

German family granted political asylum in U.S. over home schooling - ilamont
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15469407&source=hptextfeature

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megamark16
I am a big proponent of smaller government and less governmental control, and
I'm glad that we as Americans can choose whether or not we want to home school
our children. With that being said, it's a lot of responsibility for a parent
to take on themselves.

I was home schooled, as were most of my siblings, and I think that it really
depends on the parents. Some parents actually teach their kids, spend the time
with them, offer some sort of direction, and I think it can really give those
kids a great start to life and a positive outlook towards learning.

My parents, on the other hand, didn't really put the effort necessary into
teaching us, and as a result I didn't learn to read until I was almost 12, and
than only because my mother finally put me into public school. Reading,
writing, basic math, history, geography, you name it, I was missing it from my
education. My poor 5th and 6th grade teachers had a heck of a time trying to
catch me up to the other students. That doesn't do a whole lot for a kid's
confidence, when he can see that he is obviously and severely behind
academically compared to his peers. I just thought I was stupid. My mom
thought I had dyslexia or something. Turns out I just needed someone to sit
down with me and actually teach me.

There's also a lot of social development that takes place at school, and most
of the time you can tell when a kid is home schooled by the way they interact
with people. Or maybe it's just me, coming from that background, I can usually
tell when I'm talking to a home schooler, they often have a certain social
awkwardness about them. I know I was the same way until I met my wife and she
straightened me out. I often had a hard time appropriately regulating the
volume of my voice ("do you realize how loudly you're talking?), or knowing
when certain things were inappropriate to say under specific social
circumstances. And I totally fail at Trivial Pursuit (we didn't watch a lot of
TV growing up either.)

Having said all that, I finished my college degree early, graduated with
honors, and am a successful software engineer and wannabe entrepreneur. I have
a strong hunger to learn, a well developed sense of curiosity, and I have a
knack for teaching myself new skills. I don't know if I am who I am because I
was home schooled (although you could probably make a pretty good case for it
due to my unstructured upbringing), and given my success in life I don't mean
to sound unappreciative. It just would have been nice to be able to read a
little earlier in life, that's all. And I'm still not very good at math.

~~~
w00pla
Here is the problem with public school – it seems that it is an anti-
intellectual place. I was bullied quite a lot in school (I was skinny,
academically inclined and have extremely bad eye sight).

It seems that bullies single out people who do well academically to bully. In
a lot of public schools, it seems that the focus is more on sport (and other
activities) than education. In some public schools, teachers are lazy – due to
the lack of performance evaluation and strong unions.

I marked one of my own record exams because the teacher was too lazy to mark
it himself. He was angry at me because I insisted to have the subject in
higher grade (he pushed everyone to take standard grade so that he doesn’t
have to compose two tests).

Certainly, a private school would be better. But parents should have the
choice on how their children are schooled (whether in private school, home
school or religious school). It seems that every group wants children to be
schooled in their public schools to teach them their ideology. This is BS.

The government should be forced to give vouchers to people who send their
children to private school (instead of forcing to pay twice for education if
they don’t want the mediocre government education).

~~~
chadgeidel
Private schools aren't a panacea either. I went to a private (Christian)
school through 10th grade and my public school experience in my Junior and
Senior years was like a breath of fresh air.

Granted private schools vary widely, but I felt I had more educational
opportunities at the public school with the availability of advanced Math,
Science, and English classes.

