Homeschooling in Sweden (urgent!)

[Michael]

Please sign this petition to support homeschoolers in Sweden, where a law is in the works to make homeschooling illegal. Here is a page with some background information.

[Brenda]

OJ!

We have just lived for 1 year in Sweden. It was the ONLY year i have not home schooled my child. Now that we are in Hawaii, We are REALLY playing catch up to be at grade level. In any case, Its not just the Swedish Government that does not support home school. I had to explain at length to many many people WHY home school is a good thing. The mass mentality is against it. The petition will never pass until people become informed about the positive aspects. I have never been to any other country that was so totally against it. As a society, the hold very high the "rights of the child". NOT letting the child attend a brick and mortar school is a serious infraction to their minds. Its not JUST the education aspect of it. There will need to be mass media flooding of the benefits, and the reality of brick and mortar "dangers". No Swede will agree to this petition under normal circumstances until that happens. Sad, but true.

i am SO glad to be home schooling my child again! She is glad too!

[Cathy]

Brenda, I take it that the Swedes think that depriving a child of a "brick and mortar" school is depriving them of time with their peers, relationships with adults other than their parents, and a chance to be more independent? (You said it isn't all about education, so those were my guesses for then non-academic "pluses" of schooling.
Does there seem to be some sort of assumption that anyone who would want to homeschool must therefore be a super authoritarian, over-controlling parent who would gladly shelter his or her child from almost all cultural influences?

I do get the idea from some atheists here in the U.S. that the label "homeschooling parent" brings to their mind an evolution-denier, science-twister, hyper evangelical control-freak parent.