Posted on 11/06/2009 11:05:11 AM PST by GonzoII
MUNICH, Germany - Increasing custody cases in Europe are proof that officials there have declared war against home schooling and parental rights, according to some residents.
In Sweden, police burst onto a plane and took 7-year-old Dominic Johansson from his parents as they were about to leave the country.
Months earlier, they told school officials they were going to home school Dominic, prompting officials to open an investigation.
In a similar case in Germany, the government abducted 7-year-old Dan Schulz while the family was sleeping. He can be heard on tape screaming that he doesn't want to leave his home. His mother, Heidi, pleads with police to not take her son.
Dan was kept out of school because of fears that his mother's estranged husband might kidnap him. Dan had been home-schooled and began attending a private Christian school one day before the raid.
Germany's well-established persecution of home-schoolers caused the Wunderlich family to flee for France in hopes of finally being free to educate their kids. A few weeks ago, however, French police raided their home and took custody of their four kids.
Keeping an Unfair Watch
Cases like this are why some say Europe has declared war not just on home-schoolers, but on parent's rights.
Sweden is about to make home schooling illegal in most cases, and even Britain may clamp down on home schooling.
Germany is by far the most repressive state in Europe toward home-schoolers. There may be as few as 300 home schooling families left. The rest have fled.
Some say that when it comes to home schooling, the old wall around east Germany has just moved west.
Home-schoolers are watched by their neighbors. They're turned in, investigated, fined and jailed until they either quit or leave the country.
Families Vow to Fight Back
One family that refuses to give up is the Schmidts in the Bavarian town of Otting, near Augsburg.
The government first tried financial pressure against them-- more than $20,000 in fines-- and is now trying to take custody of their youngest son, Aaron.
Their oldest son, Josua, was home-schooled and has done well on his national exams. The father, Hans, works with the handicapped, teaching them skills. The mother, Petra, is a tutor of other children and is a school crossing guard.
German officials, however, ignore not only that, but their own laws that uphold parental rights.
Joel Thornton of the International Human Rights Group is one of the lawyers representing the Schmidts.
"The state constitution, the federal constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights all specifically and explicitly give parents the right to control the education of their children, particularly because of religious belief," he said.
Christian families like Schmidts don't want their kids in German state schools, where very young children may be taught occult practices and explicit sex education, Thornton added.
"A lot of things going on in the second, third and fourth grades are things I'm not comfortable sitting here telling you go on," he said. "There are homework assignments where children are asked to interact with their parents about their sexual relationship, in the fourth grade."
Trusting God for Change
The German government treats home-schoolers like common criminals.
The Schmidts have had their bank accounts frozen and been threatened with a lien on their home and jail time. Now, the state wants custody of their youngest son, Aaron. Petra Schmidt is not giving up.
"Ask the children. They know I'm a fighter. And a mother fights for her children," she said. "With every new challenge, I feel in my heart, 'Now. Lord Jesus. We're going to continue on.'"
"The more difficulties that have arisen from this situation, we realize more and more how God was standing behind us, supporting us," her husband, Her husband, Hans Schmidt said. "And God always, in the end, did the right thing for us. And I want to give Him the glory for that."
Aaron Schmidt wonders why the state won't just leave them alone.
"I ask myself why, why does this have to be?" he said. "Why can't the state just accept home schooling?"
The Schmidt's German attorney, Gabriela Eckermann, says the answer is political correctness.
The abductions of children from good families in Europe even has some worried that America needs a parental rights amendment to the constitution.
Yet, critics say it would have little chance of passage.
A French court has recently returned the Wunderlich children to their parents. Dominic Johansson in Sweden remains in state custody, along with Dan Shulz in Germany. His mother Heidi says she prays every day for the return of her son.
I wonder how much longer it will be b4 we see this in the US.
The socialists who seized the democrat party and the teachers union thugs can’t wait to violate the human rights of US home schoolers.
PING!
This is why the Second Amendment is the bedrock of our freedom. Pity the poor defenseless Europeans, who have nothing with which to fight this kidnapping of their children. It is clear that the governments there are intent on eradicating Christianity, thus making Islam the future for Europe.
True... but in the United States we have the right to keep and bear arms.
Anyone trying to take my children will be shot and killed, period.
bump
If they force these families to send their children to school, there are ‘nice’ technically legal ways to make life a living hell for those schools and make them regret ever being forced to take students whose families don’t want them there. Get creative... make the schools join the fight for academic freedom. :-)
Don’t we have special immigration options for victims of political persecutioin in countries like that?
Time was when good people could flee Europe for the shores of the New World, and carve out of the wilderness a life of freedom for their families - freedom to worship God and raise their children to be honorable and virtuous young men and women.
