Happy@Home

1st Letter to Jenni Russell @ The Guardian
29.6.09

Dear Jenni Russell,

I laughed, along with presenter Andrew Marr, today to hear Ed Balls say that they were scrapping the literacy hour because it has been so successful!
I’m now a home educating parent, fighting against the proposals within the Badman Review.

I was a primary teacher when they piloted the national literacy scheme.  I worked in inner city Birmingham.  My class had to give up their research work and projects time to sit on the carpet and do word searches!  They were furious and I was gob-smacked by the idiocy of it!
We all had teaching assistants drafted into our classes in the run up to sats.  They were to work with the children who were just below the expected standard, in order to bring the overall scores up.  Meanwhile, I had children in my class who couldn’t read at all, but got no support.  I had others at the opposite end of special needs, stewing well below the level at which they should be working.
It is the ultimate in dumbing down.  Children are taught to have the short attention spans we expect them to have.  They are repeatedly taught meaningless information (which they don’t retain) which they could pick up in one google session later in life if they found a need for it!
If they conceived of the work themselves, without it being imposed, and receive the support they ask for, they will work for hours in quiet contentment.  The only thing in the way of them doing this is the adult to child ratio.

I left the UK ed system because of this, and trained in the USA as a Montessori teacher, where I saw even more proof that in the state education system we are dumbing down and stultifying kids with what we dare to call ‘education’.

I now believe that schools fail children for simple and obvious reasons!  Too many children with too few adults to facilitate their work.  This leads to the necessity to follow a teacher-conceived, artificial curriculum (or now a government conceived, artificial curriculum).  None of it is real, so little of it is meaningful to children, despite our attempts as teachers to put it into interesting contexts.  Children learn, and learn to love learning, through fulfilling real needs and solving their own real problems.  It is natural, personalised, organic learning … an age old kind.  This is the elective home education that the Government has decided to regulate and homogenise.
Those who have elected to protect their children from damage by institutionalisation are not to be allowed to do so, nor to question the supreme ‘correct judgement’ of the state.
No great surprise that Graham Badman (who’s report contains some useful suggestions amid many draconian ones!) looks to German law as an example and to set a moral precedent for the regulation he wants to see.  I wonder if he realise the laws he was using for moral support were laws introduced by the Nazi government to ensure no child escaped the indoctrination of the Hitler Youth.

Schooling is an economic, not educational mechanism.  It’s not the great success of modernity nor the modern palliative for all ills that it’s made out to be.  Although I don’t dispute literacy is great (and would support the child’s right to prosper educationally, under the UNCRC) etc … it could and can be achieved more effectively otherwise than in school.

Indeed, schooling is in large part responsible for:

* the malaise that is the increasing social/emotional disconnection of children from parents, and parents from their children;
* the loss of the important role of parents, the role that afforded them respect;
* almost entirely removing from children a meaningful and useful role in family life and society (specific to their age and ability), one which afforded them respect and self respect.  In previous times children learnt skills by being productive in a real sense. (And nowadays we have the ability to avoid the drudgery which was often the flip side of this, where people lived in poverty).
* the increasing ‘us and them’ mentality of both adults and children, brought about by the disconnection of adults and children within society.
* children failing to learn parenting skills or how to interact with people of different ages.  Children are put into artificial age groups for 6 hours a day where they learn little or nothing of how to interact with, nurture, and be nurtured by people of all ages.
* creating disaffection by subjecting children to high levels of coercion and ‘training’ by adults whose authority is not to be questioned, but whose behaviour often deserves questioning.
* for failing 1 in 6 children, the 1 in 6 who leave school unable to read, write and compute.  Also, I would say schooling fails most or all of those who leave being able to read, write and compute!
* for inculcating a cruel culture that unintentionally propagates bullying.  The forms of coercion and discipline metered out by teachers are learnt by the children watching them 6 hours a day.  ‘Discipline’ is done by adults, but it’s ‘bullying’ when done by other children.
* attempting to homogenise people, indeed … for attempting to beat difference out of children;
* the drive for homogeneity becoming a large part of what is now a self-perpetuating and unforgiving student culture.

Introduced as a mechanism to train and control people, and to liberate a greater ratio of adults for work … no wonder it does little to educate or nurture children, let alone enable them to learn to think.  It does little to nurture creativity or interpersonal skills.  It does little to nurture problem solving skills, thinking outside of the box, or useful experience.  Our children leave school and university, almost universally unsure of  who they are, beyond what they have been told to be, and largely ill equipped for life.

If we want to prosper as a culture in our modern age, we need to begin to undo the damage done to our people by institutionalising them for the first 11 - 20 years of their lives!  We no longer need a dumbed down workforce, well inured to working in factories and taking orders without question.

Even as an economic mechanism it is no longer useful.  As a social one it is disastrous … as we are increasingly seeing.  We need to support diversity, or succumb to stagnation and mediocrity.  Let those who elect to home educate do so.  Let’s support the movement toward individualised learning environments and away from the kinds of standardisation that evidently do nothing to improve standards!

Sincerely
Sally Lloyd

Here is the letter I’ve emailed to friends and acquaintances, and am circulating within my community:

Dear all,

RE: Elective Home Education Review could threaten civil liberties of all parents.
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/ete/independentreviewofhomeeducation/irhomeeducation/

Whether you are sympathetic to home education or not, you may be concerned by the proposal, within the above review, that council officials would be given rights to regularly and routinely enter the houses of home educated children, with or without parental consent, and interview those children for child protection purposes without a parent present and without evidence of suspicion.
To do this a social worker has to raise a court order, having laid out their evidence of suspicion before a judge. It would not be permitted for a police officer without legal representation, and a legal guardian present, and lack of suspicion constitutes wrongful arrest and harassment.

The premise upon which this proposal rests is that home-educated children cannot be easily monitored by the state.

• Firstly, this is a presumption of guilt rather than innocence, which begins to set a precedent that weakens our basic rights.

• Secondly, in article 8.14 of the EHE Review, Graham Badman states:
“I can find no evidence that elective home education is a particular factor in the removal of children to forced marriage, servitude or trafficking or for inappropriate abusive activities.”

In law, if the risk is seen to be proportionate to the loss of rights, it is seen as appropriate to create a law to regulate that risk.
Badman concedes that there is no evidence of particular risk, and thus the actions he proposes are disproportionate to the loss of civil liberties they will bring about.

Registered or not, home educated children routinely have contact with doctors, health visitors and school nurses, neighbours, club leaders, swimming teachers, etc.

• The level of ‘invisibility’ that home-educated children are assumed (without empirical proof) to have would apply equally to preschool children (the group most at risk of abuse) and school children during holiday periods.

There are important filtering methods that enable us to find children at risk. The Lambing report (investigating the Baby P case, among others) found that these methods and measures are already available but providers of safeguarding services are understaffed, under-trained and need to use the measures consistently and reliably.
The EHE Review contains potentially deadly, and financially impossible recommendations that would present safeguarding service providers with a larger haystack to pick through, via a policy requiring them to regularly inspect some possible 80,000 EHE children who are at no more risk than the general public.

Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (the Lord Minister for the Department for Children, Schools and Families) has announced that no cost analysis will be made, as the recommendations are not yet proposed law. However, despite the public consultation being only just begun on the EHE Review and not complete before September 2009, the recommendations have been written into the draft education white paper just published. She dismisses that these policies will require any extra expenditure, despite the requirement to regularly inspect an estimated 60,000 extra children, and for staff to be required to have extensive training and advanced police checks! She says these extra expenses will be balanced by more efficiency!

The review ushers in another level of demoralizing disrespect for ‘service users.’
We need to carefully balance the methods and measures we use with our need to retain civil liberties and to raise our children in an atmosphere which teaches them to trust their parents as the loving and trusted guardians most of them are.

In British law the parent or guardian is primary parent to the child, not the state. However, the Government is on the cusp, in numerous ways, of stepping over into the position of primary parent, intentionally or otherwise.

Imagine if your child and every child was routinely required to attend the doctor’s surgery without parents present, against their will, to be questioned about their family life and checked for signs of abuse?
What if a social worker was to routinely and regularly put child protection questions to your child, without you present and without any cause for suspicion agreed valid by a judge?
What would it say to our children about us, and what damage could that do to the child?

• I’m disturbed by the ‘mission creep’ this government seem to suffer from. It is a house of cards where one erosion of civil liberty rests upon the loss of a previous one, each setting a precedent for the next.

The media have widely published reviews of famous cases of large-scale removal of children from their families, brought about by professional error. These cases have highlighted concerns with the reliable use of methods and some children have never been returned to parents, subsequently found innocent.

• I’m afraid of an imperfect system given more power and wider remit, stretched beyond its limit.

Days before the publication of the government review into the application of the Civil Liberties Act (13th June), the Elective Home Education Review was published by Graham Badman (9th June). The intentions and recommendations of the EHE review clearly contradict the intentions and recommendations set out in the CLA review.

The EHE review is flawed in serious ways. For example, a section of a statement from the Church of England, taken out of context and used by Badman in the review appears to show lack of support for home education. However, the whole statement shows that this is not so and that the Church is concerned about the impact on the reputation of home educators of the review itself and supportive of parents’ right to home educate. Badman appears to be skewing these statements and using the Church to cast more suspicion upon home education. This is a characteristic of the review throughout.

