German Police Storm Homeschoolers' homes, Seize Children by Force

[cpwill]

"When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."

Ah, Germany. Where not turning your children over to the State is Not Allowed.

Four children, ages 7 to 14, have been forcibly taken from their Darmstadt, Germany, home by police armed with a battering ram, and their parents have been told they won’t see them again soon, all over the issue of homeschooling, according to a stunning new report from the Home School Legal Defense Association.

HSLDA, the world’s premiere advocate for homeschoolers, said the family of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich has battled for several years Germany’s World War II-era requirement that all children submit to the indoctrination programs in the nation’s public schools.

The shocking raid was made solely because the parents were providing their children’s education, HSLDA said. The organization noted the paperwork that authorized police officers and social workers to use force on the children contained no claims of mistreatment....

“Citing the parents’ failure to cooperate ‘with the authorities to send the children to school,’ the judge also authorized the use of force ‘against the children’ … reasoning that such force might be required because the children had ‘adopted the parents’ opinions’ regarding homeschooling and that ‘no cooperation could be expected’ from either the parents or the children,”..

Michael Farris, HSLDA founder, said in a report the actions violated a number of established European precedents, including provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights.

“The right to homeschool is a human right,” he said, “and so is the right to freely move and to leave a country. Germany has grossly violated these rights of this family...

Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.

 

[German guy]

Yeah, Germans and Americans have different ideas of what makes "big government".

In America, it's the state requiring pupils to go to school. In Germany, it's extralegal detention and denial of fair trials for mere suspects, or interventions illegal by international law. Or the CIA or NSA logging the mails of all German citizens.

Go figure. These damn totalitarian Germans.

 

[Gathomas88]

"When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."

Ah, Germany. Where not turning your children over to the State is Not Allowed.



Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.

God forbid that Homeschoolers fail to be indoctrinated with the "approved" curriculum necessary to turn them into the cookie-cutter nanny state drones government requires.

Think of the children for Heaven's sake! :roll:

 

[TiredOfLife]

"When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."

Ah, Germany. Where not turning your children over to the State is Not Allowed.



Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.

Send your kids to school, meaning follow the law in this case, and at night teach them what you want them to know. If they reject it, it's because it's probably crap.

 

[TiredOfLife]

Think of the children for Heaven's sake! :roll:

They are.

 

[German guy]

Heaven forbid that they fail to be indoctrinated with the state approved curriculum necessary to turn them into the cookie-cutter nanny state drones.

Think of the children for God's sake! :roll:

Yeah, they should be taught that that the US practize of giving the executive the power to kidnap people at random, deny them fair trials and detain them indefinitely, is not just a thing Hitler did, but a common practize of the US government ... who could possibly agree that German pupils should be indoctrinated with this critical attitude towards totalitarianism.

 

[Gathomas88]

They are.

No, they are thinking of themselves.

Consciously pursued or not, the simple fact of the matter is that Government ultimately only has one goal, and one goal alone; the maintenance of its own power.

Nowhere is this more blatant than in the case described in the OP. The government apparatus feels threatened by the idea that Homeschooled children might be brought up to believe something different than what strictly serves its interests, and so it has resorted to blatantly draconian measures to try and "correct" that problem.

If the jackbooted thugs described in the OP do not count as "thought police" in the Orwellian sense of the word, I quite literally do not know what does.

Yeah, they should be taught that that the US practize of giving the executive the power to kidnap people at random, deny them fair trials and detain them indefinitely, is not just a thing Hitler did, but a common practize of the US government ... who could possibly agree that German pupils should be indoctrinated with this critical attitude towards totalitarianism.

This is a completely evasive red herring.

Were the parents in question teaching their children totalitarianism?

No?

So what on Earth does it have to do with anything here?

 

[German guy]

To use clear words:

After your 9/11 violations of the most basic Western values and constitutional values, Americans are in a pretty bad situation to lecture Germans about freedom. Do us all a favor, and shut the **** up.

Until you no longer allow the executive to be above the law and constitution, by allowing it to be accuser, judge and hankerman in the same person. Shut the **** up lecturing other people about basic standards of Western civilization. You break them all the time.