EDIT: I also wanted to say that bullying happens in ALL schools public or
private.

~~~
w00pla
Maybe. The advantage of private schools is more choice. The problem (at least
here) is that public school teachers are unmotivated and discipline (of both
teachers and students) is often lacking.

It seems that public schools cater for the lower 40% of the population.

My problem is not bullying per se, but the atmosphere around it. A school
should not be sport centric (as many schools are).

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tokenadult
Links to books that have shaped my thinking on this issue:

<http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html>

I'm homeschooling four children. I try to cooperate with my friendly local
public schools not only in meeting Minnesota's regulatory requirements, but
also in offering to provide American Mathematics Competition

<http://www.unl.edu/amc/index.shtml>

and other math coaching opportunities to public school students throughout my
community, some gratis and some on a nonprofit, cost-recovery basis. My
community volunteer work consists mostly in being president of a statewide
nonprofit organization dedicated to improving education of gifted learners in
our state, most of the members of which are parents of children enrolled in
public (that is, state-run) schools.

What got me interested in homeschooling was FLEXIBILITY. My oldest son would
not have had the opportunity to take formal classes in C programming at middle
school age in any public school I am aware of in Minnesota. He did make use of
a state-run accelerated math program,

<http://mathcep.umn.edu/umtymp/>

but he got ready for that through a distance learning program that I found for
him as a homeschooling parent.

<http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/math/>

He developed a deep interest in literary writing, which is now leading to a
start-up project he is coding for, through acquaintance with another family in
our homeschooling support group, who have a daughter who is very advanced in
writing.

It's best to leave the educational system as flexible as possible, to meet as
many learner needs as possible. One size doesn't fit all, and parents ought to
be able to shop for as many different models of primary and secondary
education as they are able to shop for of automobiles or computers or
foodstuffs.

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dll
Why did they go to the US? As EU citizens they could have moved to a country
that does allow home schooling quite easily. I'm in the UK and home schooling
is legal here. I guess that the immigration judge didn't understand that as
Germans the Romeikes have freedom of movement in the EU and so could easily
have avoided persecution.

~~~
Semiapies
There are relatively few people the US - and other countries - grant political
asylum who could _only_ relocate to the country in question.

This is a _good_ thing; otherwise each country can simply say, "Denied, as
some other country will take you."

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rauljara
I find myself having a really hard time taking a side on this issue. If a
government, for example, mandated the teaching in school that it's people were
genetically superior to all others (say in North Korea), I would say parents
were well within their rights to withdraw their students from school. If,
however, parents wanted to withdraw their students from school so they could
'teach' them that evolution isn't real, or to keep them from having to go to a
school that was too racially diverse (say, in the South right after Brown vs.
Board of Education), I would say that the parents are doing their own children
harm and their children should have to go to school. I suppose I come down on
the side that a government should have a right to impose educational
standards, but like any government power it should be monitored closely
because it is very easy to abuse.

~~~
dantheman
Who in the government is imposing these so called "standards".

~~~
rauljara
Who in the government decides for what things citizens can be deprived of
their personal freedom (i.e. arrested)? Who in the government decides when it
is legally permissible to confiscate citizens' property (i.e. taxation,
eminent domain)? Who in the government decides when it is permissible to force
its citizens to force its citizens to attempt to kill other people (i.e.
impose a draft)?

~~~
jimbokun
Are you in favor of expanding the governments ability and proclivity to do the
things you list, or do you think it better if the ability of governments to do
those things were further curtailed?

(Your answer, of course, will depend on the government you are living under,
and the extent to which they can or cannot do those things currently.)

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Ixiaus
I am always in support of less government - why in the world should a
government be in control of the education of children? Society doesn't
progress by circumscribing all of it's member entities, it progresses when
those boundaries are pushed by people that do things _different_.

I was home schooled most of my life, and I'm self educated; school was a
failure for me because there was too much "authority" instead of "discovery"
while learning.

~~~
bbb
This is not a "black and white" issue with one true answer. You have to see
this in the historic context.

One of the reasons why the first German democracy (1918-1933) failed (and gave
rise to Hitler) is because the German society was very much compartmentalized
and split into "subcultures" at the time. In fact, large parts of the military
chose to continue as "para-military" units after the end of WWI. These violent
groups that saw themselves as above the law played a significant part in
Hitler's ascent to power.

