{"id":21083,"date":"2019-04-06T15:59:10","date_gmt":"2019-04-06T15:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/?p=21083"},"modified":"2021-12-28T21:05:18","modified_gmt":"2021-12-28T21:05:18","slug":"a-home-schooling-register-the-brainwashers-trojan-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/?p=21083","title":{"rendered":"The ‘Brainwashers\u2019 Trojan Horse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A free society intervenes in parental choice with humility. Requiring children to be properly educated is, however, a hallmark of a civilised society<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

So proclaims The Times<\/em> in a leading article applauding the Government\u2019s proposal to require parents to register home-schooled children. The irony of its supposition that children are being \u2018properly educated\u2019 in our state schools and that this is \u2018a hallmark of a civilised society\u2019 appears to have been lost on the newspaper.<\/p>\n

More than a third of last summer\u2019s Year 6 pupils (10- to 11-year-olds) failed to reach the baseline standard in their SATs for literacy and numeracy. At GCSE the grade boundaries have had to be manipulated to ensure most candidates achieve a \u2018good pass\u2019. For mathematics this figure has ranged from 15 per cent to 20 per cent over the past two years, as even The Times<\/a> <\/em><\/span>has pointed out.<\/p>\n

According to the OECD, the UK is up to three years behind the best education systems around the world. A BBC investigation in 2016 showed that the level of GCSE maths in the UK was around the level taught at primary school in South Korea (age 7 to 12).\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Employers\u2019 organisations are consistently complaining that at least a fifth of school leavers are unemployable. Small wonder, then, that we are so reliant on immigrants.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the current A-Level pass rate of 97.6 per cent has done nothing to alleviate ignorance. For several years universities have been running remedial catch-up courses for first-year students.<\/span>\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

This is the reality behind what The Times<\/em> sees as children being \u2018properly educated\u2019 in mainstream, as opposed to home, schooling. This is the educational \u2018hallmark\u2019 of what the newspaper claims makes a \u2018civilised society\u2019.<\/p>\n

Worse, in the wake of the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, the TES<\/em> (formerly The Times Educational Supplement<\/em>), published a model classroom lesson. It asked pupils to \u2018give three good reasons for joining Islamic State\u2019 and told children to imagine the world \u2018from the point of view of a soldier of the faith\u2019. \u2018Isn\u2019t it rather a challenge,\u2019 it added, \u2018rather a good way of getting to be important? Rather fun being awarded some female slaves? And you are one of the good guys too!\u2019<\/p>\n

Pupils were provided with ISIS propaganda and directed to the ISIS online magazine to assist them in being \u2018properly educated\u2019<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In its support for a home-schooling register The Times<\/em> is in tune with the prevailing orthodoxies of current educational and sociological thinking. The intention, certainly, is to be helpful to children, to parents and to society as a whole.<\/p>\n

Currently, we do not know how many children are being home-educated although the number appears to be growing significantly. A register will provide helpful statistical data; not least, the extent of parental desperation to find an escape route from failures in mainstream provision such as I have outlined.<\/p>\n

The proposed register is, though, rather more than it seems and it is regrettable that The Times has not spotted what is going on. The BBC, though, has let the cat out of the bag:<\/p>\n

Ministers say a register would help councils intervene when standards were poor or if children were at risk.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The register is likely to become the government\u2019s Trojan Horse. It will become the means by which the failed teaching and sociological ideologies of maintained schooling are foisted on to home-schoolers via local authority monitoring.<\/p>\n

\u2018You are not teaching your child in line with best practice\u2019 will be the reprimand of the home-schooling inspector. Either do as we say or we will serve a \u2018child in danger\u2019 order on you. Thus, the home-schooling escape route from low standards and PC brainwashing will be cut off.<\/p>\n

There may be a need for a home-schooling register but there is an equal need for safeguards against educational \u2018enforcers\u2019 bullying parents into conformity with what is supposed to good for their children.<\/p>\n

To adapt and paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, for home-schoolers the most terrifying words in the English language will soon be: \u2018I am the home-schooling inspector and I am here to help.\u2019<\/p>\n

How sad that The Times<\/em>, a respected and illustrious newspaper, can no longer recognise the threat to family life and a sound education posed by that knock on the door.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2019 The Conservative Woman<\/a><\/span>-All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

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A free society intervenes in parental choice with humility. Requiring children to be properly educated is, however, a hallmark of a civilised society.\u00a0 So proclaims The Times in a leading article applauding the Government\u2019s proposal to require parents to register home-schooled children. The irony of its supposition that children are being \u2018properly educated\u2019 in our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":21084,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"wp-image-borders","9":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/home_school-56789.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bgnN-5u3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21083"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22484,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21083\/revisions\/22484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/watchmanmedia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}