Germany jails homeschoolers

Catholic Standard Times ^ | October 2006 | Susan Brinkmann

[NYer]

Germany jails homeschoolers

FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT TO HOMESCHOOL — Mike Farris talks with a family who have already taken their plea to the German Supreme Court. Although the family lost at that level, they are still homeschooling.

By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent

On Thursday, Sept. 7, in Paderborn, Germany, a female plainclothes police officer rang the doorbell at the home of Katharina Plett. When Plett opened the door, other police officers who were hiding rushed into her home.

Plett was placed under arrest. The officers followed her into the bedroom where she was permitted to change her clothes. Before being taken to nearby Gelsenkirchen prison, she was permitted to contact her husband, who had fled the country the day before with their 12 children.

If you suspect Plett is guilty of a very serious crime, guess again. She was arrested and thrown in prison for homeschooling her children.

Homeschooling, along with any educational institution other than state-run schools, was outlawed by Adolf Hitler in 1938. But a recent decline, both academically and morally, in the country’s public school system has more and more German parents looking for better ways to educate their children.

“The German people want options,” said Christopher J. Klicka, senior counsel at the Virgina-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) which consults with homeschooling organizations in Germany and other nations. “They want to get out of the public school system so they’re testing the limits, and the German government is slamming their fingers as soon as they try.”

The situation became even more grave on Sept. 27, when the European Court of Human Rights delivered a stunning defeat to another German couple, Fritz and Marianna Konrad, who had argued for the right to homeschool their two children.

The Konrads contended that Germany’s compulsory school attendance laws were a violation of their human rights.

The human rights court ruled: “Parents may not refuse the right to education of a child on the basis of their convictions,” adding that the right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the state.”

Klicka said his association was “very disappointed” by the ruling. “When you look at the language of the European Union (EU) human rights constitution — which is a higher law over all the 25 countries of the European Union — they have a reference to a parent’s right to educate their children. When you look at wording of the constitution, it looks pretty good.

“But when I looked at the opinion of this Court, and how they interpreted the German situation, I was incredulous at how they took the plain language of the human rights constitution and just twisted it up to come up with this ruling.”

What makes the decision so menacing is that it opens the door to other European nations that may wish to curtail homeschooling in their countries.

“In Europe, homeschooling is legal in some fashion everywhere but Germany,” Klicka said. “It might be regulated or restricted a little, such as in France, where they subject homeschoolers to curriculum review, and the Czech Republic, where you can homeschool until the fifth grade.

“This ruling doesn’t change any of the [laws of] other nations, it just gives them the okay that if they wanted to crack down legislatively — outlaw or prohibit homeschooling — they can do that.”

Since the E.U. human rights court ruling, German families that want to homeschool can forget trying to win the right to do so through the court system.
“For Germany, it’s curtains,” Klicka said.

Unfortunately for German parents, the climate in public school education shows no signs of improving. Graphic sex education, the promotion of ideologies that undermine Biblical morality, and poor academic performance in public schools continues to fuel the movement to challenge the government’s 68 year old stranglehold on education.

Thanks to the internet, German families are discovering that the same problems in U.S. public schools sparked the success of a homeschooling movement whose ranks have swollen to two million children, many of whom consistently outperform their public school peers.

“Three main issues have sparked the movement toward homeschooling in Germany,” Klicka said. “First, the knowledge of homeschooling has increased because of the internet; second, moral issues such as graphic sex education and homosexuality; and third, academic studies are showing that things are not going so well in German public schools.”

An Italian study completed five years ago measured children’s academic performance in 20 European countries. Germany was very close to the bottom of the list.

“That was a very embarrassing study for Germany,” Klicka said. “All of a sudden, people were doubting the public school system and wondering if their kids were getting a good education. Although we have many of the same problems with our public schools, Americans have the option to choose to homeschool.”

German couples are not so lucky, and many of them have paid a high price in the form of fines or imprisonment for trying to change the laws.

For instance, in 2004, Sigrid and Michael Bauer tried to fight compulsory school attendance for their five children because public education was undermining their Christian beliefs. The state ultimately ruled that parents must accept the teaching methods and content of public school education, even if they contradict a family’s religious convictions. The law says that parents who “continually or obstinately prevent their children from fulfilling the compulsory school attendance” be slapped with stiff fines or prison terms up to six months.

“The only options left for Germans is to seek asylum in America or other countries,” Klicka said. He was one of seven members of the board of a German homeschooling association, called School Instruction at Home, that included at least 200 families. Of the seven original members, only one still lives in Germany.

“The other option is to put pressure on the government,” Klicka said. “If there’s enough international pressure and media attention, the Germans could change their legislation to allow homeschooling. All countries are somewhat sensitive to the US perspective.”

He said members of his association, which supports and has helped to found homeschooling organizations in 28 countries, have made a difference by contacting embassies.

“We’ve had some success with stopping bad bills in the Czech Republic and Ireland, and we passed a good bill in South Africa,” he said. “And it was purely through international pressure.”


Readers may respectfully protest the German government’s actions by writing to the German ambassador at the following address:
Wolfgang Ischinger, Ambassador; German Embassy, 4845 Reservoir Road NW;
Washington, D.C., 20007-1998, and by calling (202) 298-4000 or visiting on the Web: www.globescope.biz/germany/reg/index.cfm.

[Sisku Hanne]

Once again, your post is not logical and contradicts itself. You are supposed to allow one-sided leftist indoctrination so the larger society can go on to contradict it and convince the children that their teachers are wrong? Yet your teachers, you previously claimed, are oh-so "professionally screened" and not biased?

I hate to tell you this, but you're NOT living in a democracy if you're so threatened by your neighbor wanting to educate his child that you have to outlaw it, and try to give some lame excuse to justify your censorship. Perhaps you should worry less about self-esteem and more about common sense! You are the frog in the kettle who has no idea how hot the water is getting, and how fast the dictators are stirring the pot. Sehr schade!

[Logophile]

The human rights court ruled: “Parents may not refuse the right to education of a child on the basis of their convictions,” adding that the right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the state.”

In what way does the "very nature" of education require its regulation by the state?

Are there other areas of life that similarly call for state regulation? Or to put it differently (considering that this is Europe), is there anything that does not fall under the purview of the state?