The war against home education

Dealing with some of the more militant types of home educator is a bit like coping with a remedial class for slow learners. Everything needs to be repeated endlessly, explained in a dozen different ways and then the whole, soul-destroying process begins anew the next day. Not only that, but one gets the same silly comments and interruptions, the constant cries of, “Sir, I don’t get it!” I felt this most forcibly when people were asking on here recently, as to  why I went into detail about the actual reason that our old friend went to Ireland.  I assumed that my motives would be plain, but I see now that I must settle down and explain, step by step, exactly why I wanted to set the case out in such detail.

To begin with, it is necessary for readers to understand that there is a certain strand among British home educators who believe, or purport to believe, I am not sure which, that some sort of war is being waged against their chosen method of education. They claim that attempts are constantly being made to suppress home education and that there is an agenda by some in the mainstream educational establishment to do away with the practice entirely. It is of course preposterous, but there it is. In order to maintain this worldview,  these people  need always to be uncovering new plots against home educators; they require  a continuous stream of threats and menaces to their favoured  lifestyle. (Of course, fighting all these attacks on their liberties makes for a far more congenial life than actually educating their children! It is  essentially a displacement activity, which means that rather than teaching their kids their times tables, they can instead spend their time  lobbying MPs and writing political manifestos).

Sometimes, there are slack periods, when no obvious danger is looming on the horizon for home education in this country.  When this happens, they  have  to fabricate threats and pretend that some individual is being persecuted because she is a home educator.  This stops other home educating parents becoming complacent and thinking that they are safe! This is what was done last year, when this appeal was widely circulated among home educators;

A well-known member of the HE community and trusted friend needs our help. The 
person's family is facing a possible court order and they felt the need to leave the country very quickly in order to protect the children from unfounded interference based on home education as a risk factor. 

Now anybody reading this, would assume that home education was integral to the threat facing this person. She is a member of the HE community and  she is facing a court order and the possibility of ‘unfounded interference based on home education as a risk factor’.  This was very neatly done and many people fell for it. Of course, the attention of social services and their unfounded interference was precipitated not by home education at all, but by the sequence of events which I outlined a few days ago. The key factors were things such as the condition of the home, the call to the police and previous trouble with various authorities which also had nothing to do with home education. The mother in this case was also in the habit of posting about her use of illegal drugs and that probably didn’t help matters either! So while it was not wholly untruthful to say that home education was a risk factor, the ‘unfounded interference’ about which people were worrying, was not based upon this. If it was a factor, it amounted to about 0.00001% of the total of concerns being expressed by the agencies involved.

This is not an exceptional case, of course. We regularly see home educators trying to work up fears that they are under attack and that if we don’t all support them, then our own lifestyles will be the next to be targeted by the government. I have mentioned any number of incidents of this sort  on here over the years; this was not the worst example of such scaremongering, not by a long chalk. In this case though, hardly anybody with whom I have been in contact knew the true story. Those who signed the original letter have been very keen to keep the actual events from being known, because it shows that all those people like Neil Taylor-Moore, Alison Preuss and Barbara Stark, who signed that letter,  were playing people for mugs and using a case which had very little to do with home education in order to put the wind up them.  It was this practice, which is not limited to that particular instance, to which I wished to draw attention. 

The ‘Exiled Educator’; an update

Readers will perhaps recall that there was a little unpleasantness here a couple of weeks ago, following  a casual remark which I made in answer to a comment by Gill Kilner. I said:

I have just remembered, weren't you one of that gang who helped somebody slip out of the country and relocate to Ireland, in order to avoid answering all those awkward questions from social services about leaving her kids alone in the house?


Cue predictable outrage, in the course of which I was accused of everything  from criminal harassment and libel to suffering from a cogitative dissonance! How dare I say that she left her children alone in the house! I knew nothing about it and was smearing an innocent woman! There was renewed hostility when I elaborated by explaining that the  woman’s seventeen year-old son had been left in charge of his younger siblings and that this came to the attention of social services, because he was not a fit person to be left looking after young children. 

This sort of thing is a bit of a distraction from the real business of this blog, but now that the dust has settled a little, I thought that I would set out the facts of the case and allow readers to decide for themselves if I was right.

The mother in question  went off for the evening, leaving her teenage son to take care of the younger children.  While he was babysitting  a prank call was made  to the police from the house. They duly attended the property, whereupon the boy refused to let them in. They then forced entry to the home. At this point, perhaps we could just consider what I said; that the mother left her children alone in the house. Anybody think that this is the sort of thing that having a responsible adult in the house would have prevented from happening?

Having gained entry to the home, the police discovered that not only was there not a responsible adult looking after the children, conditions in the place left somewhat to be desired. There was, for example, animal shit all over the floor. As a result of this, they did the sensible thing and notified social services. The mother had had trouble before with both the police and social services. She was pregnant at the time and was in the habit of smoking cannabis and then more or less boasting about it. There were rumours that the kids might be about to be taken into care and so she left the country for Ireland, where she started a blog briefly, called,  The Exiled Educator. This may be found here:

http://the-exiled-educator.blogspot.co.uk/

  She had the baby, returned to this country and now lives in the north of England,  not far from  Nottingham.

I am hoping that some of those who were so unpleasant to me about what I said will now take the opportunity to apologise; beginning with Gill Kilner. I don’t really expect this to happen, but readers might like to look back at the things people said here, when they evidently knew all about this and wanted to pretend that I was making up lies about this case. What a bunch!