The ethos of freedom is that you have the inalienable right to live life as you see fit, not how another believes how you should live life. The classical liberal tradition, which people have struggled and fought hard, proclaims the right to live unimpeded by any other individual, whether that individual is a masked gunman or an officer of the government. However, freedom from intervention is, these days, constantly under threat from a statist ideology that proposes all people should be subject to the rules and regulations of a central controlling political body, which in turn has the power and force to punish and lock up those who prefer to walk their own path. Little difference remains between the totalitarian forces that unleashed so much war in the first half of the twentieth century and those that now parade as Western democracies.

This article reminds us that the fragile right to educate our children at home is under threat by the latest round of statist expansionism: the threat is unjustifiable and should be countered at every opportunity - parents are the rightful guardians of their children, not the state.

The tradition of freedom holds that people are free to act in such a manner that does not intervene in others lives, but there has always been a concern over the moral and hence political status of children. The ethics of freedom have often assumed to apply only to adults, for they are deemed capable of making rational or reasonable choices, or at least of understanding the consequences of their choices, while children are assumed to be incapable. Even those, who stem from the liberal traditions of John Stuart Mill, agree that children form a special case deserving special protection.

However, we must ask - protection from what or from whom? There are two paths of action in this world - control or freedom. A person is either said to be controlled (regulated, licensed, taxed, forced, coerced, bullied, threatened, etc) or to be free.

But does this right to freedom (which has indubitably been eroded in this country) suddenly appear at the age of 16 or 18? Arguably, no. There is no distinction between the moral standing of a child and that of an adult - children can be bullied, coerced, violated, defrauded, murdered, raped, and forced into actions that they would prefer not do engage in just as adults can. A violation or act of aggression in any form is an act by another to harm or to take away the freedoms of another.

Aggression is an abhorrent and immoral procedure that cannot be justified morally - yet statism asserts the right to take away people's children, to indoctrinate them with mass education, and to control their access to resources (banning children's rights to earn money for instance). The state aggresses against parents when it demands their children be put through mass production education and threatens parents and children with punishment for non-compliance. Such was the policy of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: even today, home education remains illegal in Germany.

Italian fascist education propaganda (source)

While in the first critical months of a child's life, physiological and psychological requirements imply a close contact with its parents, the child gradually begins to assert its own will; sometimes it clashes with the physical reality of the world, othertimes with the desires of others. The beautiful emergence of independence begins and it is our responsibility as parents to cultivate it and enable it to flourish, so the child becomes a confident, loved, and strong human of mental and moral independence.

From a child-rearing perspective, the child's abilities increase properly when its freedoms and abilities are respected and encouraged. For the most part, parents are keen to ensure that their children are healthy and capable of developing their self-esteem and talents accordingly; errors, as every parent may attest, will be made; children's talents are thwarted, their desires blocked, injuries occur and sometimes greater tragedies unfold.

At this point, the modern statist wishes to jump in and to assert the state's power 'to protect' children. But the state is an institution, it is a closed organization whose members are locked by constitutional and Parliamentary edicts that restrain their remit and control the ideology by which they must operate. The state is a coercive body - it can only act by exacting monies from people and by threatening civilians with regulations and imprisonment for non-compliance. By its very nature, the state should not have any thing to do with the raising of children! It is the ultimate bully from which we all shirk.

Parents, on the other hand, are those most capable of caring and loving their children. They are the ones who decide to conceive children and who thus are responsible for the child's development and growth. They are also the ones who are best placed to adjust their behaviour for their children, and while this is at times hard and some times parents do not see the consequences of the actions, friends and family might - it is much better to offer advice to those struggling with sincerity and love than with a legal proclamation from a barely accountable official who has the entire apparatus of force and coercion behind him/her - who could remove your child, ensure that your planning applications are frustrated, that your taxes are looked into, that your business is refused a licence, or that you are fined or imprisoned.

But the state hardly likes the independence that communities foster, the self-help and mutual assistance that emerges spontaneously and continues to develop according to circumstances without any state direction whatsoever. Helping each other out without recourse to a municipal body or central organ of the state is anathema to government. The purpose of government is to divide the citizens from their family and from their cultures and localities in order to control and tax them more: divide and then conquer. In turn, parents learn to depend upon the state and upon the advice of tax-funded 'experts' and men and women parading in white coats or the spin doctors of the NHS or the Ministry of Education. After nearly a century of increasing government controls into the lives of the British, we witness the remnants of self-help and mutual aid: government has usurped the natural tendencies of humanity and replaced them with rules and faceless bureaucracies making judgments on how we live and how we ought to bring up our children.

