Green fields and open horizons

Helping people make informed choices - it's not rocket science, but Darcia Narvaez just didn't nail it

2011-08-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

As a long-time lactivist, I am a supporter of World Breastfeeding Week, whose purpose is to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world. This year there were some great articles on the internet that discussed these issues. However, a recent series on the Psychology Today blog, which attempted to highlight this theme, backfired spectacularly. Whatever the intentions of Darcia Narvaez were, her venture ended up going sadly awry.

As an unintended consequence of the final article in the series, Narvaez evoked some strong responses from various corners of the blogosphere. She ended up re-editing the offending article and retracting, or a couple of her claims.

However, I'm not sure that Narvaez really gets it. In her most recent post, although she apologizes for the lack of empathy she displayed, she seems to think that the underlying reason for the negative reactions to her article lies in the fact that "the information we provided is often shocking for those not previously exposed to it because the (mistaken) baseline assumed by many is 'formula feeding is fine'". Although this might be the case for a few mothers who read her article, I'm afraid she's way off base here. Many of those who criticized her posts were familiar with much, if not all, of the information she presented.

As well as that, she seems to be rather confused as to the tone of her offending article. She writes that the post deliberately "had a very sharp tone", after which she tells us that she and her co-writers "intended a coaxing tone." It seems that she's not sure what tone was intended, but in the end, her articles came off as judgemental and bullying, even to many of those who shared her point of view.

In response to a critic (who obviously hasn't heard of milksharing networks, as she states that milk donation isn't viable because pumping is painful and time-consuming) Narvaez writes that the purpose of her posts is to get information out about the deficiencies of formula. I have no problem with giving information, but the problem here is that Narvaez didn't leave it at this. She twisted and exaggerated the research to make her point and to make formula seem worse than it is and valorize breastmilk, and in doing so, did a disservice to the cause of infant feeding. In some cases, her exaggerations appeared to be deliberate, but she also carelessly cites hyperbolic claims made by others.

There's an example right in the very comment that I just linked to. Narvaez writes that WHO studies show that "in societies where breastfeeding is expected to be the norm there are no physical difficulties." NO physical difficulties? What about those babies with cleft palates, those with Downs Syndrome and other congenital defects, very low muscle tone, severe tongue tie or mothers with hypoplastic breasts who can't produce milk? These issues occur in all societies, not just in modern industrialized ones and the breastfeeding difficulties they cause don't disappear in societies where breastfeeding is the norm. I totally agree that breastfeeding difficulties are almost absent in societies where breastfeeding is the norm, but Narvaez goes too far when she says that there are none. What her statement does is to idealize breastfeeding. Her statement that 99% of women can breastfeed was another example of how she manipulated statistics. The source she was citing from actually said that 95-99% of women can breastfed, and Narvaez knowingly cited the most optimistic figure.

What I particularly want to focus on in this post, however, is Narvaez' claim that "Chemicals used in rocket fuel production have even been found in some infant formulas." Now that sounds really scary. Who wants to be told that their babies are drinking a concoction that is laced with rocket fuel. There are a number of things wrong with this statement. It is an example of the logical fallacy known as appeal to fear. The reference to "chemicals", in the plural, serves to heighten this claim. Narvaez implies that more than one constituent in formula is tainted by association with rocket fuel.

As it is, the link in Narvaez' footnote only refers to one chemical, perchlorate. In the form of ammonium perchlorate, it is used as a propellant for rocket fuel. However, it also has other uses, one of them medicinal and in fertilizer, but the statement "Chemicals used in fertilizers have even been found in some infant formulas" just doesn't strike the same level of fear into a pregnant mother's heart. Perchlorate has been found to be naturally present in arid environments. There has been some contamination due to its release into groundwater after NASA launches and fireworks displays.

It has also been detected in breast milk, at higher levels than in infant formula. There's a touch of irony in this, given that Narvaez mentions its presence in formula to debunk the myth that formula is as safe as breastmilk.

Perchlorate is a chemical which may disrupt thyroid activity, so its presence in formula and breastmilk could be a cause for concern. However, this is not a reason to wean babies from breastmilk or bovine-based formula. When this chemical was discovered in breastmilk, the media had a field day with the rocket fuel reference as well, this time in an attempt to sensationalize the issue and possibly also to discredit breastfeeding (that's my conspiracy theorist alter-ego talking there.)

I don't want to downplay the issue of perchlorate or other contaminants, but this is just a further indication that Darcia Narvaez' aim is not so much to inform as to strongly persuade. I don't think there's anything wrong with attempting to persuade, but this is an attempt to persuade cloaked in the guise of providing information and in this case, it went badly awry.

Next time you want to do something to promote breastfeeding, Darcia,sit on your hands - you'll do a whole lot more good that way. If you do aim to inform, then I hope that in future you try to do it honestly and look very carefully at the way in which you present "facts".

By the way, breastmilk and some formulas (the ready to feed ones) also contain an ingredient that is also produced as a result of the combustion of rocket fuel and whose overconsumption can result in death. I'll leave it up to you guys to guess what it is.

Law professor makes a half-baked attempt to bash homeschooling

2011-08-09T11:30:00.000-07:00

I'm a regular follower of Milton Gaither's blog, and I like it even more now that he recently posted a complimentary review of my MA dissertation.

In a recent blog Gaither reviewed Catherine J. Ross, “Fundamentalist Challenges to Core Democratic Values: Exit and Homeschooling.” in William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 18, 991-1014 (2010). As the whole essay was available online (which isn’t always the case with articles or studies in scholarly journals), I decided to take a look at Ross's arguments.

As a homeschooling mother myself, I admit that I’m biased. However, I feel that homeschoolers do themselves a disservice when they simply dismiss what the detractors of homeschooling have to say by invoking conspiracy theories. The concerns of those who critize homeschooling can't be just brushed off and ignored. I believe that it's important to address their arguments with an open mind. With this in mind, I started reading Ross's essay.

I couldn’t decide whether Ross just has an ideological objection to homeschooling, or whether the claims she makes are borne of ignorance as well. Her bias clearly comes through in her essay, in which she stated that homeschoolers poses a threat to fundamental democratic values. In fact, Ross makes a number of claims. She asserts that “the growing reliance on homeschooling comes into direct conflict with assuring that children are exposed to… constitutional values” (such as tolerance). She claims that the overwhelming majority of homeschoolers are religious fundamentalists who want to “protect their children from conflicting messages.” She argues that the requirement of state oversight applies not only to the educational attainment of homeschoolers, but also to religious indoctrination by homeschooling parents. Ross also claims that the state’s interest in a pluralist democracy entitles it to monitor such indoctrination in homeschooling families, at least during those hours when they are educating their children.

Although the article is written in a scholarly tone, and relies heavily (in some sections) on legal citations, its flaws expose it as being rather tendentious. In fact, when I examined Ross’ sources, I was astounded at the way in which she cherrypicks quotes out of context to support her statements. And, to quote one of my favorite statements from daytime television “that’s not all!” Ross’s article is one long example of how to manipulate quotes and statistics in order to make it seem as though they to support your point of view.

Ross starts out by describing the historical background of homeschooling in the USA, before moving onto the current situation. The first thing that jumped out at me when I read Ross’s essay was her assertion that “almost ninety percent of parents who homeschool do so for reasons stemming from their religious beliefs.” Ross’s conclusion is based on surveys conducted in 2003 and 2008 by the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education. She states that in 2007, eighty-three percent of homeschoolers reported that they chose to keep their children at home to ‘provide religious or moral instruction’.” In this survey, only 36% of homeschooling parents cited this as their primary reason. However, Ross argues that any degree of religious motivation places homeschoolers in the category of fundamentalist. In light of the fact that nearly 84% of Americans identify themselves as having a religious affiliation, and that I know several moderate homeschooling Christians who do not prevent their children from being exposed to other teachings, I don't get Ross's point. According to the Pew Report, 26% of Americans are evangelical Christians, which does indicate that, with 36% of homeschoolers having religion (or moral teaching) as their primary motivation, this element is, to a certain degree, overrepresented in the American homeschool population, but I can't see it being 90%. Aside from this, homeschooling for reasons stemming from your religious beliefs does not equate teaching your child intolerance. Martin Luther King was religious and I don't think that Ross would regard him as an example of intolerant.

What Ross does next with the results of these surveys is the part that took my breath away. When I read that “homeschooling parents cite their desire to protect their children from “negative peer pressure,” much as the Amish parents in Yoder worried about the goings-on in high school”, I started smelling a very stinky rat. I have no religious beliefs myself and one thing that I really like about homeschooling is the fact that it reduces negative peer pressure on my children. I don’t have a problem with the fact that my 17 year old son is way more responsible than his peers, and, even though he’s an avid blues and rock guitarist, isn’t interested in drugs or alcohol. I’m quite happy that my nearly 14 year old daughter still has no desire to shave her legs or wear make-up. However, I wasn’t aware that this makes me a religious fundamentalist. According to Ross, however, not only are those who primarily homeschooled because they were “concerned about the school environment” (21% in 2007) but also those who said they were “dissatisfied with the academic instruction at other schools” (17% in 2007) religious fundamentalists in secular clothing. She only regarded the group whose primary motivation was interest “in a nontraditional approach to children’s education” and those with special needs children as genuine non-religious homeschoolers.

After my initial “WTF?” reaction to this assertion of Ross’s I decided to test it. I found the actual questions asked by the NCES and shamelessly posted them in the form of a poll on a secular homeschooling forum. I know that this doesn’t count as a scientific survey, and there is the possibility that some respondents might have checked out the answers before responding themselves, but the results of my little survey were that over 30% of the secular homeschoolers cited concern with the school environment or dissatisfaction with academic instruction as one of their main motivations. I wonder if Ross might conclude that the secular homeschoolers’ forum is crawling with religious fundamentalists, if she was even willing to accept the possible validity of my results.

Ross then quotes the following from David Sikkink, author of Conservative Protestants, Schooling, and Democracy (supra note 27) : “a significant minority of conservative and evangelical Protestants have chosen some form of an exit strategy in favor of religious schools.” However, Sikkink puts this figure in perspective by stating that 69% of conservative Protestants want to work with public schools, a similar percentage to Catholics at 67% and not far below mainstream Protestants at 76%.

Later on in her essay, Ross cites Sikkink once again, to support the point that “some
data indicate that students in evangelical schools demonstrate less comfort with freedom of speech than their peers in public schools.” (supra note 111) It’s ironic that she tries to shore up her arguments with quotes from a source that contradicts her major thesis. Right after Ross’s former quote from Sikkink, he says “I argue that there is little reason to be concerned that these schools will have dire consequences for a healthy democracy – at least judging in terms of curriculum, practices and civic philosophy.”

Sikkink concludes, “All told then, it appears that conservative Protestants and their institutions are not the strongest and most consistent supporters of a traditional democratic education within schools, but divisions on schooling issues within the movement make it unlikely that conservative Protestants pose a significant threat to democracy.” He perceives a greater threat to democratic education from too much testing, the emphasis on individual choice and the cultural assumption that education is about private choice, but he doesn’t link the latter to conservative Protestants or homeschooling specifically. In this article Sikkink specifically addressed many of the issues that concern Ross.

On examing the rest of Ross’s essay, I found some more citations that didn’t seem to reflect the conclusions of the sources she quoted. As I mentioned before, she cites a number of legal judgements to support her view that “the state can and should limit the ability of intolerant homeschoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their children—at least during the portion of the day they claim to devote to satisfying the compulsory schooling requirement.” Not only does this idea have a faintly Orwellian ring to it (I can’t imagine how this could realistically be implicated, other than by actively listening in on homeschoolers) but the judgements that Ross cites contradict this.

Ross fails to mention that the various courts’ rejection of the claims by homeschoolers for autonomy and for freedom from oversight are specifically limited to the academic content of their children’s education, the content of public school curricula or in dealing with cases where there is evidence of child abuse or neglect. She mentions that “circuit courts that have reached the question have uniformly held that once parents enroll their children in public school, (my emphasis) their rights to restrict the curriculum to which their children are exposed are extremely limited” but spends the rest of that section assuming that US courts would extend this limitation of rights to homeschoolers. Rather than take my word for it that Ross is misrepresenting these judgements to support her case, let’s see what the judgements themselves say (these are all judgements that Ross quotes from (directly or indirectly) or cites in her article:

Mozert v. HawkinsCounty Public Schools: The parents in the present case want their children to acquire all the skills required to live in modern society. They also want to have them excused from exposure to some ideas they find offensive. Tennessee offers two options to accommodate this latter desire. The plaintiff parents can either send their children to church schools or private schools, as many of them have done, or teach them at home. Tennessee law prohibits any state interference in the education process of church schools:
The state board of education and local boards of education are prohibited from regulating the selection of faculty or textbooks or the establishment of a curriculum in church-related schools. TCA 49-50-801(b). Similarly the statute permitting home schooling by parents or other teachers prescribes nothing with respect to curriculum or the content of class work.

Swanson vs Guthrie: The board's policy… does not prohibit them from home-schooling Annie in accordance with their religious beliefs, and does not force them to do anything that is contrary to those beliefs.

Brown vs Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions: (arguably the court judgement with the most salacious title)
The Meyer and Pierce cases, we think, evince the principle that the state cannot prevent parents from choosing a specific educational program -- whether it be religious instruction at a private school or instruction in a foreign language. That is, the state does not have the power to "standardize its children" or "foster a homogenous people" by completely foreclosing the opportunity of individuals and groups to choose a different path of education. … We do not think,however, that this freedom encompasses a fundamental constitutional right to dictate the curriculum at the public school to which they have chosen to send their children.

Parker vs Hurley: …while parents can choose between public and private schools, they do not have a constitutional right to "direct how a public school teaches their child.

Combs v. Homer-Center School District: (a case that Ross says lies at the core of her argument) Parents do not have a constitutional right to avoid reasonable state regulation of their children’s education. Act 169's reporting and superintendent review requirements ensure children taught in home education programs demonstrate progress in the educational program. The statute does not interfere, or authorize any interference, with Parents’ religious teachings and/or use of religious materials.

Blau v. Fort Thomas Pub. Sch. Dist: The critical point is this: While parents may have a fundamental right to decide whether to send their child to a public school, they do not have a fundamental right generally to direct how a public school teaches their child. Whether it is the school curriculum, the hours of the school day, school discipline, the timing and content of examinations, the individuals hired to teach at the school, the extracurricular activities offered at the school or, as here, a dress code, these issues of public education are generally "committed to the control of state and local authorities."

Fields v. Palmdale Sch. Dist. is the only recent judgement that I found which comes closest to supporting Ross’s assertion: In fine, education is not merely about teaching the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Education serves higher civic and social functions, including the rearing of children into healthy, productive, and responsible adults and the cultivation of talented and qualified leaders of diverse backgrounds.
This judgement also states that the right of the parents "to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs" is not protected by the constitutional right to privacy, at least not as that purported right is understood by the parents in this case.”

This part refers to the claim by the parents in this case, who objected to the inclusion of questions of a personal and sexual nature in a survey conducted among pupils at a public school. The idea that the limitation of such rights is intended to apply within the context of public school attendance is further strengthened by the following quote from this judgement:
In sum, we affirm that the Meyer-Pierce right does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door. The parents' asserted right ‘to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs,’ by which they mean the right to limit what public schools or other state actors may tell their children regarding sexual matters, is not encompassed within the Meyer-Pierce right to control their children's upbringing and education.

At a stretch, it could be argued that the reference to “other state actors” stretches the applicability of this issue beyond the public schools, but this is unlikely, given the context of this case. I would assert that Ross would have to provide more concrete and relevant evidence than this to support her assertions.

Ross quotes the Combs decision as stating that the state "has a proper interest in the manner in which those schools perform their secular education function” to justify that “the state can and should limit the ability of intolerant homeschoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their children.” However, this quote, which is actually from a 1968 Supreme Court decision, says nothing about religious education. Contrary to Ross’s assertions, it actually concludes that the state is not responsible for monitoring the religious content of a child’s education, only the secular content.

Ross also draws on a well-publicized Californian judgement to support her assertion that the intolerance of religious homeschoolers necessitates state intervention: “Similarly, in Jonathan L. v. Superior Court a California appellate court held that there is no constitutional right to homeschool, even when motivated by religious beliefs." What the court actually said was that no absolute right to home school exists. Although the difference between a constitutional right and an absolute constitutional right may seem trivial, I would argue that it is significant. If parents had an absolute right to homeschool, they could do it under any circumstances, even those where their children were being abused. The court realizes that an absolute right would leave children who are in danger of criminal abuse at the mercy of their parents.

Although the circumstances referred to in the judgement are those in which there is strong suspicion of child abuse, Ross infers (supra note 96) that the court is addressing the way in which the children’s education impacted on their economic and social success. Although the court states that education serves an economic, political and social purpose and that “The public schools bring together members of different racial and cultural groups and, hopefully, help them to live together ‘in harmony and mutual respect’” it declares, “We are…not concerned with the interference with the rights of a fit parent.”

Ross also devotes part of her essay to arguing that because private schools are subject to state oversight, homeschools should be too. As an example of state intervention in intolerant teachings at a private school, she cites a radical madrassa which “taught its students to challenge the authority of the United States and urged students to grow up to be suicide bombers,” adding that “This decision would not, in my view, compromise the rights of the teachers or the parents to continue to voice their opinions outside the temporal space reserved for compulsory schooling, as long as they did not violate any criminal statutes, including those governing incitement.” Ross is using the example of state intervention in a school that does something illegal (incitement to violence) to support her call for the state to prevent schools and parents (for part of the day) indoctrinating children with ideas that are not illegal. Such ideas certainly are repellant to many people, but there's no law against them. Much as I disagree with these ideas, it’s a far cry from teaching children that homosexuality is a sin and the earth was created in 7 days and women should submit to their husbands to telling them they have to stone gays or assassinate someone whohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif teaches evolution or organizing polygamous marriages for underage girls. However, the practices that Ross would like to limit in religious homeschooling families are not illegal and until they are, Ross is going to come up with a much, much stronger argument to make her point. The court judgements that Ross cited all support the rights of parents teaching their children to choose what ideas they're exposed to, so she’s got quite a job ahead of her.

2009-06-29T06:53:00.000-07:00

One thing I really miss about South Africa is Christmas in summer...eating an enormous roast turkey and Christmas pudding and afterwards lolling around the swimming pool. Our Christmas traditions came from the UK and it was only when, after we were living in Europe, that a friend expressed surprise that I was making a salad to eat with the roast instead of cooked vegetables that I realised to what extent we had adapted them to suit our own climate.

Indeed it was only after moving to the northern hemisphere that I realised the point of Christmas, and other similar celebrations. Christmas is supposed to be at the shortest, coldest time of the year instead of the hottest and Easter is supposed to be in spring instead of in autumn. We lived practically on the tropic of Capricorn and it took me a while to get used to the fact, when I moved to the northern hemisphere, that the hottest part of the day was not just after midday, as it was in South Africa, but in the late afternoon, when I expected it to be cooling down. The summer and winter solstice had no meaning for us, as the difference between sunset in summer and winter was about an hour.

I absolutely adore the long summer days that we experience here, but I've never actually celebrated it properly (I'm not exactly the pagan type). Thus it was by chance that I got the opportunity to take part in a summer solstice celebration, thanks to Rowena's drama teacher, Dee, who was organising the torchlit procession. It really was a magical evening (well, except for the midges that were feasting on my delicious blood). I came away feeling somehow joyful, uplifted. A photographer from the Irish times was there, too, and he recorded it:
http://www.irishtimes.com/indepth/slideshows/midsummer-celebrations/

If you look carefully, you can see Rowena in the background at 1:43, (behind the hand of the woman lighting the torches), 1:23 (between the two people leading the procession), 1:02 (silhouetted in the middle) and in the next photo (from the back, talking to her friend Aisling).

Deschooling

2009-03-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

I was reading a comment by a German-speaking blogger about 1000Sunny, a father in the process of deschooling (and one of my favourite bloggers). She is rather annoyed that he goes on about how bad school is and how wonderful unschooling is (of course it is wonderful, I agree ;-) ). She takes umbrage at the fact that he seems to reduce having children who are in the school system to the equation, "I don't love my children and I don't want to understand them".

Whilst I think that there is a bit of button pressing going on there and that this blogger might also want to take this as an opportunity to examine why she feels so annoyed by the stance he is taking (or seems, to her, to be taking) I can also understand (and maybe I, too, am just projecting) where he might be coming from. My mother-in-law says that people who give up smoking generally annoy her more than lifelong unsmokers. She calls them "reborn lungs". She is referring to people who are so taken up with the new joys of non-smoking that they have strong negative reactions to people around them who still smoke - who campaign loudest for anti-smoking legislation. (I, by the way, am a lifelong unsmoker, except for one occasion when I was 15). I have also seen this attitude in new mothers who come to my breastfeeding support group and go through a period of perceiving bottlefeeding as a form of child abuse, even though they had considered breastfeeding and bottlefeeding to be equal choices before they had children.

When making big, life-changing, philosophical decisions, most people tend to swing like a pendulum from one extreme to the other before settling somewhere in the middle. Maybe it is important for people to go through this stage of experience strong revulsion against and rejection of their previous lifestyle choices. Maybe deschooling truly happens when one can look at school and teachers and schoolpupils and their parents without having an emotional reaction.

Enjoying our freedom....

2009-03-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

I was just reading a bit of officialese about the ins and outs of how the German educational authorities can make use of information about children registered in a community to enforce school attendance and I have to say that my feeling was one of overwhelming relief that we are not living in Germany - not even on a part-time basis. After we bought our house in Ireland, we did the back-and-forth thing a few times, with my husband remaining in Germany and the children and I spending time between both places.

