Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
As we monitor the United States Senate’s upcoming decision whether or not to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—the CRC—it’s worth seeing how this treaty is impacting the freedom of other nations that have already accepted the CRC. This week, we’re examining a recent English report on the home education law in that country.

A government investigator, Graham Badman, issued a report in June 2009 entitled, “Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England.” It proposes draconian changes in English home education law. His core premise is that the current law does not properly balance the rights of parents and the rights of children.

However, he reaches this conclusion on a faulty basis. Most significantly, he fails to fully and accurately describe the current legal framework that governs home education.

Despite his failure to accurately describe the current situation, he makes a series of recommendations to remedy the problems he’s supposedly “discovered.” The Badman Report opines that traditional English concepts of parental rights and liberty must be sacrificed to achieve the value of adherence to children’s rights theory—specifically, the theory contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We’ll be back with more on the Badman Report and homeschooling in England all this week. I’m Mike Farris.