No one came knocking

Several months ago, I wrote this article: A knock on the door

In it, I described that I was expecting to get a visit from the municipality lecturing my wife and I about kindergarten.
I was wrong. Nobody came. We were however, reported to the Norwegian Child Welfare Services, by the leader of the open kindergarten we sometimes attended.

The notification to Child Welfare Services, is largely based on different value sets – between sending children to kindergarten, or stay at home with them. We have a choice, but she was highly engaged in selling in kindergarten.

Our philosophy is that of individual freedom and living in partnership with the children. The children knows best what interest them and know what they want to learn. Learning happens naturally.

Her philosophy is one of control and supervision, the grownups must decide for the children. The grownups are in charge. There need to be an authority figure to tell the children what to do.

These two philosophies cannot co-exist. It must have bothered her that we did not let us persuade to put Martin in kindergarten.

We met some of the same arrogance at the Child Welfare Services. During our meeting, they gave us a document for us to sign. It was a document authorizing them to gather information from kindergarten, the doctor and others. They said that everything was voluntary. I had to stop them and point out that it was really not voluntary at all. Behind the phrases of how voluntary it was, there was a threat of force and a threat of escalation.

The answer that the Child Welfare Services gave to what would happen if we were to decline to sign the document, if we were to just ignore them (as they rightly deserve), was that they would go through proper authorities and get the information anyway. She did not address whether or not they would have escalated the matter further.

Of course, they would have escalated. These kind of people know nothing else. I’m certain, that if we were to use our so called “freedom”, the freedom to associate with whom we please, things would have gotten pretty bad for us. It would have become a police business very quickly. Voluntary, as if. The only thing the state knows is force. That is one of the reasons that the state is so immoral. The state has the ability and the will to escalate beyond the point of using violence on peaceful people.

This quote from Ayn Rand comes to mind.

The difference between political power and any other kind of social “power,” between a government and any private organization, is the fact that a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. This distinction is so important and so seldom recognized today that I must urge you to keep it in mind.
Let me repeat it: a government holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force.
No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury—the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

The Child Welfare Services admitted that one of the reasons that they had opened a case on us was because in kindergarten we once mentioned that homeschooling was an alternative to state school. This made the alarm go for them.

In Norway, home schooling is legal. So, one major worry for them, was that we once had mentioned that we were considering something that is perfectly legal. Wow! What a police state we live in.

The Child Welfare Services also drew into question whether or not a 5year old was able to decide what to learn.

I am flabbergasted by the level of knowledge from people, whose work it is, to valuate children. It’s unbelievable.

Learning happens all the time. There is no need for an authority figure to make kids learn. Learning happens naturally. In fact, the natural urge to learn, is trained out of many kids/teenagers by them attending school all day. Many will adopt the “I will never read a book again for the rest of my life” -attitude by the time they leave school and associate learning with something dreadful and negative.
Many also become apathetic. They don’t know what they want to or should do, but rely on an authority figure to tell them.

The school setting is also unnatural. No other places in life are you segregated by age and only associate with your group. Life is very different. In life, you have to cooperate with people of all ages. It is also unhealthy to only associate with one age group. You don’t get proper training in interacting with other people. In other words. You don’t get proper socialization by being in a school setting. The question of socialization is one of the first, if not the first questions to come up when talking to people about homeschooling. School is artificial. It is not real life. It does not even come close.

Every entrepreneur knows that when engaged in something, when really concentrated and emerged in something, time flies. They use many subjects at the same time, not only math, not only language, geometry, history, or whatever it may be. It flows organically from one subject to another.

In school, it’s one subject for 45 minutes. Then, riiiing! Clear your mind! You have a few minutes to next class! New subject for 45 minutes, with no connection to the previous subject. Then, riiiing! Clear your mind! You have a few minutes to next class! New subject for 45 minutes, with no connection to the previous subject. Then, riiiing! Clear your mind! You have a few minutes to next class! New subject for 45 minutes, with no connection to the previous subject. Then, riiiing! All day, every day.

It does not stop there. No, no. After school awaits homework and the potential for family conflict and disharmony is thus created. Homework is widely practiced by schools, but there is no evidence what so ever that it is even remotely beneficial, rather the opposite is true.

And so it goes, year after year. No wonder that many people get a distorted view on learning.

The Child Welfare Services wants a home visit. We have engaged a lawyer. We have managed to push them back and have a breathing space to the end of August. During that time, we will gather information from doctors, speech therapist, and psychologist and so on, to document that Martin is OK.

It is horrendous that the actions of one woman, who did not get acceptance for her views and did not get her will, can lead to this kinds of consequences. And what’s even worse, is that she probably thinks that she did a good thing.

The Child Welfare Services and this woman will suffer no negative consequences from this. They will just continue as before. However, we as a family have to deal with all the stress and disturbance and the insecurity in our family. We just want to be left alone. We never know what people like this can conjure up to make our life miserable and to get their way, disguised as “for the good of the children.”

Links

John Taylor Gatto - The Purpose Of Schooling

The Truth About School: Another Brick in the Wall!

Gordon Neufeld: Kids Need Us More Than Friends

The book written by Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabor Mate Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers