Germany Seizes Children in Homeschool Raid

http://hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/201308300.asp

by thejteam • 13 years ago

35 121 13 years ago

emhs• 13 years ago

Absent any evidence of abuse, true neglect (homeschooling doesn't count, regardless of Germany's laws on the matter), or other violation of a worthwhile law, this can only be considered further evidence of consolidation of power in the hands of the State and governmental overreach.

fennecfoxen3• 13 years ago

The best part is that even in the US, after a family of homeschoolers sought and obtained asylum from Germany here, our own Department of Justice appealed the court decision and asked to have them deported, making excuses about how the goal of the mandatory public schooling is so laudable (tolerance etc).

Other fun facts to point out:

* the German government is officially going to "look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement"

* the laws that eliminated the homeschooling option literally date back to the Hitler regime.

skylan_q• 13 years ago

the laws that eliminated the homeschooling option literally date back to the Hitler regime.

It goes further back. The Prussian regime was basically the founder of our current institutionalized public education system in the west as we know it today.

rdtsc5• 13 years ago

the laws that eliminated the homeschooling option literally date back to the Hitler regime

So does the Autobahn. Clearly, it should be torn down and replaced with gravel roads.

barry-cotter4• 13 years ago

I can understand the State Department's point of view. All Germans are entitled to live and work throughout the EEA (EU plus Switzerland, Norway and Lichtenstein). Most of Western Europe is okay with homeschooling. I know it can be done in Austria.

mhd2• 13 years ago

So where do you draw the line for "worthwhile" laws? Almost any modern state has systems in place to protect children, its most vulnerable citizens. Even from their parents, if need be. Which, in Germany, includes providing sufficient education and socialization to each child.

I understand that a lot of people (especially those with some religious beliefs that contradict curricula) disagree with that and consider this a slippery slope, but then again, almost every intrusion into the rights of a parent could be judged that way. So just let 'em do whatever they will, parental instinct will prevail?

ef43• 13 years ago

You're essentially saying we have no way of judging whether the law is good or not.

But there are at least two large bodies of scientific literature that shed light on this question. The first is the psychological evidence that sending men with guns to drag children away from a family where they are safe and loved is hugely damaging. So much so that it is highly unlikely to be worth it, even if you think homeschooling is bad.

The second is the evidence that home-schooled students do not underperform other children by any measurable standards, and are frequently found to outperform. This includes both academics and general success/happiness later in life. They are also no more likely to engage in anti-social behaviors. Which begs the question: what is the state's compelling interest, if there is zero evidence for damage to the children or to society at large?

Obviously it's not really about protecting children. Because if it was, you would write a law laying out standards for what constitutes sufficiently good education, and then let anyone try to meet those standards. Instead the law imposes a monopoly.

isquare2• 13 years ago

I find it it interesting that you seem to think it is adequate for you to judge these things 'regardless of German law'. This is a democratically legitimized law that is backed by the vast majority of citizens and has been found to be conforming to the constitution by the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the remarkably potically independent Supreme Court. Just as the US doesn't welcome foreign commentary on laws like 'stand your ground' or 'National Security Letters', other democratic souvereign countries have the right to give themselves laws that conform with the opinions or the majority of its citizens.

Here is the rationale: Germany provides high quality free public education to everyone. That education is obligatory for children under 15 and it is neglect of parents to deny their children their right to profit from this education. I think this is a good thing and so does the vast majority of German citizens. You don't have to agree.

hga10• 13 years ago

And would not everything you've said be true of, say, this bit of legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 with the Reichsrat (which I'll admit I first heard of today) substituting for the Bundesverfassungsgericht?

Really, now, I think you don't understand our concepts of e.g. natural law (e.g. the right to effective self-defense), and that some things, no matter how consecrated by much beloved process, can nonetheless be utterly illegitimate.

icebraining5• 13 years ago

other democratic souvereign countries have the right to give themselves laws that conform with the opinions or the majority of its citizens

Who has denied that? Nobody. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't criticize what we find wrong.

russellsprouts• 13 years ago

Part of the US system is protection from tyranny of the majority. Prop 8 in California banned gay marriage. It was passed by a 52% majority of the people, but struck down in court.

That said, I think that everyone should attend a school. Even (especially) if you don't agree with the curriculum, it's best to let children learn it. It's better to disagree with something you know rather than something you don't know.

Homeschooling is much more work than sending a child to public school. For example, my youngest sister had a bad infection for several months during winter and spring that affected her mood causing her to have trouble in school.

She attended a traditional public school for several months, but the atmosphere was not working. She transfered to a different public school in our district that only meets 4 times a week, and focuses on the core classes, but that still didn't work.

In the end, my family pulled her out of school for the remaining three months and taught her at home. She able to get ahead, and enrolled in a program for children that had various issues with a traditional school. The program starts in 7th grade (~13yo) with 8th grade curriculum, then continues in 8th grade, reviewing the 8th grade curriculum for another year, so that they are prepared for high school. Despite failing most classes in 6th grade, she received straight A's in this program with 8th grade work, and is now a year ahead in math.

Having home-school as an option gives an incentive for schools to improve, and allows people the flexibility to make the best choices for schooling their children. Some may abuse that, but I think it should be offered.

For reference, for high-school aged students, these are the options in my area:

- Traditional high school (5 days/wk, with Math/Science/Language/History, and electives - Art, Music, etc). You can take advanced classes, such as AP for college credit.

- Public Charter School (4 days/wk - no Wednesday - Math/Science/Language/History only. Must submit proof of doing art/PE/etc independently)

- Non-traditional high school (1 day required, teachers available during the rest of the week - requires much work at home)

- Home-School link (1 day w/ teachers to coordinate lessons, work done at home.)

- "Running-Start" - attend community college classes for free, earn both high school and college credit.

- Private school (religious - don't know any details)

- Full Home-school (still required to pass some state exams, must get GED to count as high school).

Additionally, sports and music programs were offered only at the traditional high schools, but students living in the district attending any of these options, including private school, could participate.

I think all of these are valid options, and I knew people in all of these programs that also participated in other activities, like sports. I think that traditional high school, or the more focused charter school are the best options for most, but not for everyone.

Most of the neglectful parents, I would think, sent their children to public school. They certainly would not take the time to teach their children on their own, or pay to send them to private school. They wouldn't apply to enter them in to another one of the programs. The worst case scenario is an incompetent parent that still insists on home-schooling. I can live with parents that have objections to the curriculum pulling their students out.

Of course, I know the German school system is much different than the US system. In the US, however, I think that home school needs to be an option.

rickjames285• 13 years ago

In the sick mind of the German socialist, abuse is homeschooling, where children can't be indoctrinated by the state. Good to know that Hitler started that nice tradition.

hga10• 13 years ago

Don't forget his party was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; the only part you probably don't know is Arbeiter -> Worker's.

nraynaud• 13 years ago

When Germany gave jurisdiction power to US MPs and special laws around US military bases (in the public streets outside the bases too), I didn't hear the same outcry.

They have a culture they want to preserve, they know that the US is exporting its culture very bullishly (in Hollywood movies and TV shows for the most part) and they are, like many western european countries, afraid of the negative side effects of the US culture (mostly around guns, violence and extreme religion, but also individualism in general).

gallamine4• 13 years ago

"Authorities even took the children’s passports, making it impossible for the family to escape ... "

Now that's low. How is that even legal?

barry-cotter4• 13 years ago

Passports are state property, they don't belong to you. Besides, they're the state's children, they're just letting the biological parents mind them. Should they be found deficient, better parents can be found.

rickjames285• 13 years ago

What do you mean "they're the state's children"?

jlgreco4• 13 years ago

I am Not a Fan(tm) of homeschooling and support bans of it, but forbidding them to leave is going to far.

In Plato's dialog Crito, Socrates lays out his justification for respecting the rule of law. One of his arguments in to Crito is that, while not under arrest, any Athenian remains free to leave Athens with his family and posessions.

Personally, I think Plato was sort of a hack (Plato has Crito offer only token objections) and disagree with Socrates decision to stay... BUT if the rule of law is to be respected, it seems clear to me that the freedom to opt-out must remain intact. If Germany wants to prevent these people from leaving then they should properly detain them. If they find themselves unwilling or unable to do that, then these people should be free to leave the country.

