Cats and kittens

When a cat wants to eat her kittens she calls them mice.

Old Bulgarian proverb

Or when a government wants to take over your home educated children it calls you, the parent, a child abuser.

A government wants to rule the citizens of its country. How much more comfortable it is for governments to ensure that citizens have no ability to reason, to ask questions, to rock the stability of the boat that does nothing for most of them but everything for some of them, to reassess and retread, to promote change...

When a cat wants to eat her kittens she calls them mice.

Great proverb.

Draughty guidelines

I wasn't going to post about them.

Was I?

Well, if I wasn't I've changed my mind.

On the whole, I'm one of these people who ignores instructions. It's from years of following instructions to find that a) I'm more confused if I follow them and end up somewhere miles from where I want to be or b) I don't have a clue what they are saying and therefore I get more frustrated and upset carefully having tried to follow their careful beckonings. It's just... because the world doesn't come with instructions. There aren't certainties, and attempting to cover ALL the potholes we can break our legs in doesn't just work.

There's always another one to trip us up.

So someone (or more than one someone) who is still nameless to me has laboured long and hard to bring forth guidelines ostensibly for local authorities to get to grips with the incredibly mysterious matters belonging to home education.

These guidelines cover a lot of pages. Here at http://www.box.net/shared/6lk1826muy

But we have guidelines. We already have guidelines. And we have dedicated and sensible home educators telling local authorities how to do it. How to treat home educators. How home educators should be treated and how the law should treat home educators.

In my view it's like this. I live near the sea. Two minutes away. There's a pedestrian path along the side of some grass-covered dunes right beside the mighty ocean. This path is for people to walk on. The path is to keep people out of the way of cars that zoom up and down near them.

The path is shared by many, many cyclists whose cycle path ends just north of where people walk. So the cyclists see the pedestrian pathway as a continuation of their cycle-way, and the people on two feet see the concrete walk-way as their pathway.

The law favours the two-feet: the argument is won by two wheels because soft bodies are a lot more able to be damaged in a row with two wheels.

For me, it's an analogy. Home educators are the two feet. Local authorities peddle themselves along mowing down (or nearly mowing down) home educators who are going about their business legally educating their children. But in a radge between those with wheels and those with bodies but no wheels, the wheels are the winners. And the legal upholders (law/police/the state) of the right of way (home education) do not enforce the right of way.

Either the law upholders don't think that the soft bodies are worth worrying about or they like the wheeled ones better. Or both.

Or neither.

It's just an analogy. One I enjoy.

Hey, phew! watch out for the bikes now!

Inveterate detectors of lies

Children are inveterate nosers-out of the double-dealing and lies of adults.

Don't you think?

When Y was somewhat younger she came in after school full of something that made her big eyes bigger. They were made bigger by her passionate iteration of 'What matters'. By that she meant the stuff that adults think is important and even vital is not. For example, the head teacher of her school considered that straightening the lines the children formed after their break at lunchtime to be really important. Catching and stopping bullies was ignored.

The head teacher also insisted that rules - the great God Rules - should be slavishly and mindlessly worshipped. Y's rules were different. She knew that small children SHOULD NOT BE BULLIED, and did something about it when they were. She chased the bullies who, having the habit of hanging around in crowds like flies around a corpse, then flew away before her determined onslaught. She was tall and imposing, and she ran at them to STOP the tormenting of little things in the playground.

"But why didn't you tell a dinner nanny?" I asked innocently.

"But Mum," she spluttered, filled with indignation. "They just say you shouldn't tell stories, and tell you that you're lying!"

My indignant crusader. All of seven years old.

Young people are more adept at finding the truth in every situation and, sometimes, acting on their impulses of mercy to help other people.

Do you think that is why we remove our children's wisdom from society by boxing them up in schools?

Seeking a new path to truth

"When you seek a new path to truth, you must expect to find it blocked by expert opinion."

Albert Guérard

I'm a fan of iodine. The Japanese are fans too. They consume far more iodine than we Brits do. The women have less incidence of breast cancer which is attributed to their increased intake of iodine.

I was advised to take kelp (containing iodine) when I was diagnosed as being hypothyroid. That is my thyroid gland wasn't working well and when it's a lazy little thing then the person sharing the body with it is a lazy little thing also. I didn't mean to be lazy - I just couldn't help it. The gland running my metabolism was a bit slow. So I started taking kelp, and, finally, finally began losing weight. OK, the exercise, taking loads more fruit and vegetables in and watching my portions of dinner didn't hurt either.

But I blame the kelp for getting me on my feet and making me feel more like the old vibrant and vivacious Danae.

So check this out:http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller20.html

If it doesn't sound right or feel right, don't do it.