The end result was that I felt as though I was living in some kind of spy film about East Germany. The school authorities had set one of the local officials to report on our movements to them and he went about a job with the utmost gusto. Luckily, this chap had a relative living in our very quiet street, so he had plenty of opportunity to stroll past our house and report that our car was parked in front of the house, our trash was being collected, our trampoline was still in the garden and often there were children playing in the garden on weekends. I started really paranoid - after all, who knew what neighbour was co-operating with the authorities.

Once my husband's job in Germany came to an end, there was no use staying in Germany at all and we thankfully decamped to Ireland on a permanent basis. Our children have now been registered as home-educated here in Ireland and we were visited by an inspector, who seemed quite impressed, if not a little overwhelmed, by the plethora of books and educational toys and games that clutter our house (other women buy handbags, I buy books).

I was at a conference here in Ireland last week, the main topic of which was actually breastfeeding (my other "speciality") but they had a well-known Irish parenting expert as the keynote speaker. Just by the by, the issue of homeschooling was mentioned three times in the question time after his talk (in contexts such as "homeschooling is not an option for us" - with a daughter who had been having a hard time at school - , "I would happily homeschool, but my daughter is looking forward to starting school" - with a daughter who is extroverted - and a comment from a home educating father). I was absolutely bowled over by the matter-of-fact attitude to home education, compared with Germany, where the topic is just plain taboo.

What's happening with the Neubronners

2007-12-19T13:42:00.000-08:00

The Neubronner family in Bremen has been having some tough times recently. After they received a letter announcing yet another increase in the fines imposed (now totalling 7 500 euros) and threatening them with other punitive measures (not elaborated on in the letter), they decided to send their sons to school for the time being. They were concerned, having heard a rumour that the school authorities planned to remove their sons from their custody right before or during the Christmas period, and decided that this step was necessary so that they could at least have a peaceful Christmas.

Thomas is coping ok, although he is incredibly bored and can't bear to look at the acts of brutality among his classmates. Moritz, however, is already showing signs of strain. He told me last night that every three minutes he counts the days till the Christmas vacation and tells his teachers at every opportunity that he is only going because of the Zwangsgeld and the threat of his parents losing custody, but he hates school. Dagmar said that he has already started getting the cough which he had continually when he was previously at school for two years. The other boys tease him maliciously and call him a truant because he was being home educated. In spite of all this, he is demonstrating quiet perseverance while he bears his burden. He is particularly proud of the fact that, in spite of being unschooled (or because of it), he is top of the class in his year and second best among the students in the year ahead of him.

Moving away from a pluralistic society

2007-12-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

One of the things I was busy with recently was a translation of the recent judgement of the German Federal Court in the matter of a home educating family who had two of their children removed from their custody, which was taken over by the local Jugendamt (something akin to a welfare office for children). What seems to have happened is that the Jugendamt official responsible for the children's education and place of residence got to know the family and realised that there was really no danger to the children's welfare. He allowed the parents to take the children to Austria and register them as resident there, after which he himself applied to the Austrian education authorities to register the children as homeschoolers in Austria, according to that country's laws.

The court, dealing with the parent's appeal against a lower court's refusal to return the children's custody to them, took a dim view of this and not only upheld the lower court's decision, but declared that the Jugendamt official was incompetent. It decided that the custody of the children should be handed to another office more capable of upholding the original intent of the removal of custody - the enforcement of the children's compulsory school attendance.

The work of translating this document was a very emotional experience for me - I'm sure there isn't a homeschooler who can read this without the bile rising up inside them. The sheer arrogance of the judges just takes one's breath away. How else can one explain a statement like this one,

"There is no necessity to call for such a report, as the advantages of school attendance and the relative disadvantages of home education, as described by the Higher Regional Court – in line with the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court – are accessible to the judges’ expert knowledge, with no other evidence being necessary, and furthermore are covered by the the evaluation of the legislators of education law in Germany as well as that of the Constitutional Court."

And the following statement is a slap in the face for every civilised country (for example, Germany's neighbour, Austria) in which home education has been permitted for decades :

"The mental and emotional welfare of the children is lastingly endangered because the first Party rejects and hinders the school education which is important for the development of the children in a pluralistic society. It is a moot point whether the home education of the children ensures an adequate transfer of knowledge, as children should also grow up in community life. "

It is ironic that this (and other German courts dealing with homeschooling cases) has the cheek to mention the importance of living in a pluralistic society and then states, elsewhere in the judgement :

"Society at large has a rightful interest in working against the formation of religiously or ideologically coloured “parallel societies” and in integrating minorities in this respect."

A few minutes after doing an internet search on the word pluralism, I started thinking that the judges's expert knowledge of pluralism is on a par with their knowledge of homeschooling.

From the Encyclopaedia Britannica - http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9060460/pluralism

Pluralism assumes that diversity is beneficial to society and that autonomy should be enjoyed by disparate functional or cultural groups within a society, including religious groups, trade unions, professional organizations, and ethnic minorities.

From Answers.com - http://www.answers.com/topic/pluralism?cat=technology

Pluralism
A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and tolerated within a society.
The belief that such a condition is desirable or socially beneficial.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-pluralism/ ,

The strongest version of political pluralism claims that all these value systems are equally true (and thus presumably all ought to be tolerated), a weaker view is that these value systems all ought to be tolerated, and probably the most common version of the view is that some of these systems (the reasonable ones) ought to be tolerated.

On the one hand, this and other similar judgements highlight the importance of pluralism, but then they often go on to talk about the "common good" (or similar words, such as the "interest" of "society at large", as I translated it). If I am understanding it correctly, these courts themselves are not only not acting in terms of an understanding of pluralism, they are actually making a mockery of the term. I know that Wikipedia is not necessarily the most unbiased source, but I was riveted by what their entry on political pluralism has to say about the "Common Good":

Pluralism is connected with the hope that this process of conflict and dialogue will lead to a definition and subsequent realization of the common good that is best for all members of society. This implies that in a pluralistic framework, the common good is not given a priori. Instead, the scope and content of the common good can only be found out in and after the process of negotiation (a posteriori).
Consequently, the common good does not, according to pluralists, coincide with the position of any one cohesive group or organization. However, a necessary outcome of this philosophy is that the beliefs of any particular group cannot represent absolute truth. Therefore any group with a philosophy that purports to hold both absolute truth and identify the common good is wrong - their belief system is irrelevant and cannot represent truth that impacts on others who do not hold to the given belief system.

It seems to me that the German political authorities and courts are busy identifying the common good (stopping homeschooling because it supposedly creates parallel societies) without even attempting to discuss this issue. They have decided that homeschooling is bad for the common good and enforced mandatory school attendance is good for it and basta!

Buying into the Ivy League illusion?

2007-12-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

I was chatting to someone who had been reading my blog recently and she made a comment that I thought was really interesting. She asked why homeschoolers often go on about how they (or other homeschoolers) are attending Ivy League Universities in the USA, something she finds a bit of a contradiction.

My first introduction to homeschooling was an article about the Colfax brothers, who had attended Harvard after being homeschooled. I think that there was an element of "Wow, if they can do that after being homeschooled, then it must be okay", that guided my initial reaction and opened me up to this possibility. I, personally, have had no experience of American universities at all, but my friend had attended both an Ivy League institution and a state college. She said that, in her experience, Ivy League universities are over-rated and not worth the extra tuition fees. The state university that she attended had a much higher standard than the Ivy League university.

She wanted to know why, when homeschoolers prefer to give their children a more individualised (and cheaper) education than they could receive at overrated private schools and then brag that their children are attending these overrated universities.

My immediate reply to her was that first of all, home educators who attend Ivy League universities are usually there on scholarships. Also, I am sure that there some careers in which a particular elite university has a very good course in this discipline, making it worthwhile to attend this college. Generally, homeschoolers don't attend such institution - your average American ex-homeschooled kid is either getting an education at a community or state college or deciding to avoid the option of university altogether, rather concentrating on in-job training or starting their own business.

However, I think that we homeschoolers should examine our assumptions about education and ask ourselves to what extent we are buying into an illusion when we spotlight those homeschoolers who take the Ivy League route. Are we being taken in by the snob effect of these schools (and is this what makes them so expensive) or is this truly education of a high quality which home educators should be proud of achieving?

Germanism

2007-09-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

My husband and I were talking about the German government's attitude to homeschoolers (a friend of mine had received a high-handed letter from a bureaucrat), and he commented, "You can see how the Nazis could establish themselves so easily in Germany".

Now, before anyone accuses him (or me) of Godwinism, let me make one thing clear. We are not accusing the German government or Germans in general of being Nazis. But having lived in that country for a few years, as an outsider, the cultural attitudes that resulted in the Nazis, as well asthe DDR, stand out like a sore thumb to us.

The letter to my friend stated that she has a duty to send her children to school and she must fulfill this duty even if it goes against her conscience. The letter does not deal with the content of her arguments at all. It implies that her duty is to the state, to fulfill its ideas of what is right, even if they go against common sense, experience and research. The German government has taken unproven (and often discredited) educational theories as gospel and decrees that everyone has a duty to obey this without question.

Germans, for the most part, have not yet confronted the weakness in their culture that made them so susceptible to the National Socialist Regime. By this, I mean the tendency to regard the individual as subservient to the State, rather than the other way round.

Recently, talkshow host, Eva Herman, inadvertantly caused a furore when she was misquoted as seeming to praise Nazi family policies. She is now an ex-talkshow host. Anyone who has read a couple of good parenting books knows that extreme sensitivity is is an indication of unhealed wounds. The Germans are plastering over their unhealed wounds with little band-aids making it illegal to promote fascism or anti-semitism, but the cultural foundations of their society are still the same.

By continuing to stick to the Nazi-invented Schulzwang, the German authorities are doing exactly what Eva Herman was accused of doing. You won't catch any German politician, judge or bureaucrat saying "Well, I think that the Nazi educational policies were a good idea", but in applying those same principles so stringently today, they might as well be yelling it through a megaphone.

The thin end of the wedge

2007-09-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

Most Germans, even the majority of those who identify with the principles of family life that home educators embody, perceive us as the lunatic fringe. Although these people are also often stay-at-home mothers (and sometimes fathers) who are closely involved with their children, they cannot identify with those of us who would choose to avoid the school system. They think of school as necessary for their children's social and educational development and feel that the lack of educational freedom in Germany is not their problem. Until recently, most German schoolchildren only spent half the day in school, with their afternoons free for interaction with their parents (if their parents are available).

Well, they'd better think again. What is happening in Germany is only the thin end of a very broad wedge. The issue of freedom in education is becoming one which will touch more Germans, not just those "crazy homeschoolers". What were just the isolated voices of a few socialists, calling for compulsory schooling to become a full day affair for all except infants, is swelling to a choir singing its praises, from all sides of the political spectrum.

In July, Ingrid Sehrbrock, a member of the conservative CDU party, was quoted as saying that it should be compulsory for all children to be in daycare from the age of two years. She restated this position in a letter to a home educating mother, stating: "If I am to take the demand..., that everyone must have a chance, seriously, then it means to me that parents should be obliged to enable their children to attend preschool from the third year of life". She goes on to declare that, "...in France, all children attend the mandatory Ecole Maternelle free of charge from the age of three."

My friend replied to Frau Sehrbrock that she is mistaken - neither school nor preschool is compulsory in France, which has compulsory education, as opposed to compulsory schooling. She still hasn't received a reply to this. One hopes that Frau Sehrbrock is busy checking her sources.

Christian Pfeiffer is concerned about the increase in crime levels among young people. That's understandable, I suppose, him being a criminologist and all that. He points to the link between the increase in violent video games and violent crime and has come up with the perfect solution. To reduce the time that children spend in front of the computer and watching TV, they should be obliged to attend school all day. He supports this assertion by stating that it is already compulsory for children to attend all-day school in many other countries. Perhaps Christian Pfeiffer has been sharing the same sources as Ingrid Sehrbrock. He also thinks that compulsory preschool would be a good idea.

As you can see, educational freedom is not just an issue that affects home educating families. We home educators are like canaries in a coal mine. The manner in which a government treats home educators is an indicator of its respect for families and its attitude to educational freedom in general.

What happened to that educational mandate?

2007-08-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

In Germany, when you finish school, you are obliged to either study further or undergo vocational training. Up till now, the government has been bemoaning the fact that companies are not providing enough apprenticeship places to fulfil this need. Well now, it seems, according to a recent survey, this is no longer an issue. The places are there - the problem is that the current crop of school-leavers don't have the necessary abilities to fill them.

The Bonn /Rhein Sieg Chamber of Industry and Commerce sent a survey out to 2000 companies and over 70% of the respondents stated that the applicants lacked the education necessary to fill all the places which they would be willing to offer. Many of the companies surveyed were unhappy not just with the applicants' academic abilities, but also with their social skills. They bemoaned the applicants' written and spoken expression (76%), mastery of elementary math (57%), their willingness to perform and their motivation (54%), their discipline (46%) and their ability to work under pressure (44%).

Wow! More than half of these school-leavers don't have the education necessary to undergo vocational training. And half of them are lacking in basic social skills. And here I thought that it was part of the German school system's educational mandate to produce "responsible citizens who are able to participate in the democratic processes of a pluralistic society"?

Happily unschooling....all over the place

2007-08-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I should continue having "Happily unschooling in Northern Germany" as the subtitle of this blog, as we (the children and I) are going to be spending the major portion of our time in Ireland. We were recently in the west of Ireland, househunting, and although we didn't find anything suitable at the time, we intend to continue looking.

We had to come back to Germany for a bit to tie up some loose ends and ended up being stuck here for longer than we intended. The "quick" application for a new Irish passport for our eldest son (we had to apply in Germany, as my husband is resident here) turned into a complicated affair, due to his original birth certificate going missing. Thankfully that matter is now sorted out and we should be in possession of passports for all our children. Once we receive the said document, the children and I will be jetting off to Ireland where I can resume my application to study for a masters degree through the National University of Ireland. My sister-in-law is in the process of moving from South Africa to Ireland and so our children will be close to practically all their cousins. I am also in the process of registering our children as homeschoolers with the relevant authority in Ireland.

Ireland and Nothern Germany have a very similar landscape - lots of green fields and open horizons there too. And, I think, that as we will be visiting my husband from time to time, I will continue to have "happily unschooling in Northern Germany" as my subtitle. After all, home education in Germany is what this blog is all about. Thanks to the internet, with online newspapers, skype, email groups and forums I will still have full access to all the news about the home education situation in Germany.

2007-08-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

I read a letter on a conservative blog to one of the German education ministers in response to the situation of the Dudek family in Hessen. The person who wrote this letter obviously felt very strongly about the German governments' approach (as do I). He wrote,

Two times in the twentieth century young men from our nation had to go to Europe to free innocent people from the oppression of the agents of German tyranny. My father's generation and his father's generation. Our men shed their blood and my father risked his life to rid the world of the dark heart of German evil that you now, once again exhume and parade for the entire world to see.

You are persecuting the innocent Dudek family for the "crime" of bringing up their children properly. Your violent interference in this sacred process is an affront to God and one that Americans readily recognize. Your impulse to imprison Christians is from the same spiritual source as your fathers' impulse to exterminate Jews.

Cease and desist.

Hearing of the cruelty you impose on a family that is, in every way, your superior, raises in me, as it will in all Americans (who love freedom more than you love oppression) a fury, when they hear of your deeds, that will not abate until you have made it right, or are properly imprisoned, or if your government should justify you in this, until they, themselves are overthrown and reside in the grave that has been prepared for the criminals of German National Socialism.

You don't seem to have learned your lesson as a nation. Can you ever?

My comment, which I posted on his blog, and which I am posting here, because I think it is an important issue for all foreigners to take note of when writing to German politicians, etc. about home education, is :

Well, as a homeschooler living in Germany (at the moment not officially, I am "visiting" my husband), I have to say that the effect of the tone your email is rather to put the person to whom you are writing on the defensive. If you do get a letter back from Frau Wolff (which I doubt), it will contain the usual waffle about how it is necessary to curtail homeschooling in Germany to prevent the creation of parallel societies and to ensure that children grow up into well-rounded, tolerant, functioning members of society. Those are the faulty accusations which need to be undercut.

Although it is true that the German Schulzwang originated with the Third Reich, and it is totalitarian in the extreme, I'm afraid that accusing German politicians and officials of Nazism is not going to help German homeschoolers. The officials don't care because they are just doing their job in the very German way of applying the rules as they are written and the politicians and judges are just going to think "These arrogant Americans are trying to tell us what to do again. Are they going to invade us next?" Politicians only listen to what their own voters have to say.

I suggest a new tack - pull the feet out from under these people by bringing up their arguments and then discounting them.

Family flees Germany for the sake of handicapped child

2007-08-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

What an embarrassment to the German government! Because of their overzealous application of the compulsory schooling laws, another family is forced to flee to neighbouring Austria for asylum. Are the Hessen school authorities scared witless of some kind of parallel society of handicapped people being formed? I wonder how they can possibly justify the enforced school attendance of this little girl as being in the interests of society or even in her own best interests?

(BTW, I am not sure about she was to have started school this year - or the newspaper got her age wrong. Here it states that children are only schulpflichtig if they have completed their sixth year before June 30).

Austria's Chancellor offers personal help where the German democratic state has failed

Parents want to protect their daughter from enforced school attendance in Germany

Fleeing from the school

Her fifth birthday on June 28 was a big celebration for Madeleine's parents. In the little house in Bad Emstel in the German state of Hessen there were gifts and cake enough to make Madeleine's heart sing - or at least Corinna and Matthias Zeppich are convinced that their daughter was pleased. Madeleine is unable to express her feelings. She suffered severe brain damage as a result of oxygen deprivation at birth, which consequently affected her motor function. In spite of her severe handicap, the five year old must start school in September. "We have already received a letter from the school: because Madeleine was born before June 30 2002, she has to start school in her sixth year", reports her father. "She wouldn't be able to endure the monotony of the school day," warns her paediatrician, Olaf Marzian. This has been confirmed by several other doctors.

Because the officials are insisting on compulsory school attendance, the family has no other choice but to flee to Austria, says Matthias Zeppich. Here, in particular, they have the option of home education instead of school attendance - something which is not infrequently practised in Austria. There are 300 home educated children just in Vienna. "We never ask for the reasons," says an employee of the Vienna Schools Inspectorate.

Chancellor intervenes

This alternative has only existed up to now in Germany in exceptional cases. "We have spoken with various German ministries and they have all told us that Madeline must attend school in Autumn in any event - even if she has to be brought in an ambulance," says Matthias Zeppich. In fact an employee of the responsible Hessen Education Ministry told a reporter from the Wiener Zeitung that handicapped children only start school at the age of seven - however Madeleine's father fears that it would just be delaying the inevitable - they would be dealing with the same issue all over again.

Because their father has his hands full looking after Madeleine and her little brother, Marvin, he does not want to become embroiled in a drawn-out legal battle with the authorities. Thus, the family asked for help in Austria - and received it, at the highest level. Austrian Chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer, has personally ordered the Citizens' Service to support the Zeppichs in their new homeland.

Madeleine, who currently falls under the highest care level, will not be receiving the support of the German social welfare once the family has moved. The Austrian Republic must step in, where the social services of their neighbouring state are clearly malfunctioning.

Aside from the issue of compulsory school attendance, the Zeppichs have another reason for wanting to leave their home. "We were harassed by other people in the housing estate where we live", says Corinna Zeppich.

Harassment in their homeland

Because her handicap means that Madeline looks a bit strange, the neighbours have poked fun at her "angry expression". "They want to get us so riled up that we leave here." At the same time, Madeleine is a bright, happy child. "Only her motor function is limited and she can only make herself understood through her gestures," reports her father. She indicates hunger or thirst by sucking on her bottom lip. "She wasn't able to hold her own bottle and she can't sit upright without help."

It is possible that a highly complicated operation in a specialist clinic could improve Madeleine's condition somewhat. "Her weak lung wouldn't cope with it, though," her father fears. Thus, he tries, at least, to make his daughter's life a little more endurable. "We are constantly fearful that she won't survive one of her frequent bouts of pneumonia. "

A difficult move

Now Madeleine has to deal with the move to Austria, which itself has created another problem. "We need to find an affordable ground floor apartment, with space for all Madeleine's equipment," says her father. As it is, the little girl is continually dependent on an oxygen apparatus and needs a special board to support her stably, as she is unable to stand by herself, an enormous changing table and her hospital bed, which weighs 400kg. "There has been no lack of offers and the people here in Austria were all very nice to Madeleine when we viewed the apartments for the first time. Unfortunately all the properties we have seen so far have been way too expensive."

Apartment-hunting is currently the Zeppichs' biggest headache. According to Walter Wotzel from the Ministry for Social Services, who has been entrusted with Madeleine's case, "We will support the family in all social issues, but they have to attend to the apartment themselves."

J K Rowling and Compulsory Schooling

2007-08-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

Now that I have outed myself as a Harry Potter fan, and demonstrated that it is not anti-Christian, I suggest that homeschoolers should read, at least, page 173 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Here is what I wrote to J K Rowling about it :

Dear Ms Rowling

I have just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (bought it Saturday morning, my 13 year old son read it first and finished it Sunday after an all-nighter and I read it Sunday and yesterday – my children were sorely neglected yesterday, but don’t feel guilty.)

In all the magnificence of the book, there was one paragraph which really jumped out at me. It was the paragraph on page 173 where Lupin tells Harry, Ron and Hermione that attendance at Hogwarts is now compulsory (except for Muggle-borns, who are forbidden from attending). You did your research very well, Ms Rowling. You are obviously aware of the Reichsschulgesetz passed in Germany in 1938 which not only banned private schools and home education but also introduced “Schulzwang” (enforced school attendance). Jewish children were forbidden under this law from attending school.

