• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

German Police Storm Homeschoolers' homes, Seize Children by Force

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:

Oddly, having read a bit back into the story - the family went to America in 2010 or thereabouts seeking asylum but were denied.

There's probably a lot more to this than being reported. Could it be what they are actually teaching their kids?
 
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.
What makes you king and that you can proclaim such nonsense upon the rest of us? The evolution fundamentalists are the scary ones. No scientifically proven science and yet we are just required to believe we all descended from, basically, rocks? And rocks somehow developed DNA on their own when we cannot, with all our best "scientific" minds, replicate that [ isnt that necessary for the scientific method to hold true, to validate?]... and yet you would force this upon our children...

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.
If they suddenly decided that accredited schools in Germany were to only teach creationism to the exclusion of evolution, would you still think that a wise provision? What is good for the goose, they say...
 
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:
I think truancy and indoctrintaion are vastly different concepts... and if you are not concerned, why even post in this thread?

"I just don't care" is supposed to be debate?
 
No, it's perfectly sound. You can't allow religious or political nuts to educate their children to build totalitarian enclaves.
So we just allow all the other "nuts" to have free rein with our children, parents do not have any real say anymore, is that it? The state owns the kids?
 
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.

But is there evidence that that was the case here?


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.

I'm not personally in favour of homeschooling, but as long as they're receiving the same education as everyone else, why does it matter where the education occurs?
 
Oddly, having read a bit back into the story - the family went to America in 2010 or thereabouts seeking asylum but were denied.

There's probably a lot more to this than being reported. Could it be what they are actually teaching their kids?

What I am wondering is how did the government realized what the parents were teaching their children in their homes?
 
What I am wondering is how did the government realized what the parents were teaching their children in their homes?

Not showing up at school is kinda a big red flag no?
 
But is there evidence that that was the case here?




I'm not personally in favour of homeschooling, but as long as they're receiving the same education as everyone else, why does it matter where the education occurs?

Education is about much more than 'pens and paper' you know...

Paul
 
Not showing up at school is kinda a big red flag no?

That could only show absence. It sounds though that the government knew the content that the parents were teaching and were not happy about it. Deutchguy for one claims the content was either Neo-Nazzi or Islamic extremism.

So I was wondering how the government captured the content? In that, were they spying the family?
 
That could only show absence.

And that is enough. That would bring in the authorities and then it is pretty easy to find out if they were being home schooled. They would go to the family and ask why their children were not in school and take it from there. Either way, the parents would have been seen as unfit since they did not get their kids to school, so the kids would have been removed. Now in this case the reason for not attending school was not social problems, but home schooling.. so hence it gets blown up by certain people into something that happens all the time... but instead of home schooling the parents are drug addicts or drunks..

It sounds though that the government knew the content that the parents were teaching and were not happy about it. Deutchguy for one claims the content was either Neo-Nazzi or Islamic extremism.

Considering the websites this has been popping up on, then I would suspect they are Christian fundamentalists.

So I was wondering how the government captured the content? In that, were they spying the family?

Now you are paranoid :)
 
And that is enough. That would bring in the authorities and then it is pretty easy to find out if they were being home schooled. They would go to the family and ask why their children were not in school and take it from there. Either way, the parents would have been seen as unfit since they did not get their kids to school, so the kids would have been removed. Now in this case the reason for not attending school was not social problems, but home schooling.. so hence it gets blown up by certain people into something that happens all the time... but instead of home schooling the parents are drug addicts or drunks..

Not taking kids to elementary school is and should be penalized here also. The whole issue for me though was about government somehow knowing the content that was being taught in their homes somehow.

Considering the websites this has been popping up on, then I would suspect they are Christian fundamentalists.

So they wanted their children clean from critical thinking and science did they? Well good that this intervention occurred then.

Now you are paranoid :)

You really think so?! I guess I have Deutchguy to blame for this!

Deutchguy! You owe me cafe for spreading your condition around, you hear?! ;)
 
Not taking kids to elementary school is and should be penalized here also. The whole issue for me though was about government somehow knowing the content that was being taught in their homes somehow.

