We welcome illegals and offer them everything under the sun, but harrass homeschoolers fleeing persecution!

From World Net Daily, March 22, 2010

Homeschoolers win U.S. asylum, now face deportation

Citing a European court ruling, U.S. immigration authorities are arguing in an appeal that a family that fled Germany and gained asylum in Tennessee claiming their government persecuted them for homeschooling should be returned to their home country....ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency) sought application of the Konrad case in the European Court of Human Rights that 'the public education laws of Germany do not violate basic human rights.' The ruling elaborated that parents had no right to direct the education of their own children because that was a responsibility of the state....

The HSLDA has documented that in 2003 the highest administrative court in Germany ruled in the Konrad case it was allowable for parents who travel, such as circus performers, to homeschool children. But homeschooling was not allowed for reasons of conscience.

The nation's highest criminal court said in the 2006 Paul-Plette case that the government could take custody of children whose parents wanted to homeschool for reasons of conscience.

I wrote about this family, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their five children, in the winter issue of the Les Femmes newsletter. To think that after winning asylum they now have to face the Obama immigration team is sickening. It is one more example of U.S. authorities putting court decisions outside the country ahead of U.S. courts. If ICE is allowed to prevail, will the education of children in the U.S. also be considered a "responsibility of the state." The federal government has taken over health care, the banks, large segments of the auto industry. Is the right to control the education of our children next? They will no doubt try to make homeschooling illegal because they want to control the next generation and they can only do that if they control the content of what is taught.

And isn't it ironic that ICE does nothing about the millions of illegals who are burdening our health care system, our schools, and our welfare systme, but will persecute this one homeschooling family. It's just one more example of something rotten in the administration.

Why do they hate home schooling so much?

The answer is easy. They can't control it. Robin West recently did a hatchet job on "The Harms of Home Schooling." West is a law professor at Georgetown University. (Why am I not surprised when the attack comes from a teacher at a so-called Catholic university which should be a defender of the primary rights of parents over the education of their children?) West bemoans the fact that many Protestant fundamentalist parents are home schooling and doing it "with little or no oversight from public school officials, who in some states need not even be notified of the parents’ intent to homeschool."

Wow! what a horrifying situation! Public school authorities who often expose children to the glories of sodomy and abortion are being taken out of the loop by concerned parents. But West is appalled that home schooling has become a "widespread and thoroughly privatized educational practice that devolves full responsibility for a child’s education to whatever parent wants to claim it, which is not only legal, but virtually unregulated as well."

For lawyer West's information this was the same situation that existed in this country for two centuries when parents, not the state, taught their children to read and write and apprenticed them to learn a trade. She is also horrified that some of these parents might use the Bible as their primary curriculum. (Another widespread practice in Colonial and post Colonial America.)

West goes on to make a number of outrageous claims about "unregulated" home schooling, from the allegation that home schooled kids are likely to be physically abused (parents of the Columbine students might have an interesting take on this statement) to the claim that parents aren't qualified, curricula is probably deficient, kids miss out on being socialized, and that "poor" fundamentalist parents are probably economically depriving their children as well.

In view of massive research on the success of home schooling and the fact that children at home outperform their institutionalized peers by wide margins, West's article, which provides NO documentation to back up her outrageous allegations, is irresponsible. She wants state regulation by educational bureaucrats who in many places have failed miserably and are producing functional illiterates.

But I suspect West's real agenda isn't so much with what parents are teaching their children, but what they aren't. She espouses her agenda by quoting an opponent of homeschooling. "Robert Reich has persuasively argued, curricular review would give the state a way to ensure that the academic content is such as to protect the children’s interest in both acquiring the necessary skills for active, autonomous, and responsible citizenship in adulthood, and in being exposed to diverse and more liberal ways.

Ah! There you have it. Children schooled at home partly to protect them from "diverse and more liberal ways" that include teaching them to put condoms on bananas, reading about Heather's two mommies, safe touch and sex ed programs that sexualize them from Kindergarten, how to pray like a Muslim, etc. must be liberalized. As always, the foxes want authority over the chicken coop for the benefit of the chicks.

If you're interested in homeschooling you can read West's article here and a response by PhD Brian Ray here.

The Coercion of Evil

You're a dad. You don't want your children exposed to sex education that promotes fornication, contraception, abortion, and sodomy. You refuse to allow your children to participate in a play called "My Body Belongs to Me" that teaches children how to have sexual intercourse.

What happens? Well, if you live in Germany you're arrested and thrown in jail which is exactly what happened to eight German fathers. Here's an excerpt from an article by a German parents' rights group:

Christians in Germany have faced enormous persecution from the German government for removing their children from the German public schools, either through homeschooling - an illegal act according to a law instituted during the Third Reich - or taking them out of select classes they deem harmful to their Christian values, which is also illegal.

The fact that these children often outperform their counterparts in state schools has little bearing on the matter for Germany; the government's stated public policy is to suppress the existence of Parallelgesellschaften or "parallel societies" based on "separate philosophical convictions" through the education system.

The Youth Welfare Office or Jugendamt - an institution similar to Child Protective Services - acts as the government's chief intervening instrument, and when prison and fines do not bend Christian families into compliance, they recommend that these Christians lose parental custody of their children.

In one case, the Jugendamt, accompanied by 15 heavily armed police, forcibly seized 15 year-old Melissa Busekros in the dead of night from her family in 2007 against her will. However, legal intervention ensured that Busekros was legally permitted to return to her family upon turning 16.

It's clear that in Germany the children belong to the state. The fact that the law banning homeschooling originated under Hitler is chilling. All homeschooling families are in danger of having their children taken from them. Read more here.

This is one more example of the coercion evil, in this case the murder of innocence. No disagreement will be tolerated. The children must be perverted and if parents have to be imprisoned and families ripped apart to do it, too bad.

Recess is Over; Back to School

If your children aren't back in school this week, they will be after Labor Day -- except for home schoolers who learn year round no matter where they are and what they are doing. When you live, eat, and vacation with the teacher, learning is a full time affair, which may be one of the reasons that home schoolers excell on standardized tests and outperform their public school counterparts by every measure.

A recent report discussed in the Washington Times showed home schoolers, 1.5 million estimated by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), excelling in all areas:

The study included almost 12,000 homeschool students from all 50 states who took three well-known standardized achievements tests—the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Stanford Achievement Test—for the 2007–08 academic year. The students were drawn from 15 independent testing services, making it the most comprehensive homeschool academic study to date.

The results reinforced previous homeschool studies conducted over a period of 25 years.

Five areas of academic pursuit were measured. In reading, the average homeschooler scored at the 89th percentile; language, 84th percentile; math, 84th percentile; science, 86th percentile; and social studies, 84th percentile. In the core studies (reading, language and math), the average homeschooler scored at the 88th percentile.

The average public school student taking these standardized tests scored at the 50th percentile in each subject area.

Home schooling is growing by 7% a year according to DOE and it's no surprise to me. As a former home schooling mom I can testify to its effectiveness. When you know exactly what your children are studying, you can relate everything to it. "Remember when we talked about camouflage in nature? See how this bug looks like a stick. He blends in with his environment."

The five years I homeschooled offered dozens of opportunities for fun learning from directing our homeschool drama club in The Tempest at the Folger Shakespeare Library's middle school festival, to walking the Gettysburg battlefield listening to a costumed docent describe her experiences as a nurse, to leading a pre-school "nature detectives" program with my daughter dressed as a snow goose or an indian or a farmer at harvest time telling the little ones about her experiences. There was plenty of work involved, but also a lot of fun. Jamie went from being a so-so reader in second grade to an excellent reader with study skills that made her sought out by her chums when she returned to the classroom later.

Consider home schooling especially for your little ones. Protect their innocence, help them develop critical thinking skills that will serve them for a lifetime, and keep your family together. My only regret is I didn't homeschool all my children at least for a time. Homeschooling fosters a close-knit family especially when the experience is grounded in prayer.

May all our children, no matter where they are, have a blessed and productive school year.