Granting asylum to people fleeing from Germany?

Great Debates
21

There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether they would be pursued for this. Having lived in Germany, I would rather doubt the Germans would spend the time and expense of extraditing them for a minor infraction if they had already left the country.

Even if they are the only ones in their village with these beliefs, there is nothing to stop them from relocating to an area having more such people. If they are willing to travel all the way to Tennessee they should be willing to go to another town and follow the rules to set up their own school, or go to a private school they agree with.

I agree that the situation is not optimal. I agree that Germany should have less strict standard about allowing people to home school. But it just doesn’t seem severe enough to warrant asylum.

22

I don’t know what the situation is beyond what I’ve read here. But other people are saying that people have been extradited back to Germany for violating this law, so it seems like a realstic concern.

As to where to draw the line on oppression, I guess that’s an individual call. I think oppression can occur even absent threats of death. Taking somebody’s children away to be “re-educated” is a pretty oppressive act in my opinion. American Indians used to be forced to send their children to “white” schools so they could be “civilized” into giving up their tribal culture - was that oppression? The Soviet Union used to make children in the non-Russian republics go to schools where they would be taught to speak Russian and learn Russian history so the next generation would be “russified” - was that oppression?

23

In public schools, they teach you to capitalize the names of countries. :slight_smile:

24

While I agree with the parents position, I question the motives. Why the USA? Was every option in Germany tried? Had they been through the courts?

I think the motovation is simply they wanted to come to the USA and found, as another poster put it, a creative way to do it.

Are we going to allow any person in any country now to come into the USA because they won’t allow homeschooling? Now every person in Germany should be able to come to the USA under this ruling.

Germany isn’t DENYING the right to homeschool. The parents could’ve sent the kids to school and then homeschooled them after they got home.

But of course this isn’t convenient so it’s an ignored option.

A government certainly has the right to require you do things. Some require you have to vote, some require you have to serve in the military, some require you serve on a jury.

So requiring a child go to a state school isn’t unreasonable as long as they don’t ALSO prevent the parents from teaching them at home as well.

25

Bahhh.

If your literal life isnt on the line, quite your bitching. Yeah, you have a complaint because your society aint exactly to your liking, but for everyone of you there are a 1000 folks elsewhere fearing for their actual life.

Maybe in a thousand years such dire things won’t exist and the guy who is being hounded by his homeowners association because his lawn looks like crap is actually at the top of the list anyway you look at it. Till then, get way the hell at the back of the line.

26

Please. That’s not what homeschooling means. It’s clear that the Romeikes thought that the German school system would have a harmful effect on their children - so they didn’t want their children to go to the schools at all. That’s what homeschooling generally means - the parents are the alternative to the regular school.

27

I’m German, and I’m absolutely fine with this law. It’s not like there is indoctrination going on in our public schools.
There is religious education, but that is very mellow, like almost all religion in Germany, and you can opt out of it.

But if there are parents who don’t want their children to hear about Evolution or whatever, they are simply wrong. I’ve heard about what’s going on in these circles in the US, and that frightens me much more than a state that requires you to interact with society for 30 hours a week.
I know that it’s a freedom of speech issue for you, but much like the law against holocaust denial, we think that regulation of extremism is worth it to restrict freedom of speech a little. You could say that it’s a lesson we learned.

If you look at the effects on society, I definitely prefer the German way.

28

I would actually like to see a cite for that, because I wasn’t able to find one.
I found occurences of fines, jail time and taking away custody.
I had no idea that was the legal situation in Germany, it’s quite scary.

lol well yeah, it’s taught everywhere, but I don’t quite see what that has to do with the thread.

29

I fully support homeschooling, and I find views like [Undecided] Adrian’s frightening. However, if they were going to leave Germany anyway, it looks like they had plenty of other local options that didn’t require seeking asylum anywhere. This was not an option of last resort. Granted, I don’t know beans about how our asylum laws work.

30

I’m looking for solid citations for what’s been happening to families in Germany, but there’s so much in the way of repetitive news stories and blog posts that it’s a little tricky, and I don’t have much time to devote to it. The blog posts tend to talk about things that were common knowledge within a certain circle at the time they were written and therefore didn’t provide the citations I would like.

What I’ve been gathering is that the German gov’t has decided that homeschoolers are establishing a “parallel society” which they want to stamp out. This shows a misunderstanding of what homeschooling is, actually–homeschoolers tend to be more civically involved–but the stamping out has escalated over the past few years. Children have been taken out of their homes and forced to attend school. Parents have been fined huge amounts of money and sent to jail. One teen girl was put into a psychiatric institution although she was entirely healthy.

I’ve been seeing people talk about friends who were chased by Interpol and arrested after moving to another EU country, even though they were not breaking any of their new host country’s laws. It’s happened to an English family as well as Germans, though it seems to be pretty rare.

One problem with finding names and solid citations are that homeschoolers in both England and Germany are often working underground–more so in Germany of course.

Anyway I sent some feelers out to some friends and will report back soon.

31

I understand that Americans view this very differently, and since the US is not going to join the European Union very soon, we are free to take a different approach here.

But what do you fear from a more homogeneous education? Fascism?
Political and religious extremism thrives in a fragmented, divisive education system. Comparing the public discourse in Germany and the US, that is readily apparent.

If you fear indoctrination, that is much more likely to occur in a homeschooling environment than in a state-run school.

