Seeing the Bigger Picture

I posted this photo on twitter earlier with the title *Hot Sugar*. A dear old friend of mine pointed out that it looked *a bit dodgy*, and that perhaps in the wrong hands it wouldn't do the image of Home Ed any good (I know I'm paraphrasing A). When I posted it, it never occurred to me that it looked like someone *chasing the dragon* - a phrase I hadn't heard of until today! It was just a picture of my 6 year old son doing some experiments from the chemistry kit. Ok, I did think it was a bit of a #DCSF Alert as the age on the box says 10+, but that was as far as my imagination went.

Later on, when I was cooking tea, the same son was messing about with some flour left over from pastry rolling. I'm a child of the 80's so I've heard of White Lines!


Of course it reminded me of Grandmaster & Melle Mel so I bobbed over to youtube to have a listen.

Listening to the words I realised that *sugar* was possibly slang, so I went looking and goodness me, what a wealth of drug slang there is! Low and behold, sugar is indeed slang for cocaine, LSD, crack and heroin. So I have posted a photo of my son, titled *Hot Sugar* (because that is exactly what the picture showed), where it looks like he is indulging in some drugs related behaviour. Marvellous.

Incidentally, we also have several syringes in the kitchen drawers. One is left over from feeding the tongue tied baby, the others are from a hydraulics kit.

Oh dear.

We would have to hope that the Local Authority inspector was able to look and see the bigger picture wouldn't we?

The devil, they say, is in the detail. Which brings me, in a round about sort of way, to my point.

We all need to learn to look at the bigger picture, rather than making snap judgements based on first appearances.

The Government and Mr Badman presumably hoped that no one would bother looking for the devil in the detail in their HE statistics, and they would presumably *have gotten away with it too, but for those pesky home educators* who are very used to looking at the bigger picture and teasing out the truth of a matter. Like Dani, who has produced this rather attention grabbing document which lays the lies bare. Have a look, dare to see the bigger picture for yourself, and then the next time you hear or see something that makes Home Educators seem like a dodgy bunch, ask yourself if you're really seeing all there is to see.

Sharing The Glad Tidings

I don't have anything to say at the moment because others do it so much better. So I will just pass along these links because they really are worth reading.

Gill does an excellent job de-constructing the evidence presented to the Bill Committee here.

Kelly has blogged about the differences between the internal and public consultation statements from the DCSF here.

As for us; we're getting on with living and not giving much thought to the likes of Balls and Badman as they are, quite frankly, an irrelevance which we will not allow to impinge any further on our lives.

Definitely time to reclaim HE for ourselves again, and what better way to celebrate doing so than with a little challenge.

Home Educators are Racist, Child Abusing, Religious Extremists

No this picture is not of a home educating family having a jolly little BNP stylee knees up, this is a photo of that rational, intelligent, family guy who is head of the department which is now resorting to using the BNP smear card against us, because we dare to SAY NO. How to say NO is something dear old Ed could learn from us. That is of course if the truth of the matter is that he *only wore the uniform so as not to upset his friends* - sounds a bit similar to that old nazi war criminal defence of *I woz only doin' me job mate*....

We watched the *debate* in the Commons yesterday, and I can honestly say that it made me ashamed to be English. If that is the kind of behaviour those who run our country think is acceptable (and consider that all but maybe one of them are the result of the school system) then you can take your school system and shove it where the sun never shines. My children are better behaved, and have more respect for others than the lot of you. You do not have any right to tell us how to run our lives. Consider yourselves fired.

previous related articles:

Aren't you all hippies, weirdos and religious nutcases?

Home Education Diversity Survey Results

ETA: This tickled me as a concept - Cromwell your MP it's anonymous, incase that makes a difference ;)

And again ETA: Gill has, as ever, written an excellent post on yesterday's events here.

And another ETA: BillySu has done a fabulous collection of graphs - great visuals.

Ah, and Grit, dear Grit, tells it as only she can. Bravo!

Oh Lord Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz

Well, actually I'll give the merc a miss, but the where with all to attend this would do nicely, thank you :)

No Smoke Without Fire

So the saying goes. It's not always true though is it, as we frequently find out when trying to light our stove!

I've read in a few places recently, that the reason the government's idea of a licensing scheme won't work to save home educated children at risk, is because those who have something to hide will just move home and go underground, and it will be the innocents who suffer most from the unwarranted intrusion of the state into their lives.

I have to say that I am really rather affronted by this type of attempt to argue the case against licensing. However, if memory serves me correctly, I shouldn't really be surprised, considering the source.

We are currently in the process of preparing our house for the market, but that doesn't mean that we have *something to hide*, it just means that we don't want to stay in a country which shows such distrust in us, and which is quite happy to sanction the abuse of our children by the state. We know that we aren't alone in wanting to leave this country, we know many people who don't home educate who wish to leave the sinking ship that is England. Will they find themselves hunted down by interpol* for daring to find a better place to bring up their children? Not yet, perhaps.

What irks me is that our children have been consulted, their opinions have been listened to, and they will be acted on. This is how our family has always worked, much to the horror of quite a few people, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable way to operate a family to us. Now if the government would only take a leaf out of the books of those of us who parent in this way, perhaps articles like this one (from whence the following apposite quote comes) wouldn't be being written in today's press.

"Labour made a disastrous mistake when it abandoned its own tradition of self-help and mutual assistance for a distrustful bureaucratic state. We are not willing to be the helpless observers of our lives."

And this is exactly why we plan on moving, not because we are the foul,child abusing people who aren't giving their children a *decent* education that some sections of our own community seem to be painting, but because we believe that we are responsible people, who deserve to be trusted to do the right thing for our family, and we wish our children to be brought up to believe the same of themselves.

* this has actually happened to a Home Educating family I know, who moved from the UK to another European country.