While not specifically about homeschooling, an article by Brian Gresko, a stay-at-home dad and writer, explains his view that childhood is under attack by the very people who should be protecting it: parents. His article In Defense of Childhood: Let Kids Be Kids! explains:

Many of the most important skills are untestable — imagination, general optimism and lightness of heart, the capability to love another creature, to empathize and demonstrate compassion. These are things a child can’t bubble in on a Scantron sheet, and yet cultivating these attitudes matters more in determining how my son will exist in the world and what kind of contribution he’ll make with his time on Earth.

Read the entire article at the link above.

In Defense of Childhood

In an article title The Homeschool Movement’s German Lesson Joy Pavelski reports in The American, the Journal of the American Enterprise Institute, on the German homeschooling family which moved to the U.S.:

On January 26, a Tennessee judge granted political asylum to Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children, three years after German police forcibly transferred the three eldest children—then aged 9, 8, and 6—from their home in Bissingen to state school. The U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appealed the Tennessee ruling a month later, placing the case in limbo. If the appeal is rejected, more foreign homeschoolers may seek asylum in the United States, where roughly 2 million children homeschool.

“The United States granted roughly 1 in 5 of its more than 47,000 political asylum requests in 2008. This was the first reported such case predominantly linked with foreign restrictions against homeschooling.”

Read the entire article at the link above.

German Lesson

A human interest story from NorthJersey.com about a movie in the making: “It was lights, camera and a lot of action on a residential Ridgewood street and at Ridgewood High School last week as movie crews swooped in to film a short movie starring Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber.

“The movie, titled ‘Homeschooled,’ is part of a larger film consisting of several comedy shorts. The film is produced by Charlie Wexler, who also produced ‘Dumb and Dumber’ and ‘There’s Something About Mary.’

“The movie ‘is about these crazy parents [played by Watts and Schreiber] who are homeschooling their son but put him through all the high school things we all go through…’”

Movie Short: “Homeschooled”

Alexandra Frean, visits the Romeike family in Morristown, TN and writes about it in The Times - Exiled: the parents who dared to teach at home

It was just after 7am in a chilly October day in 2006 when the police came knocking. Uwe and Hannalore Romeike and their three children remained quiet, scarcely daring to breath and hoping the cops would leave if they got no answer.

~~~
The Romeikes’ crime? Educating their children at home in a country where such activity is not only illegal, but regarded as highly suspect and even antisocial. A German court recently suggested that home schooling fosters the creation of “parallel societies”. And the police were called in to take the Romeike children to school.

My concern with this situation has been two fold – the bigger concern is HSLDA’s conforntational tactics and the lesser is the Romeike family itself. Frean takes us to Morristown and gives us a look at homeschooling at the Roeike’s US residence.

Settled on their sofa in a tiny duplex, near Knoxville, Tennessee, the couple appear bemused by their notoriety, which they say they never actively sought. The children have perfect manners and study quietly at a dining table in the same room, occasionally getting up to fetch a book. Even Damaris, 4, occupies herself and never once bothers her parents. Lydia, 11, asks about my shorthand and how it works. Joshua, 10, the most lively of the five, is intrigued too. “I shall always sign my name like that,” he says after I spell it out in a few shorthand squiggles.

The family is aware that they have become the object of intense scrutiny in Germany, but are taking it in their stride. “If I have to fight this battle, then I will,” Hannalore, 37, says. “I really hope that one day this will lead to a change in the law in Germany.”

Press reports describe the couple as “devout Christians”, as if this explains their desire to home school their children. It does nothing of the sort.

“We are religious, but this is not about being Christian. It is more of a social thing,” Uwe, 38, says, adding that their main aim is to help their children to develop into self-reliant adults, free from the threat of bullies and the distractions of a classroom full of 30 children all craving attention.

~~~
They had never heard of home schooling until a friend put Hannalore in touch with families using it. “When I looked into the faces of young adults or teenagers, they looked so sad and empty. But when I met the children of home-schooling families, they were more open and happy. They had had the chance to be children,” she says.

Read the whole piece and you have to be happy about how this article treats homeschooling. And, there is little not to admire about this family – almost the perfect family:

In 2007 friends put him in touch with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), a US nonprofit organisation that claims to have 85,000 members and was keen for a case to champion. “At the HSLDA, we had previously talked about using a political asylum case as a way to bring more attention to this issue in Germany. We were waiting for the right family,” says Mike Donnelly, staff attorney and director of international relations at the HSLDA

For the sake of the Romeikes, I hope this works out well.

The family battle is not over yet. The US Department of Immigration has said it will appeal against the decision to grant them asylum — so they face several more months of uncertainty.

