Home educators from all over the world gather at conference in Berlin, Germany

The Global Home Education Conference in Berlin on November 1-4 is the most powerful manifestation of the global home education movement to date. Millions of home educating parents around the world want the knowledge and experience of home education as an excellent form of schooling to be acknowledged, They want to make known that home education is here to stay, and that parenthood is every bit as important today as ever before in human history.

Parents choose to home educate for many different reasons. Their motivation to home educate can be for educational, religious, social or life style oriented reasons. However, most of them will find common ground in their everyday experience with home education. Home educating parents see that their children are doing remarkably well not least in their social development, and especially that they have a curiosity and a hunger to learn which is the envy of many other parents, and teachers.

But there is also a more grave aspect to the conference. Although home education is allowed in the majority of democracies, there are a few highly developed democracies where home education is in reality prohibited. In these countries home educating families are chased out of their home countries with threats of astronomical fines and interventions from the social authorities, and even taking children in custody. Germany with a school law from 1938 has traditionally belonged to these countries, and the newcomer is Sweden where home education is in reality forbidden with its new school law.

Home education is thereby not only the world fastest growing form of schooling, it is also one of the most urgent human rights issues in the democratic world today. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights makes it all very clear in article 26.3: Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Education says explicitly in his criticism of Germany that home education is a valid educational option that parents should be able to choose.

In Sweden more than a dozen families have already fled to Finland and Denmark where they can home educate without fear of the safety of their families. Some have been threatened with fines of several tens of thousands of dollars and subjected to humiliating social investigations where local politicians use the social authorities as a form of political police. The Swedish government is aware of the situation and accepts it. In an interview this summer the Swedish Minister of Education, Mr Jan Björklund, said in an interview that in his opinion the majority of Europeans countries which permit home education are wrong.

The Global Home Education Conference 2012 has invited several international authorities on education, psychology, law and human rights to shed light on some of today's key issues in home education in the world today. Among the speakers are Finland's permanent undersecretary of State, Mr Timo Lankinen, the member of the German Federal Parliament Mr Patrick Meinhardt, the internationally acclaimed Canadian psychologist Dr Gordon Neufeld, the British researcher on home education Dr Paula Rothermel, the expert on international educational policies Professor Charles Gleen, and many, many others.

The speakers at the conference will be able to explain many of the paradoxes of home education. For example: Why pedagogically uneducated parents can achieve equal or better results through home education than university trained teachers can in schools; Why socialization in the aspect of successfully managing an adult life often works better in home education than in school; and Making sense of the juridicial and human rights aspects of home education. In addition to this many home educating parents will share from their rich pool of experiences of a form of education reborn – why home eduction flourishes so strongly in the modern knowledge era and in the internet age.

The Swedish Association for Home Education – ROHUS – is part of the organizing committee. The President of ROHUS, Jonas Himmelstrand, is chairman of the GHEC board. The GHEC board has members from nine countries: South Korea, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Sweden/Finland, Germany, Mexico, USA and Canada.

The GHEC2012 is aimed at politicians and policy-makers, professionals and researchers within education and psychology, juridicial professionals and human rights experts, home education leaders from all over the world, everyone with an interest in educational matters, and of course every parent who home educates or is contemplating to do so.

The knowledge and experience collected in the melting pot of the GHEC2012 will have enough power to shake the current educational paradigm in the Western world. No one with an interest in educational issues, pedagogics, socialization or their children's basic education can afford not to come to the Global Home Education Conference 2012 on November 1-4 at the Seminaris hotel in the free University District in Berlin, Germany.

Press credentials are available to those qualified. Inquiries should be made through the website.

All information available at the website: www.ghec2012.org

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