I feel that the same people who engage in scaremongering about Islam taking over Europe are now complaining about a system that is best suited to prevent stuff like that.

And if you really think that such parents need asylum more than refugees from poverty and war, there is something seriously screwed up with your priorities.
But of course you’re welcome to take them in.

On preview: dangermom, I’d appreciate some cites for these claims. I’ve read some articles about that case, but I never heard anything like that. The only cases I’m aware of involve religious conservatives, and I’m not very sympathetic to them.
And how do you know how “civically involved” German homeschoolers are? The family in question certainly wasn’t.

32

To clarify: I’m not sympathetic to religious conservatives in the sense that they are should not be permitted to reject facts and substitute their own, and to shield their children from society like the Romeikes want.

33

Oh bullshit. We had a neighbour who homeschooled his daughter just fine. There is no “underground movement” of homeschoolers in the UK. We’re not talking about the French resistance.

34

As far as I’m aware Germany does actually allow home schooling, but the parent has to pass a special exam to do so (which is a few €100 as I remember). So if its that important to them they could have done that.

Would have been easier than moving to America.

Sweden’s an interesting case as in the Scandinavian states the state is almost as much a parent as the actual parent, for example Sweden pay’s for nursery schools for all children because it see’s it as an important part of socialisation* and Denmark will fully fund 6 years of higher education for all children + a monthly maintenance allowance.

It’s this loco parentis attitude that allows most countries within Europe to take a more involved approach to child care than I believe most Americans would be happy with.

I wonder how most people on the Dope would feel about a recent Swedish law that was passed to due to its large Somali immigrant population. It allows the state to prevent any family from travelling abroad if they feel the child is at risk of suffering female circumcision (female genital mutilation) and further I believe they have the right to examine a child if they think such an operation has already been done.

Is that unfair intrusion?

*On the other hand they have a voucher system in place for Secondary education which I believe is beloved of the right in America.

35

To ensure that the child is actually being taught in accordance with the national curriculum, and its whole future isn’t in jeopardy because they had the misfortune of being born to a group of home education fanatics? Yes, I think that’s eminently reasonable.

36

That’s not quite what I meant. Right now, English homeschoolers are often writing somewhat anonymously because of the Badman stuff that’s going on. Quite a few of them are preparing to engage in some civil disobedience, refuse to comply with the new law, or leave the country if it passes–like this woman here (don’t you love her Educational Anarchist image? I have a t-shirt like that). So they’re not giving out a lot of names.

It’s interesting that you assume that home edders give their children substandard education. (Especially since what I’ve been reading about education in the UK for the past few years is depressing beyond words; it really makes me very discouraged.) Home educators are a diverse bunch and they aren’t even all fundamentalists, despite what you may assume.

37

I agree with Palo Verde. This does not rise to the level of persecution as defined under US asylum law. Frankly, the granting of political asylum under these cirumstances is an insult to all the asylees I know and have worked with, those whose friends and families have been disappeared or totured or who were tortured themselves. Those who fled their countries of origin in fear for their lives and who can never, ever return home again.

38

In Germany, I’ve never heard of homeschooling advocates outside of fundamentalists.

I have more sympathy for the people who feel they can educate their children better than the public schools can, but in Germany the education system is generally doing well, and consider this: If everybody uses the public system, everybody has an incentive to make it work.
The absence of that may be one of the roots of the public schools’ problems in the US. I guess there are people who want to see them fail.

39

But it isn’t doing well for everyone. No system can. Besides which, that’s not the point. What if my idea of a good education is different than the idea my local school has? What if I simply want my family to be free to run our lives the way we think is best for us? That seems to me to be a basic right everyone should have. There is more than one way to live well.

My idea of a good education is very different from what the local school’s is. Now it’s quite a good school, I have no complaints about it (except for the math program), if I had to send my kids there I am sure they would do fine. But my ideas are different. I teach a lot more world history, more intensive science, a more rigorous math program, Latin, and we have way more field trips and go farther for them. We do state history at a different time, US history at a different time, science goes by years instead of 6-week blocks. And so on.

Many, many people in the US say the same. “You shouldn’t homeschool, you should work within the system to improve it.” And that is a good sentiment, and many people do work within the system. However, there is only so much any one parent, or even many parents, can do to change an entrenched administration that likes control. (You try it at your local school and see how far you get.) A lot of American homeschooling parents have ended up in home education as a last resort, after years of trying to work in the system, to no avail–and meanwhile the kids are growing up fast and time is running out. The problems vary: bullying, violence, lack of teaching, failure to work with a child’s special needs, and so on.

My good friend J has always been very enthusiastic about involvement at school, but she had to pull her daughter out for second grade because the little girl wasn’t learning anything in the classroom and mostly hadn’t been since kindergarten. How long do you say “Well, this year hasn’t worked out too well, but we’ll hope for a better teacher next year”? (The girl is having a wonderful time and is on track to be ahead of grade-level by the summer.)

I don’t know that many people want the US school system to fail. Improve, yes. But mostly we want freedom and choice. Parents should be able to choose the kind of education they think is best for their children, whether that be public, private, at home, or even some combination. That’s not a threat to the public school system or to society; it’s a strength.
…and now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go teach my kids. We’re studying Mussolini and the rise of fascism this week! :slight_smile:

40

I see that the lady quotes an unknown person named “GHANDI” and has spent hours “pouring over documents”.

Very impressive. :smiley: