http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/simon-webb-we-must-get-tough-on-home-schooling-1764348.html
From my facebook thread:
I believe Simon's children are miserable hothoused prisoners of their home who are desperate to escape their father, and will probably end up broken drug addicts selling their bodies for cash due to being unable to properly form relationships after their claustrophobic upbringing.
And I have as much evidence as Simon does of his worries. So I demand that I be allowed to inspect him.
Also, note that Simon "works with children with special needs in inner London ". So I'm guessing that he works for, or at the very least hand in glove with, the LA.
And from twitter:
thatdebswoman: OMG, I've only read the first paragraph & already seething - who the fuck is this prick?
pete_darby: Someone who wants Ed Balls to hold him, as the auto's scare him.
bridd: he wants Balls' sweaty caress
pete_darby: There is nothing good or right about that sentence.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Monday, 20 July 2009
Villification and Harassment...
Now, this really does take the biscuit.
The Department of Continued and Sustained FAIL are threatening to take their ball away... no, it's even sillier than that.
They're trying to take their facts away.
They're linking the existence of the satirical Badman Blog to the work of those brilliant people working away at official figures to demonstrate that Badman produced his figures in a monumental act of auto-proctological statistics.*
And so, they are reviewing the provision of FoI requests in light of the possibility that they may be used to "defame or vilify" the authors of the review.
Yes, they are witholding facts in case those facts are used to portray the author of a review (that claimed that monitoring was necessary, despite their being no evidence, on the grounds that some authority figures have "issues" for which their is no factual basis) in somewhat of a bad light.
I take it then that it is now policy that you can defame and villify a whole class of people on the basis of hearsay and deliberately manipulated figures, but that it is unacceptable to use facts to challenge that vilification.
Oh I forgot... in order to defame and vilify a whole class of people, you have to be working for the DCSF. Silly me.
*(And to those who doubt that, I say that any man who has spent a good portion of his life teaching science who then takes an unrepresentative sample, extracts the median value and then multiplies it unweighted across the whole class to obtain an aggregate figure, is not being merely disingenuous but actively misleading. Either he is too mendacious to be trusted with the review or incompetent. You see, unlike Mr Badman, I tend to vilify and defame people solely on the basis of clear evidence of their actions.)
The Department of Continued and Sustained FAIL are threatening to take their ball away... no, it's even sillier than that.
They're trying to take their facts away.
They're linking the existence of the satirical Badman Blog to the work of those brilliant people working away at official figures to demonstrate that Badman produced his figures in a monumental act of auto-proctological statistics.*
And so, they are reviewing the provision of FoI requests in light of the possibility that they may be used to "defame or vilify" the authors of the review.
Yes, they are witholding facts in case those facts are used to portray the author of a review (that claimed that monitoring was necessary, despite their being no evidence, on the grounds that some authority figures have "issues" for which their is no factual basis) in somewhat of a bad light.
I take it then that it is now policy that you can defame and villify a whole class of people on the basis of hearsay and deliberately manipulated figures, but that it is unacceptable to use facts to challenge that vilification.
Oh I forgot... in order to defame and vilify a whole class of people, you have to be working for the DCSF. Silly me.
*(And to those who doubt that, I say that any man who has spent a good portion of his life teaching science who then takes an unrepresentative sample, extracts the median value and then multiplies it unweighted across the whole class to obtain an aggregate figure, is not being merely disingenuous but actively misleading. Either he is too mendacious to be trusted with the review or incompetent. You see, unlike Mr Badman, I tend to vilify and defame people solely on the basis of clear evidence of their actions.)
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Another letter to inDCSFpendent
Dear Sir,
Helena Cox (letters 18-Mar-2009) raises a spectre of insular religious home educators, presumably as part of a general push to get public support for governmental oversight of home education.
I wonder if she has written, or had published, similar "concern troll" letters about state approved faith schools, or indeed the culturally homogenizing effect of general state schools in eliminating the very diversity of opinion she claims to be defending.
I have far greater faith in parents than the state in being able to decide on an appropriate education for their children, and the more I see reported on the state of schooling in this country and the woeful outcomes for the children mired in state education, the greater my faith grows.
I am writing as a humanist-pagan home educator who counts amongst his, and his children's, home educating friends people of all faiths and none, including as some of our closest friends a family who fit the description Helena gives to a T. I have no fears for their children, as you could not find a more loving and supportive family.
Social diversity cannot be defended by state imposed homogeneity. Perhaps Helena should ask whether she believes that home education should only be for "people like us" and that "people not like us" should be forced to be like us.
And if she thinks faith based home education is "tantamount to child abuse", I can only wish that she is speaking from a blisfully naive viewpoint of not having witnessed child abuse. The comparison is crass and insulting to all parties.
Helena Cox (letters 18-Mar-2009) raises a spectre of insular religious home educators, presumably as part of a general push to get public support for governmental oversight of home education.
I wonder if she has written, or had published, similar "concern troll" letters about state approved faith schools, or indeed the culturally homogenizing effect of general state schools in eliminating the very diversity of opinion she claims to be defending.
I have far greater faith in parents than the state in being able to decide on an appropriate education for their children, and the more I see reported on the state of schooling in this country and the woeful outcomes for the children mired in state education, the greater my faith grows.
I am writing as a humanist-pagan home educator who counts amongst his, and his children's, home educating friends people of all faiths and none, including as some of our closest friends a family who fit the description Helena gives to a T. I have no fears for their children, as you could not find a more loving and supportive family.
Social diversity cannot be defended by state imposed homogeneity. Perhaps Helena should ask whether she believes that home education should only be for "people like us" and that "people not like us" should be forced to be like us.
And if she thinks faith based home education is "tantamount to child abuse", I can only wish that she is speaking from a blisfully naive viewpoint of not having witnessed child abuse. The comparison is crass and insulting to all parties.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)