The other day we directed you to an article in Brussels Journal that details how the Socialist Utopian state of Belgium is using intrusive laws to dictate UN values to individuals who want to home-school their children. As it turns out, the forced intrusion of socialist/UN values into homes is more widespread than it originally appeared:
For over fifteen years we have been struggeling here in Switzerland and the situation is getting worse. The whole battle is about the non-declared statist ideology. Whoever has a different opinion than the states’ bureaucrats is publicly denounced as intolerant, reactionary, traditionalist or whatever, while the bureaucrats force their illogical, misleading and hidden socialist views. Unfortunately the press is mostly on their side.
More @ Celestial Junk
Update from the Comments ~ Postscript says:
Socialism is as much a religion as Christianity or any other mode of philosophical thought. The liberal-left would like to have us believe that they hold no philosophy on life, only a pure and uninfluenced centrist thought (ha, ha, ha).
Critical thinking is a key foundation to ‘free’ thought, but we will never escape from our own philosophies. It is an innate human quality to communicate through our own world view. In this way, I have no problem with schools that are exclusively Christian, Secularist or whatever. If you can find the bodies to support the type of doctrine you preach – then (for the most part) so be it. The problem comes when the State says, “This is what you must do. This is what you must teach. Your children must attend.” I believe for the Socialists and liberal-left, they fear the concept of those with conservative viewpoints forming centers of education because they know the majority of the worldview is to the Right, like it or not. It (Conservatism) is the view that many do not live up to, but they want for their children.
More from the Comments: By Me No Dhimmi
The victim (word used correctly) parents were well-educated. The father trained as a lawyer; the mother is a former university lecturer. We would need, of course, to have all the bio info forwarded to our resident arbiter, David Brown, to make sure that their alma maters weren’t 2nd or 3rd or 4th rate, but let’s take it as read for the moment, that they are well-educated, pending David Brown’s analysis and report to the appropriate ministries.
The home school population, albeit small, has doubled in a short period of time, suggesting to David Brown, our resident arbiter, that the parents have gone mad.
The “authorities” are naturally worried about career stability, not about children. It need not be debated that they aren’t the slightest bit concerned about the children, tho’ it has to be admitted that they are quite expert at using the spectre of “children at risk” to advance their agendas (a kind of ideological child pornography it always seems to me).
A certificate is required to be signed by the parents containing the laughably vague phrase “respecting … the fundamental human rights and the cultural values of the child itself and of others”. Read that vacant, vacuous phrase again and gasp! Orwellian doesn’t quite cover it.
Here’s the thing: the inspectors will make the decision as to the level of compliance to that vague bureauspeak. If they sign two reports the home-schooling is banned and the parents are subject to criminal prosecution if they don’t comply.
I have some experience with securities regulation (the receiving end). In BC, a new act was proposed containing all kinds of clauses with phrases like “what a reasonable person would expect”. We need not spent a lot of time wondering who the “reasonable” party would be in a dispute. The “authorities” thought (and even stated so in public) that the narrow tightly worded rules allowed bad characters to do bad stuff while still being technically compliant. They were pushing for the easy, lazy route: make the rules so general that they could simply decide that anything they didn’t like was non-compliant.
Now that’s “scary” (word used correctly).
ET,
I do consider Godel’s incompleteness theorem to be a blow to rationalism, at least in the sense of having faith in universals or fixed ideals. Essentially the theorem says any logical system complex enough to represent itself must necessarily contain true but unprovable statements, or the system is logically inconsistent. Once one studies non-linear dynamics, one sees this limitation to logical expressibility writ large–causality is too computationally complex for human representational systems mediated by polynomial space-time complexity thought processes (e.g., conscious thinking). As in Cantor’s diagonalization proof, a human representational system is like a countablably infinite list attempting to contain the reals–Cantor and Godel could always construct reals or true statements missing from the list. Ditto attempts to model non-linear systems with concepts and linear causation. The result, most evident in common law and science, is that the conceptual framework evolves to accomodate and become productively creative within experience.
In essence, thinking becomes an engineering problem of apply representational-computational resources to the most pressing relevant issues. Critical thinking, then, is the art of transforming the system to enhance its effectiveness. Critical thinking to regular thinking is like carpentry to a set of tools. An effective carpenter learns to use more tools more appropriately through experience and in relation to particular tasks and problems, and eventually learns to create new tools. Carpentry is a skill that is nurtured through master-apprentice discipline and self-monitored application. A teacher can provide someone with a list of tools and what they are used for, but to become a carpenter you need to develop skills through repetition of fundamentals and coaching from a master carpenter. Again, common law (esp. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.) and science are good exemplars. The representational-computational systems in each are continually transforming and are based on experience (driven by seeking and adapting to the most relevant errors generated by the models).
David Brown and others who see no problem with kids being forced to inhale secular humanist relativism in public schools show little understanding of the psychology of teaching.
The purpose of schooling in our traditional teacher/class structure is threefold: to feed the ego (by which I mean the rational part of the brain) facts and techniques so the child can function in society; to rein in the id (the ‘wild child’ within all of us) so the child will not be disruptive in work, school, or social situations; and to mold and reinforce the superego (the authoritarian part of us that holds core values) with the norms of the time.
