94 "RELATING TO CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE LAWS ON THE USE OF LANGUAGES IN EDUCATION IN BELGIUM" v. BELGIUM (MERITS) JUDGMENT INDIVIDUAL OPINION, PARTLY DISSENTING (POINT I OF THE OPERATIVE PROVISIONS OF THE JUDGMENT), OF JUDGE G. MARIDAKIS relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions". By "religious and philosophical convictions" are meant those ideas on the world in general and human society in particular that each man considers the most true in the light of the religion he professes and the philosophical theories he adopts. Those ideas make up each man’s interior life. As that life develops, it has to resort to a specific language in order to express itself, but it nevertheless exists in its own right irrespective of the idiom by which it tries to externalise itself. On this understanding of Article 2 of the Protocol (P1-2), the 1963 Acts are in no way concerned with the content of education whatever be the language in which instruction is given – whether French or Dutch; it follows that the Acts in no way prevent parents from bringing their children up in accordance with their religious and philosophical convictions. 6. Article 8 (art. 8) of the Convention reads: "1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. 2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others." The Applicants complain that they are obliged to send their children either to a French school in Greater Brussels or to a school in the Frenchspeaking region and that such "scholastic emigration" entails serious dangers and hardships. Seen from this angle the question whether or not the 1963 Acts are in accordance with Article 8 (art. 8) is a question of fact: in each particular case it will be necessary to establish the effect on private and family life of whether the French-language school is near to or far from the parents’ place of residence and of the dangers of daily "scholastic emigration". However, the question is general in nature and may be thus formulated: is the content of the Belgian Acts of 1963 contrary to Article 8 (art. 8)? In the immutability of the language boundaries and the territorial unilingualism laid down, the Acts have more general aims designed to benefit the entire Belgian nation; they in no way affect private and family life based on ties of blood and on family traditions. Private and family life would be violated if the authorities intervened to force a person to shape that life in a way that departed from his traditions and thus from the spirit that, by virtue of blood ties, predominated in relations between parents and their children and between members of the same family in general.