Annual conference 2005
Page last updated 17 June, 2005	menu>reports>2001

Europe and Home based Education Learning Unlimited Meeting, Tuesday May 17th, 2005 at Hes Fes Introductions and reports from countries Several countries were represented, including France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK. Dr Robert Bell, from the European Forum for Freedom in Education, was also present. Families from Germany and the Netherlands gave short up-dates on their country's situation. In Germany, where home education is generally forbidden, several German families are refusing to send their children to school despite being fined and some are taking their cases to the European Court of Human Rights. In the Netherlands, there are court cases concerning home educators almost every week at the moment. Home education is still not authorised except in exceptional cases, but the Ministry wants to pass legislation to inspect families. Publication of the LU Conferences on informal learning Roland Meighan has very kindly offered to publish a book of the LU conference 2005 on informal learning. The book will be published in German, English and French. It might be possible to add a summary in Spanish and Dutch. A small part of the proceeds would help fund future LU actions or activities. Volunteers to transcibe, edit and translate the speeches are needed. The French home ed organisation, Les Enfants d'Abord, will find volunteers for the French part of the book and Leslie can find people for the English part. The German families present will volunteer or try to find other volunteers. It was suggested that some of the bilingual speakers might be able to translate into their language. (Stefanie Mohsennia and Elisabeth Kunhle, for instance.) The result will then be sent back to the speakers or authors for their approval. The deadline for the preparation of the book is set for the end of October, in order that the book itself be published and ready to sell in the spring of 2006. As to details on the printed presentation, it was agreed that the book would be preferable to a book format. The cover design could be done using European flag colours. Several people volunteered to work on or give their opinions about the cover design: Roselyne Jacquemart, Kate Gallagher and Leslie Barson. Alison Sauer from England would also be willing to work on the design. Alison also offered the possibility of running the transcriptions through her autonomatic translator if helpful. Speakers for next year's conference After some discussion on the possibility of having other speakers on natural learning, it was suggested that for next year's conferences, we could focus on smaller home education movements in European countries that we hear from less often, particularly eastern Europe. Leslie will work on applying for a grant to bring speakers from such countries. Website The idea of having a web page from each country on the LU website http://www.learning-unlimited.org hasn't been successful so far, but many countries have a link to their own websites. To conclude, we heartily thank Roland Meighan for his help on the book project, Mike Fortunewood for his work as webmaster and Leslie Barson for her dedicated and ongoing organisation and support of Learning Unlimited.