US Grants Home Schooling German Family Political Asylum

A US judge has granted political asylum to a family who said they fled Germany to avoid persecution for home schooling their children. Uwe Romeike and his wife, Hannelore, moved to Tennessee after German authorities fined them for keeping their children out of school and sent police to escort them to classes. Mike Connelly, attorney for the Home School Legal Defence Association, argued the case. He says, "Home schoolers in Germany are a particular social group, which is one of the protected grounds under the asylum law. This judge looked at the evidence, he heard their testimony, and he felt that the way Germany is treating home schoolers is wrong. The rights being violated here are basic human rights."

Comments

Home schooling vs. school duty

[Sique]

Germany has school duty for all children older than six years up to 9 to 12 years in school (depends on the actual state). And "duty" means that a state examined teacher is required for schooling. You want home schooling? Then get the exam, and you are perfectly fine schooling your children at home.

Re:Home schooling vs. school duty

[Ihlosi]

The Nazi anti-homosexuality law was kept on the books in West Germany until 1994, as but one example. (East Germany got rid of it in 1950.)

That law popped into existence in 1872. That was before Hitler was even born.

And Germany nowadays still unpopular bans political parties, movements, and speech as zealously as the Nazis did.

Oh, yeah, right. That's why I find 20-odd parties on my ballot every election, including several different flavors of commies, Nazis, fundies and other assorted nutcases. Can you even name the last fscking party that was actually banned in Germany? I'll help you, that was over half a century ago. Can you name the total number of parties that were banned in West Germany, ever? I'll help you, too: It's a very, very small number. So small that using the plural form almost isn't justified.

And one of the most interesting things is that the modern German term for a "citizen" is Staatsangehörige, which literally means "subject of the State" and not "citizen."

Nope. It literally means "someone who's affiliated with a certain state".

http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=on&chinese=both&pinyin=diacritic&search=angeh%F6riger&relink=on

At the end of the Nazi regime, guess which term went away? Not Staatsangehörige, but Reichsbürger.

Yes. Duh. Guess why they wanted to throw out anything that made Germans think they'd have a "Reich" (empire) or something. Might it have something to do with two German states calling themselves "Reich" of some sort being involved in not one, but two World Wars? They'd rather want the Germans to have rather loose ties with their country, to keep nationalism from popping up yet again.

Re:Hey Germany

[Sique]

Germany did. And they thought that a child has the right to equal chances with every other child in Germany. And that means that it also has the right to an education equivalent to the education all the other children get, and this right is not to be withhold, not even by the child's parents. They are allowed to homeschool their children if they take the exams required by law to be allowed to teach children. The parents didn't, and so the law said, they weren't providing their children equal chances, and thus got fined.

Re:I do it

[inviolet]

How do you address the social aspects of school? A valuable part of being in school was learning how to interact with new people, larger groups, and authority respectfully and responsibly. Its unfortunate, but part of being a productive adult is working with difficult strangers or at least working around them.

They're in martial arts twice a week. They're in scouts and sports. We live on a cul-de-sac full of kids. They are on robotics competition teams organized by the homeschool supply store. And they have responsibilities at home which we treat like a salaried job. If anything they are spending too much time with others -- I miss having them around every afternoon.

Where was the line for you between, "I'll do this myself" and "Extend/correct/expound/refine what they learned at school"? Of the teachers I know, the best students weren't always the smartest but they were the ones whose parents took an active interest in what they were learning and who added on to that at home. Even the ultra-religious, "Harry Potter is a sin", parents got some respect for actually being aware of what their kids were being exposed to.

What tipped the scale for me was hearing them grouse about being bored at school -- even at the private schools (Montessouri and then Lutheran) that we sent them to for four years. Having now taught two students for two years, it seems insane to try to educate more than one or two kids at a time -- they end up sitting bored while the slow kid soaks up all the teacher's attention.

Re:Religion, not schooling

[bloobloo]

Germany is subject to Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights:

Freedom of thought, conscience and religion

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience
and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion
or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with
others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in
worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be
subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are
necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety,
for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection
of the rights and freedoms of others.

If the parents felt that they were being persecuted, they have a perfectly valid right of appeal via German courts and then the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the above convention states:

No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise
of any functions which it assumes in 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.

So this would specifically be within Strasbourg's jurisdiction.

Re:Good

[Jesus_666]

The German government doesn't give a shit about home schooling. However, every German child has the right to a good education and the law defines that as an education by federally tested and approved* teachers (after all, how else do you ensure that a teacher fulfils basic quality criteria?).

Had one of the two parents passed the First State Examination (there are two but the second applies only if you want to teach at a public school) everything would've been okay. But none of them has and thus the law can't verify that they're actually fit to teach. Since it's not certain that the children are getting an adequate education the usual procedure applies and the police enforce that the children are getting educated by a qualified professional; a public school is the usual place for that so that's where the children go.

The argument behind the whole issue is that the education of our children is too important to leave it to someone who has no idea what he's doing. I tend to agree.


* Apparently, a Master of Education also applies so if you think German universities are going to brainwash you into a slave of the government you can also get your qualification elsewhere.