MORRISTOWN, Tenn. — On a quiet street in this little town in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains lives a family of refugees who were granted asylum in the United States because they feared persecution in their home country.
The family came to the United States in 2008 from Germany, where children are required to attend an officially recognized school, be it public, private or religious.
The reason for that fear has rarely, if ever, been the basis of an asylum case. The parents, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, want to home-school their five children, ranging in age from 2 to 12, a practice illegal in their native land, Germany.
Among European countries, Germany is nearly alone in requiring, and enforcing, attendance of children at an officially recognized school. The school can be private or religious, but it must be a school.
I love home-schooling (I am a home-schooler). I think that it should be the parents’ choice. There may be some exceptions such as the parent must be capable to provide a quality education and things like that.
Does it make a difference to school bigots if the eighth grade dropout is black, Latino, white, or Asian? I just wondered if this is generalized prejudice or if it is confined strictly to education mythologies.
there are two different aspects here: rights (and liberty) and culture.
Reports may be biased but what I have seen on tv reporting about home schooling is that woman stays at home to raise children. So is home schooling most of the time linked to a “no career for women” culture?
Though I sure lost a lot of time at school I would never have considered to withdraw my children (and grand-children) from social interferences of “common school”. What do people fear from school? low level of learning? bad influences? jus curious …
I’m not really sure that there’s a good answer about the home schooling debate.
It really comes down to freedom. But by giving parents the right to choose to home school or not, perhaps that denies some (few) children the right to an education about the outside world.
I’ve been thinking a lot about religion and spirituality recently (I’m very opposed to the first, and I’m still working on composing my thoughts on the second). It is wrong to indoctrinate any child into any religious faith. It is wrong to indoctrinate any child into any “ism” really, (including atheism).
When people home school, many (not all, or even most) are doing it to shield their children from outside ideas, for as long as it takes to brainwash them into the parents way of thinking about a certain (usually religious) topic.
On the other hand, it is very difficult to educate a wide variety of kids in the same classroom. Many children benefit from a home school environment, where they can learn at their own pace (faster or slower).
Also, as far as an eighth grade drop out goes, of course there is a chance that she’s educated far beyond her 8th grade formal education, but the odds are against it. I actually think I may have missed the point of the exchange surrounding this though.
I am not a fan of home schooling in the US. I think a lot of the motivation comes from very conservative christians who do not want their children exposed to dangerous ideas.
On the other hand, some public schools in the US do not work well, and if my child were in one I would consider all options including home schooling.
Proper schooling is an enormous amount of work. Even though I do have more than an eighth-grade education, I would find the prospect daunting. By the time you put in all the time and energy to make it work well, wouldn’t everyone be better off if you had put the same resources and energy into improving your local schools? This is one of the issues that bothers me about home schooling–it diverts energy and resources from making our public schools work.
That’s the wonderful thing about the USA, the fans of one particular lifestyle or education program don’t impose it on those who are not fans.
The best lesson is freedom to choose.
When experts cannot improve the schools, how do you expect a parent to improve the schools? Besides, that is someone else’s job. We could put our resources to improving the police and fire protection, the landfill and recycling program, the waste water treatment, etc, but there are experts in charge of that.
Parents certainly can educate their kids.
Bear, a parent who chooses home schooling may have nothing to fear about the school. Just as a unicyclist may have nothing to fear about bicycles. These are simply choices we can exercise.
Just take a look at Canada for an example of why mandatory education does not work.
hint: google “residential schools”
Sure our residential schools were probably a whole lot worse than anything that is currently happening in Germany but hearing that children legally have to attend a recognized school reminds me of stories from some of my friends who were taken from their parents and forced to attend a residential school.
Good on the States for giving the couple and their children asylum.
