Tuesday, March 02, 2010

German Family Receives Asylum Because Homeschooling is Persecuted in Germany

This is an interesting case.

The Romeikes are not your typical asylum seekers. They did not come to the U.S. to flee war or despotism in their native land. No, these music teachers left Germany because they didn’t like what their children were learning in public school - and because homeschooling is illegal there.


“It’s our fundamental right to decide how we want to teach our children,” says Uwe Romeike, an Evangelical Christian and a concert pianist who sold his treasured Steinway to help pay for the move.


Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. “My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care,” Romeike says of the incident. (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

This is a mindset that’s becoming more prevalent in America.

Concerns that homeschooling could lead to insularity - or worse, as Kraus puts it, “could help foster the development of a sect” - are shaping policy debates in European countries.

(8) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1231 hrs
Culture + Foreign Affairs + Law + Politics + Politics - General

  1. Government people know best how to raise your kids.  Give in to the government people or they’ll get laws passed making your decision on how to raise your kids illegal.  Then they’ll send government people in costumes over to your house to “enforce the law” which they’ll do by stealing your children and threatening you with a fine or imprisonment.

    If you don’t like it, you can just leave.  Oh wait the German parents did that…everything is ok, move along nothing to see.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 02, 2010 at 1327 hrs


  2. What is a mindset that is becoming more prevalent here?

    Posted by scott on March 02, 2010 at 1416 hrs


  3. I wonder how long it will take for a German of Turkish heritage to apply for asylum in the United States because he’s not allowed to homeschool his kids in his particular view of Islam. Do you think that the Home School Legal Defense Association will be as eager to help?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 02, 2010 at 1457 hrs


  4. Hi Scott -

    Here is a recent paper that concludes the home-schooling is such a horrible thing that public school attendance must be made mandatory.  I’ll let you for yourself if you are interested.  The logical leaps that are made will astound you.  As a home-schooler I try to pay attention to these kinds of papers and studies.  Sadely, there is an ever increasing statist mind set appearing in the literature.  I don’t think we are about to become Germany but the seeds are the academic class that often defines how we think out such issues. 

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1516652

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 02, 2010 at 1504 hrs


  5. Joe,

    Professor Fineman used to be at UW Law School.

    What rules do you recommend to protect children from the concerns expressed in the paper without actually making home schooling illegal?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 02, 2010 at 1510 hrs


  6. Free Lunch asked:

    “Do you think that the Home School Legal Defense Association will be as eager to help?”

    I can’t speak for that organization.  But as a member of the Wisconsin Parents Association, I can tell you that WPA would be willing to help.  While I am a Christian, not all Wisconsin home-schoolers are; many (and I mean lots) are Jewish and there are a significant number of atheists, agnostics and Muslims too.  Many home-schoolers (all WPA members) are committed to the simple belief that parents and families - not the state - have the right to direct the education of a child.  Its about freedom.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 02, 2010 at 1510 hrs


  7. Your fears about “the academic class” notwithstanding, it seems to me that the opposite is occurring.  Maybe I’m misinformed, but I’d guess that support for homeschooling has risen, not fallen.  That the rights of parents to homeschool have probably expanded not contracted.  That faith in public schools has fallen, not risen.  That more kids are homeschooled today in America than ever before.  All this and you’re expressing deep concern that some academic somewhere wrote a paper supposedly casting it in a negative light?

    Posted by scott on March 02, 2010 at 1517 hrs


  8. Hi Free Lunch

    Outside of documented abuse, I really don’t think there is much a valid concern.  There was a paradigm shift some decades ago that invent the idea of the “best interest of the child” as somehow being separate from the “best interest of the family.”  I do not believe that this paradigm shift is good for society. 

    I don’t have time to get into it more at this point, but I will try to come back before the end of the day and give you a better response. 

    Hi Scott

    Home-schooling is at an all time high in Wisconsin and Wisconsin leads the way in making home-schooling easy; this is true.  But we did not get to this point easily.  As recently as the 1980s, families were being criminally prosecuted for home-schooling.  It took a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling finding a state statute unconstitutional to end this practice.  After that there was an extremely hard fought victory in the legislature – defeating a new anti-home-schooling law pushed by DPI. 

    Now, as home-schooling becomes more prevalent, it attracts more attention and focus from stakeholders in the educational system.  In fact, it became an issue in the last DPI election.  And, I pointed out that this paper was just one of several recently.  There are others but I don’t have time to find them.  In addition, there have been court challenges to the legality of home-schooling in the last few years.  There was a recent case in California.  As I said, I don’t think there is an anti-home-schooling crisis or anything but if you want to keep your rights you have to pay attention to what is going on in the courts, in the legislatures and in the universities.  Vigilance is the price of freedom.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on March 02, 2010 at 1531 hrs


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