What was the purpose of the recent posts here?

I dare say that there are those who have been wondering why I have been going on about high profile home educators, their neurological problems and strange beliefs. Is it just a protracted outburst of malice and spite on my part, or could there be a rational explanation? The reason is simple and uncomplicated. Many of those who represent or claim to represent home education in this country do more harm than good. Whatever their actual mental state, they give the impression of being odd and irrational. This negative image reflects badly on ordinary, sane and well balanced home educating parents, who find themselves being viewed askance because of the behaviour of a vociferous lunatic fringe.

The problem is that the sort of things that I have been writing about here over the last few days are pretty well known to those in local authorities, government departments and so on who have an interest in children who are being educated at home. They are alarmed by the antics of the well known home educators and former home educators and wish to bring in tighter controls, in case most home educating parents are as crazy as those one sees in the public spotlight. Let me give one or two examples of how this works.

When Graham Badman asked Paula Rothermel whether she thought that many home educating parents were suffering from Munchausen’s by proxy, it was not a random question or one intended to smear an entire community. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, based upon what we see among the people about whom I have been writing; those home educating parents who appear in newspapers, magazines, on the radio and television and so on. I mentioned a specific case yesterday of a mother with a neurological condition which defied diagnosis and whose daughter went on to present with a similar disorder. I know of two other mother/daughter pairs of the same type; both involving very well known home educators. There are also a fair number of such people who claim that their children are on the autistic spectrum, have dyslexia or ADHD, either without a diagnosis or in spite of a professional diagnosis that these syndromes are not present.

Another point is that when a well known home educator, whom local authorities and so on are treating as being a leader of the home educating community, turns out to believe that the queen is a shape shifting lizard or that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion should be in the non-fiction section at the library, then it makes ordinary people wonder what other madness is lurking beneath the surface! Some people take these weird characters to be typical examples of home educators and jump to the conclusion that most home educating parents must be mad.

This is an unfortunate situation for home education in this country, that most of the well known people involved in it come across as being the kind of lunatics that one would hesitate to trust with the care of a child. I have no idea what the remedy might be, but the next time that people are complaining that some government department or charity is acting as though home educators need to be watched and supervised, we might stop and think what sort of example some of these prominent figures are setting. It is by them that many people judge home educating parents as a group.

What does he mean, high profile home educators? What constitutes bizarre beliefs?

It was perhaps inevitable that as soon as I mentioned ‘high profile home educators’, a contrapuntal murmur should rise in the comments here, to the effect that nobody had ever heard of any high profile home educators. It was similarly predictable then when I mentioned mad belief systems, I would be accused of imposing my own standards upon others. After all, where do I get off calling other people’s worldviews barking mad? The easiest way of dealing with this is to give one or two real-life examples, being careful not to identify the individuals concerned.

Whenever home education, particularly the autonomous strand, is put forward as a successful alternative to school; two examples are sure to be cited. One of these is a boy from Leytonstone in East London who was home educated and then gained a place at Oxford University and the other is a young man in the north of England who studied bio-chemistry at Manchester. It is at the second of these two cases that I wish to look.

The mother of the boy who went to Manchester is one of those I have mentioned before, who spent years patrolling the internet to defend home education against sceptics.  She has appeared in a national magazine under her own name as well as many provincial newspapers. She has also been interviewed on the wireless. I think it fair to say that she is a high profile home educator. She is also one of the mother/daughter pairs that I mentioned a few days ago, where the mother develops an unidentifiable neurological problem and the daughter duly follows suit at puberty.

This is one instance of what I meant when I talked of high profile home educators; a woman and her son of whom most of the people commenting here are likely to have heard.

As regards bizarre belief systems, I am by no means the most conventional of men myself. It takes a lot for me to view somebody else’s beliefs as barking mad, but I have my limits. One of those who helped Alison Sauer produce her famous guidelines was also one of those nine people who were barred by the Department of Children, Schools and Families from making any further Freedom of Information requests. Her name appeared on every internet list to do with home education and she also commented constantly on the online versions of newspaper articles about home education. Another one who could well be described as a high profile home educator. She also happens to be a follower of David Icke. A well respected man whose initials are NT, one of the most well known figures on the British home education scene, is a devout believer in the New World Order. When I meet people who believe that the royal family are really lizards or that the Jews are taking over the world, I have no hesitation in calling their beliefs barking mad.

I have given a few examples here of both high profile home educators and also made beliefs. I hope that readers now understand what I mean by both phrases.

The New World Order

The accusation is sometimes levelled at me that I have a distorted view of the British home education scene because I rely too much upon what is said on the Internet and do not spend enough time mixing with real home educators. This is a fair point and I would be the first to concede that much of what one sees on sites such as Home Ed Forums and HE-UK is not at all representative of ordinary home educating parents. Indeed, I made that very point during the fuss about Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill. The point is that these Internet groups have a very great and wholly disproportionate influence upon what is going on with home education in this country. Opposition to changes in the law are generally coordinated via these lists and forums. For this reason, it is worth keeping a close eye on them.

Something which I have noticed, and I am not alone in this, is the extent to which those who have a high profile on these places are often adherents of strange ideas such as the New World Order. This was shown very clearly the other day when the owner of one of the largest lists expounded his geopolitical world-view. While every other rational person in the world is aware that sub-Saharan Africa has for many years been teetering on the brink of starvation and gripped by regular famines which kill millions of people, this individual believes that Europe will be building a bridge across the Straits of Gibraltar and importing most of its food from Africa. This is all tied in somehow with the bombing of Libya and the invasion of Iraq. This is of course classic New World Order conspiracy theory. If it were an isolated example, it would hardly be worth mentioning, but it is not. I have exchanged emails and spoken on the telephone with a few of the well known figures on the Internet home education campaigning front and have been surprised to hear both the New World Order idea and even David Icke mentioned favourably.