Where will they - and we - flee to now?
Statists of every stripe are evil. They care nothing for peoples basic rights or their dignity. They care only for ideology (theirs), and consider its brutal enforcement a high virtue. Statism is nourished only by the basest human traits.
those blessings were hard won right here - and not that long ago, the exact same thing was happening here...
I was involved in this fight here in Maine 30 years ago - we even had an 'underground railroad' to spirit parents and kids to Canada ahead of the state's gestapo.
WE fought them to the mat, all the way to Washington, finally. Now Maine is one of the best states for homeschooling.
(Last year, I won first place in the state's 2008 Press association competition for a column I write about those days - as homeschoolers are again being looked at. Many people here today have no idea what they owe the folk who fought so hard back then.)
Not too long. pretty soon it will be better not to register your child and have them at home.
Bravo!
As soon as they can figure out how to get around the same problem involved with gun confiscation.
That whole “blood in the streets” thing is a real bummer when you’re trying to “crack down” and make the populace comply.
We forget, in our present “luxury”, how tough it used to be to be a homeschooler, and the hard won rights to do so.
Join the HSLDA, folks. They’re our front line.
(HSLDA “lifer” here)
I have no doubt its coming to America.
California tried about a decade ago I think.
is your article online somewhere?
I remember you writing about this (on FR). Pretty chilling.
There's the problem. What the state gives, the state can take away.
Perhaps the solution in Europe as well as the US is for like-minded parents to form their own charter schools. It would pool the resources of the individual parents as those with knowledge in particular areas would be able to teach a class rather than their just their own. The curricula would be open and transparent to assuage the [usually irrational] fears of bureaucrats. Additionally, in most states, the charter schools would receive state education funds, defraying the costs to parents who already pay fully for public schooling from which they derive no benefit. Parents who would teach could have appropriate background checks run at a nominal cost [further calming the gov’t] and perhaps on a national level, create a non-profit certification program via testing to establish the parents mastery of subject knowledge and teaching skills. Let those charter schools enforce student behavior and performance standards so they don’t become vehicles for social promotion and tolerance of anti-social behavior like many public schools. No unions or pension issues would be a boon and if sufficient numbers of schools opened across the nation would result in considerable tax savings for the municipalities, counties, and states. Students win, taxpayers win, the nation wins with a better educated population and most of all parents win as they retain the right to ensure their children have an opportunity to thrive in an excellent learning environment.
A girl can dream, right?
Unfortunately home schoolers are caught in the same predicament that in the US is found with State Child Protective Services. (I’m NOT saying that it is right, just that this is how the governments are treating it.)
That is, in the US, when some psychopath meth addict beats their child to death, and the public finds out that the State investigated the parents but left their child with them, the public goes screaming nuts.
However, just one year later, in the same State, because of allegations of dangerous abuse, the CPS swoops down and takes away happy kids from a perfectly normal family. Of course, this makes the public go screaming nuts as well.
Either way, the CPS is caught in the middle, whipsawed between doing too little and doing too much.
But for some weird reason, in Europe, instead of potentially murderous child abuse, their public equates the SAME level of hysteria with—home schooling? I know, it is an apples and oranges debate. But a lot of Europeans are deathly afraid that someone will school their children in some way that threatens all of them.
The Germans first instituted their ban on home schooling during the Nazi years. But despite appearances this was less a Nazi thing than a “popular” thing. A lot of what Hitler did was to curry favor with the public. Like he was anti-smoking, made strict pure food laws, and did other “liberal” things that the public wanted.
This explains why the anti-home schooling movement remained in Germany after the Nazis, and is spreading in Europe beyond Germany. A lot of the Europeans are *afraid* of home schooling.
It beats all what they are afraid of, except it meshes well with the official government anti-religious atheism, as well as the governmental lust for standardization throughout Europe. And the socialist hatred and fear of either success or failure, much preferring mediocrity as being less threatening.
I do wish the European home schoolers a lot of luck against very determined anti-home schooling forces.
Perhaps the most helpful thing would be for home schooled Americans, when in Europe, to make a point of their having been home schooled—and how it helped make them a success. A small handful of Americans might be able to persuade a lot of Europeans that there is nothing to be afraid of, and much to be gained, by allowing home schooling.
I figgered they could do that but taxing bullets @ rates high enough to make them close to being illegal. No telling what they will come up w/ to reach their treasonous goals.
The bastard tried to make reloading essentially illegal by shredding the brass,
but backed off of it when our hackles rose up.
At the rate Europe is headed downhill, they will soon have to apologize to the Nazis.
good thing - that way you could always turn school into a blood bath once a teacher asks your children to learn.
Uh, what are you talking about?
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