Back to the world of Harry Potter – imagine that after the downfall of Voldemort and his evil regime, the Ministry for Magic decided that all his statutes should be done away with – except for the above one making school attendance not only compulsory, but in future enforcing it with the harshest measures possible – fining wizards to the tune of half their gold if their children did not attend Hogwarts, or removing their legal custody over their children or (in the case of one young witch who failed the subjects Potions and Ancient Runes and whose parents had decided to remove her from Hogwarts and let her learn at her own pace rather than having her relegated, unwillingly and unfairly, to becoming a squib) having Dolores Umbridge declaring, after interviewing the girl for an hour, that she was suffering from a mental illness and sending her to St Mungo’s psychiatric ward. Imagine sentencing parents to a term in Azkhaban to force them to send their children to Hogwarts.

The reasons for these actions would, of course, be very well-meaning. In order to prevent another Voldemort from coming to power, it would now be necessary for all children, by means of attendance (now compulsory from the age of 6) at Hogwarts and wizarding primary schools, to learn how to live in society and to become responsible citizens, developing tolerance for other points of view.

Another strong motivation for this would be that the Ministry has a legitimate interest in countering parallel societies. Imagine if people like the Lovegoods were able to educate their children at home – it is necessary for the good of society and for the welfare of the children that such minorities are not allowed to indoctrinate their offspring into believing their strange world-views. And of course, even more dangerous is the minority of wizarding families who might use the opportunity to home educate their children to indoctrinate them with the pure-blood, anti-muggle propaganda. The Ministry for Magic might declare that mandatory school attendance is not an infringement of the parents’ right to educate their children, but merely a complement to this right – the Ministry and the parents both perform an equal role in bringing up young witches and wizards.

Even witches and wizards briefly visiting Britain, and coming from countries where home education is allowed in the wizarding world (as it is in all other countries) would be forced to send their children to Hogwarts. Distance learning programmes from their own country would be declared invalid in Britan. Of course, in the meantime, there would be Ministry-approved distance learning programmes for young British wizards to use while they are living in another country, so that they do not have to attend a foreign-language school. Equally possible would be for these expatriate young witches and wizards to come back to England to write their OWLs and NEWTs, as home educated students whilst officially living overseas.

Ms Rowling, if you find this schizophrenic state of affairs abhorrent, then I would encourage you, the next time you are talking to German media or if you happen to visit Germany, to highlight this state of affairs, which exists in Germany today. German home educators (who cover a broad spectrum from religiously motivated home educators to people who, as a last desperate measure, remove their autistic / underchallenged / overchallenged / bullied / severely depressed, etc. children from school, even though they are aware of the legal consequences) are severely harassed by the authorities. Many German home educators have already gone into exile, rather than face having their children removed from them.

Did you ever have an inkling that....

2007-08-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

the Harry Potter books might be Christian literature? (gasp!)

For all the so-called differences between home educators, when it comes down to it, they can be divided into two groups : Those who are avid Harry Potter fans and those who see Harry Potter as akin to Satanism. Okay, there are the odd sods who don't give a hoot about J K Rowling's famous, and now sadly complete, series, but they really don't count.

I've always wondered why our Christian neighbours who are so anti-Harry Potter love C S Lewis' Narnia books (their mother even bought our son The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for his birthday last year, which was great because I had had the whole series since I was twelve excepting that one, which went missing at some stage). Now I've just discovered that my feelings on this matter are shared by none less than John Granger, author of the book The Hidden Key to Harry Potter.

Granger states, "I started reading the Potter books as an Orthodox Christian father who had to explain to his oldest daughter why we don't read such trash, but once I started turning the pages the University of Chicago side of me kicked in."

He refers in his book to the classical and mediaeval symbolism in J K Rowling's novels, declaring that she is an inkling, writing in the tradition of Tolkien and Lewis from a Christian metaphorical point of view.

One thing is for sure - Granger is probably one of the few authors who are not suffering from J K Rowling envy.

Do you think I can get away with giving our neighbour's daughter Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone for her next birthday? Or maybe I should give them Granger's book first...

Update: Here is a wonderful blog entry about this issue, which includes a link to Professor Granger's own blog.

2nd update: I really enjoyed reading this one - Tasses you're welcome to ally yourself with me - I don't have one of those cutesy pictures on my car.

Homebound yes homeschool no

2007-08-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

This situation is so fraught with irony. Betsy Loiacono has an autistic son who has been declared by a doctor to be unfit to attend school. She wants him to receive homebound instruction. The school authorities of her local county refuse to recognise the doctor's note and have taken her to court and had her arrested for truancy. Betsy refuses to take the easy (for the authorities) way out and register her son as a homeschooler, as she feels she is entitled to the support that she would then have to give up. She is insisting that her son receive homebound tuition.

I wonder how Corinna Fischer, mother of a young boy who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, would regard this situation. After he suffered from traumatic bullying experiences, she took him out of school and started home-educating him. As she is living in Germany, not even the option of homeschooling is legally available to her. She has also become quite familiar with the inside of court buildings in the last couple of years.The school authorities even tried to convince the court that Corinna had her son's diagnosis made up by friendly psychiatrists.

That is one irony in this situation. The other is that Georgia, like Germany, has compulsory attendance laws (instead of compulsory education)
"Every parent, guardian, or other person residing within this state having control or charge of any child or children between their seventh and sixteenth birthdays shall enroll and send such child or children to a public school, a private school, or a home study program."

Just a tiny little addition to German school laws would make a world of difference for people like Corinna Fischer and her son.

Schools for individualists

2007-07-14T03:15:00.000-07:00

I've always wondered what lay at the root of the German government's stubborn assertion that school is necessary for the development of a child into a responsible member of society. This fascinating interview has clarified the issue for me.

Marsha Enright states in the interview, referring to the well-known educationalist, John Dewey

In addition, Dewey focused on the socialization of the child. For him, the school was about teaching the child how to get along with other people and be a part of society—this was the crux of his “pedagogic creed.” You can see it in his famous declaration about the purpose of education, first published in The School Journal in January 1897. Dewey wrote, “I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs.”

Educationalists who dogmatically follow the Dewey line are obviously unaware that they are just being closed-minded in their religious fervour. How else can one explain their clinging to an outdated and unproven, or should I say, disproven, theory.

Especially the last sentence of this quote indicates that Dewey stood for the antithesis of individualism. Nor does he realise that the peer-group dumbing-down which takes place in schools acts as a funnel into "narrowness of action and feeling".

To top it all, the "Dewey-influenced" schools are the ones from which parents are removing their children in droves. That speaks volumes for their effectivity in turning out functinal members of society.

Public school - that wonderful melting pot

2007-07-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

Emma Goldman, a revolutionary who had the guts to change her mind, once had this to say

'Public school - where the human mind is drilled and manupulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression."

Is that what the German Constitutional Court meant when they declared,
"...social competence in mixing with people of different points of view, practising tolerance, assertiveness and self-assertion of a conviction which is different to the mainstream can be better exercised when contacts with the society and its different perceptions do not just happen occasionally but are part of the everyday experience as connected with school attendance."?

Christopher Hitchens refers to the essence of totalitarianism as being "created sick and forced to be well". Sounds like what happens in Germany. I wanna puke every time I read another report parroting this twaddle. In the meantime, they pretend that the schools are the healthy option, forcing a totalitarian system on the German youth.

Successes of the German school system

2007-07-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

Before you read this and start getting uptight and defensive, I just want to say one thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing schools, or implying that the children who attend them are generally social deviants or that parents whose children attend school are in any way deficient in their commitment to their duty, or some other guff like that.

What I am bashing, however, is the automatic, ignorant comment that is invariably spouted, robot-like, by any judge or official functionary every time the subject of homeschooling comes up. Here I mean, the statement (yawn) that school is indispensible for the proper social development of a child into a decent citizen and that homeschooling would only encourage the promotion of parallel societies.

Anyway, today I was sitting in a cafe, idling away my time over a cup of coffee, while my daughter was at her riding lesson. To pass the time I paged through a copy of that popular German tabloid, Bild. And came across this shocking story.

The tormented Jasmin: The girl who tortured her talks.

She hides her tears behind her hands. "I'm so sorry", says Denise (14) softly. "I'm so ashamed of myself." Thus, slowly, what she did to her victim is sinking in. And what she has done to herself. The police are investigating attempted homicide.

Denise is one of the seven girls who brutally tortured the 14 year Jasmin from Bottrop (NRW). For twelve hours, they tormented Jasmin with kicks, hitting, hot wax and glowing hot needles. Up till then, they had been a clique, friends...

Denise stammers: "I don't know any more why I joined in at all." She says, "I did it because Ramona wanted me to." Ramona, another of Jasmin's tormentors, is just 13 years old.

Criminal psychologist, Christian Lüdke, explains why these young girls went out of control.

„One calls it a deficiency in impulse control. The person looks for a weak victim, who is fully broken down and humiliated. The culprit loses control and can't stop anymore. In this intoxication, his own dissatisfaction is fought against. There is also a degree of criminal energy, that we haven't known of in girls up till now.

How many times can you say peer pressure?

Two pages later, I found this article, about one of the alleged brains behind the attacks on the World Trade Center, Said Bahaji, son of a German mother and a Moroccan father, and model pupil. Although I do not tolerate or condone his actions or the thinking behind them, I can imagine a possible scenario which led to them. Half-German boy who looks Arabic, never quite fits in anywhere finds his solace in the extreme teachings of fundamentalist Islam and in a group who welcomes him as one of their own.

And they say Homeschooling creates parallel societies?

Yet another example of German State hypocrisy

2007-07-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

His Excellency, Ambassador Mehmet İrtemçelik
Turkish Embassy, Berlin

Your Excellency,

In light of the current situation in Turkey, where a 17 year old German youth is being held in custody pending his trial on a charge of sexual molestation of a 13 year British girl, I would like to draw your attention to the outrageous hyprocisy of German politicians. I have read that high-ranking German politicians are trying to maintain that your country is apparently out of step with modern Western norms. Mr İrtemçelik, my sympathy is completely with your country in this regard.

Those very politicians who try to force Turkey, and other countries, to act in the manner they desire (although if it was a 13 year German girl who had allegedly been molested by a 17 year old British or Turkish youth, I doubt these politicians would be so fired up), conveniently ignore the fact that Germany itself is totally out of step with the European Union and the rest of the civilised world.

You may or may not be aware that Germany is the only country in Europe in which there is forced school attendance. Although education is a right accorded by the UN Human Rights Convention, as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights, Germany is the only country which chooses to interpret this right to education as a right to schooling (i.e. by attendance of a state school or state-approved private school). Not only that, but Germany implements this interpretation by harshly punishing any families who choose to educate their children in a manner which is not in accordance with this interpretation.

For instance, we are an Irish/South African family living temporarily in Germany while my husband, an Aerospace engineer, is working as a subcontractor (known as Leiharbeiter in German) at Airbus in Bremen. We have already endured various moves around the world since my husband started working in this manner nearly 10 years ago. The work is always uncertain and we never know how long we are going to be able to stay in a particular place. In order to ensure educational continuity for our children, as well as an education in our mother-tongue, English, we have chosen to educate them ourselves, a practice which is known as home education or homeschooling.

That this is an acceptable practice is attested to by the fact that the German government has authorised two distance learning institutions, the Deutsche Fernschule and Institut für Lernsysteme (ILS) to provide educational support to Germans living outside Germany who are in the same situation as us. However, the German state refuses to give permission to foreigners living temporarily in Germany to exercise the same option, where they do not have the option of sending their children to an international school or the closest international schools do not meet their children’s specific educational needs. At the moment, our family has filed an official complaint against the school authority of Niedersachsen (the state in which we reside) and we are also dealing with proceedings whereby we have been given notice of fines for educating our children at home.

As foreigners living temporarily in Germany, we are actually being treated relatively lightly. Germans who, in all other European countries, would be regarded as involved parents, who have an active interest in their children’s education, are treated as criminals. The sanctions which have been imposed on them range from fines to penalty payments and even more draconian measures, such as jailing the parents or removing the children from their custody. Dozens of German families have fled to Canada, the USA and other European countries in order to legally home educate their children. Here is a report of what happened to one family who decided to pull one of their children out of the less-than-optimal (for her – all her siblings continued to attend school) school environment and educate her at home so that she could receive one-on-one attention and develop at her own pace:

http://www.netzwerk-bildungsfreiheit.de/html/pe_erlangen_en.html

Mr İrtemçelik, I urge you to take this opportunity to remain assertive with the German government representatives and media who are putting pressure on your government. You can inform them that you are aware of the glass house in which they are so hypocritically living and that they should hold their own country to the same standards that they demand of other countries.

Yours Sincerely,

The times they are a-changing

2007-06-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Every two years, the German protestant churches hold a conference to discuss various issues relevant to German Christians. The latest conference, in Cologne, has just come to an end and it was really interesting to see that, for the first time, the issue of homeschooling was included on the programme, in the form of a discussion/debate between Helmut Stücher, founder of a support school for German Christian home educators and Armin Eckerman, a lawyer who has represented several German home educators versus two representatives of provincial and city government and the person responsible for school and education in the protestant church.

Apparently the mayoress of Bonn, who was one of the debaters, stated that she could never home educate her children. That's all very well for you, Ms Dieckmann, but I don't see why that should prevent other people from doing it, if they want to. Often women have told me that they could never have home births, or breastfeed their children, or carry them around in a sling the whole day but as far as I know, none of these practices is legally forbidden in Germany.

The debate was about religiously motivated home education and it seems that the pro-he debaters came across as fearful and narrow-minded. Although they pleaded against the issues in society which they perceive as harmful to the youth, they were unable to put across a positive argument. I think that this is because the issue is not just one of religion. I've said it before and I will restate it here again. If Christian home educators base their arguments for home educating on religious grounds, they are going to look fearful and narrow-minded and are not going to win the sympathy of anyone, least of all their fellow Christians who are sold on Schulpflicht. My plea to all the Stüchers and Eckermanns of this world is : leave the religious argument in the background. Yes it is important, but if you want to win sympathy for your cause, you need to base your argument on the things other people can relate to.

This article, in German, decries the fact that the pro-he speakers were hopelessly outnumbered and that the debate was unfair (their arguments were often ignored by the moderators, the other speakers and by the majority of the audience, who booed their statements). However, the fact that such a discussion was featured at the Kirchentag and took place in front of 80 people is a milestone. It seems that home education is at last becoming one of those burning issues for the German people and the day is coming when politicians and judges will have to stop burying their heads in the sand.

Statist "family friendly" policies for Europe?

2007-05-28T00:44:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this report the other day and alarm bells went off. It refers to an initiative being undertaken by Germany, which has the current EU presidency. The professed aims are laudable - to make Europe more family friendly. However this sentence, which really raised my hackles, makes me wonder whether the goal is rather to increase state control of families across Europe :
So, on the basis that this initiative recognises the shared responsibility of parent
& state in raising children, it is to be welcomed.

I didn't know that it was universally accepted that the state and parents have a shared responsibility in raising children. Although the German government maintains that it has a mandate to raise children, which means that parents have to give up their school-age children to the state for a certain period of time, this is by no means recognised across Europe.

There are a couple of things about this initiative that really disturb me. Firstly, is it going to be used to push the German idea of an "Erziehungsauftrag" onto the rest of Europe? Secondly, is compulsory schooling in Germany going to be extended into compulsory preschool (something which many people are calling for) ?

Finding my calling

2007-05-19T22:37:00.000-07:00

The excerpt which I quoted from W W Sawyer's book, Mathematicians Delight has reminded me of why I decided I decided to homeschool my children in the first place. The lightbulb clicked on for me before I even had children. I was in the last year of my studies, doing my post-graduate education diploma. We were required to do two stints as "interns", teaching at schools under the guidance of experienced teachers. I chose to do my second practical at my old high school.

One of my chosen majors was english and I was placed with an english teacher who had not been one of my own teachers at school, but whom I knew quite well. The literature text was The Great Gatsby and I naively thought that my job was to encourage the pupils I would be teaching (10th graders) to share their views on the text and to explain their reasoning. It was soon quite clear to me that the teacher I was with was teaching imitation english and that reasoning was the last thing that was encouraged in this classroom. Her method was to give the pupils questions from the study guide on the book and they would look at the back of the study guide and copy the answers down verbatim.

My other subject was German and the teacher I was assigned to in this regard had become so unmotivated that she was also teaching the imitation instead of the real thing. I had started my studies afire with the desire to imbue the children I would be teaching with a love of language. I looked at these two teachers and saw myself, twenty years down the line, beaten down by the system and dishing up fare to my pupils that bore almost no resemblance to the original. Even if I did manage to stay on track, I would be faced with classes full of children who had already had the interest in learning sucked out of them. I decided that this wasn't how I wanted to fulfill my calling. I took a typing course and started working as a secretary.

I did actually get a teaching job a few years later, but that only confirmed my feelings about the school system. Then, when my first child was barely a toddler, I read an article about homeschooling. The final piece of the puzzle fell into place and I knew I had found my real calling.

W W Sawyer - a man before his time?

2007-05-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

One book that we own is really special to my husband and it has played a large part in his accepting the unschooling approach. It is Mathematician's Delight, originally published in 1943. The copy we have was printed in 1950 and is worth ten times its weight in gold. It explains mathematical operations in such a way that one can actually understand the logic behind them. For instance, I never realised that multiplication of fractions actually meant a fraction of a fraction - e.g. two fifths times three quarters is the same as two fifths of three quarters.

The author, W W Sawyer was a math teacher in England who realised very early on in his career that ". . . education consists in co-operating with what is already inside a child's mind". He recounted a couple of incidents early in his career, which were eye-openers for him:

I knew I should be doing something different, but I did not know what. The boys said they were interested in aeroplanes. It was only afterwards that I realised what opportunities I had missed, and how, beginning with this general interest. . . I could have led the class into various parts of mathematics.
In a class I was taking there was one boy who was much older than the rest. He clearly had no motive to work. I told him that, if he could produce for me, accurately to scale, drawings of the pieces of wood required to make a desk like the one he was sitting at, I would try to persuade the Headmaster to let him do woodwork during the mathematics hours - in the course of which, no doubt, he would learn something about measurement and numbers. Next day, he turned up with this task completed to perfection. This I have often found with pupils; it is not so much that they cannot do the work, as that they see no purpose in it. (A European Education.)

The book is divided into chapters as follows:

PART 1
The approach to Mathematics
1. The Dread of Mathematics
2. Geometry - The Science of Furniture and Walls
3. The Nature of Reasoning
4. The Strategy and Tactics of Study

PART 2

On Certain Parts of Mathematics
5. Arithmetic
6. How to Forget the Multiplication Table
7. Algebra - the Shorthand of Mathematics
8. Ways of Growing
9. Graphs, or Thinking in Pictures
10. Differential Calculus - the Study of Speed
11. From Speed to Curves
12. Other Problems of Calculus
13. Trigonometry, or How to Make Tunnels and Maps
14. On Backgrounds
15. The Square Root of Minus One

One of my favourite passages in the book is this one:

Nearly every subject has a shadow, or imitation. It would, I suppose, be quite possible to teach a deaf and dumb child to play the piano. When it played a wrong note, it would see the frown of its teacher, and try again. But it would obbviously have no idea of what it was doing, or why anyone should devote hours to such an extraordinary exercise. It would have learnt an imitation of music. and it would fear the piano exactly as most students fear what is supposed to be mathematics.

What is true of music is also true of other subjects. One can learn imitation history - kings and dates, but not the slightest idea of the motives behind it all; imitation literature - stacks of notes on Shakespeare's phrases, and a complete destruction of the power to enjoy Shakespeare.
...
To master anything - from football to relativity - requires effort. But it does not require unpleasant effort, drudgery. The main task of any teacher is to make a subject interesting. If a child left school at ten, knowing nothing of detailed information, but knowing the pleasure that comes from agreeable music, from reading, from making things, from finding things out, it would be better off than a man who left university at twenty-two, full of facts but without any desire to enquire further into such dry domains.

Life's little ups and downs

2007-05-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

I must be a city person. I took my three youngest children today to meet up for lunch in the city with a friend and her two little children (she is going away on vacation tomorrow morning and when she gets back we will be in Ireland, so we were keen to meet up). Obviously everyone else had the same idea, as the first three parking garages I found were full. Eventually I found a parking garage with a few parking spaces on the roof (7th floor). It was quite harrowing on a couple of occasions trying to manoeuvre my Chrysler Voyager up some of those ramps.

Finally I got to the square in the city centre where my friend and I were to meet. I was already hungry, as I hadn't had breakfast and my youngest had nicked the banana I had brought with me. The staff at the restaurant where we decided to eat obviously also hadn't realised that the city would be invaded because they certainly weren't prepared for all the diners. It was almost an hour later when we tucked into our lunch and I was practically fainting from hunger. The rest of the afternoon went pretty smoothly, except that we had to hunt down the waitress to pay our bill (nothing uncommon in Germany) and my littlest one had a super duper tantrum just before we went home.

After all this stress and strain, one would expect me to arrive home exhausted and ready to put my feet up. Strangely enough, though, my batteries were charged up and I had more motivation and energy and gusto than in the last few days. Good thing, because there was an envelope addressed to me in the post office, informing me that the director of the local high school has instituted proceedings against us. I am required to reply within 8 days, stating whether I accept or deny the charges. What I would really like to do is to write them a letter telling them to go shove their stupid Schulpflicht where the sun doesn't shine, but I suppose I shall have to be polite.

The parable of Melissa and the Jugendamt on Youtube

2007-05-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

Maybe I've got a bit of a one-track mind at the moment, but when I saw this amazing video (filmed in my home country of South Africa) I couldn't help thinking of Melissa. Imagine that she is the baby buffalo, the lions are the Jugendamt and the herd of buffalo is the homeschooling community. The crocodiles are the psychiatrists in the clinic in Nürnberg - their hold on her was brief.

The video takes a while to buffer, so just start it and click pause while you go and unpack the dishwasher or make yourself a cup of tea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Prosecuting attorney takes brave action against dangerous criminals

2007-05-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

The German state of Hessen is one of those where not sending your child to school is a criminal act. I know a few families in Hessen who are homeschooling, some religious, some not. Most of them stay very underground. For good reason, as you can see in the report below.

