Homeschooling According to the House of Lords

I think you'll *love* this House of Lords blog. I guarantee you after reading such snippy, condescending "I know more than you do about everything because I'm upper-class" attitude for more than a few minutes, that you'll hug your American flag for happiness. You might even dislike Obama just a little less because you know other people have it worse.

The link highlighted above is about homeschooling, but if you go back to "home" and scroll down there are some other dooooozie entries and comments. Dang, you think they're racist here in the backwoods of Missouri? Check out the comments about being sure that those counterculture Muslim chicks are educated, hereby defined as and "taking some science A-levels." They just use their fancy accents and puffy words to express their "concern."

"If home education is as good as is claimed," Baroness Deech writes while looking down her nose, "Then there is nothing to fear from some inspection."

Nevermind that the criteria for said inspection hasn't been decided yet. Nevermind that failure to live up to these unwritten expectations could result in your children being shipped off to public school against your wishes and/or taken away if educational neglect is found. Writing those expectations down takes too much time! How tedious, when there is ever so much fox hunting and polo to attend to. (I throw a stereotype back every now and then, just because I can. For how much longer can I speak openly politically? I don't know, if what is happening in other countries keeps creeping in here.)

And as to their making exceptions in the unwritten criteria for special-needs kids? Well, that would just open the door to someone, somewhere, not finishing her science level As who could have. All those unwashed people in the lower classes shouldn't be deciding things for themselves anyway. It opens the door to all kinds of new and dangerous ideas like... oh... I don't know... meritocracy and stuff.

On the same blog, Lord Soley (gotta love that name!) quips that extreme intervention into private lives of homeschoolers is warranted because sometimes "parents are providing a level of education that fails to enable the child to learn basic skills like reading and writing." (Of course, by that token, there are MILLIONS of parents of handicapped children who can never, never, never succeed and never do right. But... another post on that.)

It's been written elsewhere that the British mindset is such that he considers himself a "subject" of a monarch and as such, is the victim of a rather medievalish mentality. Look at the comments, though, and you'll see plenty of feisty people who seem to understand this concept of "freedom" and have a few things to say about it.