Ed Balls commissioned the review to discover if home education could be being used as a cover for child abuse. It was published, read and accepted, whole-heartedly, the same day! He has given the thumbs up to every bit of the review despite the fact that it openly finds no evidence to suggest that its original premise is substantiated.
The review was conducted in 4 weeks instead of the minimum of 12 in the code of practice. Badman’s statements, on taking the job of ‘independent’ reviewer, show that he made public strong preconceptions about home education. He was by no means ‘independent’ of prejudice and his selection could be seen to support the governments desire to regulate.

Despite a consultation and review (end of 2007) that found the law pertaining to elective home education sufficient as is, the reviewers were also asked to consider this issue again. The law currently supports the parents’ responsibility for their child’s education. They can delegate this to a school or educate their child ‘otherwise’. The education must be ‘efficient’ … meaning that it ‘achieves what it sets out to achieve’, and therein the law supports the diversity of religious and philosophical convictions and doesn’t impose the current government’s position.

Schools are required to be accountable … to parents … because the parent is ultimately liable for their child’s failure to receive an efficient and suitable education. The Government is not liable, because the responsibility is not theirs by law.

Without directly taking on parental responsibility (which would make them liable for the 1 in 6 children who currently leave school unable to read, write and compute), the Government, in bringing these proposals to law as regards elective home education, will erode this parental right. Through dictating what they consider to be efficient and suitable, they will bring the politics and current educational philosophies of the Government to bear on those who wish to educate their children according to their own philosophies … a right enshrined in European human rights law.
Government representatives, having little knowledge of the child, will be able to make decisions about the child’s ‘ability’ and ‘aptitude’ and decide what is an ‘efficient’ and ‘suitable’ education, meaning it sets out to achieve what they want your child to achieve … thus removing the parent from their legal right according to the law, without removing them from their legal responsibility.
• The EHE review notes that there is precedent set for this within German law, intimating that it therefore must be reasonable and moral. However, it doesn’t mention that these policies were brought into law during Hitler’s government (along with the outlawing of home education to ensure all children were party to the indoctrination of Hitler Youth!)

Many elective home educators do not choose to home educate. They are often forced by circumstances such as persistent bullying, school phobia, their child’s disability and desperation as they see their child being failed by the system.
They frequently did not start off philosophically supporting home education, but almost universally come to do so through experience. Anyone can find themselves in this situation, and everyone should have the choice, whether for necessity or for philosophical reasons.

The Government are attempting to achieve these changes in the law through the use of an emotionally charged and populist agenda (safeguarding). The Kafka-esque “not guilty? Nothing to hide!” argument adds to this atmosphere. This action is being taken solely against a minority group. It is deeply discriminatory. The actions of the Government and the slanderous words of news papers would not be allowed if the minority group was one of religion, sex or colour. We have human rights by law that protect us, but they are being ridden rough shod over without any objection from the country’s press and with little help so far from the parties of the opposition.

Your MP may already have received at least one letter on the subject. I’m asking that you see if you can’t help them become more aware by sending them another and asking others you know to do the same.

There are letters you can send on file at The Badmanreviewactiongroup yahoo group if you are not keen to write from scratch. Membership is open to anyone and you may well find it interesting too.

In order to give this campaign credibility we need the general public to contest it too. The conception of the review itself has fed into people’s gut level concerns about child abuse and inaccurate media reporting regarding it have destroyed the credibility of this large group of people. Please alert anyone locally who may be interested in helping with civil liberties if not home education itself. Please send this information to anyone and everyone you can

With love and hope
Sally

Children’s Rights Survey (their response to the proposals) closes 30th June.

Children can respond here

This made me really think!

“I can’t help but see parallels here with the government ban on hunting. The government has once again found a minority group that they want to persecute under a populist agenda with no particular justification.

Were you against the hunting ban? Did you think “I’m don’t like the idea of the government stomping on these people’s rights, but I don’t support hunting much either, so I don’t really care”?

Is this what people think about us?

And if those people with their wealth, power and influence couldn’t stop the change going through, are we going to have any chance”

It’s a comment by Chris at Duchess Discloses here.

Maybe the very importance and popular agenda the government have tried to manipulate home educators with will work against them?
It is very obvious that their action is going to threaten child protection. We need to team up with organizations like the Victoria Climbie foundation UK to prevent this ridiculous waste of resources … which seems to me to create an intentional smoke screen for their current incompetence by pretending that children are ‘hidden’ and thus falling through their net. None of the children linked by the media with this review were hidden!