Dudek family to go before court once again.

By Harald Sagawe

Prosecutor Herwig Muller has appealed against the verdict in the case of Rosemarie and Jürgen Dudek. The couple from the German town of Archfeld in Herleshausen was sentenced to fines at the beginning of May. In the meantime the prosecutor in Kassel has applied for jail sentences of three months each, without probation, for the parents of six children.

Rosemarie and Jürgen Dudek were sentenced because they did not send their children to school, for religious reasons. The parents, Christians who closely follow the bible, teach their children themselves. Two years ago the court had also dealt with the Dudeks. That case, dealing with the payment of a fine, had been dropped. An application for the approval of a state-recognised private school - which, according to experts, has no chance of success at any rate - has still not been decided by the school authorities.

"It's a terrible thing, to lock up a family that hasn't done anyone any harm," says the accused, Jürgen Dudek.

The prosecutor, Herwig Müller, is currently on vacation. Chief prosecutor Hans-Manfred Jung confirmed the veto, but could not say anything about the reasons.

Jürgen Dudek is horrified at the idea that the prosecution wants to see him and his wife behind bars. "It's a terrible thing, to lock up a family that hasn't done anyone any harm," he says, "especially now, with the legal situation looking the way it is." He regards the matter as absurd.

The judge's job is to pronounce a verdict and not mix himself up in administrative matters, says Arno Meissner, director of the education department. Meanwhile he makes it clear that his office will by no means leave the family in peace, not even temporarily. "We will enforce compulsory school attendance against the family as promptly as possible. First his office intends to talk with the family, then to set a time limit and if this is not met, it will once again open a criminal case against them. Not even the announcement of a move by the family will settle the matter, declared Meissner.

Meissner dismissed the criticism made by Peter Höbbel, the judge of the juvenile court, against his department. We won't let ourselves be admonished by a judge in that way, he said. "His duty is to make a judgement when the prosecutor brings a charge and to stay out of administrative matters." Höbbel had rebuked the education department because it has been sitting on the Dudeks' application for the approval of a private school for two and a half years, with no decision having been made about it.

You can read the original article in German here.

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

2007-05-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

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.

Why home education is verboten in Germany

2007-05-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Comments :
NEL = Niedersachsen Education Law
Private instruction in this context means one-to-one instruction.

Response of the School Authoritiy of Niedersachsen to the arguments of a home educating family.

In the administrative law case of G and others VS the State Education Authority of Niedersachsen

I move on behalf of the respondent that

The action be dismissed

The action is admissible but unfounded.

The plaintiffs have no right to exemption from compulsory schooling for their minor children R, R and L.

R and R are subject to school attendance, as stated in Article 63, paragraphs 1, 64 and 65 of the Niedersachsen Education Law. L will be of school age in the school year 2007-2008.

The legal precept of universal compulsory schooling rests on the state’s mandate to educate, which is inferred from Article 7, part 1 of the Basic Law of Germany. Universal compulsory schooling and the further duties which arise from it, restrict, in a permissible manner, the guaranteed right of parents, in Article 6, section 2, first sentence of the Basic Law, to decide on the upbringing and education of their children and and personal rights of the schoolchild (see Maunz/Dürig Kommentar zum Grundgesetz. Stand 47 Ergänzungslieferung, Juni 2006 Art.7 Randnummer 55).

Compulsory schooling involves an obligation to attend school. School pupils are basically bound to attend a school and to take part in instruction there. The only exceptions which apply are those where private instruction may take place as per Article 63 Section 5 of the Education Law of Niedersachsen or where instruction may take place in a hospital or group home as per Article 69 (Seyderhelm, Nagel, Brockman, Kommentar zum Niedersachsen Schulgesetz, §63)

The plaintiffs have no right to the granting of private instruction for their above-mentioned children according to Article 63, Section 5 of the NEL. According to this regulation, private instruction may only be granted to school age children in the first 6 years in exceptional circumstances. Article 63, Section 5 states a rule-exception relationship. There must be important reasons to justify the granting of private instruction.

Grounds for an exception must normally have to do with the person of the child, i.e. his or her physical, emotional constitution or his or her character. Furthermore, private instruction can be granted to children who frequently change their residence.

No such important justification for allowing private instruction is given in this case. No frequent change of residence, in the sense of this regulation, has occurred here. The plaintiffs have not changed their residence for over 2 years. Nor does the work contract of the father show the need for a frequent change of residence. A letter of confirmation dated 31.10.2006 from the employer of Mr G states that such contracts normally last 18 to 24 months but can also last, in exceptional cases, for up to 36 months. In this light, one cannot speak of frequent change of residence.

In this context, we also refer to the circular from the Ministry of Education, “School education of children of professional travellers in the general schools” from 16.03.2002. According to 1.1 of this decree, 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. This does not apply in the present case.

Another comparison is that of the children of the members of foreign military stationed in Niedersachsen.. According to Number 3.1.1 of the decree of the Ministry of Education and Culture, "Supplementary regulations to compulsory school attendance and to the legal relationship to school" of August 29, 1995, compulsory school attendance exists independent of nationality. Children of members of stationed military forces are therewith fundamentally under the compulsory attendance law even in Germany. They fulfill their compulsory schooling, however, through attendance at schools run by the stationing armed forces. If this were not to occur, they would be required to attend school at a German school, and that would be regardless of the length of stationing of the parent, or parents.

For the rest, it is not apparent that there are particularly subjective grounds in the persons of the children which would speak for the granting of private instruction. The children of the plaintiffs have now been in Germany for over two years. The examples of other children who have come to Germany from other countries illustrate that a successful integration into the German school system would have taken place. In this respect, it is noted that the children of the plaintiff attended a state-recognised private school in Bavaria. The attendance of such a school fulfils the compulsory school attendance requirement. Compulsory schooling could even now be carried out by attendance of such a school in Niedersachsen. Why the attendance at such a school in Niedersachsen should be an unreasonable imposition is not conceivable.

As has already been explained in our rejection of the plaintiff’s application for exemption, the Clonlara School is not a school in the sense of the NEL. An education through this school is not in accordance with the requirements of the NEL. 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. (see Hebeler/Schmidt Schulpflicht und elterliches Erziehungsrecht - Neue Aspekte eines alten Themas? in NVwZ 2005 page 1369, with reference to Mannheim NVwZ RR2003 562).

Private instruction can also not be allowed for other reasons. According to no. 4 of the decree "Supplementary regulations to compulsory school attendance and to the legal relationship to school", the granting of private instruction is only to be allowed when the instruction complies with the requirements for instruction in the various schools. According to the guidelines, the instruction must be carried out by a teacher who has been specially trained for this purpose. (see Seyderheim, Nagel, Brockmann 63, No. 7). The Clonlara School obviously does not instruct according to the guidelines, so that home education cannot be allowed for this reason.

An exemption from compulsory schooling cannot be granted under the aspect of unreasonable hardship. In this context, the plaintiffs maintain that the right of the parents to direct the upbringing of their children in the Basic Law Article 6, Section 2, paragraph 1 pre-empts the universal supervisory power of the State in Article 7. Furthermore, they maintain that Article 7 does not assign the State a mandate to educate.

It is noted in this regard that the Constitutional Court and the prevailing opinion understand the relationship between Basic Law Article 6, Section 2, paragraph 1 and Article 7 Section 1 in the sense of competing, basically equally ranked, mandates to educate which do not circumscribe each other’s areas of responsibility. (see Sachs, Commentary to the Basic Law, 1996, Article 7, Note 35.) Therefore Article 6, Section 2, paragraph 1 cannot be seen as having precedence. Likewise, universal compulsory schooling, in the form of compulsory school attendance is seen as a constitutionally legal manner of restricting the parents’ custody of their children. (see Maunz Döring above). It is also the prevailing opinion that the state makes use of its mandate to educate and has the right to set its own educational goals.(See Sachs Article 7, Note 22)

Furthermore, the plaintiffs’ point of view, that the State’s supervisory duty only applies to schools and not to education in general, cannot be followed. The jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court has made no indication of this being the case.

In addition, the requirement of unreasonable hardship is not fulfilled, because this is not an atypical case. It has arisen from "Supplementary regulations to compulsory school attendance and to the legal relationship to school” that a person is regarded as being resident in Niedersachsen and subject to compulsory schooling when he or she has resided here for more than five days, even if he or she does not intend to remain here permanently. This applies regardless of the person’s nationality. The lawmakers have ordered compulsory schooling even for only a short stay in Niedersachsen. The children of the plaintiffs have resided in Niedersachsen for more than 2 years, which illustrates that this case is not atypical.

It is asserted in the complainants’ grounds that there is unacceptable discrimination and factually unjustified unequal treatment because some German children living in other countries are able to utilise approved distance education. They also give the example of the boy band Tokio Hotel. These cases have totally different underlying circumstances. These examples cannot be compared with the case in point.

Furthermore, the complainants presume that their children are being disadvantaged with respect to children in other EU countries and the rest of the developed world. There is also no comparison with the situation here. The children in other countries are subject to another legal system.

Melissa Busekros - a miracle recovery!

2007-05-17T03:43:00.000-07:00

Let's hope that the people at the Youth Welfare Service (Jugendamt) in Erlangen believe in miracles. If they are to save face, that's the only way they can explain why Melissa Busekros, whom they declared less than four months ago to be in dire need of inpatient psychiatric treatement, is now not in any acute danger and can stay with her family. In all that time, she was in a psychiatric unit for less than two weeks. The rest of the time was spent whiling away her boredom reading French books in a children's home and and helping out a farmer's wife in the foster family where she was staying.

Here's another possible explanation. Maybe they've discovered an exciting new treatment for children with depressive conduct disorder and school phobia! Imagine how much money they could save on farm labour at the same time. What an opportunity - an upswing for the German economy combined with larger numbers of happy and stable (no pun intended) teenagers.

If anyone who can understand German or feels like subjecting themselves to an online translation engine wants to see some of the original documents, they can go to this forum. (Just scroll down to where Lena has posted the white documents - from 11 May). There's even a picture of the famous abduction by 15 policemen, courtesy of the police themselves.

As for me, I'm off to the shop to buy some tissues for those ladies and gentlemen of the Jugendamt - they're going to need quite a few to wipe all that egg off their faces.

Can foreigners homeschool in Germany?

2007-05-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

The theoretical answer - no, unless you are in the Diplomatic Corps, or are moving to Nordrhein-Westphalia for only one year or are a military homeschooler under command sponsorship (although even this seems to jar with the regulations of at least one German state).

The practical answer - yes, and there are plenty of us who have managed to stay out of the gaze of the authorities, are are being tolerated by them, or have found some loophole in the law. Using a combination of these three strategies has enabled our family to homeschool in Germany for more than three years. The first possibility, escaping notice, is very often an option if your child is already of school age. If you have a child who is at the age where he/she would be starting school in September, you can forget about this, as the communities send the names of all these children who are registered with them to the relevant schools.

Some homeschooling families are lucky enough, that the local authorities tolerate them, even though they are theoretically in violation of the law and have no official exemption. This is even more likely to occur when the family in question is a foreign one, temporarily in Germany. There are those openminded school directors who have enough on their plates with running their own schools and see no purpose in hounding some family who aren't going to be in Germany long enough for their children to be integrated into the system. If the authorities are aware that you are there and your children are not attending school, it can really make a huge difference to your situation if you meet with the responsible school director and explain your situation in a friendly, open manner. Often their hands are tied, but if they are positively inclined towards you, they will do the very minimum that is necessary.

Sometimes it is worthwhile to examine the legal requirements and see if there are any legal loopholes that you can make use of. Sheila (my acting partner) seems to have found one which is working for her and her family, which involves living in Germany for nine months of the year (great excuse for a three-month vacation, Sheila). There are various other methods which have been used by homeschooling families, German as well as foreign, to keep the authorities off their back.

I've written this post because people have been coming to my blog as a result of searches like this. There is obviously a genuine (and hopefully growing) need for this kind of information.

Hacking away at Schulpflicht

2007-04-05T10:20:00.000-07:00

I have the feeling that we are busy hacking away at the crumbling foundations of enforced schooling here in Germany. The first time I came to Germany, 9 years ago, homeschooling was a taboo subject (as I mentioned in one of my first posts ever on this blog). Things are really changing now. Homeschooling has been continually in the news in the last few weeks. The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Education recently recommended that homeschooling be allowed in Germany. There was much commentary from the German educational authorities and in some newspapers about this issue, much of it negative (but all of it publicity, nonetheless!)

A couple of days after the Munoz report, the German newspaper, Die Welt, published an interview with a German Professor, Volker Ladenthin, in which he pleads for the legalisation of homeschooling. The cherry on top of all this publicity is the pretty unbiased article in the latest issue of Der Spiegel (the German version of Time Magazine) about homeschoolers in Germany. Later this month, an international Colloquium on Home Education is going to be held and I know for sure of two television camera teams which will be there.

A couple of days ago I had the privilege of being at the press conference for the opening of the first democratic school in Hamburg. The enormous press presence was not due to any particular interest in the school itself, but to the fact that one of its founders is the famous German popstar Nena (remember that haunting song, 99 red balloons?). This is the first school of it's kind to receive permission to open from the authorities. So far, two other applications (in Berlin and Leipzig), which were further along in the planning stage, have been turned down.

The legal argument which the German state has against homeschooling is the oft touted "Erziehungsauftrag" (or mandate to educate). Although the German Constitution doesn't say anything about Homeschooling, in Article 6 it states that parents have the natural right to bring up their children and then goes on to say in Article 7 that the State has supervisory authority over schooling. Somewhere along the line, the German Constitutional Court decided that the State's right is on an equal level with that of the parents and inferred that the state has the "Erziehungsauftrag".

Any decision of the constitutional court has a binding status on lower courts in Germany. Consequently, it doesn't help home educators in Germany to argue that the state has no Erziehungsauftrag. The constitutional court also said that the state has a duty to work against parallel societies. As I see it, the only way for homeschoolers to argue against the state is to take these two assumptions to their logical conclusions and show that they are actually irrelevant and are, in many cases, not being upheld.

The first issue is the actual sense in which the word "Erziehung" is meant by the Court. As can be seen here, the word "Erziehung" can mean either education or upbringing. It would seem obvious that the first sense of the meaning is meant, because, well, this is all about education. However, the fact that the authorities have accepted, in many cases, the academic benefits of home education and the other statements made by them, such as this one by the German Consul-General in Chicago, Wolfgang Drautz -

Homeschooling may be equally effective in terms of test scores. It is important to keep in mind, however, that school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct. Daily contact with other students from all walks of life promotes tolerance, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens.
...

would indicate that both senses of the word Erziehung are being used by the German state.

The authorities have told a friend of mine that distance learning does not enable the state to fulfil its Erziehungsauftrag, as this has to be carried out in person. This begs the question of how this is possible when a teacher is dealing with a class of 30 children. As studies show, home educators have no problem in becoming the kind of citizens that the state (ostensibly) desires, so does this mean that what the state is really saying is that it wants to brainwash its subjects?

Another issue which they obviously haven't thought about is that there are plenty of children going to school in Germany who are escaping the state's Erziehungsauftrag. For example, the Neue Schule in Hamburg is based on the principle of "Nichterziehung", which is the antithesis of the concept of "Erziehung". Another example is that of German children living in Germany who attend international schools. These children are not being brought up in the ideals mentioned by Herr Drautz. They do not have daily contact with children from all walks of life and are, in fact, educated in a culture far removed from that of the German one. A German friend of mine sent her son to a British school (which was actually for the children of British military personnel) for a few years. When she lost her job he had to start going to the local state school, which was an enormous shock for him, from a cultural perspective as well as a linguistic and educational one. So should the state forbid German children from attending international schools in their own country?

It is clear that the German state's arguments against home education have several holes in them big enough to drive a truck through. It is up to home educators to take a lateral thinking approach and network with each other at each step of their individual legal processes. The ideas which I have outlined above come from our case as well as that of a friend living nearby who is also embroiled in a court case. My ideas have grown out of hers and then she has expanded on mine and so the whole thing is growing symbiotically into a strong, vital little plant which will soon hopefully dwarf the rotting old system of enforced schooling that the state is desperately trying to maintain.

No more IOU's in the children's piggy banks!

2007-03-02T21:51:00.000-08:00

I had a really bad experience the week before last. It was just past the middle of the month and I had run out of money. In February - the shortest month of the year! I couldn't understand how it happened. I suppose that part of the reason was that I was visited by an old friend with her two children for a few days and we did quite a bit of what my husband refers to as "gallivanting".

My neighbour and I were chatting over coffee and it turned out that she was in exactly the same situation. For her things were worsened by the fact that she had been ill for the previous two days and had had to miss two classes (she works on the side as an aerobics instructor) for which she wouldn't be getting paid AND she had just received the bill for repairs to her car after she had inadvertantly (is there any other way?) backed over a low fence.

This got me thinking about the whole issue of finances. This is not something I do often, which is why I am in the situation I described above. I calculated my daily "income" and realised that it doesn't amount to very much per day - or at least not as much as I have been spending on many occasions. A bit of balance is called for. So I've decided that rather than take the whole monthly amount as my budget, or even a weekly budget, I'm going to allocate a daily amount - less than what I actually have and stick to that. On days where I don't spend much I'm saving money for a "splurge" on another day. That way, when unexpected expenses come up, I can deal with them and hopefully I'll even have some money left at the end of the month - now wouldn't that be something!

Compulsory schooling is a child's right

2007-02-27T07:49:00.000-08:00

A commentary appeared in the Nürnberger Nachrichten today, which comments on all those of you who have been voicing their protests about Melissa Busekros. I noticed that someone in Nuremberg paid an extensive visit to my blog yesterday, and I was wondering if it was the person who wrote the commentary below.

The title is "Compulsory schooling is a child's right" (since when does a right become a duty)?

Subtitle: Why homeschooling can never be the solution.

There is great uproar on the internet forums which have been discussing the case of 15 year old Amina in the last few days. More than anything else, for supporters of the homeschooling movement, the story seems to serve as proof of the inhumane manner in which the government imposes Schulpflicht. They are all talking about human-rights abuses, about interference with the parents' right to decide where their children should live and saying that Schulpflicht only exists in Germany, thanks to none other than Adolf Hitler. As if this at last proves how evil this system is.

In actual fact, the idea of Schulpflicht was a child of the Enlightenment. The long history of its enforcement shows who was predominantly bound by it. The compulsory education law introduced in Bavaria in 1802, which required parents to somehow make sure that their children had the opportunity to learn reading, writing and mathematics, lasted until 1919 when the duty of all children to attend school was written into law. The citizens had managed to wrest a great achievement from the state : the right to schooling. The state now had to ensure that children from all families, independent of class or financial situation, received at least a basic education. For the first time equal opportunity existed.

Thinking means comparing

And primarily it is about the right of the children. Not just the right to literacy and to knowledge of basic math. Children also have the right to encouter the world from other points of view than that of their parents. Everyone who travels on the subway in Nuremberg can read daily the quote by Walther Rathenau "Thinking means comparing". Every homeschooled child who is exclusively fed with subject matter and knowledge by his parents will, in the worst case, not have the opportunity to compare.

In a pluralistic world, every adult can decide for him or herself whether he or she believes in the theory of evolution or literally hangs onto the words of the old Testament in finding the answer to the question "Where did people come from". Children must, however, be given the freedom of encountering the discoveries of modern science.

This right must not be taken from them by their parents. Surfing through the internet forums of homeschooling supporters who have stumbled onto the case of Amina, one constantly comes into contact with just this motive. These religious fundamentalists are advocating for children to be sheltered from the "devilishness" of evolution and sex education.

Parents must let go

Childraising means always letting go. Children do not belong to their parents any more than they do to the state. No-one has the right to shut his child away. Not even behind the walls of his own worldview. School is not just a place for learning, it is also an important place for hanging out in and for meeting other young people. Admittedly, things don't always function as they should. Whoever reads the newspapers has a good idea of the problems facing our schools. There are several good reasons to work for basic changes in our state educational facilities. Possibly also many good reasons to send our children to state-accredited private schools with better educational concepts.

This alters nothing about the validity of Schulpflicht. Its implementation is no act of authoritarian state arbitrariness, but rather a protection of children's rights.

The Jugendamt- a law unto its own?

2007-02-24T22:42:00.000-08:00

My last post took a dig at the original diagnosis of Melissa Busekros, which was convincing enough for the judge to remove her from her home. I had a closer look at that psychiatrist's report this morning (you can read a summary of it here in English - scroll down to update 10).
In the diagnosis (not mentioned in the English summary), Dr Schanda specifically diagnosed Melissa as suffering from the disorder F92.0 under the ICD 10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision).

I looked up this disorder here and read
F92.0
Depressive conduct disorder
This category requires the combination of conduct disorder (F91.-) with persistent and marked depression of mood (F32.-), as demonstrated by symptoms such as excessive misery, loss of interest and pleasure in usual activities, self-blame, and hopelessness; disturbances of sleep or appetite may also be present.
Conduct disorder in F91.- associated with depressive disorder in F32.-

When I looked at the conduct disorder in F91, I read

Conduct disorders
Disorders characterized by a repetitive and persistent pattern of dissocial, aggressive, or defiant conduct. Such behaviour should amount to major violations of age-appropriate social expectations; it should therefore be more severe than ordinary childish mischief or adolescent rebelliousness and should imply an enduring pattern of behaviour (six months or longer).

Does Dr Schanda have psychic abilities? Above, it says persistent and marked depression of mood, not the kind of depression of mood induced by being taken away in a cavalcade of police cars. Did Schanda ask Melissa "So do you feel like this every day?" Loss of interest and pleasure in the usual activities doesn't sound like the kind of thing happening to a girl who practised playing the piano every day and was regularly attending English classes at the local Volkshochschule (German version of a community college). Is a developmental emotional delay of one year a major violation of social expectations. I'm also not too sure about loss of appetite - her refusal to eat anything at the police station (because she'd already had breakfast) was certainly no indication of a lack of appetite.

