Mr Badman: a bad man?
I'm receiving emails about Graham Badman's recent visit to one of the regular home education meetings in Kent, mostly predicting - quite rightly - that I'll be interrupting my NSPCC series today to blog about him. But I don't particularly want to focus on the reports of the meeting, because I'm more interested in this Powerpoint presentation he wrote (discovered by Elaine GH), as I think it gives a very useful insight into his thinking. Funnily enough I saw that and then the report of the meeting within five minutes of one another, which tells me something I think.
I don't think Mr Badman is a bad man. I think, with great respect, that he is an old man. And if Tony Mooney reminds me of my dad, then Graham Badman reminds me of my stepdad who was brought up at a time when poverty was a grindingly real phenomena and in which learning the unwritten rules of society and thereby climbing conservatively but doggedly up the greasy pole, was the only route to success.
It's all there in that Powerpoint presentation: (Another version here if you're struggling to read that one) He's even thoughtfully set out the old unwritten rules for the benefit of those following after. No 'pull the ladder up Jack', him.
The thing is (can somebody tell him gently?) those rules don't really exist any more. Or, they might in some increasingly obsolete, failing (flailing?) old world systems of hierarchy - but it's not where the real power now is.
Mr Badman has been pointed at my blog on several occasions, so perhaps he is reading this. I hope so, because I really want to help him to understand the escalating problems faced by the old structures although I can tell that he's more than halfway there, when I look at his work and the projects in which he's involved.
Two key phrases spring out at me from his Curriculum for Trusts. First:
So he knows what's happening. You can't spend so much time in schools with young people not to know this. The world is changing. And second:
Mr Badman blames the effects of poverty for this. I disagree. I think the real reason is a fundamental change in people: they're not so easily coerced any more. They don't respect 'authority' (read: *power over*) in the way they used to and those [now not-so] hidden rules don't matter to them any more, kind though it was to share them with everyone. Working out how to climb that greasy pole is no longer most people's prevailing motivation in life.
So what is? Developing authenticity. Carving one's own path. Liberty (from dogma, rules, requirements). Curiosity and being free to follow it. Our young people want to learn what they want to learn. They no longer want the parameters of this to be dictated to them. They don't want to be guided, or judged, in the time-honoured way. I can already feel the hackles of the older generation rising in a unanimous silent, pompous cry of: "Well, it doesn't matter what they want!" Oh, but nowadays it does, I'm afraid. People are networked, informally(!) informed and empowered now: you can't keep them in their place any more. They want to set the terms of their own success, not to have them dictated by some other - be that parent, teacher, government, examining body, banker or employer.
'Success' is no longer an objective term. Like so many others, it has become subjective and in so doing, it's changing the world around it.
That Graham Badman should be in charge of the UK government's independent review of home education is no mistake: for either us or him. It's crunch point: a head-on collision of power with our innate instinctive understanding of what our children need on one side, and his remit to try to shoe-horn that into a desperately obsolete system that can't possibly adapt quickly enough, on the other.
The acquisition of money, status and power is plainly - according to his work - the most important thing in the world to Mr Badman and he perhaps assumes that to be the case for everyone else, though I think he really knows everything I've said here to be true. The question is - although he certainly seems to have the intelligence - whether he also has the necessary integrity, courage and youthful flexibility to take that on board.
As loving parents, we will continue to protect our children's autonomy. Whatever that takes.
PS: Two further points:
1. Just because Connexions doesn't know what they're doing (and you can read that both ways) doesn't make our children NEET.
2. The inevitable consequence of freedom is not criminality, as implied in your Curriculum for Trusts. Make the law fair, and most people will be happy to abide by it. The missing element, ironically, is trust.
I don't think Mr Badman is a bad man. I think, with great respect, that he is an old man. And if Tony Mooney reminds me of my dad, then Graham Badman reminds me of my stepdad who was brought up at a time when poverty was a grindingly real phenomena and in which learning the unwritten rules of society and thereby climbing conservatively but doggedly up the greasy pole, was the only route to success.
It's all there in that Powerpoint presentation: (Another version here if you're struggling to read that one) He's even thoughtfully set out the old unwritten rules for the benefit of those following after. No 'pull the ladder up Jack', him.
The thing is (can somebody tell him gently?) those rules don't really exist any more. Or, they might in some increasingly obsolete, failing (flailing?) old world systems of hierarchy - but it's not where the real power now is.