HarryHirsch• 13 years ago

What if they were the state's children? What I'm saying here is that often one encounters the opinion that children are their parents' property, that they can do with them as they well please, and that isn't true either.

There are such things as abusive parents, and there are such things as crazy cults. One notices that there was that other German couple, whose name eludes me, who cited religious motives for homeschooling. That is never a good sign. I'm a practicing Catholic, and if a German gives that reason for homeschooling they are using the Lord's name in vain.

Public opinion in Germany (and in France) is that society has a duty to provide some oversight, and that that is provided by schools. By the way, public education in Germany is generally decent.

All these arguments aside, there is also the child's right to a decent education, and the parents have no right at all to deprive the child of that.

glurgh6• 13 years ago

It's German law? Every developed democracy probably has a few that you might find disagreeable or outright immoral. If you're going to get righteously indignant about every single one of them you probably won't have much time to do anything else.

a_bonobo3• 13 years ago

I think this is a case where the OP's link left out information -

I'd wager the kids' parents have said before this happened that they'd take the kids to another country like the US. Taking their passports prevents this kind of fleeing.

yk2• 13 years ago

Well, it escalated for a long time. The law in Germany is, that children have to go to some school public or private. In this case, the family refused to send the children to any school, and it escalated to a point where the government appointed a guardian for the children. Then the family left Germany and apparently returned now. So as far as I understand the legal argument: the parents have no longer the right to take the children out of Germany and therefore the passports were taken to prevent this.

derwagner2• 13 years ago

The right to determine where children do or do not travel lies with their legal guardians, which in this case are no longer their parents. The actual legal guardian is in possession of the passports.

rickjames285• 13 years ago

Just another example of socialist statism run amok. You would think with German's recent past, the authorities would be wary of snatching kids from their parents and putting them who knows where.

hga10• 13 years ago

Indeed. Every time someone jokes "It sounded better in the original German" I think of cases like these and think "It still does".

sentenza• 13 years ago

You are aware that one of the reasons we do this is to take away parents ability to indoctrinate their children in a nationalist ideology?

In German _public_ schools, children learn about the Holocaust, the Wars, the STASI multiple times over the course of their education, with progressing depth of discussion as they grow older. How many other states educate their resident children on the bad parts of their history this thorroughly?

Sorry, but your views from afar are quite skewed.

GabrielF00• 13 years ago

The Home School Legal Defense Association helped kill American ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Killing US ratification of this treaty, which would have helped extend rights that the US pioneered to people overseas, was absolutely abhorrent. The UN treaty was essentially based on existing American law, was ratified by 130+ nations and had no potential impact on American education. You may remember that Bob Dole was wheeled onto the Senate floor to urge ratification. Homeschool advocates opposition was based on disinformation ("the UN is going to take your kids") I would take anything they have to say with a grain of salt.

rickjames285• 13 years ago

Nobody is disputing the facts here, so there is no grain of salt to take.

a_bonobo3• 13 years ago

How much of that page is in fact "fact"?

They call Germany's team that picked up the kids a "SWAT" team, even though Germany doesn't have a SWAT team, Germany has GSG9 which is solely used for anti-terror operations. I also wouldn't call a team that includes social workers a SWAT-team.

This sentence alone shows that this article was only written to rile up emotions:

At 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 29, 2013, in what has been called a “brutal and vicious act,”

Who has called it an act like that? The HSLDA itself, no-one else.

I also can't find anything on this in German news, so there are no secondary sources, so no way to verify their claims yet.

tl;dr: There are no facts yet.

Edit: Just remembered, there's also the SEK, the Spezialeinsatzkommando, which are the German state police's special police to handle barricaded suspects - may have been in use here, but again, I'd highly doubt they'd be accompanied by social workers.

rdtsc5• 13 years ago

Yes I don't completely buy their argument. This appeals to Americans quite a bit because there is significant homeschooling compared to other "Western Countries" (Just a hunch, I couldn't find much unbiased data on this).

It seems _sometimes_ the reason, with one case in my own circle of friends, is the bad quality of local public schools.

However I think large number of cases are related to religious education.

I believe that is the intended goal of the German law. To not let parent teach children about God's miracles and water can be turned into wine if you pray hard enough, or how dinosaurs went clubbing with Adam and Eve and stuff like that.

