# The Romeikes - German Christian homeschooling family **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 5, 2014, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968 "2014-03-05T22:37:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/41 "2014-03-08T17:20:16Z")
Diversity is what makes America great. Including class diversity. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/42 "2014-03-08T17:50:45Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > Homeschooled students are overwhelmingly white, middle- to upper-middle-class, from two-parent homes in the suburbs/exurbs, and more than half have a stay-at-home parent. Compare their statistics to public school students with the same demographics, and the score differences are negligible at best. > [@running\_coach](#): > > [As far as home schooling,](https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=91) the biggest group (36%) homeschools for religious or moral reasons. > [Second cite](http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP88.pdf) (PDF) > [@adaher](#): > > And I’d bet that while homeschoolers are wealthier than average, few of the really wealthy are doing it. The people with the six figure incomes are sending their kids to the best private schools. I was homeschooled from 1st grade through high school. From my experience, the vast majority were far from wealthy. Mostly being single income, blue collar families. Based on the table given from that cite, I don’t see how it shows that homeschooling families are more affluent, if anything it seems to say that they are just about average. Income for different groups - > [@](#): > > Family income: (home schooled - Public school - Private school - Religious school > \<$20K 8 12 5 7 > $20K-$40K 28 22 12 17 > $40K-$60K 28 21 13 22 > $60K-$80K 17 18 13 23 > $80K-$100K 8 11 11 19 > \>$100K 11 16 45 12 > average $42,370 $43,380 $43,810 $43,960 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/43 "2014-03-08T19:34:13Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Diversity is what makes America great. Including class diversity. Do you mean that children grow up to know that everyone has value despite their being different, or that they don’t have to go to school with those nasty Lithuanians? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Weeping\_Wyvern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@Weeping\_Wyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weeping_Wyvern)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/44 "2014-03-08T19:43:48Z")
I find this notion very disturbing, that the State has the right to remove children from their families for several hours a day in order to feed them such knowledge and/or lies as it deems fit. I’m fine with a reasonable amount of regulation and inspection for homeschoolers, but banning it entirely is horrid. And yes, I was homeschooled myself, all the way until I left for college at eighteen. My parents whipped me every day and taught me all about the dinosaurs in Noah’s Ark and the black helicopters of the Zionist Occupation Government. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2014, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/45 "2014-03-08T21:39:57Z")
> [@What should be done in the Medford School District/Teacher's Union Dispute?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-should-be-done-in-the-medford-school-district-teachers-union-dispute/681640/140): > > You’re just a bitter teacher that has a really easy job that very low intelligence housewife type women could do > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I think it’s farcical that housewives and such could adequately educate their children Submitted without comment. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/46 "2014-03-09T01:00:56Z")
Now, to comment: -I have nothing against homeschoolers. I am sure that sometimes it is the best education a kid can get. The dynamics of educating your own child are so much different from educating 20-plus children of strangers from radically different backgrounds that I am sure it can be done with no formal training while often achieving a better outcome than what a well-trained teacher could achieve in a normal classroom. Our educational system is far from perfect, but is rather the best that we’re willing to pay for. -I have nothing against countries that outlaw homeschooling. There are excellent reasons to do so, and anyone the least bit curious about why a country would do so is welcome to do some Googling. -The idea that someone is being persecuted just because they don’t obey the law is absurd. You’d need to show that the law is a fundamental infringement of human rights, and as the linked article shows, the anti-homeschooling law is anything but. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/47 "2014-03-09T20:56:00Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Submitted without comment. I’m glad you posted those two quotes as it allows me to school you on discerning the finer points of language. Since nothing I said in them is contradictory, I can only assume you need this education. Housewives are different from people with “housewife intelligence.” It’s the difference between a dog that’s trained to jump through hoops and one that hasn’t been so trained. If I need a dog to jump through hoops I want the one that has been trained to jump through hoops. That doesn’t mean the trained dog is smarter, just that it has been trained. Same for education, a housewife probably has the intellect to be a teacher (anyone above the “intellectually disabled” cutoff IQ probably does) but sans the training they aren’t going to know what they’re doing. That’s like suggesting someone could fix a car just because they are smart enough to be taught how to fix a car but haven’t actually been taught how to fix a car. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/48 "2014-03-09T21:25:37Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Housewives are different from people with “housewife intelligence.” It’s the difference between a dog that’s trained to jump through hoops and one that hasn’t been so trained. Married? ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/49 "2014-03-09T21:42:31Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Married? If so, does she read the SDMB? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/50 "2014-03-09T23:40:10Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I’m glad you posted those two quotes as it allows me to school you on discerning the finer points of language. Since nothing I said in them is contradictory, I can only assume you need this education. And I’m delighted that you posted that, er, “clarification,” because it gives everyone another chance to see exactly how seriously you ought to be taken. Out of curiosity, does **anyone** find this distinction anything more than laughable? ---
