Homeschooling

The story about Paul Belien's troubles brought a note from Henry Cate concerning an ongoing Carnival of Homeschooling. I'm a little late with the link - this week's location will be at Homeschoolbuzz.com. I'm happy to support the effort though we don't do any homeschooling in the lumbercamp. I've pretty much put the TV in charge of my child's development.

In hopping around the various homschooling sites I came across other coverage of the Paul Belien situation. Most of it was supportive but one post gave me pause. It's concerning a post by one Peter van Zuidam on HSWatch. (a Yahoo group I believe)

Another thing is that the mother in question, Dr. Alexandra Colen is a member of parliament for the party Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), the political heir of the party Vlaams Blok (Flemish Block), which was forbidden by Belgian courts in 2005 because of their consequent racism. As far as I know, Vlaams Belang is led by the people who formerly led Vlaams Blok. Vlaams Belang has a racist reputation in Belgium, I must say.

From what I've read, you can translate "racist reputation" to "islamophobic," which is a term used pretty loosely these days, especially in the EU. It's also instructive to note that a poll last year expects Vlaams Belang to be the largest party in the next election. (sorry, I don't know if that has happened yet) Hey, and really, I know very little about Belgian politics, but this hatred of Vlaams Belang seems to be a very political thing. I think it's safe to call them conservative but what does that mean? That they're racist? Well, a Belgian liberal would expect (conservative) me to be a homosexual-persecuting, death-penalty demanding, bible-thumping madman if he listens to some American liberals. And he'd be wrong, on every count. So I'm hesitant to take one man's interpretation as to what Vlaams Belang is.

Besides, I've been reading Paul Belien for some time now and I don't see a bit of racism in him. He has shown concern over unrestricted immigration, yes. He has pointed out the problems with Islamic immigrants setting up a state within a state, but hey, if you've seen the automobile roasts in France, well, didn't you already suspect that something was wrong?

So OK, I don't think Paul Belien is a racist and Peter van Zuidam does. He writes:

So these parents forget to mention in their public defense one important aspect, that an inspector cannot reject HE, just because he’s in a bad mood about HE or about certain parents. Several HE-ers all over Europe would IMHO feel glad when they their supervision laws were checked and balanced this way.

Alright, I'm confused then, because later he writes:

Apart from this aspect, these parents point out 2 flaws in this homeschool statute that, to be honest, didn’t cross my mind first. The legal form by which a Flemish inhabitant intends to homeschool each school year makes the parents promise to send their kids to a school straightaway and without having the legal option of fighting this gov’t decision if their home education has been found insufficient in two subsequent inspections.

One other flaw is that the inspector is not obliged to give specific reasons for his decision to reject a homeschool situation. He may just write down his negative conclusion, that’s all.

So the inspector doesn't have to give his reasons. And you can't appeal. But Mr. van Zuidam thinks the Beliens would be safe trusting their children's future to a bureaucrat who doesn't have to explain his decision. Being a member of the Vlaams Belang couldn't affect his decision by any chance, could it? It affected how Peter van Zuidam sees the case. Odd too, because he concludes:

Moreover, the unavailability of a legal path to oppose an inspector’s disapproval in effect reduces the benefit of the doubt that the parent is supposed to have to a mere matter of theory. There’s no way to ask a judge if he would think that an inspector’s disapproval would be shared by ‘each reasonably thinking human being’. The only way to fight this indeed seems to act disobediently, to not submit a homeschool intent form, and ask a penal judge if the legislation concerned meets the criteria set out in the ECHR.

In other words, the only thing to do is what Paul Belien has done, but he's a racist so withhold your support. Well, Peter is right, except for the racist part, and the withhold your support part. Oh, and I was kidding about the TV being in charge of Lumberkid's development -- she's a fantastic student and I'm just goofy-proud of her.