{"id":364,"date":"2014-04-21T15:18:08","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T15:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=364"},"modified":"2014-04-21T15:18:52","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T15:18:52","slug":"can-germany-loosen-up-about-homeschooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=364","title":{"rendered":"SCHOOL ATTENDANCE VS. HOME EDUCATION: Can Germany Loosen Up about Home Education?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:<\/strong> Franz Reimer, \u201cSchool Attendance as a Civic Duty vs. Home Education as a Human Right\u201d in International Journal of Elementary Education<\/em> 3, no. 1 (October 2010): 5-15.<\/p>\n

Summary: <\/strong>This is the first article in a special issue of the International Journal<\/em> devoted entirely to homeschooling.\u00a0 They are all available for free here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reimer kicks off the issue with a look at the homeschooling situation in Germany.\u00a0 As we\u2019ve noted in previous posts (here<\/a> and here<\/a>), in Germany homeschooling is essentially illegal.\u00a0 The few German families that do it (and Reimer is clear that there is no way to know how many there may be\u2013a few hundred?\u00a0 Thousands?) are off the grid, fearing prosecution from government authorities.<\/p>\n

Reimer explains how German federal law specifies that \u201cthe care and upbringing of children is the natural right of parents and a duty primarily incumbent upon them.\u201d\u00a0 Nevertheless, \u201cthe State shall watch over them in the performance of this duty.\u201d\u00a0 State law, furthermore, makes it clear that \u201cthe entire school system shall be under the supervision of the state.\u201d\u00a0 Germany is split into 16 states, and each of them has its own set of education laws.<\/p>\n

Thus far German courts have sided with the states in cases involving a conflict between parents claiming that homeschooling falls within their natural right as parents and states rejecting such rights.\u00a0 Courts justify this by claiming that the public has an interest in \u201ccounteracting the rise of religious or ideological \u2018parallel societies\u2019\u201d and by the fact that parents can work with schools and with their children after school.\u00a0 Parental rights, the saying goes, is a right \u201cwithin compulsory schooling, not against compulsory schooling.\u201d (p. 10)<\/p>\n

International courts have also found the German situation acceptable according to the statutes of the European Union, so German homeschoolers cannot appeal there.<\/p>\n

After summarizing all of this, Reimer concludes with four recommendations:<\/p>\n

1. He\u2019d like German states to do some empirical research to see if the German families who are homeschooling in secret are actually failing to educate their children according to how the state defines it.\u00a0 If so, then fine, keep it illegal.\u00a0 But if they\u2019re actually doing a good job, then the state should relax and let it happen.<\/p>\n

2. The fear of \u201cparallel societies\u201d is bogus.\u00a0 Federal German law articulates great respect for minority views (a legacy of Germany\u2019s shame over its Nazi past).\u00a0 The law\u2019s acceptance of diversity trumps majoritarian fears of difference.<\/p>\n

3. German courts should take homeschooling cases on a case-by-case basis rather than hewing to blanket prohibitions of homeschooling.\u00a0 That no court has ever found any homeschooling to be legitimate despite the fact that there is no law explicitly forbidding it suggests that the courts are being lazy.<\/p>\n

4. Claims that the state has done enough to satisfy the guarantee of parental freedoms by allowing the existence of private schools and by allowing parents to have their kids after school are weak.\u00a0 A principle that is supposed to protect liberty has been turned into a principle that limits it.\u00a0 This needs to be re-thought.<\/p>\n

Reimer concludes that German courts\u2019 approach to homeschooling suggests a fundamental contradiction with the very liberalism and tolerance they claim to espouse.\u00a0 He\u2019d like to see Germany move in the direction of many other European nations and begin to permit a heavily-regulated form of homeschooling as an option for fulfiling state compulsory education statutes.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>:\u00a0 The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record: Franz Reimer, \u201cSchool Attendance as a Civic Duty vs. Home Education as a Human Right\u201d in International Journal of Elementary Education 3, no. 1 (October 2010): 5-15. Summary: This is the first article in a special issue of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[332,333,326],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-franz-reimer","tag-germany","tag-international-journal-of-elementary-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1246,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/1246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}