Thread: Americans Warned: Home Schoolers Stripped of Rights

Americans Warned: Home Schoolers Stripped of Rights

By Admin on April 30, 2013





by Dale

Recently, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that home schooling is not a parent’s right. It is a statement some are saying should frighten American parents.

Nations like Germany and Sweden show that when governments take away home schooling rights, it’s a slippery slope to no parental rights.


America the Refuge or Not

The Romeike family came to the United States from Germany five years ago hoping to find refuge. They wanted to home-school their children in freedom and a federal judge granted them asylum.

But now the Obama administration has been trying to deport them, arguing that home schooling is not a right. The case is currently before a federal appeals court.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike began home schooling in Germany because they didn’t want their children exposed to things like witchcraft and graphic sex education that are taught in German schools.

“There were stories where [school children] were encouraged to ask the devil for help instead of God and actually the devil would help (in the story),” Uwe said.
“When we found out what’s in the textbooks, it’s exactly the opposite from what the Bible tells us and teaches us, and we wanted to protect [our children],” his wife Hannelore added.

But home schooling is illegal in Germany, except in rare cases. And many home schooling parents are persecuted with fines, jail, or the loss of their children.


Homeschoolers Going Into Exile?

Most home-schoolers in America are left alone. But what if state politicians and the federal government started to move against it?
Two of the worst nations for home-schoolers are Germany and Sweden. If you want to see what things might be like if home schooling was banned in America, travel to Sweden, where the government controls education and the home schooling movement has been crushed.

In fact, the head of the Swedish Homeschooling Association, Jonas Himmelstrand, had to take his family into exile. They fled to Finland.
“We’re in exile. We were forced out of our country and that makes a stronger impact than I can imagine,” he told CBN News. “This was our country. This was where we had our friends and business relationships and a whole lot of things and now we’re pushed away from it.”

Attorney Michael Donnelly, the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, called the situation “incredible for a nation like Sweden that calls itself a free nation, a democracy, so to speak.”

Ruby Harrold-Claesson, President of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, went even further, branding Sweden a dictatorship where social workers tell parents what to do.

“Sweden claims to be a democracy but it’s far from it. It’s a dictatorship,” he said. “You have the social workers dictating how people are to live. You’re not supposed to be different. You’re not supposed to be different from anyone else in Sweden. Everyone is supposed to be uniform. They want to have these cookie cutter children.”

Claesson is also the lawyer representing Christer and Annie Johansson, who have lost custody of their son Domenic, because of home schooling. After Domenic was abducted by Swedish officials, Annie’s health began to fail.

Christer said the stress of the ordeal is killing his wife.

“If we cannot solve this issue soon, Domenic won’t have a mother anymore,” he said.


Russia, A Home Schooling Haven
Nations like Germany and Sweden could learn a thing or two about parent’s rights from, of all places, Russia, which is one of the freest nations in which to homeschool.

“We have complete freedom of home education in Russia, in terms of legality,” Pavel Parfentiev, a family rights advocate in Russia, said.

“The Russian Federation is sort of a champion of human rights in this particular area, so of course I think it is a good example for both Germany and Sweden where home educators are persecuted,” he said.

Among the persecuted, German home-schooler Juergen Dudek has been taken to court every year for the past 10 years by the German Jugendamt, or Youth Office.

“The Youth Office, I used to call it the ‘Gestapo for the Young.’ As soon as they step in, as soon as they get hold of you, you’ve really got problems,” Dudek said.

German homeschooler Dirk Wunderlich and his wife have lost custody of their children, although they are still allowed to live with them. He also told CBN News he expects to be sent to jail, but said he will never stop homeschooling.

“But I’m not afraid of this. I’m only sad for my family. I will go (to jail) laughing. You can do what you want but my children will not go to school,” he said.


America Safe for Homeschoolers?
In America, a red flag went up earlier this year when the Justice Department argued in the Romeike case that home schooling is not a fundamental human right.

A source close to the case said the White House cares more about relations with Germany than about a family seeking political asylum.

Asylum for the Romeikes might open a floodgate of refugees from Germany, further embarrassing the German government.

Uwe Roemike, who makes his living as a piano teacher, knows what to expect if they’re deported.

“First they would fine us with increasingly higher fines and they would threaten to take away custody,” he explained.

“There might be jail time, too, but the main threat is the aspect of custody because then, of course, the children are taken away from you completely and that’s what no family wants,” he said.

