Breeding licenses - 6 December 2009 |
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The government has recently been getting excited about the Badman Report (yup – that’s the author’s real name) on Elective Home Education. That’s a fancy name for the decision some families make to educate their kids at home. You can read the full (84-page) report here, and see the responses from the Christian Institute here.
Despite the government’s recent reassurances, I’m still troubled – and for several reasons. Here are just a couple of them.
First, the Badman proposals represent an inversion of the proper relationship between parents and the state. At present, parents have the right to bring up their children in accordance with their own religious and ideological convictions. Parents can, if they choose, delegate some aspects of this (formal education, for example) to the state, but the state has no a priori rights in this area. The state only becomes involved if the parents give them the authority to do so. The Badman proposals imply a reversal of this: parents would need the state’s approval to educate their own children, not vice versa.
Second, the Badman proposals will, if adopted, establish principles that will extend to every other area of family life, not just formal education. All the arguments by which Badman seeks to justify his proposals in the area of education (the ‘welfare’ argument; the ‘quality’ argument; and so on) would apply no less to the less formal aspects of childrearing. In other words, it’s not just home-educating families that should be worried.
I’m not in the habit of making predictions, but on this occasion I’ll make an exception. I predict that if Badman’s proposals are adopted then within 10 years someone will propose that all families should be subject to ’safeguards’ similar to those that are currently being proposed only in respect of home-educating families. After all, children who attend state school are in danger of ‘poor quality parenting’ in the evenings, right? And shouldn’t the government ‘protect’ all children?
Maybe the Right Hon. James Hacker spoke better than he knew… beginning at about 6 minutes, 4 seconds.
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Current affairs, Minister's Blog