Thanks to our public education, every German pupil knows such policies are worth of Hitler and the likes, but not of a free, democratic republic.

 

[German guy]

No. They are thinking of themselves.

Consciously pursued or not, the simple fact of the matter is that Government ultimately only has one goal, and one goal alone; the maintenance of its own power.

Nowhere is this more blatant than in the case described in the OP. The government apparatus feels threatened by the idea that Homeschooled children might be brought up to believe something different than what strictly serves its interests, and so it has resorted to blatantly draconian measures to try and "correct" that problem.

If the jackbooted thugs described in the OP do not count as "thought police" in the Orwellian sense of the word, I quite literally do not know what does.



This is a completely evasive red herring.

Were the parents in question teaching their children totalitarianism?

No?

So what on Earth does it have to do with anything here?

Go care about your own government first, before you start lecturing others. **** you.

America has lost any credibility whatsoever lecturing others on freedom and democracy and Western values post Patriot Act and 9/11.

 

[Gathomas88]

To use clear words:

After your 9/11 violations of the most basic Western values and constitutional values, Americans are in a pretty bad situation to lecture Germans about freedom. Do us all a favor, and shut the **** up.

Until you no longer allow the executive to be above the law and constitution, by allowing it to be accuser, judge and hankerman in the same person. Shut the **** up lecturing other people about basic standards of Western civilization. You break them all the time.

Thanks to our public education, every German pupil knows such policies are worth of Hitler and the likes, but not of a free, democratic republic.

Yea... No.

"Turnabout is fair play."

If you Europeans are going to insist on crying, whining, and bitching about those aspects of the American system that you happen to disapprove of, we are more than justified in pointing out the rather obvious flaws in your societies as well.

The simple fact of the matter is that granting government officials the power to effectively "confiscate" otherwise perfectly well cared for children from their parents simply because they happen to dislike the idea of anyone but themselves shaping those children's minds is "totalitarian," and even "Orwellian," in the extreme. You cannot deny this.

Go care about your own government first, before you start lecturing others. **** you.

America has lost any credibility whatsoever lecturing others on freedom and democracy and Western values post Patriot Act and 9/11.

You know who else tore families apart for failing to "tow the government line?" The Nazis.

Just sayin...

 

[German guy]

Yea... No.

"Turnabout is fair play."

If you Europeans are going to insist on crying, whining, and bitching about those aspects of the American system that you happen to disapprove of, we are more than justified in pointing out the rather obvious flaws in your societies as well.

The simple fact of the matter is that government effectively "confiscating" otherwise perfectly well cared for children from their parents simply because they happen to dislike the idea of anyone but themselves shaping those children's minds is "totalitarian" in the extreme. You cannot deny this.



You know who else tore families apart for failing to "tow the government line?" The Nazis.

Just sayin...

No, it's perfectly sound. You can't allow religious or political nuts to educate their children to build totalitarian enclaves.

And then, you need to teach them about basic constitutional and Western values. Which obviously does not take place in America, because otherwise, you would not never have tolaterated the government excesses past-9/11 of Bush and Obama.

And now shut up, until you have fixed your own ****ed up country that has become a total disgrace and laughingstock as "leader of the free world". When you have fixed that, let's discuss again.

 

[Gathomas88]

No, it's perfectly sound. You can't allow religious or political nuts to educate their children to build totalitarian enclaves.

And who gets to decide such things? You? Some government bureaucrat of questionable motivation and objectivity sitting in an office somewhere?

Are people no longer allowed to hold opinions contrary to what their government deems to be acceptable?

I've frankly never heard of a bigger pile of blatantly authoritarian horse manure than the idea you've just proposed. It's honestly pretty frightening that you could even seriously entertain such a notion and still consider your philosophy to be in any sense "Democratic" or "Liberal."

And then, you need to teach them about basic constitutional and Western values.

Again, you do realize that you're basically advocating exactly the same tactics used by the Hitler Youth and innumerable other totalitarian regimes throughout history, right?

"Cognitive dissonance" doesn't even begin to describe the sheer amount of doublethink you're engaging in at the present moment.

What you're essentially saying here is that "Draconian control of people's behavior is okay, but only when its in favor of something I support."

I'm sorry, but this is simply not a view I can respect in good conscience.

Which obviously does not take place in America, because otherwise, you would not never have tolaterated the government excesses past-9/11 of Bush and Obama.

Blah, blah, blah... :roll:

And now shut up, until you have fixed your own ****ed up country that has become a total disgrace and laughingstock as "leader of the free world". When you have fixed that, let's discuss again.

Make me.

 

[German guy]

And who gets to decide such things? You? Some government bureaucrat of questionable motivation and objectivity sitting in an office somewhere?

Are people no longer allowed to hold opinions contrary to what their government deems to be acceptable?

I've frankly never heard of a bigger pile of blatantly authoritarian horse manure than the idea you've just proposed. It's honestly pretty frightening that you could even seriously entertain such a notion and still consider your philosophy be in any sense "Democratic" or "Liberal."



Again, you do realize that you're basically advocating exactly the same tactics used by the Hitler Youth and innumerable other totalitarian regimes throughout history, right? View attachment 67152911

"Cognitive dissonance" doesn't even begin to describe the sheer amount of doublethink you're engaging in right now.

What you're essentially saying here is that "Draconian control of people's behavior is okay, but only when its in favor of something I support."

I'm sorry, but this is simply not a view I can respect in good conscience.



Blah, blah, blah... :roll:



Make me.

YOUR government has the practize of allowing the executive to kidnap random people from the streets, deny them fair trials and detain them indefinitely.

YOUR government allows the executive to kill mere suspects.

YOUR government allows the unchecked executive to spy on all private communications not just of your own citizens, but of all German citizens too.

You have a flying **** of a legitimation to lecture Germans about Western values.

 

[German guy]

Oh, and I am just being that harsh because you have never ever bothered showing up in the "Europe" section before. It's only good enough for you when it's about bashing Europeans, apparently.

 

[Gathomas88]

YOUR government has the practize of allowing the executive to kidnap random people from the streets, deny them fair trials and detain them indefinitely.

YOUR government allows the executive to kill mere suspects.

YOUR government allows the unchecked executive to spy on all private communications not just of your own citizens, but of all German citizens too.

Yes, and YOUR government advocates the use of force against children guilty of no other "crime" than not wanting to be indoctrinated with the state's propaganda of choice.

YOUR government also rather blatantly restricts free speech.

I'd frankly consider both of those to be far more serious fundamental violations of personal rights than any of the things you listed above.

You have a flying **** of a legitimation to lecture Germans about Western values.

No offense, but if the level of reasoning you have displayed in this thread is the measure of German public education's effectiveness, I can see why the family described in the OP was so dead set on Homeschooling in the first place.

I frankly would have left Germany entirely if I were them.

The sheer level of (almost certainly trained) knee-jerk defensiveness the very idea of questioning your government's policies seems to illicit from you is really rather telling.

 

[German guy]

Yes, and YOUR government advocates the use of force against children guilty of no other "crime" than not wanting to be indoctrinated with the state's propaganda of choice.

YOUR government also rather blatantly restricts free speech.

I'd frankly consider both of those to be far more serious fundamental violations of personal rights than any of the things you listed above.



No offense, but if the level of reasoning you have displayed in this thread is the measure of German public education's effectiveness, I can see why the family described in the OP was so dead set on Homeschooling in the first place.

I frankly would have left Germany entirely if I were them.

The sheer level of (almost certainly trained) knee-jerk defensiveness the very idea of questioning your government's policies seems to illicit from you is really rather telling.

We're a bit tougher on anti-constitutional nuts such as neo-Nazis, you're a bit tougher, no wait, not just "a bit", buch *much more* on islamists. Both are enemies of freedom. Where's your problem?

Because I bet, 99% of the people who don't want to send their children to school in Germany are either neo-Nazis or dogmatic Marxists (or islamists). Because our public schools do not indoctrinate at all. If one school was ever found guilty of doing that, it would be dead. All they do is teaching the constitutional values. Those who disagree with that ... you know who they are.