The Jugendamt states that what has happened has nothing to do with Melissa being a homeschooler. However, when one reads the court judgements, which focus on Melissa's non-attendance at school and this website, which outlines a program in Nuremberg for dealing with truants, one wonders how true this statement is. The statement on page 3 of this document,
In hohem Maß gefährdet ist nämlich ihre Entwicklung zu einer "eigenverantwortlichen und gemeinschaftsfähigen Persönlichkeit" und ihre Integration in die Gesellschaft, (their development into a personality able to take responsibility for itself and to function in a community and their integration into the community is highly endangered )bears an eery resemblance to Schanda's statements about Melissa: Serious and universal social impairment in the area of school adjustment and school related interests, pastimes and the ability to cope with social situations. The title of the project is "Sichere Erziehung" "Secure Upbringing", which is, by the authors' own admittance, a euphemism because titles like "Freedom-limiting Measures", were a bit too controversial. (I can think of some even better euphemisms - how about Final Solution?)

The fact is, is that Melissa's story is part of a much greater pattern. Removal of homeschooled children in Germany from their parent's custody is common practice in Germany. This is very easy to do, as school is perceived as essential to the child's welfare, by the courts as well as the social services and educational authorities. Last year another school refuser, a 15 year old boy who lived near me, was forced into a psychiatric institution against his and his mother's will after he became a ward of the state (the Jugendamt in question felt that going to therapy twice a week was not enough to deal with his problem). Last I heard he was still there, and he had been told that he was not going to be allowed to have any contact with his mother. The state even moved him to a clinic 2 hours drive away from where she lived. Even if there are emotional problems present, how can the state justify such a massive infringement of human rights?

The Jugendamt has been wrong before. For example, the case of the Haase family makes Melissa's situation look like a weekend at the funfair. (You can read the whole story here here too if you want - it's very long, but gives the whole background and the chronological order.) The scary part is not so much that the Haases had their children removed by the state, but that measures weren't taken by the relevant courts (apparently one judge even refused to recuse himself from the case) to ensure, as soon as possible, the validity of the expert opinion which led to this situation. They even refused to allow any witnesses to testify on behalf of the parents. At the beginning only the psychologist who issued the damning report, the representatives of the Jugendamt and Cornelia Haase's ex-husband were allowed to testify. Talk about accountability.

In a TV report, psychologist Uwe-Jörg Jopt blamed the miscarriage of justice in the Haase case on the failure of checks and balances. The only accountability which the Jugendamt has is to the judge of the family court, but when the judge takes the Jugendamt's expert at face value, the system is likely to break down, and has done so on several occasions. According to Jopt, the judges need to be better educated to enable them to evaluate the information brought before them. Although the Jugendamt has enormous power, the officials are only human and also make mistakes.

Another expert, Prof. Wolfgang Klenner is more critical of the role of the Jugendämter in cases such as these. In a letter to a German newspaper, he writes that as long as the officials can show that they have done all they can to prevent a child from being endangered in his or her current situation, they are protected from any repercussions. This is one explanation for the overzealous behaviour on the part of these officials. He states that they are then above the law. He says "To tell the truth, there are also women and men working in the Jugendämter who deserve full respect for their humanity and their sense of responsibility. However, these people are in the minority."

The Jugendamt claims to be working in Melissa's interests. But are they really? Or are they on a mission to prove themselves right? Frau Hoellerer of the Jugendamt has stated that the Busekros' will not get Melissa back as long as they continue stirring up people about her removal. Hallo, maybe someone should tell her that we are supposed to be living in a democratic country and not some banana republic dictatorship run by the Jugendamt.

My diagnosis of the German education authorities

2007-02-17T09:05:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the impressive performance of Dr S., who was able, after being with Melissa Busekros for only one hour, to deliver a really earth-shattering diagnosis, I have decided to collectively diagnose all those who are culpable in this and other atrocities against home educators in Germany.

Here is my diagnosis:

I.Findings

Introduction

Home education is legally possible in just about every democratic country. The few countries where it is still banned because of outmoded laws are either moving towards legalising it, have ways around the law or just ignore it and allow the majority of homeschoolers to live in peace. However in Germany, home education is not just outlawed, but the outlaws are pursued with all the fervour of the Sheriff of Nottingham going after Robin Hood.

Among those involved in conducting this campaign against home educators are education officials, welfare services, the police, politicians and judges. They have, on many occasions, worked together to force children to go to school, impose ruinous fines on their parents, jail the parents, remove their children from their care, lock the children away in psychiatric institutions and even label the parents as needing psychiatric measures.

Psychopathological Findings

These various officials seem to believe that children can only be properly integrated into society if they attend school. They think that school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct.
Daily contact with other students from all walks of life promotes tolerance, encourages dialogue
among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens. According to these people, compulsory schooling prevents the rise of parallel societies. Although these officials, as well as many other Germans, are accepting of home education when is practised outside their borders or by celebrities who pay enormous taxes to the state in which they are resident, they maintain that home education of normal children in Germany endangers the child's welfare and is subversive.

1. Clinical psychiatric syndromes:

This group of people is collectively afflicted by a variety of disorders. In summary, the current clinical-psychiatric finding shows that they have an emotional disturbance which is connected to a massive homeschool phobia and a strong narcissistic personality disorder. I see signs of autistic tendencies, demonstrated by their inability to relate to what is happening in the rest of the world. There is also evidence of schizophrenia, with this group of people accepting homeschooling in some circumstances but not in others, with a strong collective delusionality being present.These are all signs of a syndrome called affective homeschool aversion, which has just been discovered and named by me.

2. Outlined developmental disturbances of human-rights related talents:
Not tested - so far the European court of Human Rights has not ruled on a German homeschooling case, refusing to take on the only case which has so far come in front of them.

3. Results of intelligence:
Since its dismal performance in the 2003 Pisa study , Germany's school system has been shown to be severely lacking.

4. Physical symptoms:
Convulsions and palpitations when the possibility of home education being legalised in Germany is mentioned by the media.

5. Current abnormal psychosocial circumstances:
From the late middle ages it became increasingly popular in Germany to label people, particularly women, who in any way deviated from the mainstream as witches, leading to inhuman torture being used against these people. Although a homeschooler is no longer likely to be forced to wear an mask with spikes on the inside, the fear instilled by these measures has lasted down the generations in the collective German consciousness.

6. Global judgment of psychosocial adjustment:
Serious and universal social impairment in the area of adjustment to changing global conditions and interest in educational alternatives, lack of foresight and the inability to cope with free thinkers.

II. Position

We were unable to confront these people with the situation in Germany because they just ignored us. On the grounds of their massive homeschool-refusal, the emotional disturbance and the unsatisfactory willingness to cooperate on the part of the authorities, a relocation to a suitable homeschooling family overseas for the period of one year is urgently required in order to avoid endangerment to the development of their personalities.

Through intensive support and rehabilitation measures (no large groups and no intensive school exposure), it could be possible for these people to start accepting homeschooling within these parameters. A favorable development is possible. The education authorities and their accomplices were examined by us. They suffer an educational developmental disturbance (they are at least 20 years behind the USA and Great Britain, 10 years behind South Africa, 3 years behind the Czech Republic and are even being overtaken by Romania, which was formerly one of the most restrictive of the communist countries), a massive homeschool phobia and an oppositional denial-syndrome.

With friendly greetings, (Sorry, I just can't continue the long-winded style of the original diagnosis).

German homeschooler forced into psychiatric institution

2007-02-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

Fifteen year old German homeschooler forcibly admitted into a mental institution

The day before Christmas, the German newspaper, Erlanger Nachrichten published a picture of the eight-member Busekros family standing happily together around an advent wreath. The title of the accompanying article was “Only families open the way for new perspectives". On the first of February this year, the Busekros’ oldest daughter was torn from her family by force, thanks to a judge’s ruling : Compulsory admittance to the Klinikum Nuremberg-Nord, a psychiatric clinic for children and young people and loss of parental custody.

In summer 2005, then 13 year old Melissa was told that she would have to repeat the 7th grade at the Christian Ernst Gymnasium (a high school where one can obtain the Abitur, the highest German high school diploma) due to her bad grades in math and latin. The situation in the class played no small part in creating this state of affairs - the high noise levels and cancelled classes prevented her from receiving the educational assistance she needed during school hours. As Melissa had good grades in all the other subjects, repeating the whole year would be mostly a waste of her time, as well as the fact that she would now be in a class even more problematic than the previous year’s. Thus, it was decided by Melissa and her parents that she would be tutored individually at home to meet her specific needs. At her own wish, Melissa only took part in Music and sang in her school choir. The school and the local school authorities were not satisfied with this solution, and consequently expelled Melissa from the school, allocating her to the local Hauptschule (the lowest in the German three-tier high school system.

The Busekros continued educating their daughter at home, with their other school-age children still attending school. At the end of the school year 2005/2006, Melissa was no longer subject to full-time compulsory schooling. In spite of this the Youth Welfare Office (Jugendamt) in Erlangen appealed to the local Family Court, which ordered Melissa and her parents to appear at a hearing, which was consequently attended solely by her father. Melissa was overseas at that point. However, the authorities didn’t relent and wanted to know in detail where Melissa was, resulting in an unannounced visit to the family by the Judge of the Family Court.

The Busekros family is known and much loved by all their neighbours. Their willingness to be photographed for an article in the local newspaper demonstrates that they have nothing to hide. That was not good enough for the officials. On Tuesday 30th January just after 7am, Mrs Busekros and her children – Mr Busekros had already left for work – were startled by the appearance of social workers and police officials who demanded that Melissa, now aged 15, be handed over to them immediately. They had as authorisation a decision by the Erlangen Court (case no. 006 F 01004/06) of the 29th of January. It stated “The relevant Youth Welfare Office is hereby instructed and authorised to bring the child, if necessary by force, to a hearing and may obtain police support for this purpose.”

Melissa was brought into the Child Psychiatry Unit of the Nuremburg clinic and was subjected to an interrogation in the presence of the specialist Dr. Schanda. After this interrogation, about three and a half hours after she was coerced into the clinic, Melissa was returned home. Her relieved parents and her five younger siblings, who didn’t know when they would ever see Melissa again, as well as Melissa herself didn’t know that the worst was still to come.

On the afternoon of the 1st of February, the judge of the Family Court, representatives of the Youth Welfare Office, along with fifteen police officers, marched up to the Busekros home, to haul Melissa off to the Child Psychiatry Unit of the Nuremberg clinic. The judicial decision authorising this also removed Melissa from her parents’ custody, according to her father, Hubert Busekros.This treatment was justified by the psychiatrist’s finding, two days previously, that she was supposedly developmentally delayed by one year and that she suffered from school phobia. The fact that the less than optimal testing environment and the unexpectedness of the tests could have impacted on Melissa’s performance were not taken into account in this decision. It is not known when Melissa’s parents and siblings will be able to see her again, as the official approach in cases of “school phobia” is to completely prevent the “patient” from having any contact with those closest to him or her, as such contact supposedly enables the phobia.

The article, "Only families open the way for new perspectives " was accompanied by the photo of a happily smiling Melissa surrounded by her loved ones – in her current situation, she can’t have much to smile about. Will her smiles disappear completely, while the bureaucrats who placed her in this situation remain smug in their certainty that they have made her life better? What is being done to a sensitive and musical young girl, just because the bureaucrats want to set an example? In their zealous drive to enforce compulsory schooling (which by Melissa’s age is only part-time) at all costs, they readily accept the trauma caused to the unassuming and lovable Melissa.

If Melissa had lived in Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Ireland, the UK or Belgium, all those involved – the schoolgirl, her parents and the educational officials involved – would have been, at the very least, unperturbed that she was being educated at home. In these countries, as in practically the rest of the world, home education is a legally recognised alternative to school, which can be a boon to children with special needs and gifts. Many of those German school pupils who have had to repeat grades would have been able to complete their schooling without stress in these countries if they had parents as involved as Melissa’s. Melissa, on the other hand, has been turned into a psychiatric case : a German schoolchild’s nightmare.

The Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit condemns this inconsiderate and totally incommensurate behaviour on the part of the officials involved and demands that they give Melissa her freedom and return her to her family immediately. Additionally, the Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit calls all politicians and those in political offices, in Erlangen and the rest of Germany, to ensure that such human rights abuses and and high-handed behaviour by government officials are stopped, even if it requires personal intervention.

Here are some phone numbers which you can call to express your support for Melissa and her family and your outrage at the actions taken by the state officials.

Clinic: +49 911 398 - 2970 od 3870, 7099 Fax Haus 48 Station B, KJP_B@klinikum-nürnberg.de; axel.froelich@klinikum-nürnberg.deFamily Court: +49 9131 782-359; +49 9131 782-361 Fax District Court: +49 9131 782-0; +49 9131 782-480 Fax

Math card war

2007-01-09T22:34:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this post thanks to the Carnival of Homeschooling.

Haven't got much time to read it, as we're off to visit these friends this morning.

Part 7 - The Rest of the Decision

2007-01-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

2. The plaintiffs have no claim to have their children released from the general obligation to attend school.

According to para. 57, section 2 of the Bremen School Statute the possibility of being released from the obligation to attend a state or state recognised school exists only in cases of ‘special exception’. Decisions in this respect are to be made by the schools supervisory authority (‘Schulaufsicht’) at its due discretion (‘possible exemption’). The limits of this discretion are set by the content of the judicially unrestrictedly verifiable undetermined legal term ‘special case of exception’. If such a case is given, then there is generally no scope for discretion; the degree of discretionary freedom reduces to zero. In maintaining that the school authorities have not exercised the discretion granted to them plaintiffs have failed to appreciate this. This is borne out by the authority’s statement that it has never released a primary age pupil from the obligation to attend school. The present case requires, however, no exercise of discretion, because it does not represent an exception and certainly not a ‘special’ exception. The defendant has rightly pointed out that there is a wide range of school options amongst the state schools in Bremen, even for children with school phobia and especially in the primary sector. At any rate the simple participation in ‘homeschooling’ or in a correspondence course with an unrecognised private school does not represent a particular exception in the sense of an important hardship justifying a (complete) release from the general obligation to attend school. Notwithstanding the fact that, following an Anglo-American trend which can be observed in some neighbouring countries as well, alternative educational possibilities are finding increasing favour amongst parents, the fact remains that these alternative schools in combination with home teaching do not lead to school-leaving qualifications which are recognised in Germany, so that entrance to most vocational training schemes or institutes of higher education will be blocked or at least made excessively more difficult for the (school) graduates. In addition there is no guarantee that the educational aims promulgated by the state will be attained, nor is a later transfer to a regular school easily possible, as the example of the sons of the plaintiffs with the time-limited cooperation agreement displays impressively, the aim of which is to synchronise the home learning with school learning aims, expressly in order to enable the children a smooth transfer to a regular state school. This is in itself sufficient reason for the desire of the plaintiffs to teach their children at home to be given a lower priority than the welfare of the children (cf. section 1.; also Niehus/Rux as above, marginal note No. 320); it does not represent an especially exceptional case.

Detriments to their children’s health which the plaintiffs allege to have established as being a consequence of their children’s periodic attendance at school also do not, in their case, provide grounds for homeschooling. Such psycho-somatic incursions on pupils’ health can also be caused in other pupils, often and mainly by fears of school or examinations, without this constituting grounds for a claim to be completely freed from the obligation to attend school. The school [as institution] must take account of difficulties such as these in some other way within the framework of its widely diversified primary school programme. Only health problems of considerable gravity which cannot be solved in the long-term and of which school attendance is the cause can constitute special circumstances which justify the exceptional exemption from the obligation to attend school. This is certainly not the case in the present instance. It may remain open to question as to whether the plaintiffs’ statement that their children experience feelings of unease and display symptoms of psycho-somatic disturbance when attending primary school is credible or whether the possibility is not to be discounted that the physical reactions to school attendance displayed in the past recur as the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because there is some reason to believe that the children’s potential disturbance syndromes are implemented as a means to the end of achieving the parental desire for homeschooling (thus the expertise of the Bremen Health Office – Social- Paediatric Department – dated 09.06.2006 resulting from the school authority’s request for a medical examination of the children).

The motion to hear evidence placed during the hearing which involved calling for an expert opinion as to whether from a medical (including psychological or psychiatrical) point of view reasons exist as to why the children should not attend school, whether there are alternatives and to what extent obliging the children to attend school would prejudice their welfare in view of their refusal to attend a state school does not contain a statement (of facts) which is open to verification. This results from the use of the word ‘whether’, which the plaintiffs’ representative continued to use despite the court having pointed this out. The motion, being based merely on suppositions and in no way on concrete indications (such as medical reports or certificates), places no obligation on the court to instigate further processes for obtaining or hearing evidence (BVerwG, B. v. 31.01.2002, 7 B 92/01; JURIS; OVG Bremen, B. v. 29.06.2005, 2 A 257/04.A).

Apart from this, a medical expertise at the present point in time would not be able to establish any indications of illness relating to school attendance as the children have not attended school (disregarding very few exceptions) for more than one year. An examination would presuppose that the children attend school, which the plaintiffs refuse for reasons which they themselves have to answer for.

The decision to award costs is based on para. 154, section 1 of the Administrative Costing Regulations.

The regulation of the provisional enforceability is based on para. 167 of the Administrative Costing Regulations in connection with para. 708 No. 11 of the Civil Processes Regulations.

Instructions on the rights of appeal

[There follow two statements concerning rights of appeal. One concerns the possibility of appeal against this judgement to the next highest court (the right to appeal is granted as the case has a basic significance which extends beyond the boundaries of this individual situation). The other statement concerns the possibility of appeal against the determination of the ‘Streitwert’, i.e. the nominal amount of money involved in the case.]

Part 6 - More Fairy Tales

2007-01-06T13:45:00.000-08:00

The plaintiffs’ argument that they cannot act against their consciences by, notwithstanding their open attitude towards school in general, forcing their plaintiffs [sic – clearly the children are meant here] to attend school against their will cannot be admitted.

According to paragraph 60, section 4 of the Bremen School Statute the plaintiffs are responsible for causing the fulfilment of their children’s obligation to attend school in their capacities as agents for bringing up their children. This ruling mainly affects the general external relationship between the state and its citizens, but also indirectly the special internal relationship between children and their parents, in that it provides an adequate construal of the terms care and education as contained in Article 6, section 2, page 1 of the Basic Law. In this respect that ‘natural’ approach applies which, as a special aspect of this section, concerns the scope and limitations of parents’ responsibilities (cf. Dreher, Basic Law Vol. 1 1996, Art. 6, marginal note No. 95). There can be no collision between parental rights and children’s rights where a child is incapable of being aware of these on account of its lack of rational/intellectual maturity. In such a case no conflict with the parental right to educate can arise. On the other hand, if the educational aim of engendering a self-determining and selfresponsible personality is (partially) fulfilled, the aspect of parental responsibility contained in Art. 6, section 2, page 1 of the Basic Law is no longer applicable (Dreher, see above). The parental right to educate serves to promote the welfare of the child and is accompanied by obligations; thus it must, on account of its purpose and character, be surrendered when the child has reached an age at which it has gained sufficient maturity to judge its own life situation and be legally responsible for itself. As a right which is oriented to the child and the development of its personality it represents a part of its nature that it should become increasingly superfluous and immaterial according to the child’s growing maturity (cf. Decisions of the FCC 59, 360).

In view of this it is irrelevant as to whether the constitutionality of paragraph 60, section 4 of the (common law) Bremen School Statute is questionable insofar as it assigns the responsibility for fulfilling children’s obligation to attend school to the agents responsible for their education, i.e. also in respect of adult children as the case may be. Certainly in the case of the plaintiffs’ children aged seven and nine respectively the parental authority assigned by Art. 6, section 2, page 1 of the Basic Law includes the right to determine unilaterally for them. The very word ‘education’ (original: ‘Erziehung’, includes wider sense of upbringing) – when viewed without ideological ballast – constitutes ‘determination from without’ simply according to its basic meaning. The formal conflict between parental rights (and duties) and children’s rights is resolved by the constitution unilaterally in favour of the rights of the parents. If the will of the parents is in accordance with the child’s welfare it enjoys the basic support of the legal framework governing parental rights. To the same extent, the will of the children carries no weight (cf. commentary to the Bonn Basic Law, see above, marginal note 141) (Presumably the Bonn Commentary to the Basic Law is intended.) Thus it behoves the plaintiffs, who have on their own account an open attitude to school as an institution, but favour homeschooling for their children, to do justice to their responsibilities and for the sake of their children’s welfare (see above) to ensure their attendance at school. This does not entail an extraordinary hardship which could be at variance with the fulfilment of the obligation to attend school. This will be addressed further later (see 2.).

It is also basically to be expected of the plaintiffs that they should react appropriately to the educative necessity resulting from the children’s lacking ability to judge the situation and should insist on their attending school. This does not necessarily involve compulsion. The parental right to educate, which with its attendant obligations should serve exclusively to promote the welfare of the child (see above), does not give the parents freedom of choice in the sense of unfettered self-determination (cf. Decisions of the FCC 59, 360), but rather aims to encourage family discussion of matters of parental concern on a level suited to the child’s stage of development with a view to achieving a consensus (cf. also para. 1626, section 2, German Civil Code). The idea that this should not be possible in the case of the plaintiffs’ seven and nine year old children appears unrealistic. Insofar as the children have not been (subconsciously as the case may be) influenced to boycott the school in order to oblige the parents, it may be demanded of the latter to issue an energetic appeal. Also, in order to persuade them to attend school it should suffice to point out to the children what the parents may expect in terms of the coercion which has already been threatened (fines, substitutional coercible detention (‘Erzatzzwangshaft’) and other measures up to and including the withdrawal of their custodial rights. Furthermore, pupils who do not fulfil the obligation to attend school can, according to paragraph 64 of the Bremen School Statute, be forced to attend school. ‘Obliging’ parents who exercise indulgence towards their children can, objectively, certainly cause harm to them if they, for instance, fail to supervise the child’s school attendance sufficiently or fail to send it to school over a long period of time on account of a condition which they themselves have diagnosed (cf. commentary to the Bonn Basic Law, see above, marginal note No. 192) (Presumably the Bonn Commentary to the Basic Law is intended.) Finally, children of the age of the plaintiffs’ sons generally require (parental) authority which shows them where their limits are in order to acquire self-discipline. At that age they expect their parents to give them clear guidance and to intercede when conflicts arise. At the same time this means that the educational rights and duties of the parents specifically serve to protect the immature child from the disadvantageous results of a discharge of duties which has practically been put at its disposal.

