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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."
While interesting on a social or educational perspective, what has this to do with 'news for nerds'? There isn't anything technical about this. Nothing geeky. It's just a random news story you'd find on Yahoo News (for example)...
That's a brilliant way to get you and your family into the US without having to resort to hiding in a shipping container or over staying a visitor's visa and then buying a fake identity.
FTFA:
In 2006 the Romeikes pulled their children out of a state school in Bissingen, Germany, in protest of what they deemed an anti-Christian curriculum.
They said textbooks presented ideas and language that conflicted with their Christian beliefs, including slang terms for sex acts and images of vampires and witches, while the school offered what they described as ethics lessons from Islam, Buddhism and other religions.
Well, obviously other religions can't offer any ethical guidance, and exposing the kids to them will clearly cause them to hate Christianity. Better not even expose them to other thoughts! And the best place to go for that? Here in the US.
... to all the people who have education problems in other countries? I think we should: all afghani girls who for years could not go to school (did we give asylum to all that requested?), all the africans who cannot go to school because of social problems (did we give asylum to all that requested?), etc. Clearly shows how racist and politically biased the courts are: a group of (likely) right wing white people always get precedence over some poor 3rd world, brown-skinned, poor fellow...
Okay, so this particular family is helped. Great! Wonderful! What about the other families in Germany? Does this get bumped up to the UN?
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Well, aren't we Mr. Tolerance and Understanding Incarnate! Not an ounce of prejudice here, eh? Only among those nasty stupid old home-schooling types.
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The only problem I have with homeschooling is that the vast majority of homeschooling is done by ultra fanatic religious fringe groups who claim their kids would get all those "wrong" ideas (like, say, a humanistic education and values) when they were sent to a public school.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From TFA, it appears that the actual basis for asylum here is freedom of religion, not freedom to home-school. The parents pulled their children from public school because they are fundamentalist Christians and objected to elements of the public school's curriculum, including sex education and morality lessons drawn from other religions. The German government apparently does not recognize a parent's right to "protect" children from opposing religious views through home-schooling, and intended to compel attendance. The US recognizes this as an aspect of free exercise of religion, which can form the basis for an asylum petition. Thus, they are actually obtaining asylum on religious persecution grounds. Whether these facts actually establish a valid instance of religious persecution or not is perhaps an important question; just because something is protected by the free exercise clause of the 1st amendment to the US Constitution does not mean it is necessarily a fundamental human right which should give rise to an asylum claim. Germany is not subject the the US Constitution.
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Do you really think parents can't brainwash their kids if they go to public school?
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I don't have a problem with people home-schooling to improve the quality of education. I myself was home-schooled for several years.
I do, however, have a major issue with people pulling their children out of public school so they can be home-schooled according to religious criteria. I recognize this is a slippery slope, but based on what I've read so far I support the German government.
Religious freedom allows you to worship, but it does not in my mind give one free license to program children with it. Children are not property. Religious conflict with a secular school is not a valid reason for home-schooling.
Further, home schooled children should be subject to, at the very least, the same aptitude tests and subject material criteria as public school children. (Yes, I know most public school criteria and tests are a joke, but it's at least a starting point.)
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Germans make for good US citizens! They're white. A funny feeling tells me that the judge would not have sympathized with non-Caucasians and/or non-Europeans with the same problem.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
> Homeschooling is in no way a human right.
I totally disagree. It's the basic right to raise your children with your own views and values. Today that protects the "Christian Activists", but it also protects any family from being forced to have their children educated by the government.
If you think a government being able to force you to send your children to someplace to teach them what the government wants them to learn isn't a violation of a basic human right, then I don't know what kind of rights you think humans should have.
I'd like to applaud you for presenting a well written, middle-of-the-road argument in favor of homeschooling. It's one of those things where I fear what I hear, because the only people making noise are whack jobs.
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.
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.
Your thoughts? I know you don't speak for the entire homeschool community, but might as well draw some of your good ideas off while we've got someone who's done it.
Alright, I didn't think it would come to this on slashdot, but this must be understood.
