Michael Peach has found himself being commented on at the TES website. That's Times Education Supplement I presume, not the Til Eulenspiegel Society. (And I imagine there may be a bit of an overlap in the concerns of these two enterprises.)

Michael reproduces a few of the derisively critical things about home education that various teachers have said at this website, but in some of these comments I find comfort:

"I had a terrible irreverent thought: these parents would be a nightmare, so thank God we don't have to deal with them."

"Thanks for directing me to this site. It does almost read like a parody. I live in an area which is awash with home educators. The current crop have kids who we can be grateful aren't in the schools. Foul mouthed, "dyslexic", arrogant and precious. A lucky escape."

"This stuff is great. home education! whatever will the government think of next to ease classroom overcrowding? Well done Tony!"

Okay, these teachers are, in my opinion and no doubt in Michael's also, arrogant, supercilious idiots. But give them some credit. I believe I detect here an understanding on their part of the grief that the abolition of the right to "education otherwise" might bring to the British teaching profession. I mean, imagine having to deal, day after day after day, with the likes of Michael Peach and his brood, full of intellectual self confidence, clever, independent minded, always wanting to do their own thing, angry as hornets at being incarcerated day after day after day. Well, the good news is, some of these not totally idiotic teachers have imagined that. And they don't like the idea.

Good. People who loathe and despise one another shouldn't be obliged to have to spend any time with each other at all. That's one of the absolute best things about freedom. If you hate somebody, you can just stay away from them.

In the coerced society, on the other hand, the society in which people have to go where they're sent and have to stay where they're put, it doesn't matter how much they hate one another, they have to go on enduring each other's company. This is one of the worst things about tyranny, educational or otherwise.

In a sane world, no teacher should be obliged to teach anyone whom he or she really did not want to teach. Educational compulsion can often be a horror for teachers, not just for pupils.

There's far more to freedom than merely having a nice washing machine, very nice though that is. And there are far worse things about tyranny than merely having to do your washing by hand, very tiresome though that is.