As they admitted during the hearing, in exercising their rights to bring up their children in other areas of life the plaintiffs unquestioningly, as it were, insist on asserting their own wills against those of the children where this appears to be in their interests and do not thereby get caught up in an irresolvable moral conflict. Why this should be impossible in, of all things, an area of such importance for the children’s development as school remains obscure and suggests that the plaintiffs’ behaviour is influenced not only by the children’s welfare but perhaps also by the thought of presenting and promoting the possibility for individualised educational educational paths (homeschooling), which they consider to be the better form of education anyway, in a manner inviting much public attention. Be that as it may. (Possibly correct interpretation of mysterious sentence: Das mag aber letztlich auf sich beruhen.)

Thus it may be stated with certainty that the plaintiffs’ children are basically subject to the obligation to attend school (paras. 52 ff, Bremen School Statute) and that in order to fulfil this obligation they must attend a state or state recognised school in the State of Bremen (para. 55, section 1, Bremen School Statute). The obligation to attend school covers amongst other things regular attendance in classes (para. 55, section 7, page 1, Bremen School Statute) which the plaintiffs must ensure as a matter of principle on the basis of their commission to bring up their children.

Part 5 Grounds for the Decision

2007-01-05T23:15:00.000-08:00

Grounds for the decision
The plaintiffs’ appeal is permissible but unfounded.
The plaintiffs’ children have the obligation to attend school (1.).
The plaintiffs have no legal right to have their children released from the general obligation to
attend school (2.).

1.
The plaintiffs cannot, as they claim, choose freely between their children’s obligation to attend school and the home education which they favour. Rather, the children are subject to the general obligation to attend school. This follows immediately as a consequence of Article 30 of the State Constitution of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. According to this a general obligation to attend school applies. Further details are laid down in the Bremen School Statute.

This is not contrary to the right of the parents to provide for the care and education of their children as guaranteed in Article 6, section 3, page 1 of the Basic Constitutional Law (Grundgesetz), for the latter is subject to limitations which are themselves stipulated in the
Basic Constitutional Law. This includes the obligation to provide for education which is assigned to the State in Article 7, section 1 (cf. Decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court (DFCC) 34, 165; 93,1). As a result of this the general obligation to attend school which has been enacted with a view to realising this state obligation represents a generally acceptable constraint. Individual conflicts arising between the parental right to educate and the educational obligation of the state are to be resolved by means of consideration according to the principles of practical concordance (praktische Konkordanz, German legal phrase) (cf. DFCC 93, 1). However, the state may also pursue its own educational ends independently of the parents (cf. DFCC 47, 47), although it must display neutrality and tolerance for parents’ educational ideas and may not exercise particular influence in favour of any given political, ideological or general philosophical trend.

The general obligation to attend school serves as a suitable and useful instrument for achieving the legitimate aim of realising the state education obligation. The assigned obligation is not confined to the transfer of knowledge and bringing up children to become independent personalities. It is also concerned with the making of citizens of the state who take part in the democratic processes of a pluralistic society with responsibility and equality.

Social competence in communication with those who think differently, practised tolerance, powers of self-assertion and the ability to defend minority views can be more effectively put
into practice if contacts with society in general and the differing views to be found in it are made not only occasionally, but are part of the daily experience which comes with regular school attendance (cf. FCC, B. v. 31.05.2006, 2 BvR 1693/04).

Furthermore, the obligation to attend school represents a reasonable measure in view of the
positive effects which are to be expected as a result of its being exercised for the state educational assignment and the interests of the common good which form its background. The
general public has a justified interest in counteracting not only religiously or philosophically
oriented parallel societies, but also certain educationally oriented groups whose obvious intention is to undermine the general obligation to attend school, e.g. by registering in an (international) private correspondence school or by establishing international or regional
educational networks, to deprofessionalise the education system and to cut themselves off
from society. (Translator’s note to the above: The original sentence was even more chaotic
than this (being a syntactical catastrophe); I have tried to convey the exact sense, if that’s the
right word.) In this regard it is irrelevant that with homeschooling the children experience a
large amount of familial attention and in respect of a number of school subjects in the primary
stage, for instance, receive an adequate, or even in the opinion of the plaintiffs a better education. The final determinant is the objectively assessed welfare of the child (cf. Bonn
Commentary to the Basic Law, dated 10.96, marginal note 195), which the plaintiffs justifiably claim to be able to judge. In this respect the FCC (E34, 165) refers to the parents as the ‘natural advocates’ for their children’s education. However, the plaintiffs fail to take into account that the children’s pleasant learning experiences at home do not alter the fact that their sons must reckon with serious disadvantages in the later course of their lives because their educationally motivated exclusion from the state school system may be expected to prevent them from acquiring the competence to assert themselves under ‘normal’ social conditions, so that they can only live according to fixed rules in a small, narrowly enclosed parallel society (thus Niehues/Rux, Schulrecht (School Law), 4th edition, marginal No. 321).

As a result they would be educated to a state of immaturity, which is not compatible with the
personality envisaged by the Basic Law and which therefore cannot be justified. In addition, it
is doubtful whether the plaintiffs are at all capable of providing their children by means of
homeschooling with the knowledge and skills which section 20 of the Bremen School Statute
prescribes for the schools subsequent to the primary stage (secondary school, comprehensive
school, grammar school) (in respect of state and state recognised alternative schools). The plaintiffs have said that they wish to cross such bridges as they come and take decisions on a
case-by-case basis.

Court Judgement Part 4

2007-01-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

The plaintiffs apply to oblige the defendant to release their under-age children Thomas and Moritz from the obligation to attend a state school or state recognised school in the Federal City
State of Bremen for reasons complying with section 57 of the Bremen School Statute and also to rescind the decisions of 21.03.2006 and 12.07.2006.

The defendant applies to have the plaintiffs’ application rejected. The defendant responds to the plaintiffs’ demands with reference to the disputed decisions.

Within the framework of a process to compel school attendance (case No. 7 V 2003/06) which is being pursued parallel to the present appeal the plaintiffs and the defendant have reached an arbitrational cooperation agreement, effective from 13.09.2006, in order to ensure that the education and development of the two children may take place in a form which is supervised and monitored by the school authorities and success orientated. The aim is to synchronise the home learning with the school learning aims so that it remains possible for the children to enter a standard school. In this respect working according to the concept of the Clonlara School is regarded by the Senator for Education and Science as supplementary furtherance. The basis for the educational work with the plaintiffs’ children is the Bremen School Statute and the curriculum framework for the primary stage with the standards prescribed for the end of the 4th class or end of the year 6 respectively.

The (School) Authority file (24-12-111/7) was available to the court. Its content constituted a
part of the hearing, insofar as the decision is based upon it.

Court Judgement Part 3

2007-01-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

On 20.07.2006 an appeal was lodged against this refusal.
In addition to their previous statements in the original application and the appeal the plaintiffs
pointed out that even taking account of the arguments of the other side, sending the children
to a state school would be injurious for them. This was borne out by the intention expressed
by the school authorities to have the children examined by the school doctor to see whether
there was any medical reason why they should not attend school. Further, the school
authorities had not exploited their powers of discretion in respect of agreeing to an exception
to the rule, as was confirmed by their statement that they had never made an exception for a
pupil in the primary school section. Finally, the plaintiffs protested against the implication
that they had exercised an ideologically motivated ‘formative influence’ on their children
which would throw an unfavourable light on the institution school. Rather, on account of
major psycho-somatic detractions on the part of their children they had begun to question
whether an absolute legal obligation to attend school can be allowed to have priority over the
obvious welfare of the child. On an international level the German legal interpretation of the
right to education in the form of an obligation to attend a state (public) school which should,
if necessary, be enforced by coercion represents a puzzling anomaly. Therefore the plaintiffs
had taken account of the international legal situation in formulating their application. This
does not mean a general rejection of the institution school, but rather the freedom of choice
which is self-evident in most developed states today.
Furthermore the plaintiffs protest against the implication that their children may have
(behavioural) abnormalities, personal instabilities and social integration difficulties simply
because they did not go to school, but wished to learn more effectively at home. In most other
countries, including neighbouring countries such as Austria, Denmark, the Czech Republic,
Poland, Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, Portugal and Finland, this desire is not only accepted
as normal, but legally guaranteed or even expressly included in the constitution (Ireland,
Spain).
The school authorities’ argumentation was based implicitly on the unproven assumption that
attendance at school is generally better suited for the education of children and especially
better able to secure their social competence than education and knowledge assimilation at
home or from home.
Article 6 of the constitution recognises parents’ status as independent agents responsible for
bringing up their children. For the sake of a child’s welfare neither parents nor a school as
responsible agents should be allowed to alienate the child against the respective other side nor
actively agitate against it. Parents and state can only fulfil their common educational tasks by
working together constructively. Conflicting interests are to be balanced out in way that is fair
to all parties and as favourable as possible. The common task is to promote the development
of the child so that it can become a responsible personality within the social framework.
Insofar as the parents do this, thus fulfilling their constitutional obligation, the ‘other
educational agent’, in this case the school, may not be allowed to force its own methods upon
the parents. This would have the effect of turning the relationship of equal standing between
the agents into one of higher and lower priorities. This is, however, in conflict with the
expressed aim of the constitution.

Court Judgement Part 2

2007-01-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

In a statement dated 21.03.2006 the Senator for Education and Science rejected the parents’
application to have their children released from the legal obligation to attend school in Bremen: The educational programme of the Clonlara School for children not attending school was not admissible as a means of fulfilling the obligation to attend school. In Germany – as to some extent is the case in other countries – there is not merely an obligation to dispense education, but also for children to attend school. Teaching at home can only be considered in exceptional situations such as where parents are working abroad or for children who cannot be transported on account of handicap or illness (‘Krankenunterricht’, approx. ‘teaching for indisposed persons’). But even in these cases the curriculum prescribed by the state should provide the basis for the teaching. Furthermore it should be borne in mind that learning in school is not merely a matter of increasing one’s fund of knowledge but involves other learning experiences with other people. A learning process is involved which is not concerned only with fact learning, but comprehension in common learning. In this respect teamwork and cooperative working on a common task is important. In this way each child experiences certain limitations, must learn acceptance (tolerance of frustration) and learn to accept others in their differentness (tolerance). These are important prerequisites for being able to take on responsibility for oneself and for others in future.

The plaintiffs appealed against this rejection, amongst other things with the argument that
homeschooling children develop a degree of social maturity above the average and as adults
they display a significantly higher level of involvement in social matters than the average, e.g.
in that they vote more often at elections, do more voluntary work and become more politically
involved. This has (according to the plaintiffs) been scientifically confirmed in large scale studies. On the other hand there is no evidence to suggest that children specifically and exclusively receive furtherance in respect of social skills and team competence in state school classes. On the contrary, it is generally deplored that state schools are increasingly subject to the ‘law of the strongest’ (‘Faustrecht’) and that the children’s social behaviour tends to be determined by the lowest common denominator. Especially children who are used to conflicts being resolved at home through discussion and without resort to violence learn that this approach in no way protects them from brutal attacks from other children who have not learned it themselves.

Their sons’ social behaviour, including their attitude to people from other social and cultural backgrounds, did not improve during their time attending school, but on the contrary it became significantly worse. Since then it is once again of the highest standard. Also, their children are sufficiently confronted with the fact that in the rest of the world and in Bremen things are not as peaceful as they are at home by their exposure to public places, bus journeys, in the choir, from newspapers, radio and television. It is not, however, necessary to force them to be exposed to this violence in their immediate surroundings in order to become aware of this and take it into account.

The appeal was rejected. In his rejection statement of 12.07.2006, which will be referred to
and amplified later, the Senator for Education and Science stated amongst other things that an
exception in respect of school attendance for the plaintiffs’ children did not come into question. The children’s purported or real refusal to go to school could not be accepted as sufficient grounds. Whereas there was considerable doubt as to whether they were not subject to their parents’ formative influence, even an authentic psychologically or psycho-somatically initiated refusal would not represent a reason to release them from the obligation to attend school. State schools are regularly confronted with conspicuous behaviour, sometimes of an extreme nature, on the part of children, including so-called school phobia. State schools are equipped to attend to such children with appropriate pedagogic measures, to stabilise them in their personalities and to integrate them socially. This succeeds so much the better when the parents cooperate with the school.

Court ruling against German Homeschoolers Part 1

2007-01-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

I have received an English translation of the recent court judgement in the case of my friends, the Neubronners in Bremen. The judgement îs very long, so I'm breaking it up into smaller posts. Don't get too excited when you read the first parts, because it's just a summary of my friends' case.

Judgement

In respect of the Administrative Court case
(Neubronner, plaintiffs) vs City of Bremen (defendant)
[+ names of legal representatives etc.]
the 7th Chamber of the Administrative Court of the Free City of Bremen, represented by
[names of judges] has decreed that
the plaintiffs’ case shall be rejected.
Costs shall be borne by the plaintiffs. Appeal against this judgement is permitted.
Facts of the case
The plaintiffs require the defendant to release their children from the obligation to attend
school (‘Schulpflicht’). They wish to educate (‘unterrichten’, literally ‘teach’) their children at
home according to an alternative learning concept (so-called ‘homeschooling’).
The plaintiffs are the parents / have the rights/duties to bring up (‘Erziehungsberechtigte’)
their two sons Moritz and Thomas, nine and seven years old. In June 2005 the family returned
to Bremen from the Allgäu [South Germany], where the plaintiffs had been founder members
of a group involved in starting up a free Montessori school. There, Moritz was registered at the primary school in Borchshöhe as a child required to attend school (‘schulpflichtig’). He had predominantly learned at home until that time. At the beginning of the school year 2005/2006 Thomas was enrolled at the same school, having become of an age requiring him to attend school as well. Both children attended school regularly at first, but stopped doing so after about ten days because they – the children – had expressed the wish to be taught at home. According to the plaintiffs the children developed psycho-somatic symptoms during their attendance at school, including belly and headaches, nightmares and heart complaints.

On account of this their paediatrician declared them to be ill. At this point the plaintiffs decided to permit their sons to take part in so-called ‘homeschooling’. Attempts to reach an understanding with, amongst others, the education authorities were unsuccessful, because the
authorities insisted that the aim of synchronisation of the learning at home with the school
curriculum should be to make it possible for the children gradually to take part in normal school. At the end of October / beginning of November 2005 the plaintiffs removed their children from the school, giving as reason “a move to Ireland”, and registered them at the Clonlara School in Jewett/Ireland for the school year 2005/2006. This school is an international private (correspondence) school with a special programme for pupils who are educated at home according to the requirements of the regional school authorities. The plaintiffs planned at first to spend several periods in Ireland as a family, although not to move there permanently. However, the school authorities made this a requirement in order to free the children from the obligation to attend school. This was not possible in view of, amongst other things, the economic situation of the plaintiffs. Thus they registered their sons at the Schönebeck primary school in Bremen on 08.12.2005. Since then the children have practically not gone to the school at all.

The plaintiffs have applied (? on 18.01.2006 – sentence incomplete) to the school inspectorate
to have their children released from the obligation to attend school according to paragraph 57,
section 2 of the Bremen School Statute. This application is founded upon a moral conflict as
perceived by the parents. They have an open attitude towards school, as is borne out by their
involvement in founding a Montessori school. They in no way prevent their children from attending school and have tried by means of attending classes themselves as well as talks with
the children and teachers to engender a situation in which it would be possible for the children
to decide for themselves to attend school. Attendance at school produces, according to the
parents, a state in which the children feel under negative pressure and to which they react with
psycho-somatic symptoms. Their children feel troubled by other pupils and their behaviour;
they wish to be able to learn in a self-determining manner without this scholastic environment. As parents, they cannot exercise psychological or physical pressure on their children, particularly in view of the fact that the law allows for exceptions to the obligation to attend school. Children are not to be seen as passive objects to be educated. Rather, children and their parents have the right to choose their education as they see fit. Their sons can learn better and more effectively at home than in state or recognised private schools. This is borne out by examples from other countries where homeschooling is accepted.

These poor unsocialised homeschoolers

2007-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

I took the kids swimming today and lo and behold there were FIVE boys there who knew my poor unsocialised son. He teamed up with a couple of them and had a great time.

Rowena has been watching a replay on TV of Domino Day 2004. Looks like I'm going to have to invest in a few boxes of plastic domino stones.

The German Constitutional Court....

2006-12-31T07:44:00.000-08:00

obviously believes in fairytales. In a judgement earlier this year, they stated...
"...social competence in mixing with people of different points of view, practising tolerance, assertiveness and self-assertion of a conviction which is different to the mainstream can be better exercised when contacts with the society and its different perceptions do not just happen occasionally but are part of the everyday experience as connected with school attendance."

The European Court of Human Rights also has the same problem. Earlier this year, in refusing to take on the Konrad family's appeal, the judges stated
"In the present case the court notes that the German authorities have carefully reasoned their decisions and mainly stressed the fact that not only the acquisition of knowledge but also the integration into and first experience with society are important goals of primary school education. The German courts found that those objectives cannot be equally met by home education even if it allowed children to acquire the same standard of knowledge as provided for by primary school education. The Court considers this presumption as not being erroneous..."

Methinks that some people needs to do their homework.

Happy new Year. My resolution is to educate some judges about homeschooling.

At last....

2006-12-31T07:08:00.000-08:00

...The return of Socialisation Quote of the Day
From Time Magazine

A yawning chasm (with an emphasis on yawning) separates the world inside the schoolhouse from the world outside.

Movie Mincemeat

2006-12-29T23:45:00.000-08:00

We went to see the Eragon movie last night and I reckon that it is a good argument for waiting till you've seen the movie before you read the book. I was totally disillusioned by it.

I can understand that Christopher Paolini's book is not translatable into a 2 hour long screen format. However, the makers of the film managed to take all the fat and most of the nutrition out of his wonderful epic plot, reconstituted it and squeezed it through a mincer. I enjoyed a lot of things about the film, but as far as the plot was concerned, yeugh!

The web of lies grows....

2006-12-25T09:39:00.000-08:00

This eye-opening article has appeared on the website of the German embassy in Ottawa. The way the German authorities create fabrications to malign homeschoolers in Germany is no longer a surprise to me (see my previous post).
I wrote them a letter pointing out some of their whoppers. By the way, these are the same people who are quite happy to educate their children at home through the Deutsche Fernschule (and I'm sure some of them are doing so).

I'll quote the article, because I have a feeling that it won't be around for long. My response to them follows.

Home schooling versus the German public school system
In Germany education is subject to provincial ("Laender") and not federal law. Generally, school attendance is obligatory in all provinces for children of school age. Parents are obliged to send their children to either public or private schools.

Schools must be approved by the competent authorities and may be run by the province, congregations (Christian, Jewish or other) or private institutions. Like in most other European countries, home schooling is not an option.

The German system of obligatory school attendance has a long tradition and it has proven to be successful. It ensures that all children's intellectual needs are met. Apart from that, it provides children with valuable experiences in regards to social interaction in groups, including contact with peers from different social or religious sections of society.

Furthermore, given recent world events, general school attendance is seen by parts of the German public as a means of protection from religious fundamentalism. Home schooling might allow religious fanatics to indoctrinate children in uncontrollable ways. In Germany children can attend religious education of their religious denomination in public or private schools.

As Germany is - in contrast to Canada – relatively small and densely populated, children are usually able to reach the nearest town and their school without difficulties.

Not sending your children to school is an infringement in Germany, sanctioned by a fine. Continuous and persistent violations constitute a criminal offence and may lead to imprisonment.

Concerning the recent legal cases in Germany, there have been long negotiations between the involved families and the Provincial Ministry of Education, which are still pending. The families in question have so far not been willing to accept testing of the students' performance or the many constructive proposals made by the province. These proposals included the opening of a private school, that would take into account the childrens' religious beliefs - more so than at a public school.

I wrote (at 6am after 5 hours of sleep, so excuse the repetition)

I have looked at your website and read the commentary on home education
in Germany. I think that you should fix up some of the comments, which
are patently false.
You state "Like in most other European countries, home schooling is not
an option." Germany is the only EU country (other than a couple of Swiss
cantons) where homeschooling is not an option.
"The German system of obligatory school attendance...and it has proven
to be successful. It ensures that all children's intellectual needs are
met. "
This statement is not borne out by the Pisa Study, the Rütli school and
other "Brennpunkt" schools, school shootings such as the Erfurt one and
the more recent one.
"The families in question have so far not been willing to accept testing
of the students' performance".
In fact most of the families in question have offered the authorities
the opportunity to test their children. The authorities are not
interested in taking up this offer, as all they are interested in is
that the children are sitting behind a desk in a school during school
hours. The Neubronners in Bremen offered the authorities this
opportunity and it was only after massive TV coverage (including an
interview on Stern TV with Gunther Jauch), that the authorities took
them up on this offer.
We are a home educating family in Niedersachsen. In our dealings with
the school authorities we have also stated that we would be happy to
have our children assessed but they have not taken us up on this.
We are foreigners living temporarily in Germany, but the German
authorities will not allow our children the opportunity to be educated
at home in their own language. Yet at the same time, a distance learning
institution
is
accredited by the German government to meet the needs of Germans
overseas who want to be educated, within their own four walls, in their
own language. This is in spite of the fact that the German authorities
insist that compulsory school attendance serves the best interests of
the child. At the very least this is hypocrisy, if not discrimination
against foreigners living temporarily in Germany.