For most families, homeschooling provides an option to help with constant travel (including military families), family changes, or just plain old bad local schools. I have a few friends who were home-schooled through HS, and they are some of the smartest and quickest people I know. In public school, classes move as fast as the slowest student (or just pass him/her by), at home, if you get it, you move on quickly and have plenty of time to be creative/play sports/do whatever.
This stigma against homeschooling has GOT to go already. Not all homeschoolers are teaching racial bias or inaccurate science. Not by far.
It's always confirmation bias!
> who claim their kids would get all those "wrong" ideas (like, say, a humanistic education and values)
Yeah, but that's the thing with basic rights like this. They don't care what someone's definition of "wrong" is, because everyone has their own opinion on right vs wrong.
I don't know how it is in Germany, but in large areas of the US, a child having the right to equal education is a pretty low standard. In my experience, there are two major groups of home schoolers: the people that don't agree with standard school doctrines, methods, and no child left alone policies, and the relative few religious nuts that create a bad name for themselves and the first group. Most schools in the southeast tend more towards holding more children back than helping them achieve a decent education, and where the public school system fails, private schools and home schooling can succeed.
If being a certified teacher requires you to teach a certain curriculum, then there would be almost no benefit to staying outside of the government sanctioned school system.
Prove to me that this isn't an elaborate holographic simulation you're living in, and then we can talk about "the truth". Truth is the regime of philosophers and theologians; anyone who thinks science is about "truth" is naive.
Children taught by the public system that they are special, its not their fault they don't study, no one is better than anyone else, and its not fair if you don't have stuff other people have.
You're making that up. Or you're repeating things other people have made up. This is a myth that is constantly propagated on slashdot. It's one of those "everyone knows" memes that people just repeat to each other without any actual evidence because it meets their preconceived notions. The slashdotters who have children going through the school system almost invariably describe an incredibly competitive, stressful grind that is far more cutthroat than they remember from their own school days.
The fundamental right in question would be that of the parent to raise their own children, as opposed to the State doing so.
This is unfortunately one of those rights that never got expressly enumerated in the Constitution (although in New Hampshire we're trying to fix this) most likely because, much like a right to privacy, the idea of violating it was so beyond the pale in 1789 that no one thought it needed to be written down. What was put into the Bill of Rights were eight articles specifically in reaction to abuses committed by the British government, followed by two catch-all articles clarifying that the powers of the Federal Government are expressly enumerated (Article X), but the rights of the people are not (Article IX). Unfortunately this hasn't worked out too well in practice...
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How many homeschoolers have you people interacted with anyway? This looks like a case where you've never ever actually met one except that bad kid in the back who argues with the biology professor, who turns out to be one. You then gleefully stereotype every homeschooled kid with that same stamp, along with a few horrific rumours you imagined or picked up on the internet.
I realize there are bad cases out there, but most homeschoolers are never going to be noticed in the end because they turn out just like everybody else. They go on to get normal jobs and like like normal people. There are plenty of cases I could name where people educated in your public schools turn out to be welfare freeloaders and deadbeats.
I'm so glad I live in Canada where homeschooling is actually supported by the government and treated with marginal respect.
Now look, I've refrained from profanity, calling you Nazis, and typing in all caps. All I want in return is to not be treated like some sort of slime because I didn't grow up inside the walls of your public education system.
[/homeschooledkid]
There are a lot of us who home-school for non-religious reasons... Please quit perpetuating a bad stereotype. Some of us simply care about the the pace our children are learning things, and about the quality and content of the education. We (my wife and I) are not doing anything "special" or worthy of bragging about in terms of spectacular teaching - yet our kids test well beyond other kids their age in math and reading, and they can tell you all sorts of things about classic literature, history, logic/reasoning, and geography, that very few other kids under 10 years old have even heard of. Reducing the student/teacher ratio, and cutting out the crap makes a big, big difference.
Aww, I see, so you get to decide what morals are good for my children? I really do not think governments around the world have a good track records on teaching morals. Germany is no exception.
"A valuable part of being in school was learning how to interact with new people, larger groups, and authority respectfully and responsibly."
