George was home educated and is often seen at HESFES playing live. Watch this amazing cover on Youtube. It really is remarkable!

The 20007 Elective Home Education Guidelines for Local Authorities have gone missing. They look like THIS and used to be found HERE If found, please return unaltered! Edited to add: This comes on the back of an apparent ban on Flexischooling, as pointed out by The Home Education Forums

The new draft can be seen HERE The consultation response form can be found HERE To be EMAILED HERE Below is a response from myself (Raquel).

In my opinion education should not be compulsory. Most people want their children to do well and the state shoud trust that people are innocent rather than guilty by default. Just as famlies are trusted to feed their children and attend to their health, so they should be trusted to see that their children receive an education.Education, as with health  and nutrition should be the sole duty of the parents unless it appears that something is seriously amiss. Only then should further inquiries be made. (This does not mean issuing a SAO off the bat).  The whole of section 436a has caused untold amounts of stress for home educating families and has wasted countless amounts of taxpayers money. This new guidance, through its ambiguity and by failing to mention the 2007 EHEGLA will probably continue this trend. There is an obsession with this archaic education system. It would be so much more enlightening (and austere) if the state concentrated on putting the money spent here in to more inspirational ways for young people to access education so as to nurture innovation. We are in the 21st century and children are still truanting, because they find school stifling and uninspiring as well as a place where they do not feel safe.  The whole premise that just because they are in school, that they are receiving a suitable education shows just how flawed s.436 is.How about scrapping s.436a completely? Because in reality, it serves no true purpose other than to walk all over the rightful duty of law abiding citizens and ignores completely the travesty that many young people who are in schools are not receiving an education anywhere near that which is suitable to their age, ability, aptitudes and any special needs they may have. It also does not consider their voice when they say that the education that they receive in school is not the type they need or require.Let us stop seeking to criminalise just about everyone because they wish to be left alone and trusted to do the right thing.

Gill Kilner has also put her response online at Sometimes Its Peaceful

The Wild and Free Pigs of the Okefenokee Swamp 

Some years ago, about 1900, an old trapper from North Dakota hitched up some horses to his Studebaker wagon, packed a few possessions-- especially his traps--and drove south.
Several weeks later he stopped in a small town just north of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

It was a Saturday morning--a lazy day--when he walked into the general store. Sitting around the pot-bellied stove were seven or eight of the town’s local citizens.

The traveler spoke, "Gentlemen, could you direct me to the Okefenokee Swamp?"
Some of the oldtimers looked at him like he was crazy.
"You must be a stranger in these parts," they said.
"I am. I’m from North Dakota," said the stranger.
"In the Okefenokee Swamp are thousands of wild hogs," one old man explained. "A man who goes into the swamp by himself asks to die!" He lifted up his leg. "I lost half my leg here, to the pigs of the swamp"

Another old fellow said, "Look at the cuts on me; look at my arm bit off!"

"Those pigs have been free since the Revolution, eating snakes and rooting out roots and fending for themselves for over a hundred years. They’re wild and they’re dangerous. You can’t trap them. No man dare go into the swamp by himself."
Every man nodded his head in agreement.
The old trapper said, "Thank you so much for the warning. Now could you direct me to the swamp?"

They said, "Well, yeah, it’s due south--straight down the road." But they begged the stranger not to go, because they knew he’d meet a terrible fate.

He said, "Sell me ten sacks of corn, and help me load them into the wagon."
And they did.
Then the old trapper bid them farewell and drove on down the road. The townsfolk thought they’d never see him again.

Two weeks later the man came back. He pulled up to the general store, got down off the wagon, walked in and bought ten more sacks of corn. After loading it up he went back down the road toward the swamp.

Two weeks later he returned and, again, bought ten sacks of corn. This went on for a month. And then two months, and three.

Every week or two the old trapper would come into town on a Saturday morning, load up ten sacks of corn and drive off south into the swamp.

The stranger soon became a legend in the little village and the subject of much speculation. People wondered what kind of devil had possessed this man, that he could go into the Okefenokee by himself and not be consumed by the wild and free hogs.

One morning the man came into town as usual. Everyone thought he wanted more corn.

He got off the wagon and went into the store where the usual group of men were gathered around the stove.  He took off his gloves.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I need to hire about ten or fifteen wagons. I need twenty or thirty men. I have six thousand hogs out in the swamp, penned up, and they’re all hungry. I’ve got to get them to market right away."
"You’ve WHAT in the swamp?" asked the storekeeper, incredulously.
"I have six thousand hogs penned up.  They haven’t eaten for two or three days, and they’ll starve if I don’t get back there to feed and take care of them."