Social Worker's report

2006-12-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

I just' received a copy of the school authority's file on us from the lawyer and this report was in it from the social worker who visited us two ago.

Assessment

As far as the undersigned is concerned, the childrens' welfare is not in danger. The house was orderly and clean. The children made a normal impression. The mother is aware of the legal situation concerning compulsory schooling, but maintains that she can best help her children develop in her home. She believes that she is doing something good and therefore has no fear of future consequences. However, the mother does not recognise thereby that dealings with other children and the encouraging of joint activities are peers are part of normal child development. The interactions of the children are restricted to members of their own family. It is doubtful, that Robert could have contact with other children when he does not attend school.

BTW, Robbie was not present when she visited. Earlier in the report she states that he was with friends (which he was), creating a total contradiction. If she thought that the children were limited to interactions within the family, then how could he be with friends? Also she never asked me whether the children had interactions with other children (peers or otherwise). What she is stating here are her own conjectures. In fact, Robbie was, by this time, playing in the local football team (training twice a week, plus matches), going to chess, had just started karate and had at least 2 good friends, whom he saw regularly in the afternoons (boys about his age from the neighbourhood). If she had just asked me, I could have told her.

The comments which she makes are the normal gut reaction of anyone who meets homeschoolers for the first time, but to put them in a report as statements of fact,without checking whether they are based in fact is, in my opinion, at the very least, unprofessional. I am seething at the fact that my children were presented as social outcasts and am reminded of the Rudolph family, who were successfully portrayed by the authorities as isolationists who allowed their children no outside contacts (which was not the case at all).

Hypocrisy

2006-12-22T23:07:00.000-08:00

We are foreigners living temporarily in Germany, but the German authorities will not allow our children the opportunity to be educated at home in their own language. Yet at the same time, a distance learning institution is accredited by the German government to meet the needs of Germans overseas who want to be educated, within their own four walls, in their own language. This is in spite of the fact that the German authorities insist that compulsory school attendance serves the best interests of the child. At the very least this is hypocrisy, if not discrimination against foreigners living temporarily in Germany.

True words from a disturbed mind

2006-11-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

Germany is reeling in the aftermath of yet another school shooting. It seems that the perpretrator, a former student at the Geschwister Scholl school, where the shooting took place, was described as a loner, who felt that let down by the school system.

He left behind a letter, in which he describes his motives (some of them pretty twisted). The letter has been published, in various forms in the different German newspapers. I read the letter in its entirety and find it interesting that, along with his railing against various groups whom he disliked, his declaration that murderers should be accepted as normal people and other controversial statements, the following has also been left out by most of the media :

Das Kind begibt sich auf seine perönliche Sozialisationsstrecke, und wird in den darauffolgenden Jahren gezwungen sich der Allgemeinheit, der Mehrheit anzupassen. Lehnt es dies ab, schalten sich Lehrer, Eltern, und nicht zuletzt die Polizei ein. Schulpflicht ist die Schönrede von Schulzwang, denn man wird ja gezwungen zur Schule zu gehen. Wer gezwungen wird, verliert ein Stück seiner Freiheit

In English

The child embarks on his personal socialisation track and is forced to adapt to the mainstream, to the majority. If he rejects this, teachers, parents and, last but not least, the police intervene. Compulsory schooling is a euphemism for forced schooling, because one is forced into going to school. Whoever is forced loses a peace of his freedom.

One of the sad ironies here is that the Scholl siblings for whom the school is named died because they refused to keep quiet in the face of intolerance and injustice.

The school in particular and the German school system in general is of course not solely to blame for what this young man has done. However it is typical of the tunnel vision of most of the media and authorities that they are pinning the blame overwhelmingly on the violent computer games which this boy played and not looking at the other factors which could have led to this. In my morning newspaper a couple of pages on from the article about him was one in which someone was suggesting scrapping the child benefit (Kindergeld) which parents receive and investing it in daycare for under-3's.

A waste of time

2006-09-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

Last night one of Robbie's friends told him he wouldn't be able to come to soccer practice on Monday nights anymore, because he only comes home from school at 5pm and then has to do homework. Commented Robbie to me, "What a waste of time." (My feelings exactly).

Okay, so this full school day is only once a week, but the rest of the week, he has four hours of homework after finishing school at around 2pm (it takes him at least half an hour to get home from school.) And he's only 12. He's going to have to do this for the next 6 years and it will just get worse. Compare this with one homeschooler I know who, on four hours of academic work a day, has now started doing online courses through Stanford University and will be have completed the first two years of university by the age of 17.

Chemundo

2006-09-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

I bought this game at the shop of the Universum science center and Robbie and I played it for the first time today. It's a really fun game, based on Uno, but with the added attraction (esp. for homeschooling parents) that one learns about chemistry at the same time. Robbie and I both had great fun.

Excuses, excuses

2006-08-31T11:36:00.000-07:00

I want to thank Lady Liberty for her concerned email to me. Yes, I am still around. I went through a period where I wasn't really into the internet, and as a result didn't have time to blog. My blogging was normally done after 10pm, but now that we have been aiming at going to bed at 10pm, my blogging fell by the wayside. A pity, because I really enjoy it.

Now my internet addiction is in full swing again - a bit too much of a pendulum swing to the other side, I think - when will I find some balance in my life? I have, however, been spending my time (probably futilely) putting in my two cents and doing much teeth grinding at the Spiegel online forum. It's helping to improve my written German, if nothing else, although I do live in hope that maybe one or two souls reading it will be converted to the path of true righteousness ;-) (or at get a better perception of home education.)

The homeschooling situation is really hotting up in Germany. The family in Hamburg, whom I mentioned in a previous post, has fled to Austria after the father endured a week in jail. The school authorities had started the process of removing the children from their parents' custody. The newspapers are having a field day with the situation, generally painting homeschoolers as a bunch of loony sectarians.

We still haven't heard from the school authorities about our application for exemption, which is fine, as far as I'm concerned. May they mull over it for a loooooong time.

I hope that I don't fall back on my blogging responsibilities again, but at least, unlike school, blogging is not compulsory.

The benefits of not having it all

2006-07-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of weeks, I've been following the Diets don't Work approach to losing weight, and I've been having a great time. The main principles of the book are 1) you eat whatever it is your body is asking for at that moment; 2) you only eat when you are hungry; 3) you stop when you are no longer hungry, ie. before you feel full.

As you can expect, this involves dealing with the issues that make one overeat. In my case, emotional issues are only a small part of the reason for my overeating at the moment. The main problem for me is that I looove food. Put me in front of a buffet, or a lovely Christmas dinner and I want to sample everything. Bob Schwartz (the author) tells us, however, that if we eat the way naturally thin people do, then we should only eat those things that are a 10 (on a scale of 1 out of 10) for us.

This got me thinking and I've realised that this is an approach that I have to life in general. Life is pretty much like a buffet and my tendency is to want to have everything that it has to offer. Whether it's a book catalogue (or any kind of catalogue for that matter), activities for my children, any kind of store, the restaurants in a city (I note every restaurant that I drive past and think, I must try that out), email lists, toys for my children (you should see their playroom) and many more things that I just can't think of right now, I want to sample everything that they have to offer.

This feeling of wanting and being afraid of missing out on something has so permeated my life that my eating habits are just one expression of it. I've started realising that, as with food, It's okay not to have everything in life. I will just go for the things that are really important for me and hopefully that will make my life a richer experience.

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-07-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

From a study of The Influence of Preschool Centers on Children's Development Nationwide. Thanks to RegularNut for the link.

We find that attendance in preschool centers, even for short periods of time each week, hinders the rate at which young children develop social skills and display the motivation to engage classroom tasks, as reported by their kindergarten teachers.

Bad news

2006-07-15T15:45:00.000-07:00

My friend in Bremen, whose two sons don't want to go to school, received three letters from the educational authorities yesterday. One was the rejection of their application for exemption from school attendance. The other two were notifications, one for her and one for her husband, of coercive fines of €1 500 each. If these are not paid they will have to go to jail.

Watching a paradigm-shift

2006-07-15T15:25:00.000-07:00

I had a visitor last week, a woman who came with her daughter to visit. She is looking for someone to look after her daughter occasionally during the school vacation and had come upon a leaflet I put up at the local supermarket.

Of course, the inevitable subject came up, once she established that our two youngest don't attend preschool. I came straight out with the news that Robbie and Rowena don't attend school either, and it pretty much blew her mind. Her reaction was so strong at first ("But you can't do that - school is comppulsory!") that I thought she must be a teacher. (It turned out that she was a doctor).

The next hour was spent fielding her various questions and assumptions about homeschooling. Her greatest concern was how I found the time and oppurtunity to meet the educational needs of all my children of different ages. I have to admit that I didn't go into unschooling with her too much (I think that one paradigm blown in an afternoon was probably enough). She had what she thought was a really brilliant suggestion for me - that I send my two youngest ones off to preschool so that I can devote myself to homeschooling my two older children. I just said to her "Well we have them all at home because we find that works best for our family." Emphasising what works best for our family (while smiling sweetly) often seems to work well with people who are otherwise proving a tough nut to crack.

I think she was able to get over that homeschooling hurdle in her mind, because when she left she said how nice it was to meet people with a different lifestyle. In general she was very nice and our daughters really liked each other (it took her half an hour to drag her daughter away), so I am sure we will continue to hammer away at her educational paradigms.

Carnival of Homeschooling

2006-07-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

The Carnival of Homeschooling Week 28 is up (for all two of you who haven't come here from there)so go and check it out and come back here tomorrow or the next day. I have another post cooking and I'll type it as soon as I can. It's all about the strong reaction I had today from someone new I met (and I didn't even bring up the subject of unschooling).

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-07-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

From a recent Time Magazine article :

Siblings have a socializing effect on one another," says psychologist Daniel Shaw of the University of Pittsburgh. "When you tease out all the other variables, it's the play styles that make the difference. Unlike a relationship with friends, you're stuck with your sibs. You learn to negotiate things day to day." It's that permanence, researchers believe, that makes siblings so valuable a rehearsal tool for later life.

Thanks to Spunky for the link.

Finding a balance

2006-07-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

Rowena has drawn a racing track on the road outside our house (it's a very quiet little street and the children living on it often play out there) for her and Leo and their friends to race on with their bikes. It reminded me of an experience we had recently of waiting till our children are ready to learn a new skill.

Just before the beginning of winter I tried to teach Leo to ride without training wheels. I pushed him on Robbie's old BMX, and although he could keep upright, he couldn't get the hang of steering as well. He wasn't keen on it and I didn't want to push him (both metaphorically and literally) so he went back to riding his little bicycle, which has training wheels and is smaller than the BMX.

About a month ago, Steven (dh) was tinkering around with his tools outside while Leo happened to be riding up and down on his little bike. I had a brainwave and asked Steven to take the training wheels off Leo's little bike to see whether he could manage on that one. Then I went shopping. When I came back a couple of hours later, not only could Leo ride the little bike confidently, he was also doing tricks which Rowena had taught him, like one foot off the pedal. The next day he graduated to the BMX and we put the training wheels back on the little bike so Adrian could use it.

For me this is yet another of the many situations in the lives of my children where pushing them before they were really ready just made them unhappy and it was much more uncomplicated to wait a little longer before giving them a teeny little bump and watch them go soaring out of the nest.

Swimming in the rain

2006-07-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Seeing as I'm on a real "blog"roll this evening, I'll quickly tell about our day before I hang up my keyboard for the night. After their operations, Rowena and Robbie had not been able to do any sport for a week. The last few days have seen some really scorching temperatures and they were desperate to go swimming. As a compromise I bought a paddling pool which they could sit in. (The day I bought it, Rowena put the cat into the water. Luckily, dh was able to mend the resulting leak.)

Finally, today, the first day where they could go swimming and leap about with impunity, dawned, but not bright and clear. As the morning went on, the clouds started to look more threatening. The children, however, were determined that I would keep my promise to take them swimming today, so off we went. We chose a swimming pool with an indoor section, and as we arrived there it started raining. At least there was plenty of parking, and it was really an exhilirating experience, swimming outdoors in the warm rain.

Defending our choices

2006-07-07T12:01:00.000-07:00

So much pressure

2006-07-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

Now that I have this blog running, I'm really starting to feel the pressure. I have a couple of regular readers and I feel really bad when I see that they've visited my blog and there is nothing new for them to read. A couple of weeks ago I totally went off the internet for a bit. I barely even checked my email and didn't even read anything on my precious UnschoolingDiscussion email list, let alone reading other blogs or writing for my own (I'm sure Doc missed me during that time).

I have so many posts cooking in my brain and they never get out of the pot. Something interesting happens and I think "I must blog about that", but get no opportunity that day and it disappears into some mental black hole. When I do blog it's usually late at night after the kids are in bed and then I end up going to bed looooong after my own bedtime. (You know, that point when you are past tired and then you can't go to sleep for an hour and lie awake while hubby snores gently next to you.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining (though dh would probably say I am). It's just that I've realised that blogging is not something done lightly. Or am I going overboard on the responsibility bit here? Is this my co-dependent side coming out?

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-07-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

By Gordon Neufeld, in the introduction to the German edition of his book, Hold onto your Kids. (Translated from the German by me)

When peers replace the parents, children remain stuck in their development. Peer orientation produces a mass of immature, conformist and problem-afflicted young adults, who are incapable of integrating into society.

Unschooling Voices

2006-07-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

Go here if you want to read a collection of good unschooling blogging. (Yes, it's at the same blog where I found my latest socialisation quote.)

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-07-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

From Joanne at A Day in Our Lives.

I usually laugh on the inside when someone, after finding out our kids don't go to school, asks about socialization. I'll never understand what one has to do with the other.

Are they saying that when their children are not in school (like weekends or summer breaks) they are isolated from other children?!
Wow, I kinda feel sorry for them.

Now I know what I'll say the next time someone asks me the S question. And that's not all. Joanne continues

My 7 year old interacts with 15 year olds, one of my 13 year old's friends is nine and my ten year old loves to read to the little ones in our homeschool group.

And if that wasn't enough, the really cool thing is...they actually have a choice!
Suppose one of my children doesn't feel like being around other kids. We all have those times when cocooning in our cozy home and being able to think and dream and just be alone in our own head, is what we need.
They have the freedom to do that.
They don't have to push those feelings aside and spend 8 hours straight with other kids when they don't want to.

Some really yummy new science books

2006-07-02T11:01:00.000-07:00

It was an expensive weekend, even though I hardly left the house. My local Usborne books lady dropped off an order I'd made a couple of months ago. They are all science books, but WHAT science books! They are so beautiful that I was drooling over them. You can see some of them here. The ones I got include Mysteries and Marvels of Science, some of the internet linked reference books and the Illustrated Dictionary of Science. I hope the children like them as much as I do.

Catch-up weekend

2006-07-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I don't like housework. It's really good exercise, especially the vacuuming. Routines are generally something I forget about, but I had a lightbulb moment yesterday. Instead of putting off the vacuuming, why don't I do it for twenty minutes every day, straight after I finish my 35 minute Tae-Bo workout. Just think of all the calories I will be burning off!

That's assuming I do my Tae-Bo workout every day. I started again nearly a month ago, after a long hiatus, and no sooner had I dusted down the DVD than I came down with a rotten cold, which had me feeling weak for seven days. (I wrote that cos "feeling weak for a week" didn't look quite right). Then the virus got Adrian, which turned him into the incredible clinging toddler. Throw two days spent in hospital with my two eldest with no chance to get exercise (when we came home both afternoons I had the incredible clinging toddler to look after) and I could look back on another long exercise-free period. It's like starting over again.

Bedside manners

2006-06-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

Well, Robbie, poor boy had his adenoids removed today. It wasn't exactly a pleasant experience for him, especially after he came round after the anaesthetic. I went with him into the operating theatre and stayed with him until he was under anaesthetic.

The anaesthetist dealing with him was a very nice older lady, with a great bedside manner. I've noticed that when doctors are about to perform some invasive procedure on you they start chatting to you about a totally unrelated subject to distract you. So as she was about to insert the IV needle into Robbie's arm she asked him about his school. Awkward pause as Robbie looks at me. "He doesn't go to school," I say, "he learns at home." "Oh, with you," says the anaesthetist, "That's quite rare here". Comments the theatre sister, "I read an interesting article about it in the paper recently."

Then the anaesthetist switched topics to soccer (always a safe one with young boys at the moment) and said to Robbie, "So are you looking forward to watching Germany play Argentina tomorrow night?"

26th Carnival of homeschooling

2006-06-28T04:53:00.000-07:00

Dh has fulfilled his promise to take our two eldest children to a theme park today and I'm left at home with the two youngest (one of whom is in bed with fever).
I think I'll console myself by a visit to the Carnival of Homeschooling at the homeschool cafe(which features a post by me) and a lovely caramel latte.

Scatty's Taxi Service

2006-06-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

We spent the weekend in sporting fever (and that doesn't include the World Cup soccer we watched). Saturday I had to run Rowena up to Bremerhaven (3/4 of an hour's drive away) to train in the hall where she would be taking part in the championship the next day. Then it was back down to Bremen to watch Robbie taking part in a soccer tournament where his team came last (which was predictable, considering most of the other teams were a year older than them, they were two players short and they were playing on a full-size field for the first time). I felt like a kind of emotional sink for Robbie's frustration and disappointment, which had me praying that we wouldn't have the same situation the next day with Rowena.

Sunday morning saw Rowena and I going bright and early to Bremerhaven for the State Championships in Artistic roller skating (not such a big deal because the state Rowena skates in is the smallest one in Germany and is just two cities). We came home at about 10pm that night, Rowena clutching the little trophy she got for coming in third place overall in her section.

One of the results of the competition is that she saw the dance skating (similar to ice dance) and now wants to start doing that as well. Most of the girls in her group are doing it but I had not wanted to push her into it. At this rate, we might as well put up a tent on the skating rink for her.

This is what our weekly schedule looks like :

Monday - I take Rowena to skating where she trains from 3.15pm till 8pm. (Including 45 minutes of ballet).
Robbie cycles to Karate and then to soccer training.

Tuesday - I take Rowena to her riding lesson.
Robbie catches the bus into the city to play Yugioh cards in the back room at a gaming shop. I fetch him at 7pm.

Wednesday - Robbie cycles to soccer training or I take him if I'm free.

Thursday - I take Rowena to her piano lesson.
Robbie catches the bus into the city (see Tuesday).
I take Rowena to skating training which on a Thursday is conveniently at the (defrosted in summer) ice rink, minutes away from Robbie's Yugioh activity. Rowena finishes training and I fetch Robbie.

Friday - If Robbie has no football matches I take him to chess and afterwards he goes to karate, which is right next door.
Now Rowena will also be having roller dance on a Friday, so I still have to get my mind around that one.
If Robbie has a match, we forget the above two things and take him there and watch him play.

Saturday - I take Rowena to skating training, hopefully leaving the two little ones with their father.

Sunday - I collapse. Or there's a tournament and I swear and wonder when I'm going to get the washing done. I'm hoping that Rowena won't get really good at skating because then she would be in the Bremen State team, which would mean training on Sunday too.

Both Robbie and Rowena are having their adenoids removed at the end of the week. The only good thing about it (besides the fact that it would help their breathing) is that they are not allowed to do any sports activities next week.

Mission Impossible?

2006-06-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last night, just as I should have been putting the little ones to bed, I got sidetracked. They were playing with lego and Leo wanted me to help him because he was having trouble finding some pieces. Our lego is stored in two rectangular bins and is frequently dumped out on the floor in the playroom. While I was searching for the pieces I realised that the smallest pieces always manage to end up at the bottom of the box. I had thought previously of sorting the lego and last night I tried out my idea. The next two hours were spent sifting through the boxes to find the small pieces and put them into little drawers, according to type - eg ones with only one connections (the really teeny tiny ones) together, the ones with two connections, pieces of people, etc etc. All the time I was saying to Leo, "Now you don't need to dump the lego out anymore, and you will put the pieces in the right place, won't you."

I think the lunatic asylum has a special straitjacket and padded room already reserved for me.

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-06-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Janine Cate

I find it kind of ironic that one of the most frequent critisism against homeschooling is "socialization." Comments like, "They need friends!" and "What about the prom?" indicate a belief that school leads to friendship and connectedness. I think the opposite is true. School disconnects children from their families and from other children. More and more we see the "alone in a crowd" phenomenon, children with a pathetic need to fit it, but lacking any true relationships.

Update on our situation

2006-06-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

In this post I mentioned that the education authorities had gotten wind of us and demanded that we apply for exemption of compulsory schooling. I sent a letter off requesting this, on the grounds that we move frequently and that we want to ensure educational continuity for our children.

Today I received a letter back requesting proof (eg. my husband's work contract) that we are not likely to be here much longer. For me this argument is problematical because it starts looking a bit silly if we are still here in two years time. The whole point is, though, that we can be forced to move at a moment's notice, even if we have the opportunity to live in one place for four years.

The letter stated the current legal situation (yawn - paragraph this and section that!)One thing that really jumped out at me was that "The state has control of education". I wondered why they can't at least exercise this control (or supervision or oversight, depending on which word you translate it with) by conducting regular inspections of homeschoolers, as is done in other countries. One country in which this works well is Ireland. I have spoken with a school inspector from the Irish National Educational Welfare Board, who is extremely positive to all manifestations of homeschooling, from curriculum-led to unschooling. I just think that the German authorities are too fearful and narrow-minded to consider this.