I do not know what school you went to, but at my high school it looked from my perspective that the kids just learned more about how to break the rules and get away with it then any respect for authority.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Actually, the parents in question did a good job teching their children - one went in to get his GCSE and wpassed with an A grade average. What I find questionable is that they don't want their children to attend a school because the children might be confronted with values the parents don't agree with. Yes, that's their official reason.
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Maybe there are a lot of "ultra fanatic religious" nuts who homeschool their children.
But there are also a LOT of homeschoolers that are doing it simply to help their children get real educations.
We associate with many other homeshooling families in our area and they range across a good spectrum of religious beliefs: protestant, catholic, mormon, buddhist, agnostic and atheist. Once a week the families get together for some social time and larger group learning. The adults and kids get along great, and have a great time doing fun, active learning. If anything it is the atheists that are the most fervent in bringing up religion during the co-op learning activities.
Germany sensibly determined that Scientology is a cult and outlawed it, while the US has raised it to the status of religion and given it tax-exempt status. The Germans also happen to believe that children deserve a basic education that reaches certain objective standards. Nothing prevents parents from adding to that education.
Any further comment would be superfluous.
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For those that oppose home-schooling, do they seriously think that the government does a great job of educating children? I can't believe there are so many that oppose home-schooling, yet Slashdotters in general rail on the poor quality of the American education system.
To me, home-schooling is a great alternative. Parents in general care the most about their children, not the government. Obviously there are the exception (child abusers, etc.), but that's not necessarily an argument to ban all home-schooling outright.
Seems like as long as the children can pass the standardized tests (SAT, etc.), we should support it. In fact, studies have been done that show that home-schoolers often do better than public school students. For example:
http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp
Anecdotally, my sister found that some colleges actually prefer home-schoolers for this reason.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
No, the Romeikes were just a pain in the ass, and everyone is glad they are gone. :)
All sorts of things.
Weekly co-operative learning with groups of other homeschooling families. Sports teams. Singing groups. Piano lessons and recitals. Scouting. Church meetings and activities. Playing with friends. ... it's not like they're trapped in the house!
Whats wrong with packing all the religious nuts off to the New World - its traditional. Europe has been doing it for the last 400 years. :-)
The only problem I have with homeschooling is that the vast majority of homeschooling is done by ultra fanatic religious fringe groups who claim their kids would get all those "wrong" ideas (like, say, a humanistic education and values) when they were sent to a public school.
As a christian, I've met many home-schoolers. And I don't think anyone would consider any of them to be ultra fanatic religious fringe group members. They were definitely christians, but very level-headed. I would love to be able to home school my kids. But I have to work. And my wife doesn't feel qualified to do it. So we send our kids to a private christian school.
Any time the government dictates a certain standard of anything for all children in the country, it infringes on freedom. When a population is allowed to home school, there's always a risk that some kids won't get an adequate education. But you can't legislate away bad parenting.
The next time you feel like we should outlaw home schooling, think about how you would react if a religious nut came to power and mandated that your children take a religion class in public school. Would you want to pull your kids out and educate them in the manner of your choosing?
P.S. In my kids' private christian school, they learn about evolution.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Big fan of home schooling myself, however the biggest problem with home schooling isn't the quality of education. It is the lack of socialization. Home school kids are massively underdeveloped socially, they miss out on a lot of cues that the rest of the population learned the hard way in social environment.
Between church, Cub/Boy Scouts (our city has one cub scout pack made up of exclusively homeschoolers, and one boy scout troop that is about 50/50), Awanas, and volunteering at a church-based public service ministry, my kids get plenty of social interaction
So between religion, a religion based organization, another religion based organization, and volunteering for religion, your kids are well prepared to handle the real world? Seriously, get your kids some secular experiences and let them make up their own minds. They'll be much better people for it.
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there's no good answer to this. who's the responsible, moral, educated, fair decision-maker as to what is the best education children can get? the parents or the state? frequently, neither. but sometimes, the parent, other times, the state. i myself, would bet on the state, especially if i lived in california, and if anything, complement the education at home or somewhere else. as to the germans, their education is fine, and i would rather leave them in germany, legel precedents of political asylum notwithstanding. as to what this has to with linux, programming, and the internet, and /. -- nada.
