Pondering.

The Children Act is law. We fought the good fight, but the majority of the population hasn’t even heard of it (as an aside, am I the only one that finds the lack of mainstream media attention freaky?), and probably doesn’t care. It allows for the setting up of databases (singular, plural, you name it, they can do it) that will keep tabs on all of our children, and therefore, us. It requires different departments to share data – and there will be a field amongst all of this for educational setting. When that turns out blank, you can be reasonably sure that the LEA is going to come knocking. And when they do, they may well bring Social Services with them, as a recent peek at a letter from a local LEA implies *they* think that home education is a welfare issue.

It isn’t. You know that, I know that. But all these professionals are running scared, that sooner or later there will be another Victoria Climbie, and if they haven’t frantically shared all the information possible, they will be to blame. I could go on to explain how all of this has nothing to do with Victoria Climbie, and the databases were designed before the report into her death came out, but hey, you can find all that out other places. I could explain how this isn’t going to prevent any more deaths, in fact it might even cause them, but you can all put the figures together and work out that fewer social workers doing more work means less ppl on the front line and more fiddling with computers.

So we’re all out in the open now, it’s just a matter of time. Oh we could challenge the act in the courts, such things are being discussed on various politically active lists, and by ppl like ARCH. If there were any justice in the world we’d win. We have a legal right to a private family life. We have a legal right to educate our children how we see fit. But there isn’t a lot of justice in the world, is there?

So what do we do? My theory is that we live our lives. We get on with getting out there. We don’t hide, duck behind the parapets, or keep our heads down – what is that teaching our children? That we’re scared of authority? That we are ashamed of what we are doing? I’m not either of those. And if I talk to ppl who’ve never heard of home education and I leave them with a pleasant memory of a normal person, then I think that that has to be positive. The woman I spoke to this morning had come across home education before, and thought it sounded lovely. She wasn’t defensive of her choice to send her children to school, and I thought that was fine too. They can be difficult conversations, but with a bit of practise, I’m sure I’ll get better at them. 😉