Thursday, May 17, 2007

When will the rest of the EU give the German state a taste of its own medicine?

I read this on Blogdial.

The Germans are fond of telling people to go back and vote until you get it right when anyone in the EU disagrees with them, maybe the UN will tell them to go back and remove Hitler’s anti Home Schooling law, and keep telling them to go back until they get it right.

I couldn't agree more. The European Union claims that education is one of the areas where the states make their own decisions and the EU can't interfere. Well I don't care if the German school system makes it compulsory for all children attending German schools to stand on their heads for 2 hours every Tuesday. I just wish they would stay out of people's private lives.

For an example how German education laws interfere with European directives, look at this Motion which was passed by the European Parliament (dealing with the education of circus children) :

.....
to provide the necessary means inter alia for pilot projects to determine
appropriate models for school education for children from travelling communities, notably
as regards:
- developing and supporting e-learning and distance learning projects as a component of
a comprehensive education initiative for travelling communities;
- developing concepts for independent/self-reliant learning;

In total contrast to this is the legal practice in certain German states (from my previous post)

...children of migrant employees, are subject to compulsory schooling as per Art. 63 Section 1 of the NEL. These school pupils fulfil the requirements of compulsory schooling as follows: They are assigned to a regular school, which is responsible for supervising their education. This school prepares the pupils and their parents or guardians for the time when they will be on the road and supervises their learning from afar (see 2.3 of the decree.) Whilst on the road, the pupil fulfils the requirements of compulsory schooling by visiting a so-called support school. Children of people whose professions involve much travelling, e.g. inland sailors and circus employees, have to frequently change schools. Even so, they are subject to compulsory schooling, as required by the lawmakers, and are obliged to visit support schools whilst travelling. Although private instruction is not specifically mentioned in this decree, it could be granted if the pupil is constantly moving around with his or her parents.
....
In the jurisprudence it has been acknowledged that instruction by the parents of his or her own children within the family can never be “school” in terms of the education law, independent of whether the parent is a qualified teacher or not.

So I guess that those distance-learning French and Russian circus children had better just stay out of Germany.

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