France moves to ban homeschooling in 2021
by Jeanne Smits, LifeSite:
France’s president explicitly intends the move to stifle religious instruction of children.
French president Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday morning that he intends to outlaw homeschooling for all children except those who have a health condition that would justify staying away from school. He also intends to step up control on private independent schools that receive no public funds, in particular through inspections on the curricula taught there, by more severely implementing a recent law that requires such schools to teach a “common core” defined by a high authority for education.
The new law would come into force in the school year 2021–2022 for all children aged between 3 and 16. It was already under Macron’s presidency that education became compulsory for tots of infant school age. With a comfortable majority at the National Assembly, the ruling La République en Marche party, which Macron led to victory in 2017, is expected to validate the draft law the government will present in accordance with the president’s wishes.
Macron’s announcements were part of a series of measures aimed at fighting what he calls “separatism,” a strange expression he uses to designate the aims of “radical Islamists” who want to substitute the laws of the French Republic with sharia law. He quoted the example of a clandestine school where young Muslims were found in a plain, almost windowless room, taught by women in niqabs and learning mostly prayers and the Koran, in order to justify his wide-ranging attack against freedom of education.
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