Bishop Hill Wait for it...
May 22, 2008 Civil liberties Education Carlotta wonders about the impact of the Birmingham starved child case on home education. Word has started to get around that the poor child had been taken out of school ten weeks ago following a campaign of bullying. I heard the family's MP on the radio this morning saying that parents weren't allowed to take their children out of school in this way. This will have been a surprise to the thousands of families who have done just that, and demonstrates once again the traditional talent of MPs to sound off at considerable length on subjects about which they are entirely ignorant - the law is quite clear that if you want to educate your children yourself, you can.
Since the news broke, there has been some relief for home educators with the news that the family had received a visit from the local authority home-ed inspectors, who had noted nothing out of the ordinary. This rather undermines the arguments, which are surely coming soon, that home educators should be obliged to accept regular inspections from local authorities to ensure that they're not abusing their kids - at the moment they are free to tell the local authority to take a running jump. People will say that in order to avoid tragedies like this there is no alternative to change. "It's for the children!", will be the refrain - an arugment that, for most people in the UK, seems to trump all others .
Let's hope that the political tide of change that seems to be strengthening at the moment, brings with it a realisation that civil liberties are just a bit too important to be thrown away on irrational, emotional argument like this. The idea that you cannot live your life with your family, without officers of the state coming to check that you haven't committed some heinous crime against them, is dangerous and is frankly untenable in a free society.
If we are still a free society, that is.
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