Recently a family that is a little different from most has started coming here to Mass. They are in exile from their native home country because they want to educate their child themselves, they are German. If they stayed at home, the parents would be put in prison and their child probably separated from them forever. The cause is the law introduced by Hitler, and still persecuting parents, which placed the eduction of children in the hands of the state, taking away from parents the right and duty to be the "primary educators" of their children.
Last year a US court granted asylum to a German family who wanted to "home school".
19 comments:
Thank you for letting us know about this Father. This is quite appalling. Can something be done about this at a European level ?
A blessed Advent.
I've heard that this policy is accepted by European lawmakers (their failure to address it in Germany and elsewhere is implicitly accepting of it), in which case it'll be coming to us sooner or later. The Labour party were moving in this direction, as exemplified by the Badman Report; the Tories are ideologically identical so their policy will eventually coincide, once the threat of losing votes recedes.
Absolutely true, Father Ray. What could be more classically fascist than FORCING all parents to give their children over to the State to be educated - on pain of huge fines, possible imprisonment and permanent removal of the children from the home?
As a homeschooling father who lived in Germany as a young man, I read up on this a few years ago, and recall a statement by a government official to the effect that all children had to be educated by the government to ensure that they would be "good citizens". Or would "compliant" citizens be more accurate? Funny, I thought "diversity" was the buzzword du jour...
Homeschooling is not for everyone, obviously, and it is crucial that there be some form of monitoring for quality. But in Germany, the option simply doesn't exist.
Ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Gehirnwäsche?
Father,
I just returned from Germany and this very issue came up in my conversation there with devout traditional Catholics and non practicing Catholics. I'm appalled by this. Is it not the parent's responsibility first and foremost to educate their children? I take it that families are allowed to home school their children in Britain?
This sounds like something for the European Court of Human Rights. Then we shall see if it is really a court of human rights.
There is a particularly heartbreaking case of a child from Sweden who was taken from his family in Sweden because they were home schooling him:-
https://sites.google.com/site/homeschoolinginsweden/sweden---the-next-germany-/the-state-abduction-of-dominic-johannsson
He has been separated from his family for over 2 years now and his case is attracting worldwide support.
Another family from Germany were granted asylum in the U.S.A. because of the persecution they were experiencing due to their decision to home school:
http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/201001260.asp
Thank you for writing about this Father. This frightening problem needs far more publicity than it is currently getting.
I wonder what this one about Dominic is about exactly. Some friends of mine in Sweden have a son who got on badly in an ordinary school. The authorities were sympathetic, which seems to be the usual situation, but he ended up in a school for handicapped children. Except that he is not handicapped, though perhaps has some kind of Asperger's syndrome. He is the kind of boy who in the 1950s would have been given a scholarship to study physics or engineering at Oxford - the science faculties - students and staff - were full of people like that.
The teachers were delighted to have a very bright boy in their "handicapped" class. He got extra attention and enjoyed a free 20 miles each way taxi ride to and from the school each day.
The situation seems to be ending well as he has had a period on secondment to the technical university in Gothenberg and was perfectly comfortable in that environment.
There is a more general issue with schools - the children start too young and fail to be given the individual consideration that they deserve.
Behind that is the potential for state indoctrination in all sorts of undesirable ways, but given the propensity for children to ignore what adults, especially teachers, tell them, it could be counter productive.
How awful.
We seem to be moving towards being not allowed to think for ourselves.
No wonder Classics (and debate) is disappearing as a school subject. We're increasingly being penalised for not following norms promoted by the state and western civilisation with Greek democracy and Roman law at its backbone is being chipped away. A type of totalitarianism/socialism seems to be creeping in.
I support the rights of parents to make educational decisions for their children. However, if I lived in Germany or Sweden, and couldn't afford to move, or to send them to a good Catholic school, then I'd send them to the state school. Yes, there would be some risk involved in terms of bad influences, but at least I'd be their legal guardian still. How is it better to fall on your sword for the sake of homeschooling, only to lose custody of your children and end up having no ability to protect or influence them, as they spend their days in foster care?