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I'll just point out that, even with that social environment, some of us still don't learn the necessary cues. Some of us end up learning the cues the really hard way in adult life. Some of us end up having never learned the cues at all.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The only stipulation here is that the kids are taught in a classroom setting by certified teachers according to a strict curriculum.
Your stipulation is considered and rejected.
Parents have plenty of rights, but the right to destroy their kid's future by teaching them anti-science and borderline racist interpretations of history ought not be one.
The logical error you are perpetrating here is that gov't is an adequate judge of what "destroys" a kid's future, what is "anti-science," or what is a "racist" interpretation of history. It's not. I am a much better judge than government of what is, and is not, a good education for my children; and more to the point, perhaps, government has no right whatsoever to tell me otherwise.
We have whole states here in the US that are filled with nincompoops because of homeschooling.
You are, of course, making that up. When you invent something like that in this context, it certainly doesn't help your argument about what education for children should be.
Homeschooling begets more homeschooling in an endless cycle.
There's not much evidence of this, actually, since it's only a recent phenomena on a significant scale. So again, you're making it up. (Although since you've not in the least bit demonstrated that homeschooling is bad in any way whatsoever, you also give no one any reason to think this purported "cycle" is a bad one.)
When you try to push morals and religion into education you end up with none of the above.
Oh come on. That doesn't even make a lick of sense. You're literally saying that morals and religion can't be taught.
So... out of curiosity, what would have been an appropriate response for a curious 10 year old? I mean, counseling actually strikes me as the appropriate response.
Granted, I know nothing of the circumstances. But I'd really know what you'd expect the school system to do. Expel the child? Have him arrested?
.
As an elementary school teacher myself, I have to respond.
The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong."
True, but I could also say the first lesson is "You have to learn and not only play. Let's face it, they are kids and they want to play. They don't care about maths, science, politics, music, etc. They want to play. Ask any kid what they'd rather do between learning and playing, and they'll want to play. As a teacher, I have to make sure I teach in a fun and playful way so that it becomes almost like a game, if not a game itself, but it's a hell of a challenge.
The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch.
True and false. In the morning we might do maths, then in the afternoon we might do grammar. It's still too long for the kids, yet too short for the teacher. So, I understand that as adults we might perceive this has forcing them to turn on and off as required, but the kids need variety. They don't have the attention and patience adults have. I say, let's finish the cool project tomorrow instead of doing everything the same day and being bored with it at the end of the day.
The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command.
Parents already do this before elementary school. It's part of learning how to behave. It's not my place to say if it is good or bad, but we are not living in an anarchist's society. We have a hierarchy in the real world. If kids can't listen to the teacher, will they even bother to willfully follow the laws of society? And would that be good or bad? That's an unfinished debate.
The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study.
Well, yes. Anyway, kids that age are not ready to teach themselves. They only want to play after all. So, at that age you have to enforce it and explain to them that knowing many things is important. A minority of kids are different. It is true that those truly gifted are stuck in the system. I'd prefer it if kids wanted to learn by themselves, but almost every kid don't. The result is that the current system is excellent for almost everyone, except for kids that are slow and for kids that are too fast. You give interesting extra work for the fast ones and try to mentor the slow ones, but it's a heck of a job. Right now, this might not be perfect, but it's a good way to do things.
In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth.
In a way, this is becoming false. If your job is to teach someone to make coffee, there will be many objective criteria that will tell you if the endeavor is a success or a failure. So, what's the problem? On the other hand, if he's criticizing the fact that he's being compared to others to know if he is worth something or not, this is not the case anymore. (At least, not in Quebec). This self-worth problem happens when kids want good marks to impress others, and not when they are intrinsically motivated to master the task at hand. I'm not fond of means and medians and telling kids how successful they are compared to others. This is a private thing. They should try to master the tasks and be motivated to be the best they can. On the other hand, this is completely destroyed when they want to go to university where marks are extremely important. You might say, elementary schools are "ahead" of the rest since it's easier to change how we do things. Try to tell the medical department of your university to not look at marks, but to instead compare the motivations, projects, extra work and personal home researches the students have done. It's too much work for them. It's much more easy to scan a list of students and call those above a certain mark.
