{"id":6586,"date":"2006-06-17T19:10:42","date_gmt":"2006-06-17T23:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/?p=6586"},"modified":"2006-06-17T19:12:32","modified_gmt":"2006-06-17T23:12:32","slug":"brussels-update-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/?p=6586","title":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS UPDATE"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure these folks ought to be a cause c\u00c3\u00a9l\u00c3\u00a8bre<\/em>. Here’s an updated version of Peter van Zuidam’s HSWatch post (Reprinted with permission. Typing\/formatting errors are mine.):<\/p>\n

A bit of a background about this case. I miss one IMO very important aspect in how Mrs. Dr. Colen and Dr. Beli\u00c3\u00abn interpret the Flemish law concerning HE, and that is that an inspector is only supposed to reject a child’s homeschool situation if it would be clear to each reasonably thinking person that the home education provided cannot meet the minimum requirements set by the state. Those requirements are indeed derived from article 29 para 1 of the UN Child’s Rights Convention, but also from article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.<\/p>\n

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 ;-). This reasonability check gives parents the benefit of the reasonable doubt. In the spectrum of legislations about homeschooling, the Flemish decree is one of the most free. Parents have every right not to have their home education follow the national school curriculum, which is rather the norm in countries like Austria, France, Italy, the Czech republic, Hungary and Poland.<\/p>\n

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. And because of the animosity this party and all other Belgian political parties spread against each other, some Belgians now loath everything concerning home education in Belgium, just because it is done and publicly defended by broadly known Vlaams Belang members.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. Mrs. Colen reported one case on her website (in Dutch) where this behavior was complained about.<\/p>\n

In other words, if you want to home-educate legally, you can state you have to promise not to use a part of your European human rights beforehand (namely the right to appeal against a government’s decision to restrict one of your human rights before a court, the European Convention for Human Rights guarantees that).<\/p>\n

When this law was defined, the gov’t even willfully left out any path of appeal concerning the disapproval of a homeschool situation. And I have read a few Strasbourg rulings where the ECHR found a state guilty of breaking the European Convention, just because a citizen was not given a clear path of process to question a restriction of a human right.<\/p>\n

The second flaw reminds me of the Olsson contra Sweden case, in which the Strasbourg court found a restriction of the family life (which forbidding to continue home education clearly is an example of) acceptable only if the necessity to do so is clearly specified. A mere statement like “we found this home education insufficient, period” like inspectors seem to use in Flanders won’t do in the Strasbourg ECHR court, if you ask me.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So, I wouldn’t be too surprised if these parents get away with their act of civil disobedience. The Flemish community gov’t might end up revising their HE statute because of this case.<\/p>\n

But in general, few families get their homeschool disapproved in Flanders. In the year 2004-2005 1 out of 86 inspections of children of primary school age was found insufficient.<\/p>\n

In the Netherlands the minister of education still wants to have homeschooling supervised. I still present the Flamish law as an example of a more flexible government inspection approach, one that takes the diverse character of home education among different families and leaves parents the benefit of the doubt. But I warn about these two flaws, though.<\/p>\n

Peter van Zuidam,
\nSecretary,
\nNetherlands Homeschool Association<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, the parents are members of a political party that, if not banned outright, skirts the very edges. I think it might be best if the conservative\/homeschool bloggers <\/p>\n

(AND HSLDA)<\/h3>\n

<\/strong> just sit this one out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure these folks ought to be a cause c\u00c3\u00a9l\u00c3\u00a8bre. Here’s an updated version of Peter van Zuidam’s HSWatch post (Reprinted with permission. Typing\/formatting errors are mine.): A bit of a background about this case. I miss one IMO very important aspect in how Mrs. Dr. Colen and Dr. Beli\u00c3\u00abn interpret the Flemish law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6586"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cobranchi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}