If you read the lists and forums with this in mind, a lot becomes clear. Just as in some home educating circles in the USA, many of these people believe that attempts to monitor home education are part of a wider attack on liberal parents being coordinated by the United Nations/Illuminati/New World Order/sentient reptiles from outer space. It's all tied in with Big Pharma and the military-industrial complex, you see.

Before anybody asks, no I don't believe that the majority of British home educators are mad enough to believe in stuff like this. But when some of the most influential groups 'supporting' home educators are influenced by nonsense of this sort, it is bound to have an effect. Has anybody noticed that even on this blog, nothing ever happens by accident? When Blogger helpfully installed an anti-spam filter here without my asking for it, some comments vanished. At once, the assumption was that I was censoring people. When the Department for Children, Schools and Families website was being reorganised a while ago, the 2007 guidelines went missing for a while, along with a lot of other stuff. Coincidence? I don't think so! Many of the people on the home education Internet circuit thrive upon conspiracy and the idea that they are being persecuted by dark forces. They clearly enjoy believing that they are the targets of a wider international conspiracy to suppress freedom. This is one of the reasons that stories from Sweden and elsewhere are so popular; it confirms that they are fighting a battle across the world.

I am not going to direct attention at individuals, but if readers care to look at a few of the lists with what I have said in mind, they might spot some of what I have been talking about here.

The New World Order

The home educating community in this country has a tendency to seize upon slightly unusual words and then use them all the time in their communications, both to each other and to outside agencies. 'Conflate' was one such word, 'narcissism' is another. And of course, 'statist'. 'Conflate' is just a buzz word of course, but 'statist' is rather different. It ties in with a mental attitude which seems to be becoming increasingly common with home educators and is fuelled by six or seven of the main Internet lists.

As many are aware, as a result of writing a couple of newspaper articles on the subject of home education, I am more or less officially a pariah among other home educators! Nevertheless, many contact me by email and we then speak quite amicably on the telephone. Some of these are fairly well known figures who, in public, denounce me as a traitor and a fool. Talking to two such individuals in the last week or so, I was struck that both made casual mention of the New World Order and World Government. These references were so run-of -the-mill that it was plain that they assumed I would catch the allusion, which indeed I did. It was still pretty alarming to hear reasonable people talking of such things in a way which suggested that they bought into this idea. On reflection though, it is not at all strange; much of the home education scene, not only here but also in the USA, is permeated by the same unspoken assumptions which provide the foundation for the idea of the New World Order.

The New World order is a conspiracy theory which originated in far right American circles. The basic premise is that powerful and influential people have been working behind the scenes for decades or even centuries to establish a global government which will mean the end of individual countries. In the last few years, left wingers on both sides of the Atlantic have adopted a version of this idea. It ties in with globalisation, which many left wing types detest and also mass surveillance. For some in America, the United Nations is the embryonic World Government and all its works must be viewed with suspicion.

How does all this fit in with home education? In the USA, the Home School Legal Defense Association is a large home education group with members in Europe as well as America. They are at the forefront of the fight to prevent the USA from ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Of all the countries in the world, only America and Somalia have not signed up to this. For many right wingers in America, this is all a plot by the United Nations to take away traditional American rights such as freedom to raise their children as Christians, teach them at home and allow them access to firearms. It is the HSLDA which is fighting the Johansson case in Sweden and curiously enough the father in that case thinks that he has lost his child not because of home education but because of his involvement with Vaken, a weird website which exposes the New World Order.

New World Order conspiracy theorists have a few favourite bees in their bonnets. Interestingly enough, vaccination is one of these. In the Johansson case, the lack of vaccination for the child was mentioned again and again. Many home education activists in this country are convinced that vaccinations are designed not to make their children more healthy but are part of a heartless plot by the globalised big-pharma complex which will at best poison their children and at worst make them autistic. Concerns about mass surveillance are very common among British home educators. They see the annual entry into their homes of a local authority officer as not just another irritating manifestation of the Nanny State, but more a deeply sinister plot to deprive parents of their rights. Once again, this is a key concern of New World Order believers.

Talking to and reading what some of the more militant and active home educators in this country say, one is struck by the sub-text; the message which is not spelled out explicitly, but assumed to be common ground between them and their readers and listeners. If somebody working for the NSPCC says something mistaken about home education then this cannot be a simple error. It is because the NSPCC itself is corrupt and venal; they care not about children but are a self-serving bunch of people who are only after more money. Vaccination? A money making dodge by globalised companies. Local authorities are not genuinely concerned about vulnerable children, but are rather waging a war against home educators. In other words, the simple and obvious explanation for much of what goes on in the world is never enough for many home educating parents. Others may be hoodwinked, but they alone can see where all these things are leading!

Of course many ordinary home educating parents are not like this at all, but if they spend much time on the Internet, they are liable to become influenced by these ideas. If the link to some document on the Department for Children website is broken, most parents assume that it is just a technical malfunction. As soon as they go onto some blogs or Internet lists though, they will learn that this too is part of a government conspiracy to deprive people of their rights. The more that one looks at the concept of the New World Order, the more that a lot of what is being said by leading advocates of home education in both this country and the USA makes sense only from that perspective. Taking one aspect alone, it must have struck people how much talk there is on some Internet HE lists about vaccination? And has it ever occurred to anybody to wonder why an obscure concept like statism should have become a common term in home education circles? I shall be posting further on this whole topic in the next few days, as it is worth exploring in a little more detail.