Max and i have been wondering recently exactly the extent to which some sort of smear campaign is being conducted against HEers, prior to the, perhaps inevitable, legislation to control us all. It seems like a succession of stories come out, radio interviews with LEA officers, articles etc all slanted against these well meaning but deluded ranks of HEers who inadvertently harbour criminal child abusers in our ranks. At best, we have a narrow definition of education, find it hard to keep going after a couple of years, or our children are unlikely to cope with social situations. *yawn* Max said last week he watched something that dragged up a 10 year old case of children abused while HE’ed as a reason for us needing to be kept a tally of and inspected. Conveniently, the story made little effort to point out that these 2 HE’ed children were apparently in foster care and it was the foster mother who kept them locked naked in a room for a year. Presumably that meant they WERE being monitored, but no one noticed 🙄
Nevermind that they couldn’t find a more recent or more relevant case.
One wonders then, when we need monitoring as a majority for the sake of a minority who may, or not, exist just exactly how the powers that be can explainclaims like this one, seen today on the BBC.
We are the easy target though, they have a fair idea where we are (or they will once they hook up all the databases…) And of course, as we have nothing to hide we won’t mind inspectors calling without notice will we? 🙄
There was some talk of this on Saturday (potential smear campaign, not sex trafficking in the Midlands – which is appalling) and talk of how to counter it.
One suggestion was to actually pay for professional PR. I don’t know how on earth such a thing could be organised though really, and most people seemed to be against that, thinking that we are all intelligent and can do it ourselves. I think probably both is best …
This link and the “What the Media can do for you” link on that page are interesting. They suggest (for starters) keeping an eye out in your local paper for education stories and writing a letter, or contacting the Education Correspondent, if you see anything to which you could respond.