Mr Badman has been pointed at my blog on several occasions, so perhaps he is reading this. I hope so, because I really want to help him to understand the escalating problems faced by the old structures although I can tell that he's more than halfway there, when I look at his work and the projects in which he's involved.
Two key phrases spring out at me from his Curriculum for Trusts. First:
Highly individual, entrepreneurial [behaviour], adaptive to constant change, [is] becoming [the] dominant lifestyle choice in younger generations in UK and US
So he knows what's happening. You can't spend so much time in schools with young people not to know this. The world is changing. And second:
It is getting more and more difficult to conduct school as we have in the past
Mr Badman blames the effects of poverty for this. I disagree. I think the real reason is a fundamental change in people: they're not so easily coerced any more. They don't respect 'authority' (read: *power over*) in the way they used to and those [now not-so] hidden rules don't matter to them any more, kind though it was to share them with everyone. Working out how to climb that greasy pole is no longer most people's prevailing motivation in life.
So what is? Developing authenticity. Carving one's own path. Liberty (from dogma, rules, requirements). Curiosity and being free to follow it. Our young people want to learn what they want to learn. They no longer want the parameters of this to be dictated to them. They don't want to be guided, or judged, in the time-honoured way. I can already feel the hackles of the older generation rising in a unanimous silent, pompous cry of: "Well, it doesn't matter what they want!" Oh, but nowadays it does, I'm afraid. People are networked, informally(!) informed and empowered now: you can't keep them in their place any more. They want to set the terms of their own success, not to have them dictated by some other - be that parent, teacher, government, examining body, banker or employer.
'Success' is no longer an objective term. Like so many others, it has become subjective and in so doing, it's changing the world around it.
That Graham Badman should be in charge of the UK government's independent review of home education is no mistake: for either us or him. It's crunch point: a head-on collision of power with our innate instinctive understanding of what our children need on one side, and his remit to try to shoe-horn that into a desperately obsolete system that can't possibly adapt quickly enough, on the other.
The acquisition of money, status and power is plainly - according to his work - the most important thing in the world to Mr Badman and he perhaps assumes that to be the case for everyone else, though I think he really knows everything I've said here to be true. The question is - although he certainly seems to have the intelligence - whether he also has the necessary integrity, courage and youthful flexibility to take that on board.
As loving parents, we will continue to protect our children's autonomy. Whatever that takes.
PS: Two further points:
1. Just because Connexions doesn't know what they're doing (and you can read that both ways) doesn't make our children NEET.
2. The inevitable consequence of freedom is not criminality, as implied in your Curriculum for Trusts. Make the law fair, and most people will be happy to abide by it. The missing element, ironically, is trust.
posted by Gill at 6:16 am
33 Comments:
So, I don't care about food quality and I only find jokes about people and sex funny?
Perhaps I am secretly middle-class?
Or maybe actually Wealthy class, after all I do know the local Hunt Master well enough to get a lift up the road from him. I also had elocution lessons when I was a sprog, I rebelled and spoke with stronger dialect and accent!
The old joke in our house is that "Why, when we know so many wealthy and influential people are we poor nobodies?"
Because we don't use people like social climbers do.
I have enough connections (despite being "poor") to ensure that my daughter will have a job at 16 should she want one. In the areas that she wants to work in and have a college place too to get the formal qualifications she has to have but does not need.
I do hope the Badman reads this!
Thanks for this Gill. Still processing all of the Badman stuff and wondering how we find our way through to any sort of connection either with him or the panel members.
It is very frustrating because on a personal level it is almost impossible to get your more complex views and reasoning heard.
Really trying to think of ways to get the active support of more of the general public as I think we need to be bigger in some way.
I think sometimes our more militant views can be off putting to the general public who can see us as paranoid and angry without just cause.I'm not saying that expressing those views is wrong - I think it is vital. It just might need a different approach if we want to bring more people on board in support of us.
Its so hard to know how to deal with this situation.
Jo
I am afraid the Mr Badman continuing to fall for LA carp at this stage was a blow for me. I have read many of his writings , I am aware that he, by default, realises that schools are defunct in their present form.
Badman has been attempting since the dawn of the internet almost, to transform education and until yesterday my thoughts had been that he saw home education as a vehicle to carry his idea's forward, not a pleasant thought but I hoped that by exploring the world of home ed he would see autonomy working and therefore be able to go away with new ideas on how to select the school children who could adapt to his form of self led learning and trial it with more success than previous trials that had used blocks of schoolchildren geographically and failed.
He has not only failed us he has failed himself if he doesn't now step away and think.