Uwe said the fact the White House would be willing to deny homeschooling freedom to his family, should make all American home-schoolers concerned.

http://spreadlibertynews.com/america...ped-of-rights/

Ohio

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December 17, 2013

Worst-Ever Homeschool Law Proposed in Ohio


Staff Attorney Mike Donnelly answers questions and assists members regarding legal issues in Ohio. He and his wife homeschool. Read more >>
With the introduction of Senate Bill 248 on December 3, 2013, by Senator Capri Cafaro, Ohio has suddenly become a frontline in the battle over homeschooling freedom.
SB 248 is breathtakingly onerous in its scope. It requires all parents who homeschool to undergo a social services investigation which would ultimately determine if homeschooling would be permitted. Social workers would have to interview parents and children separately, conduct background checks and determine whether homeschooling is recommended or not. If it is not recommended, parents would have to submit to an “intervention” before further consideration of their request to homeschool.
SB 248 was offered by sponsors as a way to respond to the death of 14-year-old Teddy Foltz-Tedesco in January 2013. News reports indicate that Teddy had been abused for years by his mother’s boyfriend, Zaryl Bush. After teachers reported abuse to authorities, Teddy’s mother withdrew him from public school, allegedly to homeschool him. Reports tell a sad story of a broken home where neighbors, friends, family, police, teachers and others knew Teddy was suffering ongoing abuse. Finally, Bush beat Teddy so severely that he later died of his injuries. Both Bush and Teddy’s mother are now in prison. A news report can be found online.
Unfair to Homeschoolers

HSLDA condemns child abuse and is saddened by Teddy’s death. HSLDA supports the prosecution of child abusers like Bush and the improvement of systems that prevent child abuse. However, this proposed law does not actually address the problems that led to Teddy’s death and instead unfairly targets homeschooling.
In recent years HSLDA has observed numerous attempts to severely restrict homeschooling in state legislatures around the country. In response to a growing number of academic critics, Michael Farris wrote “Tolerance and Liberty: Answering the Academic Left’s Challenge to Homeschooling Freedom.” Published in the Peabody Journal of Education and available online, Farris articulates why laws like SB 248 are unnecessary and un-American. His response to these critics who have proposed radical constraints on homeschooling freedom puts this latest attempt in the proper context.
Teddy Foltz-Tedesco was killed because those responsible for protecting him did not step in as the law or common sense would have dictated. Why? Although news reports indicate that abuse had been reported for years prior to Teddy’s death, it does not appear that any serious intervention was made by government authorities charged with investigating such allegations. Why was not enough done to protect Teddy from known abuse?
System Failure

Even if, as SB 248 would require, his mother had sought social service’s approval to homeschool and was denied, he still would have been at home subject to abuse after school. Regardless of where he went to school, Teddy was left by authorities in a home where they knew abuse was occurring.
Clearly, SB 248 would not have saved Teddy.

SB 248 turns fundamental American values upside down. Parents have been deemed by the United States Supreme Court in Parham v. JR to act in their children’s best interests. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the Court ruled that parents have a fundamental right to direct the education of their children. This law replaces parents with unqualified social workers to make educational decisions for children.
What happened to Teddy Foltz-Tedesco is a tragedy that could have been prevented. If those responsible for investigating child abuse had done their job, Teddy might have been saved. The system needs reform, but Senate Bill 248 will increase the load on social workers by requiring them to investigate all families who want to homeschool rather than focusing resources on parents actually suspected of child abuse.
Misguided

Rather than target tens of thousands of decent Ohioans who homeschool, policymakers like Cafaro should try to discover what prevented police and social workers who knew what was going on from taking action and faithfully enforcing Ohio’s already adequate child protection laws. This bill is misguided and a step in the wrong direction.
HSLDA has requested its Ohio members contact the bill’s sponsors to ask them to withdraw Senate Bill 248. However we encourage all our members to consider intervening. This misguided attack on homeschooling in Ohio may only be a precursor to more general attempts by some to impose similar restrictions on parents. Such attempts have been made in the past in numerous states but thanks to the work of HSLDA and state organizations, homeschooling has so far been protected.
For more information visit HSLDA’s legislative summary of Ohio SB 248.

• • •

Protect Your Family


If you have questions or difficulties in a school accepting your family’s homeschool diploma, don’t hesitate to contact HSLDA. We are happy to assist you! If you aren’t a member of HSLDA—what are you waiting for? By standing together we can fight discrimination against homeschoolers and protect our fundamental freedoms. Join today!

http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/oh/201312170.asp

WND


Persecuted homeschoolers dealt stunning new blow

Homeschoolers everywhere will shudder in fear when they hear this latest outrage at the hands of the "authorities."

You simply won't believe what one family is going through now...

http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/judge-hom...rment-to-kids/

Judge: Homeschooling a ‘concrete endangerment’ to kids
wnd.com
A Free Press For A Free People Since 1997

WND EXCLUSIVE

Judge: Homeschooling a 'concrete endangerment' to kids

Father says ruling just like 'what happened under communism'

Published: 2 days ago

The Wunderlich family with Michael Farris of HSLDA.

A judge has issued a stunning verdict in a homeschooling case in Germany, ordering that the parents cannot have custody of their children because the family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a “concrete endangerment” to the children.

Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s case made international headlines in August when 20 armed police arrived with a battering ram and forcibly took their four children from their home in Darmstadt, Germany, and enrolled them in public school.
As WND reported at the time, the children, ages 7 to 14, were taken into police custody. They were allowed to return home three weeks later when their father and mother, given no choice by the federal bureaucracy in Germany, agreed to allow their kids to attend public schools despite their objection to the social and religious instruction there.
According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, an international organization advocating for homeschool rights, the ruling from Family Court Judge Marcus Malkmus rejected emphatically the parents’ request to regain custody.
Lawyers for the family had asked the judge to allow the parents to have custody because they had met all court demands for their children to go to public schools, and they wished to move to France, where homeschooling is legal.
The judge, in his ruling, said that even though the Wunderlich children were academically proficient, well-adjusted socially and without educational deficiencies, he was horrified by homeschooling.
Malkmus compared homeschooling to having the children wear a straitjacket and said he had to make sure the children remained in Germany so they would be integrated into society.
He feared “the children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”
Such treatment, he warned would be “concrete endangerment to the wellbeing of the child.”
The father, Dirk, told HSLDA the recent decision was shocking.
“I had really hoped the judge would just let us leave Germany peacefully. We don’t isolate our children. They are well adjusted and doing well academically. We are happy for them to be connected to society. We just prefer to homeschool them because we believe it is better for them. It is so sad that my countrymen are not able to see that homeschooling should be allowed. It is legal in many other countries, and I believe it’s a human right.”
He compared Malkmus’ decision to building “another Berlin Wall apparently designed to prevent all parents who might leave to homeschool from leaving Germany.”
Wunderlich said it’s no different “than what happened in the former East Germany under communism and before that under the Third Reich.”
“We need help from others around the world to help our country see this terrible violation of human rights,” he said.
Chairman Michael Farris of HSLDA, which is working on the family’s behalf, said such statements about homeschooling being a “danger” are why the U.S. Supreme Court needs to rule on behalf of homeschooling families in a case involving the Romeikes.
The family moved to the U.S. several years ago because of similar homeschooling-related persecution in Germany. They were granted asylum on those grounds, but the Obama administration appealed.
The appeals court sided with Germany and ordered the Romeikes to return to the punishment they would face for wanting to teach their children. The Supreme Court has been asked to intervene.
“Germany is acting outside the boundaries of accepted international norms by imposing through force its vision for state control through education,” Farris said. “The Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 because of this very threat. The United States should not send them back to a country that will take their children away just because they homeschool.”
The arguments in the Romeike court case note that Germany is violating international human rights standards in its restriction of homeschooling parents.
“The responsibility and freedom of parents to educate their children is among the most cherished and important of basic human rights,” continued Farris. “This right is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in direct response to Germany’s nationalization of education during World War II. The fact that Germany continues to impose a totalitarian view in education for those who would homeschool is very troubling.”
Michael Donnelly, the organization’s director of international affairs, said the German decision is a disgrace.
“The German constitution and multiple international treaties guarantee the Wunderlichs’ right to leave their country. It’s one thing to disagree with homeschooling and enforce the law, but to prevent an otherwise loving and caring family from leaving because of homeschooling is a monumental violation of basic human rights.”
He said Malkmus “has effectively imprisoned the Wunderlichs in Germany over their intention to homeschool. It’s the kind of thing that you would expect from a communist bureaucrat in the former Soviet Union, not a modern German court of law.”
The judge also threatened that if the family departs without his permission, he would seek the parents return and prosecution in a criminal court.
Because of the anti-homeschooling law in Germany, adopted under the guidance of Adolf Hitler, German courts awarded custody of the Wunderlich children to social workers in 2012, but they were allowed to remain with their family because they consistently test high on academic and social scales.
Then in August, a different judge authorized the armed, SWAT-team raid to seize the children.
Although the homeschooling ban dates to Hitler, the current German government has endorsed it fully. In 2003, the German Supreme Court handed down the Konrad decision in which “religiously or philosophically motivated” homeschooling was banned.
Four years later, the German Federal Parliament changed a key provision of German child protection law, making it easier for children to be taken away from their parents for supposed “educational neglect.” In that same year, the case of Katerina Plett, a homeschooling mother who moved with her children to Austria while her husband maintained the family residence in Germany, made its way to the highest criminal court in Germany.
That ruling said “the general public has an interest in thwarting the development of religiously or motivated parallel societies” and “integrating minorities in that regard.”
The court, stunningly, said homeschooling was a form of “child endangerment,” so authorities were justified in using force to take children.
Farris said although the case is in Germany, others in the U.S. should be concerned.
“I want the American homeschool community and other friends of liberty to take note – this mindset isn’t limited to Germany. Many U.S. policymakers and academics agree. … They are even working to see them realized here. So far, thankfully, homeschooling isn’t a legitimate reason (anymore) for the government to kidnap your children if they don’t go to state approved schools,” Farris said.
Donnelly said there are “already too many voices in the United States that want to advance the idea that the state must control education for the safety of the state or other reasons.”
“And this is the same rationale of the German government in perpetrating deplorable acts like this,” he said. “Why should we think it couldn’t or won’t happen here?”
Donnelly asked further: “Can’t a government that can order you to get health care tell you that you don’t qualify for certain life-saving treatments, tell parents they can’t allow their children to get certain kinds of counseling or that they must have a particular kind of medical treatments or that certain religious speech is intolerant and may not be permitted or must be punished, or that only national curricular standards are acceptable for all children, etc. – can’t a government like that order you to send your children to school? And then punish you if you don’t?”
It was in 1937 when Hitler said: “The youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/judge-hom...2osYUZ1jTAx.99