L’Unione fa la forza

Proposal for European home education organization, bringing together both existing associations and groups, and non-associated home educators in different European countries.

If there is strength in unity, then the more we are together, the stronger we can be . There are differences between people who educate at home, but we need to focus on what we share now. All over Europe there is a movement on behalf on governments to restrict home education , as recent and not-so-recent activity in
England, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany and Sweden shows. There are countries in Europe where you can’t home educate, others where you can only do so if you have a teacher’s title, countries where it is used a pretext to take your children away from you, countries where if you fail the state exam you are ordered to go back to school, countries where parents are so afraid of the police arriving at their doors that they choose to have their children suffer in a situation where their happiness is seriously compromised. There are countries in Europe that don’t have an association, countries where the idea that you might home educate is equivalent to saying you are a freak, countries where people don’t even know of the existence of the possibility.

That there is a ripple effect within the European Union cannot be denied, the victory of one family is a victory for all of us, and a defeat for a family always represents a defeat that can have negative repercussions down the line for a home educating family . To site just one example, but a relevant one, I received this week in the post a letter from the public defenders office here in Spain, citing the Konrad case before the European Human Rights Court in 2006,and how even though it could be proved that the education given at home was at the same level as that in school, integration into society as provided by compulsory schooling was an advantage that children shouldn’t be deprived of. In the Spanish Constitutional Court’s ruling of December 2010, when ordering that the children of the defendant be placed in school, the point that home educators can educate according to their convictions ‘after school and at weekends’ was also made, as it also was in the Konrad case. Someone that I don’t know lost a case, but it affects my situation. Knowledge is power, and the more we share knowledge, the more we support families, the more we interact with each other, the better for us all. The countries with less experience will benefit from those with more, and those with more will benefit from the strength of the larger group.

Learning Unlimited has provided a connection between individual home educators since 2001, and been invaluable in providing assistance, advice and support to people all over Europe. On the tenth anniversary of its founding, and in an effort to take the spirit of unity between our collective and become stronger by joining our efforts, perhaps the time has come to take another step and advance the relationships between associations, groups and individuals in Europe and create a European home education federation.Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit of Germany, NVvTO from the Netherlands and the organisation I belong to in Spain, Ale, are already on board. In HESFES this week I hope that there can be a meeting to come up with ideas about the approach we should take, and at the international conference in Spain in September.