He was asked to give an opinion on a group of people using their own brand of education , he has met motivated , happy and sociable children practising a form of self led learning.
He has worked with schoolchildren many of whom he believes would benefit from a more formal style of self led learning that could sit in the middle ground .
He knows schoolchildren who by reason of family / social constraints may actually need the schoolroom as a sanctuary at this moment in time.
Think Mr Badman where are you going to source adults who can motivate children to explore the world of learning of their own volition?.
Oh back to my opening lines , to accept the figures of an LA when their 'evidence' to date has been flawed, to not question why a home educated child should be classed as NEET simply because they have attained the age of 16, to assume 48 responses to a review justified it continuing and to continue to work with a charity that wrongly holds up a murdered child (whose life they could possibly have saved) as an example of the risks of home ed makes you, if you continue, a man whose morals and financial motives should be questioned in depth.
I am actually now actually hoping the grounds for judicial review be met because I feel that fake investigations with pre determined outcomes led by persons whose morals are such that they can be swayed by promises and percieved power need to be stopped, FULL STOP
Agree absolutely with everything you have said in this post, and I stand and heartily applaud Elaine's comment. My first thought on reading the report of the meeting was that he is an old man. The square root question made me think of my dad who is the same age as Mr Badman. It's something from that era, it's not something that most people of mine or my children's age would remember from school. A truly independent contemporary should have been chosed for this review, it's nothing more than a whitewash, and this meeting has shown that up beyond refute.
wow Elaine,
I love your comment.
Jo
maybe it was/is believed by those in authority that home educators have "middle class aspirations"? or that there are two kinds of home educators, those with middle class aspirations and those who "aren't really home educating".
bit of a cliche but...paradigm shift required
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
fiona
http://www.freedomforchildrentogrow.org/update.php
I think that is maybe what I found so hard about yesterday. When reporters have come and met the kids, they see for themselves that it works. However they then write it up, they have all left with a HUGE impression made on them by the kids. I didn't get that same feedback from Graham. He *did* say "they are obviously enjoying themselves" but somehow he didn't make that sound like a positive aim, like that was ENOUGH. I immediately pointed out that when we started going to that group Samuel wouldn't go outside (too scared) and I wouldn't let William go outside (it wasn't safe to have him unsupervised). Now Samuel is the "leader" of the group of young lads/aspie/ASD kids and William is safe surrounded by other kids and adults who know how he ticks and what to watch out for on his behalf.
As for him being old, it told a story of a child saying he looked like their grandad. GB thought that was ok till the kid said "he's dead".....
I think Mr Badman is in fact a very bad man indeed. Looking out for his friends so they gain a 'nice little earner' off the back of this review.
Apparently at the meeting with HEers Mr Badman told someone that Stephen (can't remember his name) of NotSchool... you know..one of the panel of experts on the home ed review... is a close personal friend of his.
Tie this in with the NSPCC looking for a 'nice little earner' and it looks oh so very cosy indeed.
Just to add..there are 2 or possibly 3 Elaines posting here and I'm the G-H one.
O dear, being one of those "highly individual, entrepreneurial [behaviour], adaptive to constant change, [is] becoming [the] dominant lifestyle choice in younger generations in UK and US" types, I'm afraid I don't seem to fit in anywhere on that chart of his.
Using my cynical business head, all I see happening is another faceless organisation being formed for home-educators to register with (£2,000 fine if you don't, sort of thing) and a very large commerical computer/internet contract (access for all, you understand; you must pay £150 joining fee and you must be a member or you get another hefty fine type of thing) between maybe Becta, NotSchool and Bob at the Golf Club??? ... ;0(
I found it hard to get much from that Powerpoint presentation. I suspect it was very much an aid to a talk and it certainly doesn't stand too well alone.
What struck me as odd was the fact that, on the one hand, he believes that the number of children in poverty has fallen and, on the other hand, believes that the increasing conflict in schools comes from the fact that more children bring 'poverty values' with them.
I remember reading a lot about class and education when I studied sociology (many moons ago now, of course) and what he is talking about here is cultural conflict affecting educational attainment, which is hardly a new idea! It doesn't just relate to class, of course. I have read stuff about education and race that is based on a similar idea.
What he seems to do here is to acknowledge this (that some children do not feel the same 'comfort and 'ownership') but imply that this is inevitable and that the solution lies in the role of the education system. He seems to be suggesting that the system should be supporting children through a break with their home culture and an acquisition of a culture and set of values more compatible with educational attainment and social mobility.