In a comment to Dawn Primarollo on “What have you got to say to new children’s minister Dawn Primarolo?” (Children and Young People Now), Sarah Dickinson (a respondent) states:

“I refer you to cases which are often quoted such as that of Victoria Climbie. The foundation set up in her name protests that she was neither hidden nor home-educated: “The Victoria Climbié Foundation UK is genuinely concerned about the link being made between Victoria Climbié and home education, and Victoria as a hidden child. Victoria was neither home-educated nor hidden. The reality is that there is no such thing as a ‘hidden’ child, only children who are allowed to fall through the gaps. The key issue here is how statutory services interact with children that are known within the child protection system.”

I have replied to the conversation at Mieki’s Duchess Discloses:

I’m sure it is part of a larger agenda really.

We need organizations effected by this potential legislation to team up. Not everyone can be threatened with “What have you got to hide then?” in Kafka-esque style. It’s a different kind of strength in numbers.

We somehow need to remove the isolation we are suffering from. We have no support from newspapers. What about other organizations who’s agendas will be impacted?

I’ve subsequently written the letter below to the Victoria Climbie Foundation UK, but get the message that I do not have authorization to view the site here. I then subscribed to their newsletter and am suddenly able to post email to them through their contact form.

I am very concerned by the impact the proposals of the EHE Review will have upon currently overstretched child protection resources. I’m also deeply worried that the current focus on home educated children is being used as a smoke screen to insinuate that children are hidden and thus the department is unable to do it’s job adequately. This is wholly inaccurate, especially in the case of home educated children, as the review itself states (section 8:14), as I believe you have strongly stated yourselves.
It is very important that we can let the general public see through this arrangement as the government are acting on a populist agenda for their own purposes, and it is difficult for people to see clearly where such an emotive subject is proposed to them.
Adding 80,000 children (or more) to a regular workload for social services can only break and bankrupt the system. It is so obviously illogical I cannot but assume that there is a hidden agenda.

Home educators and their organizations are very disadvantaged in this argument by the media defamation that has predictably arisen from the very remit of the review. We did not need a whole, very well publicized review to discover there is no evidence of increased risk from not being in school. This agenda has been used to manipulate a diverse group into a position of homogeneity according to other agenda the government must have.

As home educators we are being asked the Kafka-esque question “What have you to hide” and are being silenced by it. As a very child-oriented section of the population we have great concerns for the safety of children and for the wellbeing of our own, who will be subjected to unattended interviews that contravene their civil rights (We discover that this will be made possible by the UK’s ratification of a European ruling on children which supercedes our own education laws). Their right to protection by their parents as primaries is being eroded. Our right to protect our children from use of them by a large and maybe devious establishment is being eroded.

Being perhaps powerless to defend ourselves and sharing the need for this to not become legislation, I would ask your organization to publicly team up with home educators in the UK in some way, to combat this and to help us be heard above the prejudicial baying of such name calling as ‘proselytizing zealot’ and ‘child abusers’.

sincerely and passionately

If you are wondering if the concern about over-stretching of social services by this proposed policy is going to be less important to us than the impact on our children of being interviewed unattended and having their education disrupted (indeed, their very lives disrupted) … think again.

Here’s why I share that as an equal priority … in fact it may be my top one:

before and during the abuse perpetrated upon her. Victoria Climbie: NOT a hidden child.

[Edit: Rereading now I'd change "This agenda has been used to manipulate a diverse group into a position of homogeneity according to other agenda the government must have." to "... is being used ...". I was wondering about the sentence "As home educators we are being asked the Kafka-esque question "What have you to hide" and are being silenced by it." Are we being silenced? Well, however load we shout, just at the moment I think we are! It's like an empty Munch's Scream. We can all see it but you can't hear it.]

petitions:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EHEreview/

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Homeschooling/

Freedom Bill

I’ve been moved to write serious poetry again for the first time in 23 years!

Uncivil Liberties (or Badman’s Review)

It’s a black and white film, of faceless bureaucrats in cubicles without windows. Kafka-esque MIBs* with light-bulb heads.

It’s the deputy head, and his swat team, lining up loo-users to sniff their breath for tobacco smoke. Not a full top lip to share between them.

It’s a Victorian armchair designed for posture, cutting its wooden framed impression into your thighs whilst you relax.

A cat that won’t meet your gaze flicks its tale and crosses your path, defiantly.

It’s Supernanny’s naughty-step moment of loneliness and abandonment, with the bitter-sweet promise of love if you “STAY!”

It’s the corner of the classroom where I stood, disgraced, biting a small chunk from my baby finger. Curiosity turned all silent tears.

It’s like emotional double glazing through which you see the beloved, dipped juncture between nose and eye, where pool the tears you caused your lover to shed.

An ominous, dark cloud rolls into your landscape.  Spiritual homelessness in a green and pleasant land.

[*Men In Black]