In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched.
And this is bad because? If you don't remind kids they are at school, that bathroom break takes an hour. Give me a break...
Well, what about the childrens' human right to a decent education? Yes, we consider that a human right over here and it trumps parents' rights to force their views on the children. As I already pointed out, this is a diagreement over which human right is being violated and it's unlikely to get people from different side of the pond to agree.
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My wife and I love Germany and had considered expatriating there until the practical issues of raising children presented themselves. Later in my life the theoretical "freedom issues" are also an obstacle, and seem to explain the practical problem.
Murray Rothbard has an easy read called "Education, Free and Compulsory" that details the historical context, motivations, and key figures in the development of public education throughout world history. Starting with [to keep it local!] Mr Martin Luther.
The key emergent theme in public and compulsory education is not so often the "well being" of the children, although that is how it is often wrapped up, but asserting the relevant authorities "interest" in shaping the indoctrination of all persons. In the earliest systems it was the Church, and a great deal of public education had to deal with [both sides] trying to gain new supporters in the Calvinist vs. Lutheran struggle.
The history of public education is less religiously themed in the US; as in most of the world the religious hierarchy of the day was superceded by the all-powerful state as the new religion. Writings of early public education advocates in the US all talk about the need to shape and mold the child in order to conform to the purposes of the state; some suggest that children ought to universally be taken from parents so that they can be in the proper educational environment 24 hours per day.
Rothbard [as usual] is an interesting read here, but there are many others who deal at a much less theoretical/epistemological level.
The key issue is that in Germany, irrespective of what "hoops" you say exist to "let" parents homeschool, the position of the state is that children belong to the state, not the parents, and should the parents meet a sufficient number of criteria, the state will _permit_ parents to indoctrinate children in the only approved manner -- the one that serves the interests and ideology of the state.
A contrasting idea is that the state ought not to compel any particular ideology on anyone, least of all children, and that the state does not "own" children whatsoever, and as such has no actual say in the manner or content of the child's education.
I find that the best litmus test of the totalitarian tendencies of the state are as follows:
- does the state permit individual firearms ownership that bypass any allegience or subservience to the state?
- does the state permit parents to wholly control the nature and content of how children are to be raised and educated?
Theshort versions are: permissive gun laws annd permissive homeschooling laws are good indicators of a society that is "truly" free, that is, individuals are free to do things that the state may find distasteful.
In my view, the right way to think of individual freedom, and to compare/constrast different societies, is not by considering how broad the list of behaviors considered "permissible" by society is, but how tolerant the society is of behaviors it popularly considers non-permissible.
Said differently, I would consider a society that has a singular ideology of "almost anything goes" to be less free than a society that says "we don't care what your ideology is".
Germany, and most European nations, fair poorly on the challenge of tolerating differing ideologies. This is normally not a problem for most people, because the prevailing ideology is quite liberal and permissive in what they consider "normal". Yet the fair bit of socio-political unity in Western Europe since the end of WW2 has allowed it to postpone some of the teething problems that the US has and continues to deal with. The most visible effects of this is how european countries attempt to retain their identity in the face of an influx of Muslims who do not conform or integrate into their traditional politics and culture. The legal responses taken by different european nations to this specific problem are interesting, to say the least.
There are certainly Muslims in the US that would
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Because it's slashdot and you mentioned religion without bashing it, and that is anathema to the progressive groupthink located here.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
The same criticism could be applied to public schools. The only thing that GUARANTEES that the student has gotten a good education is the student himself.
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Indeed.. but of course that's assuming you're socially competent enough to be able to have a spouse in the first place. Hell, I'm having a hard enough time even getting a date.
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No, it isn't, not in America anyway. I doubt it is in any country anywhere.
Society has put limits on this 'right', in order to protect children from extremists and idiots. You are allowed a certain level of freedom, but we as a society have said that we only allow it to a certain level and you must comply with some basic standards for education so your child can eventually have the opportunity to make their own decisions without being brainwashed by you to only believe YOUR viewpoints. You are also required to teach them certain specific things if you want to teach them yourself.