There is so much I disagree with here (if I am reading him correctly) that it's hard to know where to start.
I would argue that the structural inequalities in society will not be removed by seeking solutions based on shifting individuals up and down the ladder. So, if that's the aim, it won't work. Hierarchies depend on the existence of people at the 'bottom'.
I also really object to the notion that education should be all about learning some script that allows you access to the ivory towers. That can never, in my book, really be compatible with true learner empowerment or autonomy and is all about maintaining a rigid 'top down' model of education.
There's a lot more I could say but I'm blogging in your comments box here. I'd better read some more of his stuff and then do some blogging of my own...
Thanks for showing us that presentation Gill (and Elaine). It is indeed very interesting.
I think that class structures are alive and kicking, most obviously and brutally, in the school system. As soon as you set foot in a classroom you can see the lines of division, and almost feel the weight of disaproval and low expectations pressing down on the working class kids' heads. It was one of the things that most depressed me about P's time at school.
Stepping outside the school system does free people (children included) to subvert and circumvent those 'rules' to some extent, which is why it seems to home educators that Badman's ideas are outdated.
I think the school system is one of the primary mechanisms for preserving the class system, and making sure people understand their place in the pecking order. Working class home educators are therefore very threatening to the ptb, because they are missing out on all that essential 'preparation for the real world'.
I've always been puzzled by New Labour's obsession with *everyone* being middle class. How would that work in practice?
Gina, you evidently don't *know your place,* tut tut. You're supposed to be all miserable and jobless if you're not middle class or wealthy, aren't you? Sheesh, get with the programme, girl.. ;-)
Jo, let me know when you've worked out a less militant way of saying it! I try not to see things in black and white terms, but in the case of autonomy it either is, or it isn't IME. (Although if we're middle class, we're supposed to be using language for negotiation according to the table above.)
Elaine, one of my sons said yesterday (about one of their grandads): "The problem is, people reach a certain age and then they think they know all the answers. After that, they're not taking any input that doesn't agree with them." I suppose we'll just have to hope that Mr Badman hasn't yet reached that age!
Tech, it definitely reminded me of my stepdad, who used to fire maths questions at my children and me when I was a child as if the results proved something.
Fiona, I think a paradigm shift is absolutely required.
Ann, can you tell us here about your Schrödinger's cat conversation with him please? I'd like to say something about it, but I don't want to quote your list post out of turn. In particular the "I don't agree," statement. It might be worthy of its own blog post actually.
Elaine, I think you might well be right, but since we are stuck with him for the purposes of this review, and that he has the potential to set us up for a lot of problems, I'm choosing to stick to the assumption/hope that there is some room for manoevre, fool's hope though that may be. I just think: never say never. You know, he's a church man.. he's 'supposed' to have principles.. (We've had the pleasure of Mr Heppell's company on this blog incidentally.)
Shirl, ROFL! That's hilarious! And probably true.
Allie, I completely agree with you but the question is: are they determined to try to preserve the hierarchy at the expense of learners' autonomy? According to his conversation with Ann at the meeting (which I'm hoping she'll return to recount here) he either doesn't respect educational autonomy, or he doesn't understand it.
Dani - ah yes, good point. It will be completely different in schools, won't it? That hadn't occurred to me. "Working class home educators are therefore very threatening to the ptb, because they are missing out on all that essential 'preparation for the real world'." Also it's worth noting in this context that the wives/partners of high earners (i.e. not in receipt of child tax credits) will be allowed to stay at home in the future, whereas the others will be expected to enter full-time employment.
"I've always been puzzled by New Labour's obsession with *everyone* being middle class. How would that work in practice?" Dunno... the working classes are in India/Poland/wherever the real things are being made nowadays..? We're supposed to be a 'knowledge-based economy' here in the Brave New World, aren't we?
Gill,
I didn't mean this sounded militant. I meant as a community we are quite rightly coming across in such a way -which will work for such things as getting lots of home edders to sign petitions and take action which is vita and what has got us through the last consultations successfully.
I just feel we might ned to get more people on board with this at some point and that might take a different approach which is not about compromise or giving ground at all but in engaging people in seeing that it is wrong to impose more restrictions on home educators.
Some of these people will have made quite different choices in lifestyle to us but might support and defend our rights if we can find the right way/s to connect with them.
I absolutely agree that autonomy is black and white but there must be ways to find engagement with people other than home edders -I just haven't thought of them yet. :-)
Jo
Jo you may well find the means to engage with others in the forthcoming independent review into state education.