Too right, says the statist, for people are incapable of looking after themselves, they are incapable of looking after their own children, they are prone to stupidity, irrationality, whims, and they ignore the consequences of their behaviour.

And politicians aren't?! Have goverments never been wrong? Have they always told the truth, been absolutely honest with people, never infringed rights or the dignity of people, never waged war or enacted violence or pursued irrational goals or machiavellian diplomatic games without explanation?

The state is a lying, deceiving, cheating, fraudulent, violent, threatening, expensive, murderous and self-serving institution - and you want to place your children in its care?

Find a state that preserves peace both within its borders and beyond, which rests upon the peaceful, voluntaristic aid provided by citizens to adjudicate or ameliorate social disputes. Such is utopia: it does not exist and cannot exist.

If you assert that 'well, some people are incapable of rearing children,' then name those people, approach them with your theories, insist that 'you know better' by virtue of your education, class, income, family background, qualifications, philosophical wisdom... and see what the response is! We are all free to offer advice - when it is asked for, but it is certainly another thing to assume that your advice is the best or that you have the policies and laws to make us all happy. No thanks. The political philosophy of freedom implies recognizing the innate right to pursue life as seen fit by each individual, and that typically means an individual living in a family and social context that is not of any government's creation. It also means keeping power away from any other individual on the planet, for power corrupts and attracts the corrupted who would impose their visions upon others, and because we all may fantasize about how the world ought to be, true liberalism demands that power be restricted and constrained and minimalised and even abolished: why does anybody need to control another person, except from psychosis?

A bureaucrat is in no position to care about your child, except insofar as he or she perceives a statistic to manipulate or to issue to drum up more funding and controlling regulations for the department. But your child is not a statistic. If you think he or she is - then for goodness sake, take a good look at your child and quit worrying about grades and scholarly performance!

Parents and their neighbours and family are best placed to look after a child's interests; they are best placed to learn what a child needs and to cater for its growth. A parent's care is 24/7, a bureaucrat's 9-5 and then only partially so while the file is on the desk, should, heaven forbid, your child's file ever end up on the desk of some state official looking to justify his or her salary and generous pension package.

And so we turn to home education. To educate at home is not an option, it is a right; it is not a privilege to be leant out at the whim of a political body, it is a right; it is in no manner or form something abnormal, it is the norm. A child is born into a home and from the womb upwards it receives an education, sometimes formal, sometimes informal, but always there: from the looks we give, the actions we take, the chores we do, the professions we follow, the sports we enjoy, the language we use, the care to neighbours we offer, the music we listen to and the books we read, the conversations we have, the aesthetics with which we surround ourselves, the passions and dreams of every family member, the guidelines and expectations we form, the diet we follow, the exercise we pursue, and of course our religious and philosophical views we discuss.

Education envelops a child, it is synonymous with life. It is categorically different from schooling and its flows within the household are radically different from the regulations booklets and decrees of committees and pedagogical dictators, from whom most of us ran consciously or otherwise when we were younger.

Schooling, on the other hand, is a choice. It is the choice of those who are so hard pressed in life (by the taxes and regulations that smother economic opportunities) that necessitate mother and father working; it is the choice of those who prefer to pass their child onto a mass-production institution (sometimes paying for the privilege) to garner a smattering of maths or science; most often it is a choice that is rarely thought about, because the children next door go, because you went as a child (and thought that you had no choice) or that grandparents or others expect the child to go to school. We can of course question all those assumptions and ask why? School is a choice; I am not thoroughly anti-school, but most of them do have a lot to answer for: so if parents choose to send their children to school then it becomes a choice amongst competing alternatives - the tax funded and government controlled system or the privately funded independent sector. The state and many of its supporters who enjoy grabbing our hard earned money and then playing King with society would prefer us to have no choice at all - and in some politically totalitarian leaning countries, children have to attend state schools. And there goes education.

Is it all bad in schools? Of course not, but that is no justification to force those who prefer not to send their children to schools for reasons of their own to be threatened with regulations and government authority to 'check up' on what they are doing. So long as no violence is occuring, what education a family pursues is no-one else's business.

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Home education is not to be lightly entered into, but neither then should sending a child to school.

