Dear Ed Balls & the DCSF – no thank you.
12th October 2009
You have conspired to question whether my children are safe in their own home, with their own parents, without any evidence of justification for doing so. My children are my children, conceived and grown by me, fed and clothed by me, nurtured and loved by me, taught to walk and to speak and to laugh and run and play and live while living in my care. They do not need you. They do not need you to meddle in our life.
My children love life, love to learn, are inspired to discover and explore and grow and adapt and investigate. They do not need you.
My children read for pleasure, draw for fun, run for joy, climb without fear, write for the sheer delight of creativity, make, do, help and care without help from a curriculum, without need for testing, without requirement for intervention. Because i love them, i can plan for their needs, moment by moment and day by day. Their age, abilities and aptitudes change daily and what is suitable – and the methods that will be most efficient, can change daily.
Would you question the right of a person to sit and daydream under an apple tree? Would you consider that to be suitable and efficient? If your answer is no, tell that to the ghost of Sir Isaac Newton. Your definition of suitable and efficient, Mr Balls, has 1 in 6 children leaving school lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills. 1 in 6.
That is disgraceful.
I do not need you to meddle here. I do not need you to review us and define us and defile us. I do not need you to sit in judgement. I do not need you to prescribe for us.
I will not allow you to inspect my children and interrogate them alone. I will not allow you to pass judgement on my family life. I will not allow you to smear me because i have chosen to spend time loving and nurturing my children. I, Mr Balls, have never shut the door on my screaming and hurt child and hidden under a duvet so i can conduct a radio interview. Do you know anyone who has? Will they be investigated?
Do not tell me not to get personal. You made this personal. You have inserted your fear of difference into the family life of every parent in this country – many of whom have not even realised it yet. I can only hope they will. You, i am sure, hope they do not.
I am not a subversive; i have lived my whole life according to the laws, according to the rules and according to the inbuilt desire to do right, to fit in and to be part of society. Sometimes that has not even made me proud of myself, because i would have liked to be more of a trailblazer. But at heart i am nothing more than a person who wants to live a simple, law-abiding life. YOU have turned me into a subversive. You have turned me into a person who questions the motives of my government. You have turned me into a campaigner and a complainer. You have taught me to fear my government. That is not something you should be proud of.
You will not stop me from bringing up my children to be creative, independent, happy, nurtured and curious children. You will not stop them from growing to be who they deserve to be, by trying to fit them into boxes. If i have to, i will leave this country and i will take the business that employs 5 people away with me as well. I will take these beautiful 4 girls somewhere that will celebrate them.
And when this country descends fully into a culture of hoodies and people who only know the same things as each other and all – not just the home educated – all the people with spirit and creativity and flair have fled this country, YOU will be to blame.
Posted in HE Politics, Uncategorized | 
Tags: home ed politics, home education review
19 Responses to “Dear Ed Balls & the DCSF – no thank you.”
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Fantastic post Merry:)
Great post. Good to see a variety of views, hope to see some more from other ppl tomorrow
I am so spittingly angry now that i can’t contain myself. I really struggled to keep out my views on what i think of people who shuffle kids up and down the country in the care of nannies every week, that’s for sure. My greatest fear is he is such a low life that he’ll jump ship to the Conservatives
good post merry. another one more eloquent than i can be!!
This is the first time I have commented on this blog in the 2 years that I have read it.
The last paragraph would be chilling and terrifying (and I hope unlikely). Perhaps there are people who would like/prefer a society where people wear hoodies and know the same things as each other, but it is not what I came for 20 years ago and more.
Where will you go if and when that happens? I am trying to think of the European countries that support home education, and have more than sufficient creativity. The expatriates life is a good life and a hard one. Australia and New Zealand are good too.
yeah, I certainly couldn’t write anything like that either. As I said on Helen’s blog, I just hope they are listening.
Fantastic Merry, You always put things so well. Think I will have a go at this too.
*applauds enthusiastically*
Well said merry.
I have been thinking about the review a lot lately and having a baby with special needs Im sure if this goes through we will also get special interfernce from the powers that be so much so that we are considering two options moving north of the border or open our own holistic independent school, I ask you why should I be considering opening a school just so my child gets a suitabl education. Sorry I highjacked you post. I definatly saying NO TO MR BALLS and THE DCSF.
Adelaide, we’d go to Scotland in the first instance. In the second, with enough money and a successful business behind us, i think we can find our way into Australia or New Zealand if we need to. New Zealand has just thrown out the need for inspections on the basis that the HE population is such a low risk for abuse.
And when the people who will miss us are sorry we are going, because we will, i will ask them if they signed the petition to support us. Because i am gutted to see that none of my family or non HE friends have signed it.
Sarah, truthfully, we know they are not though, don’t we? The best we can hope for is that at some point the papers pick up our angle as they did with the vetting laws.
Rachel, if i thought that would work, i’d do it. I just think they’d change the laws again though.
This is brilliant, Merry. I especially love the bit about the ghost of Sir Isaac Newton!
Brava! Well said. I am inches away from pulling Fergus out of school and home-edding. Only two things are putting me off – one is the lack of anyone else to socialise with although I think now we know more people here thru school and church it would be less of a problem. But the second reason is this whole witchhunt against home educators, I so don’t want to be registered and inspected and defiled as you put it. Scotland had occurred to me as well but I worry that where England leads the Scots might follow.
Merry the things is unless they removed the rights of all independ schools and I would register with the independent schools council they wouldnt be able to touch us imagine closing Eton…..
Montessori primary school here I come I think (on a sliding scale of fees so every family could get in of course)
A fantastic post. Keep fighting by every means possible!
All together: No
Barry
Fantastic post! I often direct my non home-edding friends here as you seem to explain it so much better than me! It’s frustrating though as most people outwith the home ed community just don’t seem to “get” it and think we’re all being paranoid.
But come to Scotland! The current executive have said there are no plans for a further review of EHE. New guidance was issued in Jan 08:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/12/17133313/0
Wonderful article – thank you so much for trying to shake us from our inertia (now where is that petition)…
….but be warned Home Educators – you are up against the centralising instincts of the socialists – socialists have a complete disregard for liberty and individual freedom because it threatens the organs of state including state organised education (through which they can pump their socialist propaganda).
Education otherwise is the only form of education that recognises the value of the individual over the group. It recognises that society is not the same as THE STATE and it recognises that society is a product of individual free choice not a separate imposed order.
That, sadly for home educators, is completely at odds with the aims and ambitions of socialists in general and this Labour government in particular, which thinks it has a god-given right to meddle in every aspect of our personal life for the sake of “the greater good” and “social order”.
Sadly for this country, socialism is the fastest route to the totalitarianism of national-socialism yet invented (with half our productive economic capacity nationalised in all but name we are half way there already).
Blessings for freedom and education otherwise,
Father Ignatius Brown
Brilliant Merry – now feeling inspired to write something of my own. I listened to the Select Committee in the early hours of today and it riled me! I even wrote stuff down!! Watch my space
blogged my ‘ Dear Ed’ – if your up for a read!!