One of the oldtimers said, "You mean you’ve captured the wild hogs of the Okefenokee?"
"That’s right."
"How did you do that?  What did you do?" the men urged, breathlessly.
One of them exclaimed, "But I lost my arm!"
"I lost my brother!" cried another.
"I lost my leg to those wild boars!" chimed a third.
The trapper said, "Well, the first week I went in there they were wild all right. They hid in the undergrowth and wouldn’t come out. I dared not get off the wagon. So I spread corn along behind the wagon. Every day I’d spread a sack of corn.

"The old pigs would have nothing to do with it. But the younger pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn than it was to root out roots and catch snakes. So the very young began to eat the corn first.

"I did this every day. Pretty soon, even the old pigs decided that it was easier to eat free corn, after all, they were all free; they were not penned up. They could run off in any direction they wanted at any time.

"The next thing was to get them used to eating in the same place all the time. So, I selected a clearing, and I started putting the corn in the clearing.

"At first they wouldn't come to the clearing. It was too far. It was too open. It was a nuisance to them.

"But the very young decided that it was easier to take the corn in the clearing than it was to root out roots and catch their own snakes. And not long thereafter, the older pigs also decided that it was easier to come to the clearing every day.

"And so the pigs learned to come to the clearing every day to get their free corn. They could still subsidize their diet with roots and snakes and whatever else they wanted. After all, they were all free. They could run in any direction at any time. There were no bounds upon them.

"The next step was to get them used to fence posts. So I put fence posts all the way around the clearing. I put them in the underbrush so that they wouldn't get suspicious or upset, after all, they were just sticks sticking up out of the ground, like the trees and the brush. The corn was there every day. It was easy to walk in between the posts, get the corn, and walk back out.

"This went on for a week or two. Shortly they became very used to walking into the clearing, getting the free corn, and walking back out through the fence posts.

"The next step was to put one rail down at the bottom. I also left a few openings, so that the older, fatter pigs could walk through the openings and the younger pigs could easily jump over just one rail, after all, it was no real threat to their freedom or independence--they could always jump over the rail and flee in any direction at any time.

"Now I decided that I wouldn't feed them every day. I began to feed them every other day. On the days I didn't feed them, the pigs still gathered in the clearing. They squealed, and they grunted, and they begged and pleaded with me to feed them--but I only fed them every other day. Then I put a second rail around the posts.

"Now the pigs became more and more desperate for food. Because now they were no longer used to going out and digging their own roots and finding their own food, they now needed me. They needed my corn every other day."

"So I trained them that I would feed them every day if they came in through a gate and I put up a third rail around the fence.

"But it was still no great threat to their freedom, because there were several gates and they could run in and out at will.

"Finally I put up the fourth rail. Then I closed all the gates but one, and I fed them very, very well."

"Yesterday I closed the last gate and today I need you to help me take these pigs to market."
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The price of free corn
The parable of the pigs has a serious moral lesson. This story is about federal money being used to bait, trap and enslave a once free and independent people.

Federal welfare, in its myriad forms, has reduced not only
individuals to a state of dependency; state and local governments are also on the fast track to elimination, due to their functions being subverted by the command and control structures of federal "revenue sharing" programs.

Please copy this parable and send it to all of your state and local elected leaders and other concerned citizens. Tell them: "Just say NO to federal corn."
The bacon you save may be your own.
Copyright 1997, The Idaho Observer. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reproduce for non-commercial purposes in entirety, including this notice.

  

"Ultra Vires Home Education Monitoring: Badman By the Back Door?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/nikki-harper/ultra-vires-home-educatio_b_1538723.html

Last month, the folks at TED announced their new education initiative. They call it "TED-Ed," and it's part of a brand new platform designed to "capture and amplify the voice of the world's greatest teachers" in the form of short, sharp, animated videos.

http://www.holtgws.com/gwsarchives.html

John Holt founded, edited, and published the first eight years of Growing Without Schooling magazine, but it is through the effort and commitment of its subsequent editors—Donna Richoux, Susannah Sheffer, and Meredith Collins—that GWS grew and thrived for sixteen years after Holt's death. Though I was president and publisher during that time, it was Donna, Susannah, and Meredith who shaped each issue, corresponded and worked with all the writers to GWS, and made sure the content not only stayed true to Holt's vision of what GWS should be, but also expanded this vision and complemented it with books, research, and interviews with many thinkers and doers both in and out of school. GWS couldn't exist without all the readers who shared their stories; but behind this, it couldn't exist without the work and dedication of its editors.

—Pat Farenga, Publisher