HSLDA’s M.O. is pitting one group against another for political gain. My hope and concern stand.

Read the piece here.

Visit with the Romeike Family

An article on The Globe and Mail site tells us about an Canadian immigration case:

They hid from German authorities, fled to Denmark and sought safety in Canada. All this for a chance to freely educate their children at home.

Now the German family will take their cause one step further when they appear before the Immigration and Refugee board in Alberta Tuesday [3/23/10] to request asylum on the grounds that they would be persecuted for home-schooling their children, and risk being locked up and losing their children if they return to their homeland. The hearing is closed, and a decision could take weeks or even months.

~~~
The family packed their belongings and hid in Germany for three months, before making their way into Denmark. From there, they made contact with the Home School Legal Defense Association, a non-profit advocacy group in the United States that also has an office in Canada, who helped them travel to North America in April, 2007.

According to the article, the family’s lawyer is not dicslosing the family’s name. This is what the lawyer, Jean Munn, wants us to know:

But the family, who doesn’t want to be identified because they fear their two teenage boys will be taken away by German authorities, say it’s not about religion. “In this case, religion plays a role less important than reasons of conscience and reasons with respect to the medical well-being of these children,” Ms. Munn said.

Hiding their identity is fair enough, but is this case about religion, health care or homeschooling? When HSLDA control the information, truth succumbs to ideology. The political ideology HSLDA serves first and foremost has a stake in the upcoming US immigration debate.

Read the story here. The comments are worth scanning.

Homeschooling and Immigration – Canada

In a piece pre-dated for Monday, March 8th, Time reports on the Romeike Asylum case again:

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Homeschool.

So why did he seek asylum in the U.S. rather than relocate to nearby Austria or another European country that allows homeschooling? Romeike’s wife Hannelore tells TIME the family was contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which suggested they go to the U.S. and settle in Morristown, Tenn.

~~~

“It’s very unusual for people from Western countries to be granted asylum in the U.S.,” says David Piver, an immigration attorney with offices in a Philadelphia suburb and Flagstaff, Ariz… “The U.S. government will come under political pressure to appeal the Romeike case so as not to offend a close ally,” says Piver, who is not involved in the case.

~~~

Meanwhile, the HSLDA says it is working to defend a homeschooling family in Sweden and is investigating cases in Brazil, where homeschooling is banned — all good fodder for a comparative-government class, whether it’s taught in school or at home.

Count on more to come…

Romeike Family Asylum Ctd.

TIME picks up the Romeike asylum case:

The ruling is sure to ignite passions on both sides of the debate — and may spur other parents around the world to follow the Romeikes’ lead. If this happens, the U.S. could see a flood of a new type of refugees —educational asylum seekers.

This is a tough call for me. I do wish the Romeike family the best and in no way begrudge the better life they appear to have made for themselves.

My reservation is that I have seen, studied and published too much on HSLDA’s activism over the years for a full throated ‘Hurray’. We will see much more of this.
o
Read the TIME piece here.

A New Basis for U.S. Asylum Claims: Homeschooling

News of the Romeike family’s asylum ruling is making the rounds. This is the first piece on the Romeike decision that I found which has done independent reporting and provides some context to this situation in Germany.

US judge grants German homeschooling family asylum.

“Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress,” Burman [Immigration judge Lawrence O. Burman] was quoted as saying. “This family has a well-founded fear of persecution… therefore, they are eligible for asylum.”

~~~
The parents identify themselves as evangelical Christians and say religion was the primary reason why they chose to homeschool their children. Hannelore Romeike said public education can never be neutral.

“During the last 10-20 years the curriculum in public schools has been more and more against Christian values,” she told the Associated Press.

~~~
While religious homeschoolers are often covered in the media, they don’t represent all German homeschooling families, said Dagmar Neubronner, a publisher and therapist in Bremen who moved her children from Germany to France to homeschool them.

~~~
The German laws mandating public-school attendance date back to Germany’s first experiment with democracy in 1919, according to Hans Bruegelmann, an education professor at the University of Siegen.

Bruegelmann said previously private education was only available to the elite, and that the public-school mandate was a clear political choice.

“The school is an embryonic democracy and will help to integrate children and young people coming from different backgrounds into the democratic culture,” he said.

