By Pat Montgomery, Ph.D.

 

Mr. Badman, former chief education officer in Kent County, completed his fourth review of home education in England in as many years. He concludes that home educating parents may be child abusers and, as such, need to demonstrate to agents of the state that they are not. Government agents will be given the power to interview the children without parents present.

 

School officials in the U.S. leveled the same absurd accusations against home educating parents in the Eighties and Nineties. They are based upon suppositions that run counter to democratic principles. A person is innocent until proven guilty; not the other way around as Mr. Badman’s review avers. The recommendations beg the question: how many of the 30,000 + home educators in England have been proven to be child abusers? How many of the hundreds of thousands over the years? If there are home educating parents who are child abusers, they can be investigated and held to the law through the existing laws without saddling school officials with a task they are not trained to handle and forcing them into a policemen’s or social worker’s roles.

 

Equating home education with child abuse is tantamount to equating conventional schools with the spread of childhood illness. Control home educators and child abuse will cease; forbid conventional schools on the basis of health reasons and childhood diseases will disappear. Neither makes any sense to rational human beings.

 

The fact is that there are already laws in place to take care of child abusers no matter which form of education they choose for their children. These recommendations are nothing more than a ruse to restrict and control home educating parents and students, prompting other burning questions:

 

Was this review preceded by a study showing that home educating parents abuse their children? Were home educating parents and children an integral part of the process?

Were home education advocacy groups asked for advice and consent?

Do the government school officials not have enough to do with the children they are responsible for in conventional schools? Do social service workers not have enough work without adding unnecessary cases? Why add another layer of government oversight that is clearly not needed at all? Are children who attend conventional schools -- and are, therefore, subject to scrutiny by teachers and administrators daily -- not abused? Has Mr. Badman done four reviews in as many years of those conventionally-schooled children and parents?

 

Mr. Badman’s recommendations are a flagrant, baseless assault on home educators. The accusations made by U.S. school officials years ago were politically based as well. They had nothing whatsoever to do with the safety or the education of children, nor do these recommendations. This subterfuge flies in the face of reason; it didn’t work in the states and it shouldn’t be countenanced in England.