Jean-Baptiste Maillard is Secretary General of Freedom Education.
Audrey Poissonneau is co-founder of the National Union for the Education and Development of Children.
Sandrine Berthelé is a representative of the collective L'École est la maison.
Sarah Michel is a representative of the Federation for Freedom of Choice in Education and Apprenticeships.
On November 23, 2022, a crucial hearing was held at the Council of State for the future of more than 50,000 children and hundreds of thousands more tomorrow.
We were there.
At a time of busy news between the war in Ukraine and the fears of winter, few intellectuals are aware of the stakes of such an event.
Since 1880, families could freely practice family education upon simple declaration, with regular checks guaranteeing that the children benefited from a quality education.
Jules Ferry had sanctified it in law, responding to a detractor of home education, the deputy Monsieur Paris, from the rostrum of our illustrious Assembly:
"Let's not bother parents who conscientiously educate with family ".
Parents were decision makers, they could make this difficult and demanding choice to become the teachers of their children.
Talleyrand himself had proclaimed from the same perch, in September 1791:
“The nation offers everyone the great benefit of education, but does not impose it on anyone.
She knows that every family is also a primary school, of which the father is the head.
»
No serious study has ever pointed to shortcomings in the family education of children for 140 years.
On the contrary, innovative pedagogies like the Singapore method have arrived in National Education by inspectors of families in homeschooling.
Many personalities who have benefited from it can testify to the richness of this educational freedom, starting with Marie Curie, buried in the Pantheon of the Republic, or Jean d'Ormesson, who was entitled to a state funeral.
From now on, parents who will not have the chance or the financial means to choose an alternative pedagogy in a non-contract school, better adapted to their child, will have to forcibly choose a private school under contract or a public school.
Jean-Baptiste Maillard, Audrey Poissonneau, Sandrine Berthelé and Sarah Michel
And yet, today, for all these families, for all these children, a wall has been built.
The wall of an authorization that may never be issued.
Indeed, the decree of February 15, 2022 on home education will, barring a dramatic change, be confirmed by the Council of State.
The public rapporteur affirms that it is perfectly legal.
It is therefore perfectly legal not only to compel parents to apply for a homeschooling permit, but also to oblige them to make this application between March 1 and May 31 of the previous year.
It is therefore legal to prevent a request to educate the family during the year, even though, as each parent knows, all schooling is unpredictable.
Most school phobias, learning disabilities, situations of failure, harassment, and still undiagnosed pathologies occur during the year.
From now on, parents who will not have the chance or the financial means to choose an alternative pedagogy in a non-contract school, better adapted to their child, will have to forcibly choose a private school under contract or a public school.
From now on, each child will be deprived of any educational alternative to what exists near his home.
For families living in rural areas or in areas where the level and atmosphere are very poor, this means a lack of choice.
Not to mention that the interest of the child, which had nevertheless given rise to a broad definition by the Constitutional Council, was not clearly defined by the public rapporteur of the Council of State.
This was, however, the major expectation of families who found themselves faced with arbitrary refusals of authorisation, with particularly unfair disparities between the academies, as the Minister for National Education himself acknowledged:
"in some departments, it's a very solid no”.
Thus the academy of Toulouse had rejected 90% of the authorizations, a figure to be compared, at the national level, with 98% of successful annual educational checks for children educated in the family, and only 0.09% of problem children.
The Council of State therefore does not seem to care about such a vice for families, manifested by more than 250 appeals before the administrative courts of the country.
This is a lot for an administration and for the amicable appeal commissions that, in his conclusions, the public rapporteur considered “impartial”.
Tocqueville wrote in his book
Democracy in America
:
Who will be able to put an end to this liberticidal drift which attacks our own children, if the Council of State refuses to put limits on the arbitrariness of the rectorates?
Knowing that 74% of French families want this educational freedom to be maintained?
(2)
Behind the abolition of homeschooling, there is an ideology, that of the State alone responsible and decision-making for the education and instruction of our children.
Jean-Baptiste Maillard, Audrey Poissonneau, Sandrine Berthelé and Sarah Michel
From the beginning, the government has lied to families.
He lied in parliamentary debates by promising that all families who practiced homeschooling properly would not be hurt.
It is quite the opposite: the youngest of siblings, whose eldest had, for many years, obtained favorable controls, saw their authorization refused.
Children of teachers, professors, and even normaliens have been refused authorization.
This injustice clearly shows how little the State values freedom of education.
It may lead to others.
If homeschooling becomes an exception, a "
concession of power
", to use an expression of François Sureau, academician, in his book
Sans la liberté
, if homeschooling becomes a zoological park made up of species disappearing, then it is the non-contract schools and then the private schools under contract, which, tomorrow, risk being dismantled in this way.
Make no mistake about it: behind the abolition of homeschooling, there is an ideology, that of the State alone responsible and decision-making for the education and instruction of our children.
One day, all so-called free schools risk being authorized, as Émile Combes already did in 1902 with the consequences that we know: a massive ban.
As for home education, the educational projects of these schools will be accepted or refused by the rectorates in an arbitrary manner.
One day, your children will be taught whatever a government decides to impose.
One day, parents with different philosophical or religious convictions will find themselves unable to find an education compatible with their conscience.
We see it here: refusing educational freedom is insidiously preparing the formatting of minds.
And preparing the formatting of minds is gradually destroying our democracy.
We do not want it, neither for our country nor for our children.
SEE ALSO
- Home instruction: "It's a freedom that is under attack", condemns Annie Genevard
