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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."
I got most of my education at private schools. I've met some people who were homeschooled and while they may be socially inept, I was far more brainwashed than they were. I can only offer anecdotes, but I believe private schools are a much bigger problem than homeschooling.
I watched a decent documentary about North Korea the other day (called A State of Mind) and my education (except college) is the same as a North Korean. Just replace "The General" with Jesus and "American imperialists" with "liberals/hippies/communists/scientists" and that's how I grew up.
I learned about how evolution is a lie, dinosaurs existed at the same time as man (or were perhaps fossils were planted by the devil), carbon dating can't possibly work, how the Puritans liberated the Indians from savagery, why the government should enforce arranged marriage, anyone who isn't a Christan is a secret devil worshiper, devil worship is everywhere, Mormons and Catholics are devil worshipers. The list seems endless.
I got decent math education out of it, but I've had to totally reacquaint myself with US/world history and literature.
It's ridiculous that such a place is allowed to exist. There needs to be some sort of oversight; many of my classmates may never recover. Most of the parents had no idea just how radical it all was.
You can quote all the studies you want, but speaking as someone who was ACTUALLY home-schooled from 6th through 12th grade, I can tell you that whatever efforts the parents make simply can't compare to being in a school for 8 hours a day.
I can of course only speak to my experience, but let me tell you my social skills suffered dramatically because of being home-schooled. Through those 6 or so years I was frequently lonely and had perhaps one or two friends throughout all my time there, whom I would see once a month when my mom took me to the school's teacher, who would evaluate my work and my education. My parents made some effort to help - I was on a baseball team throughout my time at home, but it was glaringly obvious how immature I was compared to others my age and so I made few friends.
Now, about those visits to the district education office (required in Riverside County at least); I looked forward to these less and less because most of the kids there were worse off than I was; shut-ins who didn't know how to talk, or attention-deprived obnoxious kids, and, call it a stereotype if you will, but there were plenty of crazy "fundie" parents keeping their kids out of the public schools whom I actually met. In one very poignant case I remember, the mom stepped in and refused to allow her son to read "Beowulf" because it contained "demonic ideas."
Of course, not all the parents were like that. But the kids more adapted to the environment would simply get away with not doing their work - usually by copying out of the solutions (we graded our own work - there would be spot-checking by the teacher but it was easy to get away with small inflations of one's grade).
I regret every year I spent in the program. When I got into college I was naieve, socially-shell-shocked and had trouble adapting. Perhaps it just wasn't for me, but in my opinion the majority of kids taken out of the schools learn less about life than necessary.