If it seems good to you, go for it.

Life's too short, as a friend recently remarked to me. Life is too short for me to shuffle around like a ninety year old. I'm going to go out there and grab life by the tail.

After I've swallowed my kelp tablet!

I like home education because...

I like it because...

we do it. Sometimes we do a lot of it, and sometimes we're just living, and sometimes you couldn't tell the difference between home education and living.

I like it because...

I can go to the toilet when I need to.

I like it because...

I meet interesting people who have brains and can tell good stories and jokes.

I like it because...

it's not rigid. I can change my mind, kick back, take the day off if my head decides it just can't cope.

I like it because...

it can make my teenagers likely to steam with outrage over injustice and population abuse.

I like it because...

it allows me to determine what I allocate in time to which activities.

I like it because...

I'm not just 'taking' it from someone else; although someone else might be giving knowledge I might choose to acquire.

I like it because...

I feel free letting the rhythms of my body clock determine what I do.

I like it because...

I see the struggles and the triumphs in my youngsters' lives; I see their varying moods; I see my youngsters. I don't just see them at the end of a long hard day in a school salt mine.

I just like home education.

Don't know why.

I just signed out

I just signed out when I meant to sign in.

Or, no, I meant to stay signed in, but I signed out.

Does that mean something?

Probably not.

Was I fated to sign out at the particular second I signed out? But then I signed back in so was I fated to sign in after I'd signed out?

Gosh, a girl could go slightly daffy thinking these things.

Was I going to talk about fate? Signing in? Signing out?

No, I think not.

A person I've known as a name and a presence in home education - a careful and loving presence, a beneficence - has died. Just died.

It made me think about when, exactly when, I'll find myself in the same situation.

And it's made me realise I haven't hugged my dear ones today, visited my demented mother, played with the dog long enough, written another paragraph in my long-languishing novel, or emailed the friends who have a right to expect an email from me.

So I'm going to do those things now.

Graham Stuart and the great ugly puffing dragon

We've narrowly escaped lumbering our future home educating pals with the purgatory of having the Local Authorities and school denizens being given a twenty day bullying permit. That is, prospective home educating families would not start home educating the first day that their children left school, but be left in limbo. Neither in nor out. Shake it all about. Give the LAs a green light to work on the newly fledgling home educator. Let the LA inspector or assessor or whatever their label is for it these days get at the family; let them convince the poor neophyte, struggling-to-become home edders that home education really ISN'T for their kids.

Oh, dear.

But our friendly champion was magnificent in debate last year when Labour was about to get with the action. He was about to ride down the opposition yet again. He was on his horse, hefting the spear of protection and... well, you can read it all here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110511/debtext/110511-0002.htm

All in Hansard, at column 1216.

The magnificent Graham Stuart. The thing about Mr. Stuart MP is that he listens, he researches and he thinks about consequences, intended or unintended, and he is able to change his position once he has considered and reconsidered an issue. That's a rare individual.

But it shouldn't be. It's what we should be able to expect of every MP, shouldn't we?

Yet, Mr. Ian Mearns says:

"If a child becomes unwell or is injured at the hands of parents or other relatives, the focus of attention is often not on the family but on the director of children’s services in the local borough."

Dear God in Heaven, I mean we're bothered about the director of children's services in the case of a child becoming unwell or injured. We're bothered about the reputation or the job of a man or woman who is so removed from a situation as to be unimportant. And do we know how many directors of children's services have fallen on their swords after they've totally ignored the death or injury of a child/children purportedly in their 'care'? Well, I'm betting is a vanishingly small number if it isn't zero.

Then, again, if you have children you'll know that they become unwell. Now and then some youngsters have accidents. Sometimes they have accidents when they're told not to do something. It even happened to me. My dad told me not to run on a gravel path. He said I'd fall. Sure enough, I did and I hurt my knees. Those poor suckers bled for ages. Dad was unsympathetic: 'You shouldn't have run. I told you.'

These days, the director of children's services would've been phoned and the whole thing would've been made stratospheric.

When you think about it, it's all about vested interests, isn't it? Mr. Mearns goes on to tell us that, although middle class parents can, of course, home educate effectively, these lower class folks just can't.

Do your research, Mr. Mearns. Actually, 'lower class' home educators do really very well. It's not known why. We can take a guess, though. We can feel that those parents want the best for their children. We do better when we're motivated to do better and you can bet your keyboard that those parents want to do better for their youngsters.

I could go on all day praising Mr. Stuart and criticising the prejudice on view and the sleazy logic of people who comment on his speech. But I won't.

I'm going to watch another brilliant St. George in action. I'm going to enjoy the second episode of Garrow's Law. Again.