I understand it will be launched within the next few days with a call for pupils, parents and carers and any other interested parties to give input freely on what they feel are the problems ,if any, within the system.
Oh gord - his connections with CCCUC should set the alarm bells ringing... I did my PGCE with them, and believe me, there are some lovely tutors but you do it their way or not at all.... (all woolly and fluffy on the top, but completely unable to see beyond a certain-way-being-the-only-way-because-its-right! underneath) I and a few others were the token 'different' students that year, brought onto the course by a tutor trying to shake things up and get the rest to see that a variety of teaching attitudes and delivery methods (like the ability to allow autonomy in the classroom - we were all people who got through school before the NC and openly didn't love said NC), but we all suffered for it, and he left disapointed at the years end as well :-( and apologising to us for 'putting us through it'
Elaine, Anonymous, Others
You are right about getting others on board, but I think you have to stop thinking of yourselves as an education group. You are a civil liberties group and there are lots of other civil liberties groups out there for you to make common cause with. If you stick to people interested in education you are sunk, IMHO.
Think of it as a little test for you. Will you support publicans' right to permit smoking on their premises? Will you support foxhunters' rights to hunt? Perhaps if you do, they will support your right to educate your children at home without state interference.
You don't have to like smoking or foxhunting or any of the other minority pastimes that have been done away with. You can think them revolting. You only have to agree that adults should be able to make up their own minds about the rights and wrongs.
Elaine Kirk wrote
at 11:26pm
http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/?p=8347
''In responding to the review questions, Family Education Trust observed that home educators typically view home education as part of their family life, and that there was no compelling reason why children who continue to experience family life during normal ‘school hours’ should be deemed in need of additional safeguarding or monitoring any more than families where children are out of the house between 9.00am and 3.00pm during term-time. There would be an uproar if the government were to propose routine welfare checks on all children during school holidays and at weekends. Such an intrusion would rightly be regarded as a breach of family privacy, and home educating families regard routine monitoring in the same way.''
Certainly wouldn't hurt to get major church groups vocally on our side, and that article makes good points.
I'd just lik eto add that home education can surely not seriously be considered to be revolting (unlike inflicting passive smoking or killin other animals could be...) - not that I want to marginalise home edders more but even I feel the need to recognise some boundaries (at last my own!)
As a generalisation though I do agree that it is a civil liberties issue and that not only are these being generally eroded but that our tolerance is seemingly getting higher, even from (potentially) innocuous views on how much fruit or veg we should eat (we are human!) or what our (basically irrelevant) BMI should be, a la "Change4Life".
Cripes have I just presented to Mr Badman as being middle class bordering on poverty? (whatever the heck that means in 2009)
Of course, presentation is Everything.
"Certainly wouldn't hurt to get major church groups vocally on our side, and that article makes good points"
Just a shame the Pagan Fed don't have the balls to stand up for us because I am sure as Hel has two sides that a church group would not stand up for me!
"I don't think Mr Badman is a bad man."
Yes, he is.
"As loving parents, we will continue to protect our children's autonomy. Whatever that takes."
Keeping a portfolio of their work just in case? :P
I like the idea of linking up with other liberals Jo, if that's what you mean (?) - as long as they really are. I find a lot of people who call themselves liberals really aren't when you scratch the surface. As regards negotiation though, I think our militant position has served us very well so far. No changes have been imposed, we're just being repeatedly asked the same questions, to which we don't have to yield and give the 'right' answers. We can just keep saying, "No thanks." (Though I'm a bit worried that there are signs of wavering on this.)
Helen, that's illuminating, thanks. I'm hearing quite a few similar stories about teaching courses these days.
Bishop Hill, I think that'd be a good idea, but you'd be amazed at how many of those people think our children belong in schools. They think we're somehow stifling their liberty by keeping them out. I think they must assume we do it forcibly or something.
Elaine, ooh that's interesting. Firebird, I'd be happy to get anyone on our side who really was.
Lotusbirther, I think that's the plan, isn't it? Like frogs in a pot, nobody notices the water is getting gradually hotter.
Gina, that's the problem isn't it? You'd think good people would stand up for good people, end of. The only trouble is everyone's subjective interpretation of the word 'good'!
Leo, well we'll defer to your superior knowledge then. As for portfolio, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never mentioned 'keeping a portfolio of their work just in case'. Has someone else here?
Look at no 11 on the powerpoint presentation he did.
I may misinterpret but we seem to fit into the bottom left corner.
Maybe this is the point we need to make to Mr Badman.
