(Image: State schools, come on in!)Independent: Is the Government Right to be Concerned About Home-Schooling?
I don't usually feel inclined to applaud mainstream reporting. But, bravo to the Independent here! Just to quote the best bits of the article:
But home-schooling families feel persecuted, according to Ann Newstead, of charity Education Otherwise. "The authorities say that if they can see a child every day in school then they can look for subtle changes that indicate abuse, but 99.9 per cent of cases of abuse and neglect are happening to children in school," she says. "There is no evidence of abuse in home-schooled families, and when you push people for this they just say: 'Well, statistically it has to be happening.'"
The Spry case, she claims, was about welfare failure not home schooling. New home education guidelines were brought in only two years ago. "Many of us think that the real aim of this review is to gain educational control over parents. The authorities didn't get the powers they wanted last time, so now they are using welfare as their trump card. They want some form of compulsory monitoring. They are under pressure to get results, and they live by outcomes and performance indicators."
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US research shows that home-educated children – even less advantaged ones – markedly outperform children in school by the age of 14. Research by Paula Rothermel of Durham University has similar findings. "They do very well compared with the norms for state school children. It may be school dumbs children down, or it may be to do with how the brain works when left to its own devices."
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The only thing everyone agrees on is that the numbers of home-schooling children are rising fast. Katie Bell's children may soon not be counted among them, however. If the authorities take away her freedom to educate her children as she wants she says she's off to Canada. "They even give you money for home schooling there," she says.
In my own experience, state education is not very productive and does little else other than churn out robots and fail anyone who will not conform to the system (and no, I didn't fail, I reluctantly conformed). It needs reform, and definitely the National Curriculum should be removed. I mean, think about it, government control over what is taught in classrooms?!
This is the real world. Some parents abuse children. It's a crime and should be punished, and the children should be protected. But why would state intervention in the family EVER, except in the very worst cases, benefit the child? God knows how many children in care are on Ritalin or some other wonder pill. What this issue has to do with persecuting homeschoolers, I don't know.
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2 comments:
The reason that there is such a huge attack on Homeschooling going on is what you said earlier in the post about indoctrination into the system, It's also about the state interfering in every little aspect of our lives. There is also neuro linguisting programming in the original article as subconciously people that read it make a subconcious 'Anchor' between home schooling and child abuse.
Keep up the great work!
Good point about the subconscious link, yes it's a well known fact that 'if your child doesn't attend one of our schools, their parents are abusive'.
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