State Sponsored Kidnap?
Civitas, 15 December 2010
In June 2009, 7 year old Dominic Johansson was snatched by the Swedish authorities as he and his family boarded a plane bound for India. He was immediately taken into care and his parents permitted only one short visit every five weeks. There are no allegations of gross neglect; there is no evidence of serious abuse. Dominic was taken from his parents solely because he was being homeschooled.
The facts of this saga simply defy belief. The family were temporarily living in Sweden but intended to return to the mother’s home country. Wishing to minimise the disruption caused to his education by the move, Christer and Annie Johansson chose to home school their son.
Assessing the impact of home education compared to school is problematic, not least due to the diversity amongst home educators. Nonetheless, it is difficult to understand how a parent’s decision to educate their child at home could justify such drastic intervention.
The Home School Legal Defence Association and the Alliance Defence Fund are now helping the family to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Michael Donnelly, IR Director for HSLDA, has condemned the case as “so egregious that the only explanation for the decision is that judges and social services authorities are simply trying to cover their tracks because they know they have grossly violated the basic human rights of this family”.
However, the extreme nature of the Johansson case has obscured a potentially serious underlying human rights issue. The right of a child to education appears in many international agreements, such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 28). Yet, there is a need to balance the right of the child to education against the parents’ right “to ensure…education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions” (A2P1 ECHR).
Despite being a founding member of the Council of Europe, the Swedish Government has recently passed a lengthy education bill, threatening to issue parents with a substantial fine, or even remove their children should they attempt to educate them at home, in the absence of “extraordinary circumstances”.
The situation in England could not be more different. Roger Kiska, of the ADF, has argued: “This tragic case reflects what happens when a socialist bureaucracy is bent upon turning out cookie-cutter children, rather than respecting the individual differences of individuals and families”. At every stage, the DfE guidelines to Local Authorities on elective home education emphasise this need to acknowledge diversity; whilst education is compulsory, schooling is not.
Nevertheless, it is arguable that the balance in is England is skewed too strongly in favour of the parents. Although the local authority can intervene if it has good reason to believe that the parents are not providing a ‘suitable’ education (Education Act 1996, s.437(1)), it has no statutory duties to monitor the quality of home education, and no legal right of access to the home. Moreover, the guidelines specify that, where a parent elects not to allow access to their home or their child, this does not of itself constitute a ground for concern.
Indeed, it is unclear that under ECtHR case law home education is a fundamental right at all. In a case fought by Sweden, the Court held that the parents’ A2P1 rights are merely “grafted” on to the fundamental right of everyone to education.
More importantly, Art 12 UNCRC makes clear the need to support the right of a child “who is capable of forming his or her own views…to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child”. According to the Badman Review, although approximately 20,000 home educated children are known to Local Authorities, the real number could be in excess of 80,000. Of course, bringing in compulsory registration would likely increase the temptation to enhance other forms of prescription. However, more tightly defining the scope and role of home educators would not only better enable Local Authorities to provide assistance, but better protect the equilibrium of the rights of the child against the rights of the parent.
Somewhat ironically, Christer is now being held by the police on suspicion of ‘unlawful detention’, having taken his son home for one night without approval. Even though he informed the police where Dominic would be, Christer faces up to 10 years in prison. It is abhorrent that a parent should be so condemned by the state simply for exercising their parental right to choose the mode of their child’s education. However, whilst the English system is to be praised in this sense, it is essential that the voice of the child is not drowned out by the applause.
There is a particular aspect to this problem, not touched on, with regard to gifted children.
Many teachers, many schools, within the state system, are opposed to meeting the needs of the very brightest children, as being “elitist” , “divisive”, etc. The parents of such children are therefore faced with a choice between private schooling, which may not be affordable, or home schooling, which, as this article illustrates, may cause them to be regarded with suspicion, or of allowing their child to become bored and frustrated within the state system, wasting their potential and their lives.
Furthermore – and I have come across many examples of this – many teachers do not believe that any child ever really wants to learn anything, and that any child who displays more knowledge than their teachers consider appropriate must be being forced to learn by their evil, wicked, pushy, “middle-class”, parents.
We might come to see many children being “rescued” from a situation that meets their needs, and placed in one that fails to do so, in order to meet the prejudices of those doing the rescuing.
“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise” – an odd motto for an education system, and a worse one for a society.
“Nevertheless, it is arguable that the balance is England is skewed too strongly in favour of the parents.”
This might well be true – IF the local authorities could be trusted. Unfortunately, most of them cannot be. They see HE as something alien, outside ‘the system’ and moreover OUTSIDE THEIR CONTROL. It is this last which really gets them.
In fact the LA’s have all the powers they need. If, as the majority fail to do, they stuck to the guidelines they have, they might eventually become trusted. It would be good to see the day when home educating parents actually liked their LA and were prepared to deal with them on something other than an arm’s length basis. At present, that day isn’t even on the horizon, and the fault lies almost entirely with the LA’s. Most of them seem to prefer to make their own rules. It is no wonder they are distrusted by home educators and with good reason.
Thre Badman Review was as shoddy a piece of work as I have ever read and would be a ‘fail’ for a fifth-former. Bin it.
in the UK, ‘Good Causes’ become the New Evil in Society
More and more children are being forcibly removed from families on dubious and very questionable grounds, driven by charities run by society’s new culture of ‘fat cats’ within the Third Sector. Highly paid executives move from media positions to create corporate growth strategies that gain government, business and personal donations for charitable vehicles. Donations that are ultimately used to wreak havoc upon our civil liberties under the cover of being ‘do gooders’ that masks the contrivances of unelected executives striving to gain bonus payments from their under-scrutinised and seemingly unaccountable organisations. Trading upon past reputations and more honourable histories, these charities are still, as yet, revered by government officials (just as banks once were) and have eagerly engineered their way into being a key part of the current coalition government’s concept of ‘Big Society’.
Meanwhile, paradoxically and sickeningly, cases of abuse within foster care rise inexorably; the very people chosen to ‘rescue’ those very children from that very fate. The net result of state sponsored child trafficking under guide of goodly ‘interventions’.
Do you know how the Swedish regime was able to flourish and become the monster that it is? the answer is quite simple , an industry was built that fed of the young , child protection, education etc , and as with any industry it’s appetite was never sated it kept seeking ways in which it could expand, just as Civitas, the NSPCC, Ofsted etc etc are doing.