On their website today, there is news of a surprising case in which Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman granted the political asylum application of Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, Christians from Bissinggen, Germany, homeschool their children and have fled from Germany because of its draconian anti-homeschooling legislation. Judge Burnham said:
“Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress. This family has a well-founded fear of persecution…therefore, they are eligible for asylum…and the court will grant asylum.”See: Homeschooling Family Granted Political Asylum
Mike Donnelly, staff attorney and director of international relations for HSLDA said:
“This decision finally recognizes that German homeschoolers are a specific social group that is being persecuted by a Western democracy,”Donnelly also pointed out:
“It is embarrassing for Germany, since a Western nation should uphold basic human rights, which include allowing parents to raise and educate their own children. This judge understood the case perfectly, and he called Germany out. We hope this decision will cause Germany to stop persecuting homeschoolers,”In Germany, homeschooling families face fines, and the threat of imprisonment. In November 2007, the German Federal High Court in Karlsruhe ruled that children of homeschooling parents could be taken into care because homeschooling constitutes child endangerment, and because the public has the right to be protected from "parallel societies" based on religion or worldview. Families who homeschool are likely to be visited by the Police who will "escort" their children to school.
One family did appeal to the European Court of Human Rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, but the Court refused to hear the case. The Court did agree that homeschooling was an exercise of protected parental liberties, but accepted the concerns of the lower German courts that homeschooling would create a parallel society - and that this was sufficient to override parental freedom.
Homeschooling was made illegal in Germany on 6 July 1938 when the Reichsschulgesetz (Reich School Legislation) was signed by Adolf Hitler and Reichsminister Rust.
10 comments:
wow! i am not a big fan of homeschooling but good for this family! nice to see the USA (especially the judicial branch) doing the right thing for a change
the parents must feel blessed
"Homeschooling was made illegal in Germany on 6 July 1938 when the Reichsschulgesetz (Reich School Legislation) was signed by Adolf Hitler and Reichsminister Rust."
You would think that the German Government would be embarrassed to to be still enforcing a law of such provenance - eager as its members usually are to distance themselves from any taint of Nazism.
And where has the German hierarchy been in all of this? Is there no latter-day von Galen to be found among them?
Father, homeschooling is illegal in Brazil too! It is a basic right to educate one's child but my country, sadly, is looking more and more like a socialist country everyday! Oh, my poor nation!How I wish I could homeschool ....
Best wishes, Father!
In Christ,
Patricia (from Curitiba)
Every law people don't like is a Nazi-law.
It is true that Hitler signed a law that made homeschooling illegal everywhere in Germany. However, homeschooling was illegal in most German areas for more than 60 years before Hitler signed that law. We owe much of our legislation in this part to Chancellor Bismarck and his anti-Catholic tendencies. Bismarck saw in every catholic school a threat to German unity and made laws to avert this danger.
It's a funny turn that evangelical parents today feel persecuted by these laws.
In Germany, of course, parents have the opportunity to choose a school that meets their religious convictions. The Problem of evangelical communities is that they hardly have their own schools, this is not the fault of the government.
Bee's response ignores the basic right that is here being trampled, that is the right for parents to be the first educators of their children. No organisation, not even the government or the Church, has the right to educate a child beyond or against the wishes of the parent. The only time third parties should be interfering with the parents' desire for their children is when those desires are plainly damaging to the children.
This family may be a group of Evangelical Protestants whose particular brand of Christianity doesn't have schools of its own. Fine. That doesn't give the government the right to force these parents to send their children to some other school they feel unsuitable, especially if they are willing and capable of educating the children themselves.
Anthony OPL
Good on them. I needed some cheer, what with compulsory SRE supported by the CES and bishop's support of civil unions. But that's ok, we've got Catholic schools that choose to put on an assembly for Chinese New Year with a play involving 12 animals, 4 gods and dancing with a dragon to chase away evil spirits. I wonder if children in China put on a Passion play at Easter?
There are enough Christian private schools in Germany. How absurd that Americans are granting them "asylum" when you think of their sentencing people to death or keeping prisoners at Guantanamo!
A devote Roman Catholic from Germany
One should take into account private schools can only charge a token payment under German law.
Since it is the vocation of parents to strive in getting there children to Heaven and we can find God in ever subject as Catholics, it will ultimately the childerns parents being judged.
There duty, not the state.
Yes, private schools exist in Germany, but not in the same sense as they do here in that they are not independent of the state. While their existence is guaranteed by law, they are heavily funded by the state, especially in the area of teacher's salaries. They must also follow the state curriculum.
And the reason Germany still has kept this law in particular is because it wasn't Hitler alone. Germany's compulsory schooling law was hundreds of years in the making, starting with Martin Luther in his pleas to his government to make schooling mandatory.
By the Weimar Republic, most of the education system was centralized. In fact, a law very similar to the one signed under Hitler was already on the books, but there was so much antipathy from the states that they didn't/couldn't enforce it.
Hitler really just gave teeth to existing law.
I think you can just as easily make the argument that the education laws made Hitler's rise possible. Centralization and indoctrination were already in place. It just needed a head to pull it all together.
Probably a bit late to join this conversation, but I just had to say how pleased I am that this family managed to escape with their family intact. Others are not so lucky. 7 year old Domenic Johansson from Sweden was torn from the arms of loving parents in Sweden almost a year ago for the same 'crime' of homeschooling.
http://friendsofdomenic.blogspot.com/ Parental rights are under serious attack from many quarters. Homeschooling parents understand what is at stake and are bearing the brunt of the attack.
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