Integration into democracy and learning to get along with those who hold opposing opinions are important skills that children cannot learn when homeschooled, Bruegelmann said, and that is especially true with highly religious parents.

~~~
When asked about Germans’ opinions on the public school mandate, Bruegelmann said he thought most Germans supported it.

He admitted, however, that he could not say whether that was because they truly believed in it or if it was simply what they were accustomed to.

Spiegel Online‘s coverage comes under the head, Religious Persecution? German Home-Schoolers Granted Political Asylum in US

The comments section of this piece from a German English language site is worth reading.

To get a broader understanding read Valerie Moon’s coverage of homeschooling in Germany from this blog . (Coverage dates back to February 2007.)

Romeike family asylum

Germany Declares War on Home-Schoolers, 11 August 2008, Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Virginia Beach, Virginia

It certainly looks as if the German government has declared open season on Germany’s tiny home-schooling community.

1.  I was told the same thing when I started homeschooling in Munich in 1990.  
(American military under the auspices of the NATO status of forces agreement, so the schooling law did not apply to us)

2.  This is not news.

It’s been 70 years since compulsory education was made law by Adolf Hitler’s government.

Hitler didn’t start the trend.  It has been 200 years since compulsory schooling was instituted in Bavaria (one of the states that make up modern Germany).  Charlemagne was the first leader in the area to think compulsory schooling is a good idea.  For those of you for whom history is not something you keep up with, Hitler killed himself 63 years ago.

The Germans don’t even want non-Germans home schooling in Germany.

Duh.  And American highway patrol officers don’t want German tourists driving at Autobahn speeds on the Interstate highways.  What part of “that’s not legal here” is misunderstood?

The United States State Department has advice on the matter of following local laws when in another country:

Assistance to U.S. Citizens Arrested Abroad

While in a foreign country, a U.S. citizen is subject to that country’s laws and regulations, which sometimes differ significantly from those in the United States and may not afford the protections available to the individual under U.S. law.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

What is not mentioned in the CBN article is that an Irish citizen is petitioning the European Union(E. U.) for E. U. citizens to be allowed to homeschool since:

• Germany’s education policy violates the freedom of workers within the EU
• German citizens living abroad are encouraged by the German authorities to teach the national curriculum to their children

American missionaries Clint and Susan Robinson moved their family to Germany only to have their visa application turned down because they home school. They now have to leave the country, and are looking to move to Austria, which allows home schooling.

…

Susan added tearfully, “We left our home country and came over here and God supplied this house and the environment and just everything, and now they’re saying ‘no, you can’t stay, you’ve got to leave.’ It’s hard.”

When Mr. and Mrs. Robinson moved to Germany, it was with full knowledge that homeschooling isn’t permitted.  They went anyhow.  If you are going to be a martyr, be a brave martyr.

Americans push German school law limits, 28 January 2008, Home Education Magazine News and Commentary  [links at my other blog post]

[The Robinsons] intend to train “nationals for leadership” concerning their goals.  How would we feel about ‘missionaries’ from other countries who intended to train American nationals “for leadership” concerning their goals?  Is our sympathy level still high?  How about if you know that one of the attitudes about the country to which they’re going is that it is a “pit” and that you have no intention to “cooperate with liberal organizations, men who are lost, erring brethren, and those who do not take similar stands of separation. (Groups that I would avoid cooperating with would be the liberals, neo-orthodox, new evangelicals, the World Council of churches (WCC), the NCC, the National Association of Evangelicals, Charismatic and Pentecostal groups, Southern Baptists, etc.)”

But, back to the article.

A lot of American Christians would have good reason not to want their kids subjected to German state schools. …

Then. Don’t. Go.

Missionary Robinson told CBN News, “I know of schools right in our area where it’s not just mixed swimming but mixed showering after the swim class is over and mixed locker rooms and then they leave and go to the next class.”

Yep.  That’s the way it is. 

• At my daughters’ ballet class, boys and girls changed clothes in what was essentially the back foyer, with moms and dads standing nearby.  Sometimes the teacher changed, too.  (she was Australian, fwiw) 
• There are billboards depicting families enjoying saunas in the nude, because … you don’t wear clothes in a sauna. 
• People change clothing outside at swimming pools. 
• The younger brother of a co-worker of mine changed his trousers in the living room while his mother, sister and I were talking together.  

Again, if local customs are that offensive, don’t go.  The time of foreign missionaries with enough clout to clothe the unsightly natives is long past.  No, people in Germany do not walk around nekkid in public, but the sight of the bodies we keep inside our clothing is not a big deal.  Two years ago I wrote about this at Homeschoolers and nudists.

“What we’re trying to do is get a house just across the border so we’re living in Austria, where our visa comes from so the government can’t control us with home schooling,” says Clint Robinson.

Good luck with that, although you won’t escape the nekkid people.  It was in Kaprun, Austria that our oldest son and I saw our first ‘naked sauna users.’ 