Its a compromise between letting you teach your children your beliefs and preventing you from making them nutjobs (which doesn't require a prefix of religious, there are plenty of other ways to be intolerant bastards). You can teach them and educate them your way, but you also have to expose them to certain other bits of knowledge that we as a society have decided that EVERYONE should know.
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I have one family of cousins who have been home schooled. Their most significant social problem is that they're perpetually late. If there's one thing that public school teaches you, it's to be on time.
Thank you for pointing this out. I have heard this absurd socialization argument many times. It is very strange if you think about it. Over the history of humanity, it is only very recently that children mainly interact with social groups very close to their age. It used to be that a child would learn a trade from their parents, and although they had friends/playmates, a lot of their time was spend with their parents. Early is US history, there were many one room school houses where children of all ages would be taught by a single teacher. Why do we think that public schools with near-age peers groups is "normal"?
I heard that a Canadian study on home schooling was recently released and they found very positive results. The results showed that home schooled children were better community citizens (charities, gave time, etc). The study found nothing wrong with their social skills.
When the World Trade Center got hit by airplanes, and people were in panic and looking for leadership, the primary message from the establishment was not "Help your neighbours". It was not "Be charitable". It was "Keep shopping". This should give you an idea what the establishments priorities are, why public schools are the way they are, and what kind of adults they are intended to mold children into.
If you trust the disciples of Ayn Rand and John Nash to administer the education of your children, you shouldn't be surprised if they turn into psychopaths.
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But somehow I see this opening a whole new can of worms. Now Germany is going to restrict people flying to the U.S. - based on facts about children and schooling, and likewise, people might run away to the US claiming they are doing it for their children as opposed to some ulterior motive (other more heineous crimes).
No it does not, lol. Germany and USA have different laws regarding schooling your kids, fine. You miss the point that germany still nevertheless is a "constitutional state" or a "free government under the law". In other words there is no legal way for the state to prevent parents and kids to travel. After all we live in a free country like the US citizens alike.
Many parents that do want home schooling and are in trouble with the law exactly do that. They just live in a different land of the european union where "home schooling" is allowed.
In other words, that particular family did not need to flee germany and did not need to apply for political asylum in the USA.
However the funny thing, in two ways about this is: first they don't need to go through the awkward process in getting a green card, they just apply for asylum which is probably much easier and secondly it is really a slap into the face of our politicians (yes I'm german).
I don't agree that parents have the right to educate their children as they like (it sometimes sounds as if you could do that in the USA everywhere). I strongly believe that there need to be levels, guidelines, tests, common standards or what ever.
However, to give everyone, especially the US and other oversees guys an idea. The law has old roots. The earliest laws about "school duty" (can you say that?) where formulated between 1592, 1598 and 1681 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulpflicht/ and finally in Preußen (Prussia) at 1717 and Bayern (Bavaria) 1763.
Those laws where badly necessary as the already existing schools where avoided, parents found it more important to send 6 year old kids working in dangerous factories, mines, or mechanized manufactories.
The problems in our days now is that this is no longer appropriated. There are enough examples of home schooled kids where the 5 the 7 and the 12 year old boys learn together. And they do their homework together. And it show that the typical level of an 18 years old making his "final secondary-school examinations" can be reached easily at the age of 15 or 16, because learning at (provided the parents can give that education) is 100% more effective than a standard school, if not even more.
I have seen examples of such families last weeks in TV (because there is a growing movement of "home schoolers" who try to resist the current politicians) where the youngest (like 7 or 9) plays several instruments, speaks about 5 foreign languages can write in all but one of them, is strongly interested in math and physics and is just to smart to be put into a normal school. The oldest basically made "final secondary-school examinations" at age of 16 (normal is 18 - 19) and is now doing a apprenticeship as carpenter because he is basically to young to visit an university ... either to skip time or he just likes carpentry ;D
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Using spelling-bees as a metric for a criterion for how good education is is a really bad idea. Spelling bees are essentially an extracurricular that involves lots of memorization. Moreover, this looks at outliers. That's not useful in that it doesn't tell us anything about either the average of the general sample size. For example, it might very well be that homeschoolers on average spelled about as well or worse than public school kids but since so many homeschoolers get involved in spell bees they still end up dominating the upper tiers of the competition. If you could show that homeschoolers on average had better grammar and spelling that would be a different claim. Or if you could show they did well across the board in intellectually related competitions you might have an argument. Moreover, one could actually argue that this is a negative reflection of how homeschooling functions: homeschooling in the United States is often done by reactionary Christians. Spelling is therefore appealing in that it at first glance seems to be a set of nice, rigid rules.
