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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."
The family has money to burn why not have them spend it in the US?
I have difficulty believing that this qualifies under persecution. Every country has it's own particulars and peculiarities when it comes to things. It's not like they are being treated unfairly and denied basic human rights. Oh wait... the judge feels that letting the parents choose to educate their children themselves is a 'basic human right'.
Considering the quality of education in North America versus the quality of education in Europe, I consider the Judge's decision to be laughable. I'd take a publicly mandated education from a European country over *anything* provided by the US.
Which just proves your ignorance. If you want atheists to be seen as "evolved" then you shouldn't post such asinine comments.
Nice false dichotomy jerkwad.
Come on this is ridiculous. Do you honestly agree that the government has the right to force people to education facilities to teach what they determine appropriate? I didn't even have to juice that up much to make it sound terrifying. Granted you can probably assume it would be better at this point for the child to be in government approved school, but if you make it illegal for parents to decide then how do you stop it when things go too far? Better off just letting people just decide for themselves. We'll still need people to fry our food for us when these kids grow up, or they may actually turn out fine.
I suspect you might be in the minority with your reasoning for home schooling. Don't the majority of home-schoolers do it because they're afraid of evil secular concepts like evolution and geological history? As far as I'm concerned, as long as home schooling is used to shelter children from real information, or present it from a "religious perspective", it should be outlawed. Even with a strict set of rules for curriculum, there will still be parents who give extra qualifying information along with such topics.. ie.. Here's all the nonsense that secularists believe, and here is the real truth according to the Holly Bibble. The material is still covered, and you can't eliminate that loophole, so the only solution is ban home schooling outright.
Homeschooling was originally banned in Germany by Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, when he wanted to make sure that all German children were indoctrinated in the ways of the Nazi party. The Hitler Youth was the result. Government schooling isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if a government is promoting/enforcing a radical worldview, most if not all of the kids in the school system will pick it up. Like evolution.
It sounds like Germany barely modified the 1938 law written by the Nazi's banning homeschooling. "Duty," to me sounds more like "obey."
I can't believe someone is defending putting people in prison for simply wanting to give their children an education.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Why am I not surprised that they ended up in Tennessee?
This ain't rocket surgery.
That's right, because everyone should know that they belong to the state. Opposing views are treason, and traitors are shot.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
They seemed to not want their kids to have a balanced education, instead they wanted them indoctrinated into their own religion from an early age.
Which is entirely within their rights and responsibilities as a parent. Whose responsibility should it be to select a religion for those children?
Further I humbly submit that religion in general is not bad for children and there's no basis for outrage against it.
I call sampling bias. 8-)
The situation in the U.S. is quite different because even the fundamentalists value education (just not a sound one in theology, but that tends not to matter because religion is almost a taboo subject). There seems to be a general belief that you must educate your children well, so that they can lead a better life.
In Germany, your own social status determines the your children's path to a much larger extent than in most other industrialized nations, so sadly, some parents develop a rather fatalistic attitude about their children's education, not caring much about it all. I fear that there are still some rural areas were secondary education for girls is frowned upon.
Mod parent up!
When it comes down to it, NOBODY should be forced into a worldview they disagree with. It doesn't matter whether you agree with what they are teaching or not, it is impossible to keep from imparting a worldview of some kind on the children, given the nature of subjects like history and social studies, and science (which is often very poorly taught in public schools, btw), and if the parents don't approve it is their duty and their right to remove them from the school and either educate them elsewhere, or educate them themselves.
What I find disgusting about the whole situation was that the police were going to come and drag their kids to school. If that doesn't scream 1984 Orwellian dystopia I don't know what does.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
So you mean there is one single truth and it should be pushed on everyone as the one and final truth ?
Perhaps you should move to North Korea, or China. Bet you'd enjoy their schooling system.
there needs to be a check and balance to ensure that the kids are being taught the same or better than kids in a regular school
False. This violates the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. You cannot come into my home and check to see how I am teaching my kids without a warrant and probable cause, without following due process.
Maybe there should be standardized testing, and recommended curriculum, for all schools including home schools.
Nope. I will educate my kids, and you will not be privy to the details or results. It's literally none of your business, nor the government's.
Otherwise what is to stop someone from brainwashing their kids under the guise of homeschooling?
In a free society, what business is it of yours? Who decides what "brainwashing" is? Today teaching anti-evolution science is "brainwashing" to many people; tomorrow maybe teaching anti-global warming will be. Perhaps it will be "brainwashing" to teach kids that homosexuality is sinful. You and I will disagree with some or all of those things, but how can government reasonably step in and decide them for a free people?
Government has no role here. Not in a free society.
And I'd argue that it's the children's right NOT to be brainwashed by their crazy parents. How will these kids function in society when all they know comes from the bible?
You are either grossly misinformed, or you have a vested interest in the current system, or you are just trolling.
You can't raise a kid to change the world by keeping blinders on them.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
As a German, I can only say "good riddance" to these people. Unfortunately for the Americans, that's two more votes for Palin in 2012, or whatever carbon copy is nominated by the Republicans.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
Well, religion, being a form of schizophrenia
False.
I won't bother to read the rest of your post, if you make such a fundamental error right at the beginning.
It doesn't matter where you got your education, or what it says on your diploma, if you have these test scores.
What about the parents that don't follow curriculums (like the ones in TFA )their kids don't get diplomas or test scores. Maybe you should RTFA before you comment like an idiot.
A person that believes Abraham Lincoln talks to him is going to meet some definition of a mental illness. But replace that invisible friend with a more popular invisible friend, and it's suddenly not a mental illness?
You are implying that by calling it an "invisible friend" that it is therefore not real. You are committing the question-begging fallacy, and I summarily reject it.
I'll humor you though: give me one example of evidence that religion is schizophrenia.
Read the current version of the DSM, paying attention to the schizophrenia entry.
In other words, you can't give one example.
If you don't know what the DSM is, then you aren't competent to doubt him.
That's obviously not true, because even if I didn't have a copy of DSM4 on the bookshelf and three psychology degrees in my immediate family, I could still understand the fact that no one has ever demonstrated a belief in God to be irrational, and that therefore such a belief is not demonstrative of any mental illness.
And president Obama passed 2-3 laws at least stating there would be no economic crisis after their passage.
Nothing has changed.