When the current Germany was designed after WWII, many safeguards were built
into the system to ensure that there would be no more "parallel" societies.
Two obvious examples are 1) the universal draft (flow all parts of society
through the military to prevent the military from isolating itself) and 2) no
home schooling (the public schools serve to promote democracy and western
values; the public school system is designed to be the "melting pot" that
integrates immigrants and fringe groups).

How would you feel about this case if the home schooling did not involve
Christians (Note: I'm not religious myself.), but radical Moslems? What if it
were about Nazis indoctrinating their kids with hate? What if it were about a
sect that raises their kids to prepare for a collective suicide?

The German (mainstream) belief is that the government has to step in in these
cases. It has to protect the kids from their own parents.

The family that was granted asylum may very well be fine parents and teachers
(I don't know them), but for obvious reasons you can't have an effective law
that says "you may only homeschool kids for Christian reasons, but other
choices are not ok".

So, the German society, under consideration of its history, chooses to err on
the safe side: no homeschooling. Period.

Of course, the particular circumstances may very much differ for other
societies, so that other societies may reasonably come up with different rules
(e.g., the US). But that does not invalidate the reasoning behind the German
laws.

~~~
oldgregg
The ultimate question is who is responsible for educating their children?
Historically it's never been the state. Government run education went hand in
hand with the industrial revolution-- it's designed to create a reliable (and
pliable) workforce. By this point the public education complex is just one
more oppressive power structure motivated primarily by self-preservation.

~~~
evgen
Historically, education was something for the elite because there was no need
to educate the poor who would spend their lives performing unskilled labor;
when it comes to education there is not a lot of historical precedent to fall
back upon. In the US the concept of an educated citizenry was a core principle
of the founders -- when you divest power to the masses you want them to be
relatively smart about what they do with it. Public education predates the
industrial revolution and while industrialists may have wanted a better-
educated workforce that was not why public education was established. If a
"pliable" workforce was desired then simple apprenticeship after basic
literacy would have worked fine. Mass education gives a country more
engineers, but is not required for simple factory work. It is in the interest
of the state and it's citizens to seek the former and not just settle for the
latter.

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rubyrescue
As Americans who live in Argentina and who also homeschool, we've had no end
to the social pressure to not do so. This as we are actually attending school,
but only half-day, and homeschooling the other half. I've learned a lot about
the ways in which individuals who live in societies with a significant amount
of thought control find it personally offensive when you tell them your
reasons for homeschool.

It pushes at taboos in terms of acceptable channels for dissemination of
information; it feels uncontrollable; it causes fear related to one's own
children, if any; and the list goes on.

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pmichaud
I guess it's fair enough. Homeschooling worked for my older son. If he had
been forced to go to school he'd probably be an under educated cog at 18,
instead of holding a Bachelor's and having the freedom to travel.

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simonw
It's interesting that home schooling is the example most often used to explain
the "Overton Window" political theory:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20061020144127/http://www.swordsc...](http://web.archive.org/web/20061020144127/http://www.swordscrossed.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=53)
<http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7504>

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alan_p
I hope you do take the time to read up on the background of such stories
before commenting on them.

The reason they wanted to homeschool their children is because they are
religious fundamentalists and consider the mostly laizist school curriculum
"anti-Christian".

This isn't about some poor oppressed fellows who weren't granted the right to
educate their own children. This is about two religious nutcases enforcing
their religious beliefs and refusing to let their children receive unfiltered
knowledge from a public school system.

If Germany had fundamentalist Christian private schools, they would've been
fine with sending their kids there.

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rbanffy
I hope they realize the huge responsibility they took upon themselves.

Home schooling kids is a full-time job, specially if you have more than one. I
cannot imagine they being able to give adequate attention and educational
resources to five kids.

Since many of the respondents in this discussion have been raised this way, I
would ask what is the reason for such extraordinary effort.

~~~
Andys
So how do we expect 1 part-time teacher to give adequate attention to 30 kids?

~~~
rbanffy
I guess the fact the 30 are learning the same thing helps a little.

Is this lack of teacher attention the reason?