Another non sequitur in the letter is that the state determines the curriculum and educational objectives and routes. I guess they just conveniently forgot about all those Montessori and Waldorf schools that do their own thing. Nor did anyone tell them that the educational authorities themselves are trying to go more in the direction of natural learning. Sheesh. And of course the fact that I stated in my letter that our goal is to prepare our English-speaking children for the Irish school-leaving certificate has no effect on them - while they are in Germany we can forget all that and let them fall behind (if we weren't unschoolers - I'm speaking hypothetically here) while they moulder in a German school.

If they ask us, then why are we in Germany if we don't want to send our children to school here, my husband says he will answer, "To make money out of you idiots, because the German education system is so bad they have to use engineers educated in places like South Africa to do the work here." Hopefully they won't understand him.

Didn't I say it?

2006-06-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I stated that homeschoolers who argue along the lines of religious freedom in Germany are barking up the wrong tree.

A couple of days ago, the German Constitutional Court decided in a homeschooling case and I'm afraid the news isn't good for homeschoolers. They declared that, "freedom of religion doesn't give parents the right to keep their children away from school" and that no-one is entitled to protect their children from displays of different beliefs or or points of view.

I know that this is a case that goes back years and that once people have started arguing along one line of reasoning, they can't switch arguments and say, "Oh, actually, we're not doing this for religious reasons any more." I do hope that people start thinking about the way they approach the situation, especially the very well known US organisation (that I won't name, but I'm sure you all know whom I'm referring to) that supports and sponsors many of the religious homeschoolers here.

Of course, it goes without saying that this judgement has negative repercussions for all homeschoolers in Germany, even those of us secular types to whom it doesn't even refer. Yesterday my friend in Bremen received a letter from the education authorities in which this judgement was referred to, as if it now gives them more leverage against her family.

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-06-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

This time from my friend, Viola, whose daughter is a talented young figure skater in our club. She attends training four, sometimes five times a week (afternoons and evenings)and was recently in the newspaper, which gained her some negative attention from some of her schoolmates.

School can be a lonely place.

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-05-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

I really like this one. It is an affirmation of something I wrote in this post

From Sue Fairhead at Education Otherwise :

People, on the whole, are social creatures. Being sociable is part of our nature. If we allow children to develop in their own way, they will begin to relate to other people when they are ready. Clearly children do need to meet people in order to be sociable, but home educators don't tend to be isolated from the community! A child is just as likely - if not more so - to be sociable with one or two people he meets at home than with a class of 30 children who just happen to be the same age as he is. More importantly, he is far more in control of his social life than he would be in school. Parents - who know their children best - can observe, and encourage, and introduce a shy child to other people at relaxed times, in safe environments rather than forcing them into situations where they may become withdrawn, or angry, or upset.

Homeschooling and freedom of religion in Germany

2006-05-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about this issue the last few days and today I heard a story that backed up my feelings. I reckon that religious homeschoolers here have been shooting themselves in the collective foot, and pretty much messing it up for everyone else, by arguing for their right to homeschool along the lines of freedom of religion.

This is an argument that has worked incredibly well in the USA, but it doesn't cut it in Germany. Although freedom of religion is theoretically recognised here, for a number of reasons it is pretty much ignored in the educational sector. One reason is that the government is terrified of hordes of (Christian and Muslim) fundamentalists taking their children out of the school and creating parallel societies where the children's constitutional rights are ignored. Really, German educationalists must be need their heads read if they think that their school system doesn't give rise to parallel societies. Anyone who has read about the rise of Neo-Nazism in the schools, or the immigrant gangs of various nationalities that make life difficult in inner-city schools, should know better.

When a family, like the one in Hamburg, says that their daughters are going to be nothing other than wives and mothers, the average German shudders because they are losing the opportunity to achieve their full potential. Well as a university graduate who has spent the last twelve and a half years bearing, breastfeeding and bonding (my mother-in-law used to call my LLL friends the B-ladies) with my four children, I can think of a lot worse things than just being a wife and mother. But then I'm not your average German - well I'm not even German for a start.

I heard about a case recently in our state where the judge declared that until the European court of Human Rights heard one of the German homeschooling cases pending there, he was suspending the proceedings against the family in question. Although this is a religious homeschooling family, they decided to play down the role of their strong Christian beliefs in their decision to homeschool. During the case, the judge apparently commented that if religion had been an issue here, he would not have been so inclined to find for the family.

There are many other good reasons to homeschool and religious homeschoolers who start out with their beliefs as their driving motivation soon find this out. If they have any sense, they will do as the family above did and play up the other reasons their chilren are home-educated instead of making it all about their religious beliefs.

Animal School

2006-05-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

This is a really lovely fable.

Coming out of the closet

2006-05-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

We received a letter from the local school yesterday. I had semi been expecting something like this, because our third child has to be registered at the school for the school year 2007-2008. (It's so far in advance so they can check their level of German and give them a whole year's worth of tuition so no-one supposedly starts school with a language disadvantage).

I had phoned and spoken to the Director of the school, telling her that we wouldn't be registering him because we didn't intend to be here any more by the time he was due to start school and she asked me to write a letter stating that, for her records, which I did. I was sort of hoping that that would be the end of the story but obviously not. Two years ago we had the same story with my daughter, with the school insisting she attend even if we were only staying for a short time. When we received notification of a fine we officially left Germany for the UK. When my husband's working contract was renewed for another year, we registered officially as resident here, but didn't hear anything more from the school. Till now.

The biggest surprise about the letter is how positive it is. In contrast to two years ago, when all they had to say was, "Send your child to school or else!" this time it stated that our children are Schulpflichtig (have a duty to attend school) and if I want to avoid prosecution I should apply to the State department of education for exemption from compulsory school attendance.

In one of my very first posts on this blog, I bitched about how nothing has changed in Germany on the homeschooling front. Maybe I'm wrong.

At least this means that I don't have to sneak around with my kids during school times. We can be out and about and open about it now. And I can start doing some serious advocacy work, contacting politicians and suchlike. Maybe even the odd TV appearance ;-). Lol, I think my preteen son would die of embarrassment if a TV crew were to come along to film him at his Yugioh league day, as they did with my friend's sons during their cathedral boys' choir practice.

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-05-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

This one is a beaut. It's originally from this post at Jennifer's really pretty blog (I just love her pink stripes). Thanks to Henry Cate for pointing to it. Henry also has a link to an article by the author of the quote and an interview with him.

"Accusing a homeschool kid of missing out on socialization is like accusing a work-at-home entrepreneur of missing out on corporate politics." --Perry Marshall

Socialisation quote of the day

2006-05-26T12:42:00.003-07:00

I have decided that every time I come across a good quote about homeschooling and socialisation I would save it so that I can have a collection of statements at hand to use in the event that I am talking to school officials, politicians, writing letters to editors or just debating with anti-homeschooling types. Then I thought that it would be fun to post these quotes on my blog so that others can also enjoy and use them. Maybe the title "Socialisation quote of the day" is a bit ambitious, implying that in a year's time I will have amassed 365 of them, but I'll give it a good bash.

So here is my first quote. It was in a comment by momofmine on this blog entry.

So how will my kids assimilate into a diverse society? Simple, they won't have to as they're already a part of it.

Essential science lesson

2006-05-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed this posting where Jake highlights many peoples' misunderstanding of how science works.

My mother-in-law is at it again!

2006-05-25T16:00:00.000-07:00

Not satisfied with rearranging my furniture every time she comes to visit, my mother-in-law, that interfering shopping receptacle, has gone and booked us on a cruise from Genoa down the west coast of Africa. Damn her. Doesn't she realise that I have no interest in spending 20 days relaxing in the sunshine, being waited on hand and foot while sampling a variety of Italian dishes (no I didn't mean the sailors).

By the way, just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, I like it when my mil rearranges my furniture. She has tons better taste than I do.

Don't you just love it...

2006-05-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

when your three old, who got woken up way too early by his older brother, spends the whole afternoon being clingy and whiney (compounded by the fact that this one decided that he was a baby dragon and so refused to speak a word all afternoon, communicating only in squeaks and grunts), and then doesn't fall asleep on the way home at 6.30pm as you'd hoped, which makes him overtired and then he goes crazy till he finally collapses just after 10pm. Goodnight.

And the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest is ... Mordor (oops, I mean Finland)

2006-05-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

That celebration of inanity, that refuge of the talentless, that hive of musical and lyrical cliches, the Eurovision Song Contest, has cult status in our household. Every year we sit down and yawn and groan our way through over 20 mostly insipid performances.

Tonight it was dh and Rowena and Adrian and I (Leo was asleep and Robbie was doing his first professional stint as a babysitter for our neighbours, where he was watching the Eurovision on his own). Watching the results being announced makes for a great geography lesson. Each of the 37 countries who entered the contest gets to vote (people phone in or sms their vote for all countries but their own) for its top 10 of the 22 countries that performed in the final tonight. Our favourite game is to guess in advance, for which neighbour a country is going to give its top vote. For instance, it's pretty likely that Belarus will give its top vote (and 12 points) to Russia, or that ex-Yugoslavian republics will vote for the other ex-Yugoslavian republics. Russia in particular seems to benefit from this as there are many Russians living in various Eastern European countries. Another thing that comes through quite clearly is which countries have a large Turkish population (the Netherlands and Germany) as these two countries voted strongly for the absolutely awful Turkish number.

The clear winner was Finland, though, no favouritism there. Just about every country gave one of their strongest votes to the monster rockers. I don't know if I would use the word refreshing, but it was great to see a group win that didn't have half a dozen sexy female dancers gyrating in the background.

Here are some titbits from interviews with the band's lead singer :
Here are more highlights from Mr. Lordi.

“You know, we are meat eaters in a vegetarian café,” said Mr. Lordi when asked how the band feels to be in Eurovision.
Surely Lordi and Christianity don’t go together? Sure they do. “I am a member of a church and our drummer Kita actually wrote and played some church music.”
“I don’t want to burn in hell, I want to go to heaven.”
When Finnish TV invited Lordi to take part in Eurovision, Mr. Lordi thought that they’d got the wrong number.
“We think we look pretty. We look like monsters.”
“Lordi is actually my nickname. It was given to me by friends.“
“We toured last year through the whole of Europe. And we toured extensively in Germany.”
“Our future plan is to get back to our normal heavy metal routines.”

My pool date

2006-05-18T14:26:00.000-07:00

Does the title sound alluring? Actually, the date was with my 12 year old son. A friend who owed me hours of babysitting and wanted to unload some of them before her vacation in England (she must have just touched down as I write this) offered to babysit for me one afternoon before she left. Funny enough, I didn't have any great need to go off and do something alone.

Then I remembered that Robbie had mentioned that he would like to play pool with me without us being distracted by the two little ones. Rowena was visiting another friend yesterday afternoon so I left the two little ones with my friend and off we went to a local indoor playplace to hog one of their two pool tables for a couple of hours. We had a really lovely time. I can't really describe the feeling of joy that came over me, watching Robbie having such a good time and my undivided attention. I surprised him (and me) with my not being a total dodo at pool. Maybe I could log it as a geometry lesson.

That was generally the high point of Robbie's day yesterday. In the morning he went to the ENT for an allergy test (negative) where he was diagnosed with unusually large adenoids. You should have seen his face when the doctor told us. Rowena had been there the previous week, with the same texts and diagnosis and the doctor had recommended that they be removed surgically, as they are causing her to struggle in sporting activities.

In the evening he played in a soccer match, which his team lost after getting some really unfair offside calls from the referee. There were a couple of grandfathers there who were way better mannered than the last time. Then later, Robbie watched his favourites, Arsenal, getting clobbered by Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League final.

Murphy strikes again

2006-05-15T13:19:00.000-07:00

One homeschooling family we know has three children, two of whom love playing music. It's almost impossible for them to walk past the piano without banging away on it and they will spontaneously pick up their violins and practise them. What a dream, children who don't need to be reminded and nagged to practise their musical instruments. But what a recipe for conflict that is when they have a big brother who can't stand music playing, especially when he is trying hard to study for his big exams. Why does life have to be so complicated?

Promoting normal socialisation

2006-05-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

I just read this post, about dealing with people who criticise homeschooling. Regarding the socialisation question, Meg says :
Public schools are an artificial environment forcing kids to socialize in ways that aren’t natural. It is much more natural to find a group of people that share common interests with you and hang out with them. Within that group, participants will vary in regards to both age and abilities. The older/more experienced people take over the leadership roles and model acceptable behaviors to the rest. Younger/beginners are usually encouraged because the leaders think that their activity has value and want to share. Being out of the normal synch (as in an older beginner) is not viewed as weird because of the group being such a mix.

Sounds just like the Yugioh gaming afternoon (or as my dh calls it, Geeks club) that Robbie goes to twice a week.

Interview with Pat Farenga

2006-05-14T06:31:00.000-07:00

One of the people, whom I would love to see visit Germany and talk about homeschooling and unschooling in particular is Pat Farenga. He took over the reins at Growing Without Schooling after John Holt died. One thing I would like to ask Pat is why John Holt felt that it was better to support the cause of unschooling rather than helping children learn at their own pace within the school system, and whether he had any opinions on the democratic schools.

Here is an interview with Pat. Some of his comments really jumped out at me, one of them being this :
I’m now concerned about our society deciding to support “womb to tomb education,” with all sorts of certificates and classes being required before we can join or do anything as adults. I see how this benefits educationists, but this benefit has the cost of undermining one’s “pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.” But, we seem, as a society, more willing than I ever thought to give up those pursuits in the name education. That ties in with what I was writing about the value of education.

I think this comment of Pat's addresses my question above :
Now, there are many niches to place your children in. But only homeschooling allows learning to be viewed as an embedded activity in the natural world of families and communities, rather than as a prdouct made by teaching children in a special place where nothing but learning is supposed to occur.

Doc's Sunrise Rants

2006-05-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

I always enjoy listening to or reading the kind of people who don't take any crap. The type of person who calls a spade a shovel. I think it's because I wish I was like that. Doc is just one such person.

Not just is her blog really entertaining and enlightening reading (I learnt things I only suspected about raw milk) but it is also loaded with resources. My favourites list has swollen considerably with just some of her links. So if you're openminded and looking for some interesting reading, I would suggest you pop over to her blog.
BTW you have to scroll way down before you can see the column on the right with archives, recent posts, etc.

Sibling contacts

2006-05-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week we visited a homeschooling family we'd never met before. They live over an hour and a half drive away from us.

Yesterday I received an email from the mother. She mentioned that her 14 year old son had commented on Robbie's willing involvedness with his younger brothers. He said that he had never seen any of his (schooled) friends show such understanding of and patience with their younger siblings. It's not the first time I've heard this kind of comment about Robbie. My neighbour has also compared him to the other older boys who live around here. She says that they don't want to have anything to do with their younger siblings, especially when their friends are around.

I guess that this is just just some of that necessary socialisation that schoolkids have to go through. The school teaches us acceptance and tolerance (to quote one school official) but just not for our little brothers and sisters.

I've been wanting to blog about this for a while...

2006-05-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

but I decided to wait. A couple of months ago I took the kids swimming, during school times (one of my daring moments). They were the only children in the pool and a photographer wandering around asked if she could take some pictures of them. It was going to be for the swimming pool's new website.

I've been waiting for the pictures to come up so that I could post about it and link to them at the same time. So here they are. Click on the pictures if you want to enlarge them.

Here is Rowena cuddling up to the spitting fish fountain in the baby pool. Actually she was pumping it to make the water come out.

If you enlarge this picture you can see Rowena in the background, going off to answer the call of nature. On the left are Adrian and Leo's abandoned armbands.

Rowena again. The caption underneath says "One of the little participants of our courses". That's a laugh.

Here is Adrian, unfortunately with his back to the camera. Note the goggles. Adrian loves wearing things on his head (belts, caps, scarves, helmets, etc). He never actually puts the goggles over his eyes.

I think we really did these guys a favour, coming to the pool during school hours. Otherwise they would have had just a bunch of old people to photograph and the pictures would have been even more boring than they were.

Hooligan Grandpas and ambitious parents

2006-05-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

I watched a soccer match that Robbie played in today. He is goalkeeper in the local under-13 team and they were playing against one of their big rivals. I feel so sorry for the boys in that team. The parents and trainers are more interesting than a soap opera, but unfortunately it is the young players who get the brunt of their anger, when they do something wrong or just aren't up to scratch.

Last season this team and ours were practically neck-and-neck for second place in the the discrict league, but so far this season they haven't been faring too well, as our boys have won the last two games against them. I wasn't able to watch those games, so I was keen to see if the adults were still the same competitive assholes.

Boy, did they put on a show! Early in the game, after two boys sandwiched our top player in as he was heading for their goal and then fouled him, as he lay injured on the ground, the trainer of the other team yelled to one of the boys, "Don't feel bad, you did well!" Well, even if it was an accident, I think it's pretty bad form to praise a player for injuring someone else. At least the father who managed to piss me off at every game last season by telling his son how stupid he was every time he made a mistake was no longer there, but there was another prize asshole to take his place. A grandfather there kept verbally berating the players, complaining at the referee and having little tantrums. In the second half the referee had a tantrum himself and banned the grandfather from the pitch after the latter grabbed (I suppose) his grandson and shook him after he made some mistake. The way these people behave, one would suppose that their children are playing in the first division, or something.

We get these parents at ice skating too, like the father who beat up the trainer of our club a couple of months back because his daughter was excluded from the State team after she failed to fulfil the requirements for attending practices. I actually feel sorry for these people, the parents as well as the children. They must be really insecure that every win or loss of their child reflects on themselves. They don't realise how much harm they are doing, not just to their relationships with their children but also to their own health. I would have loved to have put a blood pressure cuff on that grandpa this evening.

Sudbury vs unschooling or maybe not

2006-05-11T02:56:00.000-07:00

Last week I didn't post much because most of my computer time was taken up with responding to some posts on a German email list that I'm on. German not being my first language (or even my second) it always takes twice as long to type as in English because I have to keep looking up the right words, correct my grammar and often I don't succeed in expressing myself nearly as clearly as I want to.

In spite of all this, when I feel strongly about something I take the time to get involved in the discussions. This particular list is one that has been set up to discuss practical ways of achieving freedom in education in Germany and members come from the whole spectrum of educational alternatives, from religious Christian homeschoolers through unschoolers to those who are interested in democratic schools (eg the Sudbury or Summerhill model) to children's rights advocates.

There is a remarkable sense of openness and cohesion among the various types of homeschoolers in Germany at the moment. The feeling here is that we need to stick together and support each other. We can't afford to let ourselves be divided into bickering fractions based on our differing motives or methods. Many people straddle various camps, for example religious fundamentalists who practise unschooling or current unschoolers who started out with a more structured form of homeschooling.

Many of those who advocate the Sudbury system, however, seem to have a problem accepting homeschoolers and this is where some conflict arises. For one, many are saddled with the same prejudices about homeschoolers as the general public. In his book, "Free at last - the Sudbury Valley School" , Daniel Greenberg writes (my translation into English from the German translation), For example, there is the question of whether unschooling enables the childen to find their way in society, when the children are at home for most of the time. Of course there are cases where the parents of unschoolers visit each other a few times a week to give their children social contacts.

So here we have the idea that the most unschoolers only get the opportunity to stretch their social wings within the social circle that their parents have appointed for them. That's not the way I experience it. Currently both my eldest children are often off exploring their own interests and interacting with their friends with not a supervising parent in sight, and that's nothing rare among unschoolers, as far as I know.

Another issue is that many Sudbury types seem to subscribe to a worldview that perceives parental influence as something negative and undesirable. Although I agree that young people need to have a place where they can explore unfettered by parental influence, I think that for a healthy development a strong, healthy bond to the primary caregiver is necessary. Then letting go and enabling the child to experience independence at its own pace, as one does with a toddler, will do the rest.

I have nothing against Sudbury schools. I think that they are, like homeschooling (in its different forms) another great educational alternative which suits the needs of different people.

The value of education?

2006-05-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

I recently read something by the well-known magician and sceptic, James Randi, that got me thinking about the whole issue of whether "educated" people are really better off than "less educated" ones.

Randi wrote :
Education only provides a student with a framework for discovering the facts, but it does not force the student to use that framework. An education only makes you educated, it doesn’t necessarily make you smart; you have to get that way on your own. By “smart,” I mean “able to apply knowledge to the real world.” Give me a kid from the slums as a survival assistant in a disaster, rather than a half-dozen PhDs. The academics would still be writing a paper on how to find some food, while we two survivors were already digesting our meal.

I had a friend at school whose brother was diagnosed as "learning disabled" and went to the school whose pupils were the butt of everyone else's jokes. Jason ended up getting trained as a hairdresser and went on to become a successful young businessman. In the meantime his sister, who had been getting top marks all the way at school, went off the rails, experimenting with sex, drugs and alcohol.

An education can be a wonderful tool, a stepping stone to a fulfilling, successful life. However I think that there is so much value placed on getting an education that it becomes a means to an end. Parents are so often devastated when their children opt out of the ideal path they had envisioned them following, instead of asking whether the new path is a better one for their child than the old one.

Sitting and memorising facts and practising drills might be useful for some types of jobs but in general I don't feel that it prepares one for life. In many cases "getting an education" can be a cover for emotional lack of security or feelings of inadequacy. Someone I know recently moved out of the communal house he had been sharing with some other supposedly like-minded individuals. One of the things that frustrated him was that a bunch of intellectuals living under one roof were incapable of getting on with each other. It seems that many people who regard themselves as high on knowledge and intelligence are pretty short on commonsense and general life skills.

Update : Here's an article called Five Reasons to Skip College. I just love number three. I got the link from Chris O'Donnell's blog. I'm busy scouring it to find that I don't link to homeschoolblogger.com graphic, but I'm just getting sidetracked the whole time.

Another Update : Via Henry Cate, mother of eight, Sherry, discusses whether college is the right decision for everyone.