We are battling crazies in Southern states who are pushing this crap even into the public schools. So I believe in this country these German families will find many sympathetic years.

Now, the question I don't know is, how bad is the quality of schools in Germany. Are gangs, bullying, racism pervasive? I can see an argument made in that case, otherwise, sorry, I'll side with the majority of Germans (presumably as a democracy they could have overturned this law many years ago).

a_bonobo3• 13 years ago

Are gangs, bullying, racism pervasive?

Being German, there are no gangs like American gangs, there is some bullying (nothing rampant) and racism depends on the area you're in - my school had some problems with Turkish and Armenian kids hating each other, but no fights ever.

Edit: There are a few "problem"-schools which have huge problems with kids from all kinds of backgrounds - the Rütli-school, for example. But I highly doubt the kids of OP's link went ot that school, they're white.

einhverfr16• 13 years ago

I think there is something much larger at stake though.

The question as you put it, I think, is whether culture should be allowed to arise from the grass roots or whether it should be formed by the state in public schools.

You put it in one way but what about when it comes down to cultural values? We have extended the definition of bullying so far as to cover stated ideological opinions in the US, and therefore we use public school (as I think you are advocating btw) to destroy the diversity and pluralism that has traditionally underscored our society. But what if Indian immigrants want to teach that there is value in the caste system? Must the state use public schools to try to stamp out such a view?

I am btw a large proponent of homeschooling because I think it represents a way for parents to take control of passing culture on to the next generation and that this helps encourage a tolerant and pluralistic society. If Indians want to teach that the caste system is a noble part of India's heritage, bully for them. If Catholics want to teach that radical individualism is harmful, and that marriage is extremely important because it supports the key relationships that hold society together, particularly between parents, grandparents, and children, bully for them.

Accepting and encouraging such diversity is important for our nation. Encouraging culture at the grass roots, I think, is universally important, and it is worth noting that public schools have been, since the time of Lycurgus, an institution intended to destroy that role, and foster the primary loyalty not to one's parents or family but to the state. While this may have worked in ancient Sparta on that scale without destroying the local nature of culture, it cannot scale to the level of a modern country.

I can't help but think about this in relation to the responses I get every time I suggest that the US should try to implement a Canada-style state-by-state single payer system for health care. A few on the right get upset at any notion of single payer, apparently believing that "private sector" is a magical incantation of great power, but the big objections I get are from the left. "But we can't let Alabama run their own health care system! That would be a disaster!" is one typical response. It is as if the role of the government in a democratic country is there to save people from democracy and that, paraphrasing Orwell (in "Animal Farm"), that people are free to make decisions as long as it is decisions that those in power like. But what if families should take responsibility for raising children? What if the general problems of state government belong properly to the residents of that state (aside from things which clearly violate the Constitution, including the Equal Protection Clause, of course)?

I don't understand this hostility towards localism.

iterationx• 13 years ago

To protect yourself from being inconvenienced by a Christian, you advocate state creation and control of culture, like most "progressives" you are actually an outrageous totalitarian.

tzs• 13 years ago

That was a sad day for American politics. Not only would ratification have had no impact on US education, including homeschooling, it would have had basically no impact on anything domestically. Everything the treaty required we already do.

Where it would have affected Americans is when they travel to other countries that also ratified the treaty. Since the US did not ratify, those countries do not have to extend to visiting Americans with disabilities the same rights they have to extent to visitors from countries that did ratify the treaty.

einhverfr16• 13 years ago

But one argument against marijuana decriminalization of drugs is that it violates international treaties we are a party to. One real problem with treaties of this sort is that they remove public policy decisions from political discourse.

thejteam• 13 years ago

If it was based on existing US law then nobody in the US lost out on anything by failure to ratify. The treaty presumably would apply in other other countries that ratify it. Also, the danger is less what it would do now versus how the treaty could be interpreted in the future.

Also, while HSLDA mobilized their members against the treaty they hardly have the political clout to kill a treaty in the Senate. At most they gave a few Senators who were on the fence reason to delay consideration.

nhangen• 13 years ago

Meanwhile, here in Florida (USA), we have a state sponsored virtual school system that doesn't require a single step inside of a school building. Maybe that's one thing we get right here.

rafski2• 13 years ago

As a natural extension of a welfare state paradigm, children are property of the state and parents are merely temporarily assigned guardians.

