Freedom to homeschool

must never be taken for granted. From the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA):

Seven homeschool families in Northwest Germany are being forced to enroll their children in public school. The Paderborn County school board has levied fines against these families and ordered the children to attend school by Monday, January 10, or the police will forcibly take them to school. Any resistance by the parents will result in the removal of these thirteen elementary age children from their homes and into state custody!

Despite the lack of state recognition in Germany for homeschooling, these families pulled their children out of public school earlier this year to begin teaching them at home. Their primary reason, as Christians, was to protect their children from the humanistic and godless values being taught to their children in the public school.

While the school district responded by stating that homeschooling is illegal, the parents' maintained that their fundamental rights as parents would be violated if they were forced to return the children to public school. All of the families obtained excellent packaged curriculums from German correspondence schools, and demonstrated to school officials that their children were receiving a proper education.

Heinz Kohler, the county education director, dismissed the families' beliefs, stating, "you and your children are not living in isolation on some island but rather in an environment posing intra- and extracurricular situations where you'll have to accept that your world view will be curtailed." Mr. Kohler further explained that homeschooling could not be allowed as "children should not be encapsulated or kept apart from the outside world. In these cases, the parents' rights to personally educate their children would prevent the children from growing up to be responsible individuals within society..."

It’s not too late to contact the German Embassy and local German officials involved in the case on behalf of these families:

Wolfgang Ischinger
Ambassador
German Embassy4645 Reservoir Road NW
Washington, DC, 20007-1998
(202) 298-4000

The embassy can be emailed from its website.

Local German officials involved in the case:

Landrat Paderborn: Mr. Manfred Mueller – landread@kreis-paderborn.de (County official)

President Nordrhein - Westfalen: Mr. Peer Steinbrueck – local media – landespresseamt@stk.nrw.de – CC poststelle@stk.nrw.de