I think one needs to be careful about blaming everything on Hitler and the Nazis. People can feel affronted if they are told that their pro-choice views are the same as those that produced the holocaust. Of course none of us would accept that we are followers of Nazi ideology. But, but, but … the Nazi ideology grew out of an earlier set of ideas which one call scientism which includes the perversion of Darwin’s theories into eugenics, the attack on the excesses of capitalism which was perverted into anti-semitism, what Churchill called ‘perverted science’ etc etc. The Nazis merely put these ideas into action and as Bernanos said ruined the devil’s plans by going much too fast. Now these ideas are being implemented more slowly and more insidiously. The disease which fed the Nazis is still with us. Here again Simone Weil is very interesting:
The task assumed to-day by the experts and by all those who write around about science is of such weight that they also, like the historians and more, are perhaps more culpable of the crimes of Hitler than Hitler himself.
She then quotes a passage from Mein Kampf where Hitler says that the whole universe is driven by force which man cannot oppose and she comments: These lines express in an irreproachable manner the only conclusion that one can reasonably obtain from this conception of the world embedded in our science. The entire life of Hitler is but the putting into practice of this conclusion. Who can reproach him for putting into practice what he believed to be true? Those, who carry within them the grounds of the same belief, have not realised it and have not translated it into acts, and have only escaped from crime through lack of a certain type of courage which he had.
Again it is not the abandoned adolescent, a miserable vagabond, with a starved soul, that it is right to accuse, but rather those who gave him nothing but lies to eat. And those who gave him lies to eat, were our elders, whom we resemble.
In referring to the abandoned adolescent she was probably thinking of the young Hitler but does it not make one think of some of our own adolescents whom we have deprived of God and fed with lies.
I am so shocked by this - why has this law never been repealed? I understand George's comments, the sentiment behind them, but the more I've now read about this the more indignant I feel. There is a point where the worst of fascism and the worst of communism merge and it's a dark place indeed. Thanks for posting.
I will take this up with Nigel Farage. He will enjoy standing up for human rights in Brussels. This is the kind of dictatorship German officialdom is breeding.
I was amazed to read this. My auntie Annelise died a few months ago. She was German and when she came to the West of Scotland not long after the end of WWII having married my late dad's cousin she suffered not inconsiderably being German, and hence in the minds of many (no matter how understandably) a Nazi. And yet all these years later Nazi legislation is still intact and un-confronted by the ECHR and its signators!!
Recently Fr Ray has been persecuted by a "Gay" activist who deliberately played up Nazi anti-homosexualist legal actions. Bet that legislation is long gone.
Pope Benedict had a cousin taken away and "euthenised", never to be seen again, because he was a "mongol", a Down's child. Bet none of those who saw to the above cared whether that was off the statute book or not.
As to Christian education in the home? Even less of a chance! Despite the European Convention on Human Rights, Substantive Protocol No.1, 20 March 1952, Article (2):
"No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions."
Get that: the State shall respect the right of parents!
But according to the UN they don’t need to if what parents want, and parents do want, “Faith Schools”.
And, in the absence of same, they undertake to relieve the State of the inconvenience of teaching their children? Bring back the Gestapo!
I have heard there is quite a strong underground HE movement in Germany. I hope in the end those families will have the freedom to educate and keep safe their children as is their right.
I hope the family you know, Father, will be allowed to make a home here and find some freedom.
Sadly I think in the end the USA will be the only place safe for home education. Gil is right, this Govt is only marginally less anti-family than the last one.
The astonishing dishonesty of Badman and Balls backed by the MSM actually shocked me when we had to fight it. (I will never be so shocked again)
Most of us who home educate are more than aware the fight is only on the back burner and not over.
And I am sure I am not the only Catholic home educator who learned that our bishops will support the Government as they remove our family rights. THAT really was a shock.
If this family want contact with other home educators Father, please pass on my details. I am not near Brighton, but if they can get access to a computer I am willing to support them however I can.
I am pretty sure there is a European counterpart, but in the States we have this wonderful group called HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association). Last I heard, they were helping Dominic Johansson out, and had a front page article on Germany in their bi-monthly "Court Report". If you can join them and have not done so, then you are wrong. Join them now!
Now that we are churning out graduates from the Universities in their thousands without a chance of finding employment we should have no shortage of educators and Home-Taught children may even learn to read & write.
For the information of 'Hughie' the Nazi anti gay legislation remained on the statute book of Grmany into the 70s or 80s. One result being tha those who had been imprisoned by the Nazis for being gay remained in prison after the war ended.
Damask Rose - I completely agree with you, but don't you think that, rather than '...creeping in.', the socialism you refer to is actually here, and looking more virulent by the day.
Kyrie eleision, Christi eleison.
What is left of innocence and youth? The only place to raise children is far from the world.
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