Bronwen

-- Take Action -- Help Home-education in Holland --
-- Sample mails on http://www.thuisonderwijs.net/support-nl/#samplemail --

Background
In The Netherlands home education as such is currently not a legal option.
You may try to get an exemption from school registration, but only for
deeply felt religious or philosophical reasons. These exemptions are
recognised with great reluctance, for your child is not considered to be
educated effectively without school attendance. Once your child has attended
a school even this option is barred; taking a child from school as a result
of a change of your opinion about life is in fact prohibited.

Now only the parents of about a 100 children have been able to avoid this
trap to secure their freedom. Many more families would like to home-educate
their kids but are not able to get their way without years filled with
courtcases and child protection investigations.

Since some courtcases have been won rather unexpectedly by home-educators
this year, Maria van der Hoeven, the Dutch minister of Education wants to
make life even more difficult for them. Despite the fact that the current
law does not consider home-education to be an effective option next to
schooling, she wants to put us under tight educational supervision. The
Educational Committee of the Second Chamber, the Dutch House of
Representatives, will have a debate on her plan on October 30, at 10.00 AM.
It can be read in English on
http://www.thuisonderwijs.net/support-nl/notice-english.html

Since only a 100 Dutch children are exempted from school registration, most
politicians do not consider this important. The debate has been postponed
twice already, and now it has even been put into a 1 hour shorter schedule
than before. But from the attention this small group has drawn in the past
few years, one might think that the potential interest in home-education is
far, far greater. Thousands of children are known to be damaged by their
school-attendance, many more children do not attend school for numerous
reasons. Many of those would be helped out of if their parents would only be
entitled to home-educate them.

We, a group of home-educating parents in the Netherlands, want
home-education to become a legal option, its effectivity recognised by the
authorities, and most of all we want parents to exercise a free choice for
and with their children without unnecessary state interference.

That is why we ask for your input. We know some members of parliament
sympathise with us, after having sent them tens of pages of arguments
against the minister's view, but all this input has come from a small group
of activists so far.

So, after having sent them lots of info about reseach and different
legislative possibilities we need a lot of your messages to reach the hearts
of those MPs! Let them know that home-education has become an indication for
respect of human rights! Let them find out that home-education has grown to
a worldwide grass-roots movement of responsible families!

Reading English is no problem for most Dutch people, knowledge of French and
German is also wide-spread here, so don't hesitate to express yourself in
your mother tongue. Perhaps you can include an English summary.

Send mail
You can tell the Dutch legislators your own story and opinion using the URLs
you can find on http://www.thuisonderwijs.net/support-nl/#samplemail . Or
you can answer one or more survey questions like these:

- How and why does home-education work for you?
- Is it a real and viable option in education? Why?
- Does it work for you family? How?
- Do you think a teaching certificate is necessary or useful for
home-educating parents?
- Do you consider routinely held inspections useful or necessary?
- What has been your own experience with inspections on your
home-education, if any?

Quick Sample Mail
If you don't have the opportunity to write down your opinion in detail (we
know how busy home-educators always are!), then you can use our quick sample
email which includes the following text:

subject=Debate about home-education

Dear madam Minister, dear Committee members,

Through this message we want to express our concern with the way how
home-education has been misjudged in The Netherlands so far. We urge you to
correct this judgement and to remove any obstacles in your law that still
prevent parents from exercising their responsibilities freely, with or
without the use of schools.

Allowing home-education as such has become an indication of respect for
human rights and fundamental freedoms of both parents and children, since
its effectiveness has become clear beyond reasonable doubt. Please act in
accordance with this understanding.

Sincerely,
your name and country


Email addresses
Mails should be sent at the same time to the Educational committee of the
Dutch parliament and to the Minister of Education. A CC goes to our mail
action address, so that we can make a compilation of your messages and
present this to the Dutch press. Your efforts won't be lost! Click this to
start your mail:
info@...;cie.ocw@...?cc=home-education@...

If you want to keep your identity or e-mail address confidential, please
send your mail to
home-education@...?subject=support-nl-confidential, and we'll forward
your message without sensitive data.

Any further questions or remarks? Mail us at
home-education@...?subject=support-nl-question

A thousand times thanks from the current and future home-educators in
Holland!

Kind regards from the NVvTO, the Netherlands Association for Home-Education

Information and updates on this action can be found on
www.thuisonderwijs.net/support-nl/