It was 1977 and  we were on vacation.  My husband andI had determined that we would turn around in Austria and go back home to Germany when we got to the halfway point of our money.  We’d hoped to make it to Vienna, but, wow, was that ever wishful thinking.  After a long day on the road, my seven-year old son and I were relaxing by leaning on the sill of our 2nd-story hotel room window, just watching the world go by.  (hanging out the unscreened windows that open like doors is a popular Germanic past-time)  All of a sudden, some doors that looked to be directly under us in the basement flew open, steam rolled out, and two fellows in their birthday suits ran out of the doorway and jumped into the nearby Alpine stream to cool down.  It was all very culturally interesting.

Austrians appear to be no more prudish than are the Germans.

As it is, Mr. Robinson doesn’t mean to stay out of Germany.

Thank you for your prayers!

We can have a house just across the border in Austria and we already know that we can get a visa there. Since the border is completely open, we could still have a ministry in Germany (with residence in Austria).

Since Austria is a German-speaking country, we would not be hindered in any way from functioning in this country (and they seem as if they have more freedoms there).

 

——————–

From a homeschooling perspective, it is unfortunate that the German states have strict schooling laws that they take seriously.  However, if homeschooling is to succeed there, the state legislatures will have to change their laws.  For that to happen, the people in those states will have to accept homeschooling, just as Texans, Arizonans, Virginians, Floridians and all the others did.  An alternative would be for the E. U. apparatus to declare that Germany is out of compliance with E. U. standards. 

Working the system from the E. U. standpoint looks like the best bet because forcing the issue of German laws is unlikely to succeed any more than American military immunity from quiet hours is likely to happen. 

However, if people want to martyr themselves, well, there’s not much anyone can do about it other than to point out that martyrdom is seldom pleasant.

The German sky is falling on homeschoolers

I received this press release today from Rina Groeneveld.

Robert and Rina Groeneveld, Kathy Sinnott

Thursday, 17th July 2008

European Commission to open dialogue with Germany on their hypocritical home schooling law following Irish petition

 

A petition on a ban on home schooling, hosted by Kathy Sinnott, MEP for Ireland South, was discussed in the European Parliament Petitions Committee this morning. Catherina Groeneveld, the petitioner and an Irish citizen married to a South African, travelled to Brussels to present her petition to the Petitions Committee and Commission.

Catherina and her family moved to Germany temporarily because of her husband’s job. She chose for linguistic and other reasons to home-school her children while in Germany. She was surprised to find that not only was home schooling illegal, home schoolers were subject to persistent harassment by local authorities.

Catherina lodged a petition with the Petitions Committee in 2007 making the case that Germany’s education policy contradicts the freedom of workers within the EU. She as an Irish citizen has a constituted right to educate her children and Germany’s refusal to accommodate her makes it hard for her family to work in Germany. This is in clear contradiction to the EU’s mobility of workers. In her presentation, the petitioner pointed out that foreigners who home school their children are subject to harassment, fines, jail sentences, removal of their children by the Jugendamt (children’s courts) and criminalisation. 15 out of the 16 German States allow exemptions but only to circus children and young people who have music careers. These exemptions do not extend to foreigners. Such families who wish to home school their children are subjected to draconian measures. Catherina points out that if her family were German citizens living in Ireland, they would be encouraged by the German authorities who would offer her the national curriculum to teach her children at home. The petitioner asked the Petitions Committee to help the German Government rectify this hypocrisy.

The Petitions Committee have been paying close attention to this petition and both the Committee and the Commission congratulated the petitioner on an impressive presentation. The Commission have decided to open a dialogue to put this issue on the agenda of their regular meetings with Germany. The Petitions Committee is already embarking on a report of abuses by the Jugendamt towards non-German parents and has decided to include this aspect in the report. German law, unlike Ireland, identifies the State as the principle authority responsible for a child’s rights not his or her parents. Germany has the highest rate of children taken into care from their parents by the State in the EU.

Kathy Sinnott, Vice President of the Petitions Committee, stated “This petition brings into question workers’ mobility. One of the guarantees of the internal market is the freedom of movement of workers in the EU. There is an increasing awareness that workers have families and that flexibility to meet their needs should be part of employment law. However, Germany’s approach to home schooling compromises this and forces families to choose between a job and the best interests of the children. The need for family friendly employment policies must be recognised throughout the EU. We need to have flexibility in the education of children temporarily resident because of work. There is also an issue around the attitude to non-German families in the German children’s courts. I hope the dialogue between the Commission and the German State will resolve this discriminatory situation.”

 

For further information, questions or comments, please contact Kathy on:

Brussels office: +32 228 47692
Cork office: +353 21 4888 793
Email: kathy.sinnott@europarl.europa.eu
Website: www.kathysinnott.ie

Homeschool petition presented to European Parliament Petitions Committee