Two people withdraw from the home educating ‘community’

I was a little surprised to see Mike Fortune-Wood announce that Tania Berlow has withdrawn from the home educating community. How does one actually do that? By not home educating any more? By no longer posting on the Badman Review Action Group list? Ali Edgeley, her best friend, clarified matters later by explaining that Tania would no longer be commenting on message boards, lists, forums and so on. She has apparently ’suffered’ from people saying horrible things about her over the Alison Sauer guidelines business. I have to say that this strikes me as absurd. There has not been any shortage of people saying horrid things about me over the last couple of years, but I would not say that I have ’suffered’ as a result! People need to get a sense of perspective.

I must express my unbounded joy at the news that the awful Alison Edgeley will also be withdrawing from the ‘home educating community’. People have in the past been a little sniffy about my commenting on home education, on the grounds that I technically stopped when my daughter turned sixteen in the summer of 2009. What then shall we say about Ali Edgeley, who hoofed her kids back into school when she started up a business in 2007? Three years after she had stopped home educating, she was still pestering the London Borough of Islington with communications like this:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/27702/response/67948/attach/html/3/306585%20Anti%20Badman%20Campaign.doc.html


Both woman are active on the Internet in other capacities than as home educators. Ali Edgeley posts as tinpanali and Tania as both Alex Panzeca and catbythetail. Some of the things that both Ali and Tania get up to and say elsewhere, tends to confirm strongly some of my remarks about the general strangeness of many well known figures in the world of home education!