Friday, October 16, 2009

Only 3 Days To Go

...to get those consultation responses in.

Closing Date:
Monday 19 October 2009!!!!!

Mr Badman reported in the Select Committee hearing that he knows the names of the tiny minority of home educators who object to his report. Given that I personally know at least 100 families who object to his proposals, and only 3 of these went to the lobby, and given that there were over 450 people there, I was impressed. He must know a lot of names!

Let's see if his memory for names is almost world-beating! Let's see just how many consultation responses we can lodge objecting to his proposals. At the moment there are well over 2,100 from different people, and quite a few from different organisations representing numerous people. Many of these responses object strongly to most, if not all, of his proposals.

Perhaps Badman is consulting an expert in mnemonics or perhaps he is exaggerating his abilities, or could it be, just could it be that he wants to underplay the size, severity and utter reasonableness of our objections to his proposals?

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My updated response and links to other responses here. It is perfectly acceptable (if not preferable) to write a much smaller response than mine!


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

hope he knows our name Peter Carol and Peter! we the chess players!

emma said...

NB I read on a list that he didn't say he knows our names, but instead that he can count us. Or he knows how many we are or something. It's in Hansard anyway!

emma said...

Oh, but I do not wish to detract from his feat which is, in any case, considerable ;-b

Anonymous said...

Yeah, well, we know his name too.

Danae
http://www.threedegreesoffreedom.blogspot.com

Carlotta said...

Hi Emma,

Have just found a mo, and on quick scan through the Committee Hansard, found this:

"Chairman, I have been somewhat surprised by the reaction of a vociferous minority - and I do think it is a vociferous minority; I can actually count the number of people who have done it."

I think I inferred that as he could count them, he could also name them, since he must be able to remember who he has counted before and who he hasn't. This still strikes me as an impressive feat, given that the vociferous minority at the very least must constitute about a thousand of us!

He also writes: "I have found the remarks of some of them offensive, but I draw comfort from an academic friend of mine who says that often personal attacks are made when logic has been defeated."

Not necessarily so, Mr Badman. Your academic friend is wrong, and applies a logical fallacy of his own...that of the fallacy of false cause.

I am afraid some people have been abusive, and I am not sure that this is good or proper, despite being understandable. It does not mean that their arguments are illogical or that they do not have good cause to be angry. At the very least, your proposals infringe about eight rights of the child, as inscribed in the UNCRC.
When you consider this, you can understand that people will be pretty annoyed.

There is more on Mr Badman's infringements of children's rights in answer to question one here:

http://daretoknowblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/draft-consultation-response.html

Anonymous said...

I, on the other hand, can count the number of home educators who *support* his report on one hand. I only know of a single one: a certain ex-home educating parent who was in front of the Select Committee on Wednesday morning!