Public schooling in the US has a lot of problems, and the foremost of them is that in many cases the children are more intelligent than their teachers
This is a major issue, and I feel that I was very lucky in that I had parents who were active in my education when I came home from school. The worst is when your teachers aren't just stupid, they're vindictive. I [mostly] dodged that one, but my brother, who is both a non-traditional learner and brilliant, was repeatedly singled out and punished by teachers who didn't understand what he was saying. Fortunately he stuck with it, and is now at the point where his employer is paying him just to do his graduate work. Take that, teachers!
There are many good teachers, but they are vastly outnumbered by the mediocre and bad teachers. Given the time it takes to become a teacher, the arbitrary hoops that must be jumped through, the daily work politics, and the relatively low pay, I'm not surprised that good teachers are hard to find. The incentives really are geared toward keeping people who are committed to a life of doing the bare minimum.
My wife and I probably will not send our children to public school when the time comes.
Religious reasons for homeschooling are not intrinsically detrimental to the education of children. My parents are devout Baptists, and they homeschooled me in large part for religious reasons. I was required to do Bible study every year for the nine years I was homeschooled. Ironically, this made me into a walking weapon of mass faith destruction after I renounced Christianity at age 17, since few Christians know a Bible as well as I do and where all its most egregious flaws are.
None of this prevented me from getting high SAT/ACT scores, or getting into the exclusive Honors Program at Seattle University, arguably one of the most respected schools in the state, and the program only takes 25 students per year, selected in ultimately by interview. It didn't prevent me from landing me decent-paying job and marrying a truly wonderful (and non-religious) woman who makes even more than I do.
I don't like Christianity, and I'm not going to encourage any exposure of my daughter to it, but I'm not about to place myself in position to dictate to people how they should live their lives. That makes you no better than a moralist religious nutjob yourself.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
> The question is who gets to decide what a "real-world education" is. And it's not
> government.
A "real-world education" would enable the children to be able to be in some kind valuable to other people in order to survive, when their parents arent around any more.
The reasoning for removing Romeikes kids from the school here was solely in order to prevent the whole rest of society from showing them that there is a life outside of religion, that there are children with other religions and (shock) children with no religion at all. It was to prevent questions like "Mommy, daddy, the other children in our class dont have to pray 10000 a day, why do we?".
It absolutely had nothing to do with any kind of education _quality_.
>> Except it isn't if you're removing your children from the society, culture and from
>> knowledge they need to later live in and as a part of this society.
> False.
Obviously religion doesnt trump children rights everywhere, since they otherwise wouldnt have to leave not only Germany, but basically whole of Europe.
> You are apparently, by your vile and ignorant words against religion, an atheist.
And you are apparanetly, by your vile and ignorant words against reason, a theist.
> What if you lived in a theistic nation, where government decided to force everyone to
> follow a certain religion?
How exactly is that different from parents deciding to force all their children to follow their religion and in order to prevent real-world contamination, incarcerate them for life josef fritzl style?
> It does not get to decide if our kids are of a certain religion, or if they learn
> Spanish, or if they learn about evolution or global warming.
But it decides if you try to prevent your kids to get a education they need to survive once they (shock) decide to leave your walled religion garden.
> There's no evidence that teaching your children to follow your religion screws them up
> in any way.
Forcefully removing them from school, contacts other (different) kids, books, knowledge and so on _does_ screw them up.
>You're being competely irrational, and you're just making things up.
If I were making things up, the Romeikes would have been able to stay home, lock their kids up and threw the keys away. But they arent. So draw your conclusions.