Sorry no time to respond in more detail now
Gill I'm amazed how you keep this all up. Bravo
Elizabeth
"Leo, well we'll defer to your superior knowledge then."
Gill, you know better not to defer to anyone's "superior knowledge."
I'm serious about Mr Badman. A good person would not keep such a last name. It's not childish to say this. It is "the emporer is naked" situation.
I think most of our children probably fit that bottom left hand box too Elizabeth, but then an increasing number of schooled children probably do too, despite the system's best efforts.
Leo, I had the same thought about his decision to keep his last name, but we're stuck with him so we have to have hope. Surely the alternative is despair?
When his report is published, if it's a complete sell-out then I'll be joining you in the 'No clothes!' scream.
I know I am off topic here just wanted to clarify I really am not against a militant stance - I am very in favour of it and do not think there is any negotiation to be done.
The people I was thinking of were more other parents in you don't know what you've lost till you need it kind of way. What if sometime in the future your child has problems with school and home education is necessary - how would you feel about having to use an eduational model that resembled the one that had failed your child rather than being able to tailor it to meet your child's needs.
Home education currently does not have a defined one size fits all model precisely because it is an essential safety net for children where the states one size fits all model does not work.
Other parents I think have a vested interest must be stay at home mums whose kids don't go to nursery.There kids too are unseen in the same way and if legislation is changed for us it would set a precedent that would make it easier to change it for other groups of people too. As we are a small minority it will be easier to get this through for us but if we can get others on board we might have more people fighting our corner.
People don't see how this affects them but if we can show them that this isn't just about our eduational choices which might be different to theirs we might be able to garner more support.
I think I am just looking for ways to feel less impotent in all of this. I have stood up and been counted filled in consultation, written to mp,signed petition etc. But I just get the feeling its not enough this time.
I have been trying to come up with some posts that will highlight this to post on various parenting forums but am struggling to get the right tone and unsure if it is a wise way forward.
"Gina, that's the problem isn't it? You'd think good people would stand up for good people, end of. The only trouble is everyone's subjective interpretation of the word 'good'!"
Yep you tell them at the anglican church thing that you are getting hassle because you home educate and they will stand beside you, tell them that you are a pagan home educator and they will be on the phone to the NSPCC so fast that we will have another Orkney/Nottingham/Rochdale.
Satanic Ritual Abuse Myth will return.
Gina xx
I agree that the problem is over people's different interpretations of what is "good". I think this is because "good" is the wrong criterion to use to decide this kind of question. As a society, we are in the pickle we are in because we have taken as our criterion for banning things "stuff I think is bad". As you rightly point out, the problem is that people disagree about what is good and what is bad.
The correct criterion is of course the "harm principle" (see John Stuart Mill's On Liberty) which says that the only reason for interfering with anyone else's activities is when they are directly harming someone. Home educators are doing no-one any harm. Therefore nobody, including the government should have any business interfering. Ditto the hunters and smokers.
Slide 22 of the PPT presentation: The team around the child/family.
Anyone else find this image incredibly threatening?
Jem
Gina: Not sure why the PF should make any statement in this... I'm pleased the Anglican Church has stated its position, but it is a political organisation. I wouldn't expect the Baptists, Methodists, etc. to join in, likewise any Hindu, Muslim, or Krishna organisations!
I just think you're asking a bit much of a voluntary body. I don't think it's a question of the size of their collective machismo!
Jem
Jo, is that you? I take your point, definitely, and I'd love to know how to achieve this:
"People don't see how this affects them but if we can show them that this isn't just about our eduational choices which might be different to theirs we might be able to garner more support."
Please let us know if you come up with anything! (And don't worry about being off-topic.)
Gina, that's very shocking but probably true :-(
Bishop Hill, I agree with you. Wow, a proper libertarian :-)
Jem, yes I do, absolutely. Is it worse, do you think, or better than the ECM one? At least GB's child is visible, and has a family, though it has far more 'unnatural' entities around it than the ECM one does. Or perhaps the ECM ones are just more grouped than GB's.
The PF could have come out with a statement supporting home education (and home educating pagans) and stating against the abuse claims.
After all Aim 1 is
To seek to support all Pagans in their personal and public life, to help ensure that they have the same rights as the followers of other beliefs and members of other religions.
Yet I was told that "it wasn't within their remit to support us as the issue is too controversial"
I conclude that they, like every other organisation that is supposedly there for support, don't really want to know about some problems because they are the "wrong" problems and only want to raise their head above the parapet when there is a chance of free publicity.
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