This flag is just a matter of time.
Action Call as German Homeschooled 17-year-old Sentenced to Child Psychiatry Unit — Apparently the EU has given Germany the right to continue to make illegal all home schooling.
The Canadian and American homeschool associations are calling their memberships to take action on the case of a homeschooled teenager in Germany who has been taken away from her family and placed in a child psychiatry unit.
Last Thursday, a 17-year-old homeschooled girl, Melissa Busekros, was forcibly removed from her parent’s custody by over 15 police officers. The homeschooled girl has been placed in the child psychiatry unit of the Nuremberg clinic.
Home school legal defense explains the situation stressing that this is a case of Germany attempting to keep down a surge in the popularity of homeschooling which remains illegal in Germany. “Homeschooling was first banned under Adolf Hitler, and that ban is still enforced today,” says the association.
“In the summer of 2005, when Melissa was 15, she was told she would have to repeat the seventh grade at the government school because she was failing math and Latin. She had good grades in the rest of her classes, so her parents tutored her at home for those two subjects. When the school officials found out they were angry and then expelled Melissa, so the family began to homeschool full time,” explains HSLDA.
I especially “love” the picture: so now, because of some idiotic bureaucrats, whole Europe is a Nazi camp? The same thinking that makes all Muslims and Arabs terrorists and anybody who dares to disagree with Israel a Jew-hater. Way to go, Dvorak!
How come when some European country gets tough on Muslims and forces them to submit to the local culture and laws we all chear. But when they expect the same from Christians we’re up in arms.
If any Christian in Germany feels they can’t conform to Germany’s laws and culture, move to the US. You’ll fit right in here.
john c, you seem to have a thing with home schooling. let me tell you, i am german, and a typical left-wing intellectual. the kind of guy who had to flee to the US during the nazi era (which my grandfather told me of) because of his beliefs.
and i am strongly convinced that it is right to outlaw home-schooling. kids, who missed public schooling should be given medical support, even by a psychiatric clinic.
btw i wouldn’t mind religion being outlawed too. but yes, this would collide with the basic human rights, so don’t. as long as children are safe from totalitarian propaganga (one god, one führer, what you like).
#1, The picture is appropriate. A Nazi-era law introduced by Hitler is being enforced in an EU country.
#2, Forced public education is a ‘recent’ phenomenon (i.e. last 200 years). How does that apply to either Christianity or Islam?
#3, It is the extremists from both the secularist side and the religious side that cause problems. Banning religion or home schooling fixes nothing and will only polarize.
Cripes!
Despite the fact Germany is a lovely country where I had many friends during school, their government is turning themselves and subsequently the EU into a nanny-state. Why is home schooling bad? If parents want to teach their kids it’s as much a sucessful proven mechanism as actual state schooling. Is there something about German culture that is lost on the rest of us, because as a fellow European it seems extremely strange to me.
I can understand that it stops parents keeping kids out of school to work or for whatever reason other than education, but as long as they are passing the grade, really, what’s the issue?
Just because the law was enacted during the Nazi era is NOT a reason to disallow or discount it. What if the same law required all students to achieve a certain level of proficiency before graduating? Would you discount that too?
Home schooling is just plain creepy. I shun those who home school and those who have been home schooled. It is a prejudice I sustain without evidence yet with firm conviction.
WTF, can’t you fix the “you can only post once
Home schooling is just plain creepy. I shun those who home school and those who have been home schooled. It is a prejudice I sustain without evidence yet with firm conviction.
Am I the only one who gets the “slow down cowboy” warning for no apparent reason when posting?
Now wait a minute.
The girl was failing two classes. Her parents gave her some tutoring in those classes (otherwise known as helping your kid with her homework, and done all the time in the US, sometimes commercially–Sylvan Learning), so she was expelled? So the parents kept teaching her so she wouldn’t fall behind, and for that the girl
was put in a psychiatric hospital, apparently to make sure she wouldn’t learn anything?
Something is really wrong here. Either the school system is psychotic (expelling the girl for getting tutoring from her parents on her homework), or the home schoolers are psychotic (they prayed for the girl instead of offering money for legal counsel). Maybe both.
I’m all in favor of kids going to regular school (my daughter had a friend that was home schooled, but overly sheltered, and it showed), but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with helping a child with homework, especially if they’re falling behind in some classes.
#3 “btw i wouldn’t mind religion being outlawed too. but yes, this would collide with the basic human rights, so don’t. as long as children are safe from totalitarian propaganga (one god, one führer, what you like).”
There is a contradiction here. You can’t make an exception. You are either for the rights of the individual or you’re not. In this case not.
“who missed public schooling should be given medical support, even by a psychiatric clinic.” So off to the reeducation camps eh?
Appropriate link today from the International Herald Tribune:
There’s a brain drain from Germany of highly educated professionals. Major reasons mentioned include the stifling bureaucracy there, along with labor disputes.
“Something is really wrong here”
It’s called a Brave New World. Governments are starting to get ideas from fiction, but very shocking to say the least. All the government is saying, “If you don’t be good and think like us, we will drug you and send you to a reeducation camp.”
Welcome to the nanny state. Where you are not allowed to wipe your own bum. The government has to do it for you.
#4: what is a … secularist extremist? i mean… in reality? and no, banning religion is no good. people need their hobbies.
#10: yes, i do make an exception. there need to be limits, even for individual rights, to protect children.
#13: bavaria is sometimes behaving as independent, but it’s not more than any other federal state in germany. think of it as texas. in terms of history and cultural heritage, it was bavaria that sided with emperor napoleon roughly 200 years ago, so bavarian soldiers killed germans, while formerly being a part of germany. a problematic membership.
#14,
I meant secular extremist or secularist, but anyway. It is one who so firmly believes in atheism the he/she cannot accept that people have beliefs other than there own and have zero tolerance for those other beliefs. Sometimes known as Zen Fascism… (thanks to my girlfriend for introducing me to that term!)
I’m amused that Germans have outlawed the display of the Nazi swastika but aren’t ashamed of Gestapo tactics.
Dear #8,
I just wanted to point out how idiotic your statement was. I was homeschooled from the 2nd grade to the 9th, and I assure you there is nothing creepy about it, unless you find something disturbing about trying to get a decent education, which, judging from you comment, you must.
I suppose you are one of these people who assumes that anyone who pays any attention to their children is a pedophile? All I can say is that I hope you don’t have any.
And finally, why do you hold said opinion to be true in the absence of any evidence, as you yourself admit?
The girl is actually 15 now. And if I understand correctly, she was expelled for only going to select classes, not because of tutoring (which was taking the place of the missed classes.)
Homeschooling is “just plain creepy?” What kind of an argument is that? And on what grounds does being a left wing whatever convince anyone that medical treatment is necessary for homeschoolers? If that is not state controlled indoctrination, I don’t know what is.
When the state controls education, they control the minds of the people.
Against Homeschooling?
You must have failed history.
All of our founding fathers were home schooled.