Tuesday, October 05, 2010

A Matter of Conscience



















There is no question that every child has the right to an education. There should also be no question that as a matter of conscience, parents have the freedom to educate their child at home. And up there with educational freedom should be the right to educational happiness.

Ideas too radical for the many and yet that is exactly what autonomous learning supports and must be prepared to fight for as documented in Kelly Green's latest book, A Matter of Conscience: Education as a fundamental freedom.
"...when we educate our children ourselves, we choose or create the educational program that we, as parents, believe is most likely to lead to that ineffable, indefinable, thing call the good, or flourishing, or virtuous, or productive, human life."
Reading these words by Green I thought immediately of the US Declaration of Independence of 1776-
"We hold these truths to be self-evident.....that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.".
Happiness, goodness, flourishing. As parents, it is for us to determine the education that will best meet these goals.

I felt like cheering for the logical and clear arguments Green presents in the collection in the defense of home education against any government who would tamper with this fundamental right-as has been the case in England and the reason for this collection in the first place.

We have this precious right that most people just give up; don't even know that it is their right to determine the best education for their children.

And so parents turn over their children to the state without a second thought. What am I saying? More often then not, they are eager to get them into the system the sooner the better.
So that state monitored education becomes the default position and any other setup becomes suspect.
"For the state to involve itself in or attempt to control our decisions about educational provision is a betrayal of our commitment to freedom of belief, conscience and self expression," Green writes.

Yes- betrayal. A strong word that gets straight to the heart of what is at stake if we are slack and do not support one another when these rights are threatened or violated.

Passionately written, this book is not only a call for constant vigilance against those who would take these rights from us, it is also an opportunity to re-examine our position on what we are doing.

We're normal in the sense that we are no more fundamentalist, hippies or other stereotypical depiction tied with home educators than the rest of the population.

Green reminds us that we are defining our own educational success, on our own terms and we must actively work towards educating others about home education without submitting to or cooperating with unhelpful home education research that has its own agenda on what we do.

Green's arguments against regulation of home-based education are compelling and useful for all of us should we ever need to stand up for what we are doing.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Right so Ms. Green will have every unfit parent of which there are many educate their kids at home? A fine state our culture would be in if the state allowed this to happen! Home education if done correctly works well-but frankly most people are incompetent to educate their kids at home.

Mrs. Making the World a Better Place said...

Excuse me Anonymous, have you read the book, or even the above content? Ms. Green is simply verifying the RIGHT and FREEDOM to homeschool. Not pushing everyone to homeschool!

Our culture is in it's current horrific mess because the state began cumpulsory mass schooling in the early 1900's. For more info, please read 'Weapons of Mass Instruction' by John
Taylor Gatto.

Once you've read that, please feel free to leave more ignorant, saucy comments!

Now, about the book, I think it looks fantastic and can hardly wait to read it! Way to go Ms. Green!

Anonymous said...

Kelly Green has written a brilliant book. An important book. An eminently readable book.

Kelly Green, a true champion of home education.

Danae
http://www.threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

@Anonymous-Thanks for your comment. It has given me an idea for my next blog post. Stay tuned.
@Mrs. Making the world a better place-nice clarification. You won't be disappointed by the book.
@Danae-thanks for your comments. Thank goodness for the Kellys of our little world.

Anonymous said...

This is a culture where people are expected to dump their kids into institutions at the first opportunity. Most people don't like being around their children.

Laurence said...

Great article! Here is a link to an great documentary questioning whether Western schooling is really the answer...

http://schoolingtheworld.org/film/film-clips/hd-trailer/

Laurence @connectionzen.com

Unknown said...

@Laurence-thanks for the link. It looks really interesting. I am posting the trailer on the blog.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...