The investment (or malinvestment) that schools offer should be seriously considered and the child's attitude and behaviour watched assiduously, for there, in the school system that we entrust our beloved children, will be those who bully, who would demean our children's values, who would teach them nefarious ways, who would curtail their curiosity, humiliate their values, mock their choices, undermine their confidence, and force them into prescribed lessons and timetables that they would prefer to avoid. Yes, I was talking about the teachers there - and if you think that such bullying does not go on, then you do not know schools or what some of our children suffer.

There are good teachers, but follow what happens to them - they leave for less hassle, because the very controlling nature of schools creates a twisted social psychology that strains on the nerves, so they either get head-hunted for fairer pastures or climb up into senior management posts where they avoid teaching in favour of a higher salary. Those in the independent sectors tend to have a better time of it - there is more flexibility and accountability to parents there, as well as more room for adaptation and getting to know pupils, as well as the privileged momentum that private education can bring both from present and previous pupils.

The dutifully good who remain may earn praise for sticking to it, but at what personal and family cost? The idealist who asserts that they can make a difference is often speaking about making a difference in the odd individual pupil who comes their way, whose ambitions and the desire to learn have not yet been thoroughly annihilated by the system or by their peers, and whose progress can be encouraged: indeed, such pupils, as I've experienced, can make all the difference to a teacher - they remind us of our purpose and often of the reason for entering education in the first place. However, in a classroom situation, the numbers are small relative to the numbers taught. Most will pass by relatively unaffected, because the teacher cannot get to them, cannot reach out to their inner most thoughts or fears, to their aspirations or dreams. Instead the teacher faces disaffected faces, children who know that they are being constantly manipulated and controlled and whose thoughts on matters that are important to them (such as what clothes they can wear) are disregarded as unimportant, or whose choices for their own education are completely rejected in favour of what the bureaucrats wish to see on next year's statistics.

Schools can be very unhealthy places. Yes, they are the saving grace for many youngsters who would otherwise have no routine or values because of family and social breakdown in their culture, but we must also ask why there is so much tension and irresponsibility today and we soon have to consider the consequences of decades of government interference, rising taxes, welfarism, the persistent attacks on innovation, entrepreneuriality and anything that smacks of the extraordinary beyond TV reality shows and mindless soaps and porn, and then there's the degradation and humility of our children year after year in our schools - children who become guinea pigs for the latest pedagogic fashions, who are tested and (de)graded according to how well they can pass exams, who are shuffled from class to class regardless of interest or aptitude.

The state is a violent institution, and so is the school system by definition - consider the penalties that governments seek to impose on those who run away; take a good look at the controlling devices that our pupils encounter on entering a school (CCTV, controlled doors, one-way systems, cameras in toilets even!!!). Why send our child to prison? It seems a strange option to me, when so much more could be offered at home by those who have the time and love to offer their children, and, as many home education specialists have noted, you don't have to be a teacher (what is a qualified teacher, by the way? except someone who has passed a series of hoops designed by government - none of which translate into creating a good teacher); you can read up on home education and teach most of the basic skills yourself and then perhaps pull in a tutor for the higher requirements that your son or daughter may become interested in; or wait until they are of such moral strength (14 perhaps) to send them to school if they wish to take formal exams (which are not necessary for university entrance by the way).

At home, a pupil may serve himself or herself much better than in a formal, structured, classroom environment. He or she can pursue whatever takes their interest, rather than running from bell to bell like a dog chasing a biscuit (or rather running from the threat of punishment); books are most accessible these days from second-hand sources on line, such as www.abe.com, as well as from other parents who may circulate books and resources.

Home educated children tend to turn out much more mature and well-rounded, for they are not thrust into an age-determined class that effectively pins them into a peer group, again not of their choosing, with all of its idiosyncracies and immaturities heightened by group psychology; home educated children are more likely to mix with different ages.

I'm a realist as well as a philosopher - home education would not suit everybody, but it must remain there as an exit for those whose children do not fit into schools as well as for those who make a conscientious decision to home tutor. Needless, to say, home education is under threat, as all of our liberties are, and many have now gone. Bye-bye freedoms! Hang on to the vestiges of freedom, a book I wrote a few years back, and reject the

I shall be adding more to this as and when!! Any advice, contact me on the contact link above.

Dr Alexander Moseley (c) 2009

Home education resources from amazon.