In Germany and Norway, children are taken from their families on a decision of a social worker, no court is needed. All it takes is a teacher's report stating that a kid is "sad".

Google "Jugendamt" to read the horror stories. A classic scenario involves forbidding a divorced foreign parent to speak in their non-German language with their kid, ever.

superuser215• 13 years ago

I'm surprised to see HN jumping to support the right of parents to raise children in ideologically-driven information vacuums.

Censorship by parents is censorship, too. Learning to think critically and being presented with information which may challenge your parents' religious beliefs are basic freedom of speech and freedom of information principles. I would call them human rights.

Let human beings decide for themselves whether to disregard science, believe in God, believe the Bible is literally true, etc. I'd rather have a little state overreach than fundamentalists whose beliefs have solidified before they were ever even exposed to ideas that didn't fit their parents' version of reality. That's bad for politics, bad for science, and unfair to the children.

Everyone has a right to at least be presented with the scientific view of the world. They don't have to believe it, and their parents can certainly offer alternative views at home. But in my mind a child is a person with at least some rights which supersede those of her parents. Education has got to be one of them.

fleitz2• 13 years ago

Given your opposition to ideologically-driven information vacuums I take it you don't support the public school system?

superuser215• 13 years ago

I support biology, chemistry, and physics classes. You have a right to be taught what is known in these areas, how we got there, and what it means about our world. Consider human evolution (bio), carbon dating (bio/chem), origin and expansion of the universe (physics). The history portion of chemistry presented us with the scientific process and the story of how we formulated, experimentally tested, and refined our models of matter, often proving the Church wrong in its blind acceptance of ancient philosophers' conjectures. This is a way of thinking to which every person deserves exposure, and some parents aren't comfortable with it.

In physics, we used telescope measurements to calculate the rate of expansion and age of the universe. Results were not consistent with some parents' readings of Genesis.

I'll buy brainwashing in subjective areas like history, current events, economics, and literary analysis but not in science. The public school system is problematic, but it at least allows access to books and websites which are screened only for sexuality, not for reality.

rickjames285• 13 years ago

You're actually surprised to see HN folks coming to the defense of parents/individual rights and against statist intervention into every aspect of a person's life?

I think it's pretty clear that you leftists believe that the state really "owns" the children. That's a sad thing to see here on HN.

yk2• 13 years ago

What about the rights of the children? The parents do not own them either, and society has sometimes a duty to protect children from their parents.

superuser215• 13 years ago

And I think it's pretty clear that you libertarians believe you own your children. We're coming at this from extremely different perspectives, but realize that the thought that parents own their children is as disgusting to me as the thought of the state owning children is to you.

To (some of) us, children are people. They are not owned. They have rights. The state is the only available instrument to protect the rights of the weak against the strong.

wonderzombie• 13 years ago

You'll get a lot more out of a discussion if you don't argue with a caricature of your interlocutor's opinions. I'd love to go on about about libertarian ties to right-wing, Christianist movements, which themselves are inextricable from white supremacy and a hostility towards women, but it's unfair to assume that you, personally, hold any such beliefs.

So let's talk about children, and the state.

The state believes that parents do not own their children. This is relatively uncontroversial, if you want somebody to be able to protect children from the depredations of shitty parents. Kids are fragile and easily influenced, and they can't make adult decisions. They're defenseless, particularly against their parents.

Generally education is considered critical to a child's welfare, and for good reason. Basic literacy and arithmetic are important if you're to have citizenry capable of participating in a democracy.

Put it all together and perhaps you see why a society might be just a wee bit concerned about how parents treat their children, including whether and how they educate them.

jimzvz3• 13 years ago

I'd rather have a little state overreach than fundamentalists whose beliefs have solidified before they were ever even exposed to ideas that didn't fit their parents' version of reality.

And I wouldn't.

ef43• 13 years ago

You're completely misunderstanding the motivation for many homeschoolers like myself. I am an atheist and an engineer. My local homeschooling groups have literally hundreds of families like mine, in which one or both parents have advanced degrees.

