Germany's Crackdown on Homeschooling

Our family is a member of Homeschool Legal Defense Association not because I believe police or social services will be knocking on my door anytime soon, but it is more of a precaution.  The yearly fee is not outrageous and I feel that belonging to HSLDA can be compared to the insurance you have on your home:  you don't expect your house to burn to the ground, but if that day happens you have the help and resources to rebuild.  Along with access to lawyers, we also receive a weekly e-mail on HSLDA's involvement in the court room and other legislation as well as various other homeschool information.

Yesterday, I received that weekly newsletter and after reading one of the articles my heart sank:  I am talking about the Wunderlich family in Germany.  I know there are many countries who refuse to allow homeschooling.  Sweden for one has removed a boy, Dominic Johansson, when he was 7 years old from his parents, Christer and Annie, in June of 2009 for homeschooling.  Now in Germany the Wunderlich family has lost custody of their 4 children for homeschooling.   According to the judge it did not matter that the children were being educated properly, what mattered was that they needed to be "socialized" by the state.  As I stated in a previous post, socialization has nothing to do with raising a child to be able to interact with others, it has to do with following rules of the government.

I can not imagine the pain Dirk, Petra and the rest family are going through.  The uncertainty of when their children will be removed, and if they are removed will they ever be returned, what will this do to the children emotionally, etc...?  This judge did not care that the children were happy and healthy, were being well educated, loved being schooled at home, or anything else other than these children were not being "integrated" or "socialized" into the state mindset.

I would like to add something that I am sure many will find controversial, but here goes:  after WWII and the realization of the horrors of the Holocaust many then asked (and still do by the way) "How could the people of Germany allow this to happen?" and my answer is they were socialized by the state.  They learned from little on in their school system to think what the state wanted them to think, to do what the state wanted them to do and ask no questions.  The result was a mass population that stood back and allowed the murder of millions of people.  What is scary to me is how our own school system here in the US is based on this model. Please see the following site for more information on how and why public schools were started in the US.   www.johntaylorgatto.com.

If you would like to read more about homeschooling in Germany please visit the Der Blaue Brief Blog or to read the article on the Wunderlich family please visit the following HSLDA Article.

Please keep not only the Johansson and Wunderlich families in your prayers, but all those who homeschool throughout the world. Only God can change the hearts of those creating and enforcing education laws.