Now, in most schools, if the teacher fails in the first task, his students don’t learn anything, and eventually (we hope), the teacher is replaced. If the teacher’s fine, and the child doesn’t learn anything, we take remedial measures with the child.
Similarly, in the second task, if a teacher can’t keep discipline in his class, he won’t last long. If a child won’t exhibit self-discipline, and disrupts the class by shouting, disobedience, etc., that child will be dealt with in a variety of ways.
But, in the third task, public schools don’t do anything to evaluate or measure what values the child is learning. It just happens, and an increasing number of parents are opting out of a system that, knowingly or not, instills values that are tremendously out of synch with those of the parents.
My children go to a Catholic school. They don’t get a lot of religious instruction – about 15 minutes a week. But they do go to a school where images of Christ and Christian messages are prominent, and here’s the important point: those messages are absorbed into their subconscious just as surely as they absorb the latest Black Eyed Peas ditty.
Do I think my kids might reject the Church as teenagers or young adults? It’s a possibility, and I’m open to discussing it with them, and letting them make their own choice – when they’ve got the thinking skills and the experience to do so. But, as a parent, when it comes to shaping that superego, I happen to think the Church’s positions are far superior to those of the sec-hums, and that children exposed to them will become better human beings for it. Now, that’s my opinion, and it may be wrong, but I’ve never seen anything to contradict it.
David Brown:
Of course I’m “concerned about career stability”. However, I’ve been self-employed since age 30 and my customers decide my career stability. I have zero power over them. They decide my fate, day in day out.
“Arbiter” wasn’t sarcastic. It came from your scoffing reference to parents with General BAs from 2nd rate universities, one of which I fear I may have attended myself. Have you no understanding what a kick in the face that would be to a great swath of humanity including many visitors here. I’m guessing you’re a young technocrat.
“all types of vagaries could ensue” – you mean CHOICE? (oh trust me, I LIKE using that liberal word). Again, don’t you get the bureaucratic totalitarianism in that phrase?
When liberal automatons like youself use rote words like “tolerance” “inclusiveness” and “diversity” what you really mean is adherring to the default statist position. i.e., you may select any option form LIST A. I’ll be generous and say you are not even aware of this, as per your earlier assertion that your children were “politics free”.
It is revelatory that you refer to the probability that “some parents could abuse the homeschooling situation” whereas you fail to acknowledge that the modern interventionist state is routinely abusive. Read new kid on the block’s story, and convince me that the state is not abusive. Then tell me that parents are MORE likely to be abusive than unionized government employees with a vested interested in protecting and expanding state power.
I do like to look for some common ground: I agree with your earlier comment somewhere else that “young children” should not be exposed to the politics of sexuality. I was a bit disappointed that you did not decide for us what the appropriate age would be. May I humbly suggest there is no appropriate age in the public school system for the politics of sexuality? Or for ANY other politics.
Earlier — from a statist point of view of course — you warned about pandering to various and sundry special interests. EXACTLY. But that is what is happening. You don’t notice it because evidently it is aligned with your value system. I presume you are aware of what just happened in BC — a gay “couple” has been given a contract to oversee curriculum to include “queer history” and it is proposed that parents be prevented from opting out of “instruction” in these matters, and that a dispute between this “couple” and the province will be decided by arbitration.
David Brown:
Of course I’m “concerned about career stability”. However, I’ve been self-employed since age 30 and my customers decide my career stability. I have zero power over them. They decide my fate, day in day out.
“Arbiter” wasn’t sarcastic. It came from your scoffing reference to parents with General BAs from 2nd rate universities, one of which I fear I may have attended myself. Have you no understanding what a kick in the face that would be to a great swath of humanity including many visitors here. I’m guessing you’re a young technocrat.
“all types of vagaries could ensue” – you mean CHOICE? (oh trust me, I LIKE using that liberal word). Again, don’t you get the bureaucratic totalitarianism in that phrase?
When liberal automatons like youself use rote words like “tolerance” “inclusiveness” and “diversity” what you really mean is adherring to the default statist position. i.e., you may select any option form LIST A. I’ll be generous and say you are not even aware of this, as per your earlier assertion that your children were “politics free”.
It is revelatory that you refer to the probability that “some parents could abuse the homeschooling situation” whereas you fail to acknowledge that the modern interventionist state is routinely abusive. Read new kid on the block’s story, and convince me that the state is not abusive. Then tell me that parents are MORE likely to be abusive than unionized government employees with a vested interested in protecting and expanding state power.
I do like to look for some common ground: I agree with your earlier comment somewhere else that “young children” should not be exposed to the politics of sexuality. I was a bit disappointed that you did not decide for us what the appropriate age would be. May I humbly suggest there is no appropriate age in the public school system for the politics of sexuality? Or for ANY other politics.
Earlier — from a statist point of view of course — you warned about pandering to various and sundry special interests. EXACTLY. But that is what is happening. You don’t notice it because evidently it is aligned with your value system. I presume you are aware of what just happened in BC — a gay “couple” has been given a contract to oversee curriculum to include “queer history” and it is proposed that parents be prevented from opting out of “instruction” in these matters, and that a dispute between this “couple” and the province will be decided by arbitration.
Oops, sorry for double post.
Me No Dhimmi,
I’m self-employed as well but run my affairs as an employee of my own company whichs tends to insulate my life from the whims of our clients.
I don’t understand the kick in the face part, if your motivated enough to attend university then surely your smart enough to know the level of the institution your at. What’s wrong with accurate self evaluation?
I describe myself as a technocrat.
“Vagaries” as in David Karesh or David Duke or Ernst Zundel. You’ll have to explain ‘bureaucratic totalitarianism’…I don’t get it.
Where have I used use rote words like “tolerance” “inclusiveness” and “diversity”? Your generalizing. Guilt by association doesn’t count.
There’s abuse at all levels…parents, the state and kids themselves.
It seems our common ground is that there is no place in the public school system for sexuality and politics, not at any age.
Special interest groups get what they want because they’re louder and more organized than the majority. The way to fight them is not to turn tail and run but organize better and become more vocal than them. 10% should never be allowed to rule the remaining 90% but they do because the 90% allows it to happen.
“The way to fight them is not to turn tail and run but organize better and become more vocal than them.”
I disagree. The overhead of becoming personally involved in a zealot war is too great–there are more important things to accomplish in one’s short life (unless you don’t have anything better to do). It is more resource-efficient to vote with one’s feet and spend more time doing activities with your children, which is why choice is important, both as an option and as a disciplining force on the government system. Look how much Edmonston’s school system has improved as a result of the discipline of choice.
Debris Trail:
The EU states are trying to impose on these families “socialist” values.
An excellent , short summation of the core reasons for these actions.
That is the main reason for this forced indoctrination of socialism, by a state run by life time bureaucrats. Who do not want to allow any dissent of there ideology, or political control to parents.
Its the “beer & popcorn” mentality on speed.
Its become quite apparent that socialists detest the public, parents & anyone who dares to question there fairyland reality. All must be crushed under the banner of State supremacy over the family & individual.
I think this is commonly known as dictatorship. Hitler youth, Communist pioneers et al.
It would be like the teacher Unions taking over here, or the NDP federally.
Its obvious the Socialist State does not think parents have any rights to there own issue. Nor do they want individuals or those with dissenting opinions. They want nice little bring washed morons.
I hate to break it to the Socialists. It never worked in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, China or any where else. Eventually It will come back to bite them in the rear.
Why? Because there whole ideology is based on lies & false paradigms. Margaret Mead or Kinsley anyone? This is why they want the control so much. Socialist Democracy is dead. They see this & fear it.People are not tabula rasa’s.Noe are they born with morals.
There in panic mode now. So there showing there true iron fist. Not the tolerance BS they love to dribble out of there two mouths. No this is the real wall behind the facade.
Absolute control by the polity for indoctrination.
Among many things that bother me about David Brown’s posts, and I won’t venture into any of the various holes of sinking sand, it would be gratifying to see the “your,” as in “if your motivated enough” be used properly. “If YOU’RE motivated enough…” etc.
You + are = you’re
Your = the possessive adjective, meaning it belongs to you
BTW, I went to a second-rate university.
new kid on the block,
You’re absolutely correct! I know this, it’s 1 of my faults, I start keyboarding too fast and make this mistake far too often.
My apologies.
David Brown, no need to apologize: Just don’t do it again!!
Hear, hear, murray! That is why choice is so important. I recognize that I can do more by putting my children in an alternative school, whether it be homeschooling, private or otherwise, than I can by organizing a rebuttal force and getting into a giant pissing war that will never end while my children are in school, defeating the whole point of the exercise.
Update: Spell Prison …-
Homeschoolers Refuse to Sign UN Convention Based Document, May Face Prison
The Brussels Journal ^ | 6/20/2006 | Alexandra Colen
Posted on 06/22/2006 6:17:32 PM PDT by bordergal
In today’s Belgian newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen Bob Van de Voorde, the spokesman of Frank Vandenbroucke, the minister of Education, says:
“One of the conditions [for homeschooling] is that the homeschoolers must sign a document in which they promise to rear their children along the lines of the UN Convention on Children’s Rights. These parents have not done this. This is why the ministry has started an inquiry.”
The parents Mr Van de Voorde is referring to in the paper are my husband (TBJ editor Paul Belien) and myself. The “inquiry” is a threat to prosecute us.
Homeschooling is a constitutional right in Belgium. …- freerepublic.com
Homeschooling is ILLEGAL in Germany. Hitler banned it in 1938 (?) because he wanted the state to be considered the parent.
It is one of the very few Nazi laws still on the books.
They are jailing parents (especially fundamentalist Christians like Baptists) for non- compliance; in one case the father for a week, followed by the mother for a week.
Here’s the link to the piece I read a few days after the one in this thread:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/139
BTW, I’m not a religious person and was not especially interested in this subject before this Brussels Journal piece. However, I find myself fascinated by the subject because in my view if there is ONE area for which state interference should be verboten it is parenting and family affairs (excepting of course child and spousal abuse).