Homeschooling in Sweden

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8. The Politics of Homeschooling in the United Kingdom

The following article was written for a Homeschooling oganisation in Great Britain in the wake of the battle for homeschooling in Sweden.

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Home education is under threat everywhere these days, and especially here in Europe. Some of you may know that I am currently fighting a big battle in Sweden together with other homeschoolers:

http://sites.google.com/site/homeschoolinginsweden/

Because the outlook is so gloomy on the continent, the exiles have already started immigrating. Two families here in Sweden recently immigrated to Finland and Ireland to avoid the horrors that have been inflicted on the Johansson family who have had their child seized and put into "care" by Social Services for homeschooling. Worse, the state is utterly unrepentant and a family has been destroyed. The argument: the child is being socially deprived outside a state school environment.

Homeschoolers in the UK rejoiced that the Badman report was thrown out at the last moment. However, what has to be clearly understood is that this would not have happened had the Labour governent remained in power. Indeed, there is no guarantee that homeschooling freedoms will be protected by the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (assuming it survives). The powers-that-be are for the most part all influenced by or are under the control of the Europeism philosophy which most people are entirely ignorant of.

From the research I have been doing (as I have in the back of my mind the thought that I may return to the UK is things get really bad in Sweden) it seems that the only political party which has any chance of gaining influence and ultimately power in the UK is the UK Independence Party or UKIP. It gained a huge UK vote in the European elections, beating two of the three main parties. As part of their education platform they are, as a populist, grass-roots,  freedom-promoting party, guaranteeing homeschooling. UKIP views on home education are as follows:


Thursday, 11th June 2009

The Badman Review into Home Education, out today, has been slammed by UKIP as a heavyhanded Government attempt to tell parents how their children should be taught

"The release of the Badman Review into Home Education today is yet another example of this government's controlling, heavy handed approach to society," said UKIP chairman Paul Nuttall MEP.

He said: "Calling for local councils to have the right to interfere in the responsibility of parents to provide sufficient education for their children may sound reasonable but amounts to a grab for power.
 
"Worse still the Government is using appalling scare tactics to justify its actions by suggesting that home education is a cover for the worst forms of child abuse. No evidence is presented merely smears and threats."
 
The newly-elected North West region MEP said: "UKIP believe that it should be up to the parent to decide how their children be educated.

"Child abuse must be tackled, but the tragic failures of the systems have been due to local councils' inability to follow basic procedures, not due to home educators.
 
"The fact that this report is being backed by organisations such as the NSPCC and the National Children's Bureau should come as no surprise.

"Those organisations are these days largely adjuncts to the state and appear to see for themselves a role in the monitoring, inspecting and running of Home Education, all for a nice taxpayer-funded fee. They are not independent voices and mustn't be seen as such."
 
An Action for Home Education spokesmananother an has called for the Badman review to be abandoned, saying: "AHEd members believe that the review has been composed in this skewed manner in order to attain predetermined answers for the purpose of supporting the government's desire to impose compulsory registration, monitoring and tracking of electively home-educated children and their families, including state control and prescription of educational method, content and outcome for all children."


I have never really been very much involved in party politics, having been sympathetic to the Conservatives and SDP at different times, and never joined a party until last week when I made a committment to UKIP. The reasons I have done so are several but foremost in my mind has been the fact that the EU is definitely moving towards total control of education and means to eventually outlaw homeschooling as in Germany and as now proposed by Sweden, and UKIP is anti-EU (though pro-Europe). If Sweden makes it illegal, as I think it will (though hoping I am wrong), this will have a dominoes effect in the EU. This will eventually be felt in the UK where the three major parties are all pro-EU, remembering that British law must now be subject to EU in increasingly more and more areas. Our "governments" now since the Lisbon Treaty are little more than EU executive bodies with independence and sovereignty a mere illusion.

I believe that in the long term that only UKIP will guarantee our rights as homeschoolers. I say this not an an evangelist for UKIP (for this has been a major break for me politically-speaking) but because I having been analysing the politics of homeschooling now for some time and observing the trends, I have to say that unless we exercise political clout that we will become an endangered species in the UK just as we already are in countries like Sweden where the government is hell-bent on pursuing a totalitarian agenda and exterminating us.

Britons would be wise to not only think ahead but to act ahead too.  We can't take our rights for granted. Swedish homeschoolers did, I warned them, they ignored me (telling me not to rock the boat), and now we are fighting for our very existence. We have no party to defend us in Sweden but you do now in the UK, and it's growing fast. I believe that only the UKIP will serve our interests and would like to invite the homeschooling community to examine this option. This is a plain talking and gutsy party would would absolutelty fight for us. That's just my opinion, of course, but a sincere one. And if I ever did return home, I would be fighting for homeschoolers there with them!