 

[DiAnna]

American kids are required to be educated either in a public school or in an accredited home-schooling program. Hell, in America parents have been jailed because their kids missed too many days of class. I'm finding it difficult to work up a huge indignation about another country's laws on how their children should be educated. :shrug:

 

[German guy]

And yeah, for some Americans, it is ... *gasp* ... a total unexpected thing that any non-American might ever disagree with them. You're the country everybody wants to come to, or to be like, right? NOT. Get used to it. You're not remotely as attractive as you think you are.

I post in the non-European forums all the time and often bite my tongue. Because I feel I shouldn't lecture Americans too much.

Well, to be fair, I think America is not unattractive. It's somewhere on my top 10 list of countries where I could imagine moving to (maybe place 8 or 9). But the times when you were a shining example for the rest of the world are long gone. Doesn't mean it's still pretty good to live in an alliance with America. It's still better than all other options we have. But that national myth is bunk. And that's not least because of the totalitarian policies of Bush and Obama post 9/11.

 

[Gathomas88]

We're a bit tougher on anti-constitutional nuts such as neo-Nazis, you're a bit tougher, no wait, not just "a bit", buch *much more* on islamists. Both are enemies of freedom. Where's your problem?

The United States government does not target "Islamists" on the basis of their beliefs alone. We target individuals who have demonstrated clearly aggressive intent against us.

There is a difference.

In the United States, you are free to be a Radical Islamist if you want to be so long as you do not take, or conspire to take, violent action against either the state or your fellow citizens. The same is not true of many (frankly, much more benign) political movements in Germany and most of the rest of Europe.

Because I bet, 99% of the people who don't want to send their children to school in Germany are either neo-Nazis or dogmatic Marxists (or islamists). Because our public schools do not indoctrinate at all.

The very fact that you believe such things indicates a high degree of indoctrination.

Was the family mentioned in the OP tied in any way to Nazis or violent religious extremism?

Frankly, even if they were, so what? It is not the state's place to dictate what ideas can and cannot be taught.

You can't preach the value of "Democracy" one moment, and try to play the role of "thought police" the next.

American kids are required to be educated either in a public school or in an accredited home-schooling program. Hell, in America parents have been jailed because their kids missed too many days of class. I'm finding it difficult to work up a huge indignation about another country's laws on how their children should be educated. :shrug:

Not really. It depends on the state and the way you go about doing things. I never spent a single day in a "certified" classroom growing up.

I did have to take a yearly standardized test on a couple of occasions to make sure I was on more or less the same level as my peers, but that was only for the two years my family lived in Tennessee. Most other states pretty much left us alone.

Considering the fact that I made it into college on an academic scholarship and pretty much always placed in the top 5-10% of my classes either way regardless, and even made the honor role in my freshman and junior years, I wouldn't say that this was a state of affairs which necessarily harmed my growth and development in any way.

The idea that, if I had been born in Europe rather than the United States, I could've been literally ripped away from my parents by a SWAT Team if my family had even attempted such a thing is absurd to say the least.

 

[Gathomas88]

And yeah, for some Americans, it is ... *gasp* ... a total unexpected thing that any non-American might ever disagree with them. You're the country everybody wants to come to, or to be like, right? NOT. Get used to it. You're not remotely as attractive as you think you are.

I post in the non-European forums all the time and often bite my tongue. Because I feel I shouldn't lecture Americans too much.

Well, to be fair, I think America is not unattractive. It's somewhere on my top 10 list of countries where I could imagine moving to (maybe place 8 or 9). But the times when you were a shining example for the rest of the world are long gone. Doesn't mean it's still pretty good to live in an alliance with America. It's still better than all other options we have. But that national myth is bunk. And that's not least because of the totalitarian policies of Bush and Obama post 9/11.

This doesn't have jack crap to do with any notion of "American exceptionalism."

The simple fact of the matter is that barging into people's homes and taking their children away for no other reason than that they refused to "drink the public education Kool-Aid" is a draconian and heavy handed violation of civil liberties and basic human rights. It goes against virtually every principle Western Liberalism was originally meant to serve.

My criticism of such policies would be just as harsh right now, if not more so, had the government responsible for them been American, rather than European.

 

[Higgins86]

Yeah, Germans and Americans have different ideas of what makes "big government".

In America, it's the state requiring pupils to go to school. In Germany, it's extralegal detention and denial of fair trials for mere suspects, or interventions illegal by international law. Or the CIA or NSA logging the mails of all German citizens.

Go figure. These damn totalitarian Germans.

The saddest thing about it all is that posters like cpwill haven't even realised yet that American is all about big government and has been that way for a good while, instead they ignore what is going on in their own country and focus on Europe!

 

[spud_meister]

Because forcibly removing kids from their parents is going to make their education go that much better.

 

[Rainman05]

Hello. So I don't have an opinion on homeschooling per se. At least maybe, not in the same way others do but I will throw in my 2c.

The first and most disturbing thing is that the OP decided to take the story from WND. There are other who reported it like theblaze and christianpost, but all the mentioned sources are laughable and prone to give a biased report on the news. But moving right along.

I don't know much about homeschooling, as I said. I don't consider homeschooling to be the same as leaving school, because it isn't, but I do know that the premiere group of people in Europe who do not attend school end up in very bad places. I don't know if homeschooling is superior to public education, and it is worthwhile to mention that Germany has a great public education program that breeds amazing results, especially in regards to preparing pupils for careers and jobs that are desirable in the market. This is also one of the reasons Germany's unemployment is very, very low compared to other countries in the EU and the US. This also has some negative side-effects but yeah... to each his own.

In the US, homeschooling is very popular. I think I read that almost 3% of parents prefer to keep their kids homeschooled rather than in a public education system. It is considered a better alternative than public education in the public schools in the area are bad, though maybe more expensive a bit for tutors and such, and a lot less expensive than private schools. But this is a huge difference than how it is in Europe where most countries in Europe have mandatory legislation pertaining to school attendance. I know portugal and norway have no problem with homeschooling, it's legal, and other countries have restrictive legislation regarding homeschooling. And the countries you do have legalized homeschooling, you'd find very few people prefer it. So it's safe to say that the popularity of homeschooling in Europe is low as opposed to the US.

So do I think that these 4 kids should have been removed from their parents and forced to attend school? yes and no. I don't think it's smart to take children away from their parents but I do think the parents messed up legally and they should have known better. If they wanted to homeschool their kids, they could have gone elsewhere in the EU or stay in Germany but adopt another nationality. You can do that in the EU, no problem. Especially in the Schengen area. All in all, it's a mess.

 

[Leo]

Because forcibly removing kids from their parents is going to make their education go that much better.

I can think of a number of circumstances where that might well be the case. Fundamentalist religious parents, for example, who might reject science and evolution in favour of creationism. Parents who have little education, and no training to impart what little they do have. Children are indoctrinated enough by their parents' prejudices in the normal course of things - without isolating them further from normalising influences.

We need to bear in mind that the Home School Legal Defence Association is an organisation with a clearly defined agenda. It utilises legal action and government lobbying to promote that agenda, and was responsible in 1994 for defeating a bill which would have required all educators (and potentially home schooling parents) to have some teaching qualifications (an eminently sensible concept to my mind).

The simple fact is that it is illegal not to send your children to an accredited school in Germany. I happen to think that is a wise provision.

 

[Gaugingcatenate]

Yeah, they should be taught that that the US practize of giving the executive the power to kidnap people at random, deny them fair trials and detain them indefinitely, is not just a thing Hitler did, but a common practize of the US government ... who could possibly agree that German pupils should be indoctrinated with this critical attitude towards totalitarianism.

Care to back any of that up? The practice of kidnapping people at random? Deny them fair trials, detain them indefinitely? Are you talking about prisoners of war? Common practice of the US government? Common means appearing frequently... so you are saying, maybe, it happens once out of every two, or maybe three, or once out of every four arrests...people are kidnapped just at random [ meaning they are just arbitrarily picked, not based on anything other than chance], denied fair trials [ does anybody really do that in time of war?] and what? Detained until the war is over? Is that not fairly standard practice with wartime combatants?