We see the writing on the wall.

The public schools -- even the "good" ones -- are hopelessly stuck training children for an economic model that is already dead. Sending your kids to the typical school is actively harming their economic future.

Everything about school is built around the factory model. It is precisely the opposite of how to train someone for success in the 21st century, where the only way to win is to do things for which there are no simple instructions.

I'm going to give my kid a better scientific education than the public schools have ever provided. In fact, I dispute that they have ever really done so. They teach facts that were discovered by science, but they don't actually teach science. If they did, they would soon collapse under the weight of their own contradictions:

    "why are we studying this?"
    "because it will help you later."
    "show me the evidence."
    "go to the principal's office."

Science is deeply anti-authoritarian. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters whether you have better evidence and better arguments. School actively opposes that kind of thinking.

superuser215• 13 years ago

I support homeschoolers like you. I know several kids who are homeschooled under similar philosophies, and they're the smartest people I've ever met. They take AP and college classes early, sometimes even as young teens, and are encouraged to do independent reading and think for themselves.

The article in question, though, is about parents who kept their children out of school over religious objections to the curriculum. That, I oppose vehemently.

einhverfr16• 13 years ago

Censorship by parents is censorship, too. Learning to think critically and being presented with information which may challenge your parents' religious beliefs are basic freedom of speech and freedom of information principles. I would call them human rights.

I totally disagree with you here. The problem is that the state tends to create information vacuums that are harder to detect and compensate for.

Let human beings decide for themselves whether to disregard science, believe in God, believe the Bible is literally true, etc.

Does that go for "let humans decide for themselves whether to accept homosexuality as normal for some people?" If so, would you agree that the state must remain neutral on that issue? And if so, then would you agree that expressing hostility to gay rights can never be harassment or bullying in the eyes of the state?

Now if you aren't prepared to go there, then isn't the argument over who gets to make these decisions, whether culture must arise from the grass roots of a culture or whether it should be imposed by an arguably benevolant state?

I would argue that if anything a vacuum that goes against the prevailing attitudes is easier for people to question as they grow up. A vacuum which does nothing but reinforce prevailing cultural attitudes is much harder to rethink. It is easier for someone to question whether their parents were right about gay rights in the current climate if their parents were opposed than it is to question the state, when nobody else does.

superuser215• 13 years ago

Does that go for "let humans decide for themselves whether to accept homosexuality as normal for some people?" If so, would you agree that the state must remain neutral on that issue? And if so, then would you agree that expressing hostility to gay rights can never be harassment or bullying in the eyes of the state?

The issue is not with taking a position, it's with suppressing opposition to that position. My school encouraged tolerance for the LGBT community in its promotion of diversity, but I could stand up in a school-sponsored Debate extracurricular and oppose gay marriage. I could write a persuasive paper against gay marriage and submit it to my English teacher. I could campaign against gay rights in the Republican club. If I were the editor, I could run a front-page school newspaper article opposing the administration's decision. I'd probably lose a lot of friends that way, but the school couldn't stop or punish me. This is one of the strengths of public education.

Nobody, however, gets to bully or harass individuals for any reason, including their homosexuality. As with parents and children, your rights end and the other person's rights begin.

shrnky• 13 years ago

The majority of comments from the illustrious Hacker News crowd seem to indicate we are disturbingly at ease with the Persecution of homeschoolers.

I feel as long as students are making the grade on standardized tests, there shouldn't be an issue.

This works out perfect for both parties. Whatever aspect of public schools the parent takes exception to can be avoided and the kid still get's an eduction.

By forcing parents to send their children to public schools you are in effect giving the perception of indoctrination.

icebraining5• 13 years ago

They don't force children to be sent to public schools - private schools are specifically protected by the German constitution.

hga10• 13 years ago

Is it safe to assume they cost money and/or are regulated by the state?

jimzvz3• 13 years ago

This is disgusting.

Which is the best country in the world to raise children? It needs to be safe, have little government interference, have exposure to "the real world", a culture of hard work, an open culture that is receptive to a multitude of ideas about the world, have challenging problems, multi-lingual, etc. Any ideas?

rafski2• 13 years ago

At least it's an ethos.

Germany Seizes Children in Homeschool Raid

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