**Author:** ![hansel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6bbea6/32.png) [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2014, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/51 "2014-03-09T23:51:14Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Out of curiosity, does **anyone** find this distinction anything more than laughable? I tried to count the number of different flavors of horseshit in that comment. Then I realized what I was doing, and stopped, because it’s plainly recognizable as a steaming pile of horseshit, without the lab report attached. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/52 "2014-03-10T03:08:52Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Is that experience from the news, or from people you know who homeschool? I know few religious fanatics, so I can’t tell you how many of those people are pulling their kids out of school. But I do know a lot of people in the 30-40 age range, and if there’s anything they are fanatical about, it’s organic products and the environment and homeschooling. Or any of the other latest trends in childrearing are. Unfortunately, a high percentage of these people are also anti-vaccination. Probably depends on where you live- in Portland, it’s probably the hipster types, but here in Texas, I’d be willing to bet that the religious loons outnumber the rest about 10:1. The only homeschooled guy I’ve ever met was the product of a religious nut family. As an example, he was in the Boy Scouts, but he wasn’t in the Order of the Arrow due to his family’s objection to some vaguely mystical mumbo-jumbo ritual as being Satanic and non-Christian. Which is asinine; it’s very vague, and hardly another religious system or anything like that (says the Brotherhood OA member) He was all concerned about his newborn daughter not going to public schools because it wasn’t a “Christian” environment, and there was no moral instruction. Another parent I knew wasn’t quite so religiously loony, but just enough that between his local school’s bad reputation and his concern about the non-Christianity of it all, he decided to homeschool his already really awkward and weird son who was just starting 6th grade. Probably a terrible decision for the kid, if you ask me, but hey… he’s properly Christian, so I guess that’s what counts. I’ve known several others, and the vast, vast majority are all really religiously conservative and have problems with girls in tight jeans, etc… ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/53 "2014-03-10T10:51:18Z")
> [@bump](#): > > He was all concerned about his newborn daughter not going to public schools because it wasn’t a “Christian” environment, and there was no moral instruction. Which always strikes me as a bit weird. The whole anti-bullying thing is moral instruction, and teaching students to treat each other with kindness and respect is an absolute necessity of classroom management. Hell, I teach my kids a variant of the prisoner’s dilemma as a way to reach the moral center of my budding rational egoists. If folks wanna say there’s no _religious_ instruction, well, sure. But no moral instruction? You’d have pig heads on pikes within a week. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/54 "2014-03-10T15:15:28Z")
I’m sure I’ve posted about this before, on this specific case: these parents should be allowed to move to somewhere where their homeschooling practices were allowed. They could have done that anywhere else in the EU. If they wanted English language schooling, they could have come to anywhere in the UK. No asylum necessary. Why did they move to the US? ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/55 "2014-03-10T15:22:27Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > I’m sure I’ve posted about this before, on this specific case: these parents should be allowed to move to somewhere where their homeschooling practices were allowed. They could have done that anywhere else in the EU. If they wanted English language schooling, they could have come to anywhere in the UK. No asylum necessary. Why did they move to the US? From what I can glean from the [NY Times article](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01homeschool.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&), it sounds like they had a lawyer ready to litigate in the US on their behalf: > [@](#): > > Mr. Romeike began looking to other countries, but his inability to speak anything other than German or English limited his options. Then, at a conference for home-schoolers in 2007, he saw Mike Donnelly, a lawyer for the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Virginia-based advocacy organization > > At a brainstorming session, one of the lawyers, Jim Mason, came up with the idea of petitioning for political asylum. > > “I don’t know German law or German courts,” Mr. Mason said, “but I do know American courts.” ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/56 "2014-03-10T19:54:01Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Really? Would you expect a person chosen at random to be better at _any_ job than a trained, experienced professional, or is it that you believe that teachers, uniquely, are deliberately hired for their incompetence, and/or specifically trained to make them more incompetent than they would be otherwise? No. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/57 "2014-03-10T20:12:44Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I’d expect a typical housewife to be able to deliver a much better education than a typical public school teacher. Perhaps you could clarify: do you expect a typical housewife, plunked into a room of 25 kids with a list of state standards to teach and the threat of a standardized test hanging over her head, to deliver a much better education thana typical public school teacher? Or do you propose that a typical housewife could, absent those constraints, deliver a better education to her own children than a typical teacher who labors under those constraints? If it’s not one of those two, could you please clarify? ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/58 "2014-03-10T20:32:52Z")
> [@stpauler](#): > > From what I can glean from the [NY Times article](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01homeschool.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&), it sounds like they had a lawyer ready to litigate in the US on their behalf: That’s not much of a reason. They speak English, so they can move to England. There’s a strong homeschooling movement here. They don’t have to move to the US. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/59 "2014-03-10T21:02:16Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Perhaps you could clarify: do you expect a typical housewife, plunked into a room of 25 kids with a list of state standards to teach and the threat of a standardized test hanging over her head, to deliver a much better education thana typical public school teacher? Or do you propose that a typical housewife could, absent those constraints, deliver a better education to her own children than a typical teacher who labors under those constraints? > > If it’s not one of those two, could you please clarify? You didn’t ask me, but I think an average person with a decent education can teach one other person, or perhaps two, as well as a professional, especially if they know the children very well, which gives them an advantage that professionals don’t have. But teaching 25 kids they don’t know all that well? No chance, the pro wins hands down. It also depends on level of education. I can’t teach calculus, I never took calculus. But I can teach algebra as well as anyone, if I know the strengths and weaknesses of the person I’m teaching. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968/60 "2014-03-10T21:16:28Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Which always strikes me as a bit weird. The whole anti-bullying thing is moral instruction, and teaching students to treat each other with kindness and respect is an absolute necessity of classroom management. Hell, I teach my kids a variant of the prisoner’s dilemma as a way to reach the moral center of my budding rational egoists. > > If folks wanna say there’s no _religious_ instruction, well, sure. But no moral instruction? You’d have pig heads on pikes within a week. To rational folks, what you say makes sense. But to religious wingnuts, “morals” = SEX, and that’s about it. They’re so hung up on it that it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-romeikes-german-christian-homeschooling-family/682968.md?page=4)