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Tuesday 15 February 2022

Clamping down on kids



I know nothing about home schooling, so here's a blog post about home schooling. Fortunately, Tristram Llewellyn Jones has a worthwhile piece in TCW on the subject.

ONE of the most puzzling aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic responses is that it was a Conservative government which implemented the authoritarian rule mirroring that of Communist China. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, given that generations have now been schooled in a national curriculum which has been taken over by the secular Left. The last remaining forum for truly independent education is home education, but now the Left is coming for that too.

Discreetly announced this month is a Government intention to legislate for a compulsory register of home-educated children. Full details are not yet available, but this will not just be a simple list because the Government says it wants a ‘comprehensive picture’ of the child on the register with the local authority having a ‘duty to support’ the family. For ‘comprehensive picture’ read surveillance and for ‘support’ read control.

Many people have seen this coming for some time. Even so, it is worth reading the whole thing as yet another reminder that party politics isn't working. The clue is Swamp(UK), which appears to be trundling along without much political interference at all. A reader comment on the piece makes a key point.

Respectfully, folk are missing the point. The problem is the state is the customer of the current education systems. Schools work for civil servants, not parents.

5 comments:

James Higham said...

"I know nothing about home schooling"

Well, not at this stage of our lives, no.

Sam Vega said...

Yes, entirely predictable. I agree entirely with the comment that the state is the customer/consumer, but would point out that it's not quite as simple as giving parents vouchers for education that they can spend wherever they want. Like some aspects of medicine - but even more so - there are commitments which last. It's not like having your hair cut at a different barber's if you didn't like the last haircut. Children make friends, they dislike disruption, and have all manner of "irrational" thoughts and feelings which cannot be ignored.

Scrobs. said...

We don't hear much about the failings of 'education authorities' these days do we!

Maybe this is the back-door method, but I'm sure it'll go down well in the ghettos...

Tammly said...

This is the key, though, to solving the problem of the spreading acceptance of 'woke' culture - when education is forced to serve the people and not the State and the producers ie teaching unions and education theorists.

That is why our politicians are so culpable, they enabled and sustained the ruination of first the secondary then the university education systems. If the shining examples of Toby Young and Katherine Birbalsingh can be built on, we will be well on the way to a cure.

A K Haart said...

James - so long ago.

Sam - yes there would be problems in moving kids from one school to another. Worth trying I think, if only to shake up a system which is showing its age.

Scrobs - some parents seem to see school as a free creche.

Tammly - to my mind elites appear to have no interest in raising educational standards for the rest of us, possibly because it is seen as a threat to the interests of their social class. This seems to have been the case for decades.