LONDON, January 9, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A German family has fled to safe haven in the United Kingdom after the mayor of their town attempted to have their children seized and put into state custody for the crime of homeschooling according to WorldNetDaily (WND).

WND reports that officials with Netzwerk-Bildungsfreiheit, a German homeschooling advocacy group, said that Klaus and Kathrin Landahl and their five children, "are in safety in England. They reached Dover on Saturday midnight."

The Landahl family was preparing to leave the country and had deregistered themselves as German citizens, when the Mayor of Altensteig filed a lawsuit with the local family court demanding it intervene and take custody away from the Landahls.

A spokesman for the advocacy group told WND, "As the mayor knows that the family wants to leave Germany and that they have deregistered, his attempt is that the family court takes custody away in a so-called … (preliminary warrant) which means that custody can be taken away without a hearing [for] the parents."

He added also that in the Landahl case, not only were the authorities seeking to usurp the parents' right to decide their children's education, but also their right "to determine the place of abode," an action more in line with Soviet-era East Germany.

The Landahls were in the process of moving into a rented apartment abroad when the court served them with a legal notice of the lawsuit.

The local court has not issued a final ruling in the case, but ever since Germany's Supreme Court ruled in favour of the state against homeschooling last fall, most families have found safety to exist in flight.

http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2008/jan/08010906.html

Thoughts?:eek:

The Germans are very systematic, and they have a great education system. I don't blame them for disallowing homeschooling, which is more often than not religiously based and inadequate.

Are Germans homeschooling due to religion?

I believe in homeschooling. It is fairly well protected in the US, in no small part by the religious right, thus some of the core supporters of Bush and Islamophobia and so on. On the other hand homeschooling is also done by parents of lefties, liberals and even radicals dismayed by the public and private education options for very different reasons. I think parents should have the right to teach their children and not be forced to submit them to whatever the school system has to offer.

Of course this means that some children, then, are immersed in their parents loopy worldview. Loopy that is in my opinion.

It's a bittersweet feeling I get out my support for homeschooling. I know the doors it opens and I know the doors it closes.

The Germans are very systematic, and they have a great education system. I don't blame them for disallowing homeschooling, which is more often than not religiously based and inadequate.

I would guess, knowing the Germans, that the system is following rather old pedagogical ideas and there is a lot of sitting still, staring forward and listening to teachers telling them facts they need to memorize. I am sure the Germans are very efficient and clear about all this as they are in say, business affairs, but few of my German friends look back fondly on the anal, control oriented 'education' they got there.

As I mentioned above, what some children are subjected to in their homeschooling is not something I celebrate, though I don't draw the line simply at religion/secular.

I am glad that my friends in the US, who yes, tend to not be religious, at least in any of the big organized religion sorts of ways, have the option of homeschooling.

Control fetish vs. control fetish.
Government wanting control, the religioius, perhaps in this case, wanting control.
Everybody wanting to control what goes in the kid's mind. Shit, where's the respect for the kid.
Rare. Very rare.