It is not about the content.. it was because they did not attend school.... , but when you take the kids, you ask them questions and of course put them in a real school and then you can easily see what they are learning and not learning. Not to mention if they got a court order to look at the house and what materials .. after all the parents will be put on trial for this, so evidence is needed.

So they wanted their children clean from critical thinking and science did they? Well good that this intervention occurred then.

Dunno, but that is what I suspect, since it is far right American religious sites promoting this story.
 
I don't agree with this. I know a number of home schooled people who don't conform to stereotype of religious fundamentalism or social retardation. If they're sitting state examinations I'm not sure what the problem is.
 
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.
Weirdest defense of a ****ed up situation I have ever seen.
 
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.

You can argue over whether or not it is used wisely, but even our libertarians will accede that Defense and Police are two powers properly exercised by government. The argument that children belong primarily to the state is absolutely a totalitarian precept.
 
I don't agree with this. I know a number of home schooled people who don't conform to stereotype of religious fundamentalism or social retardation. If they're sitting state examinations I'm not sure what the problem is.

Problem is, that in the German education system you can only sit the state examinations if you are in the German education system.. and a home schooled aint.

Plus school is far more than just learning from books, it is also learning how to be around people and so on.. and home schooled children do not have that learning and that means they will be more of a social outcast when they grow up.
 
Problem is, that in the German education system you can only sit the state examinations if you are in the German education system.. and a home schooled aint.

and..... why not?

Plus school is far more than just learning from books, it is also learning how to be around people and so on.. and home schooled children do not have that learning and that means they will be more of a social outcast when they grow up.

Naturally. :roll: that is why in the centuries before state mandated education, no one knew how to interact with each other, and we all lived solitary lives.
 
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.

Who gives you, or anyone else, the right to make that call?

Are the children in question going to suffer any objective harm if they happen to believe in God or maintain a certain degree of skepticism regarding an abstract scientific theory which plays no role whatsoever in the daily affairs of most people?

Virtually every aspect of the arguments being put forward against Homeschooling in this thread are hilariously dogmatic and totalitarian. What you people are basically saying here is that everyone should embrace your particular worldview, or be bullied into doing so by power of the state.

Well... What if the shoe was on the other foot?

Would you support the same tactics if it were Nazi Germany, Cromwell's English Commonwealth, the Taliban, or Francoist Spain setting the standards for what are or are not "acceptable" ideas and behavior?

Of course you wouldn't.

Hypocrites like yourself would cry and scream to the heavens about the violations of human rights being perpetrated in those countries, and demand that all of their leaders be lynched.

The sheer level of comically unaware moral and intellectual bankruptcy on display in this thread frankly boggles the mind to behold.

Children are indoctrinated enough by their parents' prejudices in the normal course of things - without isolating them further from normalising influences.

Because indoctrination is only okay when the government does it, and only when it happens to be directed towards a goal that the political Left happens to agree with, amirite? :roll:

Plus school is far more than just learning from books, it is also learning how to be around people and so on.. and home schooled children do not have that learning and that means they will be more of a social outcast when they grow up.

I'm frankly glad that I never experienced the "socialization" enforced by the public educational system.

Have you seen how the people in my generation behave?

If being Homeschooled means that children are kept away from the idiocy of today's youth culture, and all of the problems it inevitably leads to (drugs, underage drinking, STDs, teenage pregnancy, counter-productive rebellious attitudes, group think, etca), I would frankly view that as being a point in the practice's favor.

The argument that children belong primarily to the state is absolutely a totalitarian precept.

If this thread, and the case it is based around, demonstrate anything, it is just how fundamentally "anti-Liberal" the modern Left has become.

Several of the people in this thread are only about a half step away from taking the Soviet route and simply declaring anyone who expresses ideological opposition to their ideas to be mentally ill, and in need of clinical treatment. :roll:
 
and..... why not?



Naturally. :roll: that is why in the centuries before state mandated education, no one knew how to interact with each other, and we all lived solitary lives.

yeh they learned social skills because they were put to work at a young age they didnt stay at home....:roll:
 
Problem is, that in the German education system you can only sit the state examinations if you are in the German education system.. and a home schooled aint.

Plus school is far more than just learning from books, it is also learning how to be around people and so on.. and home schooled children do not have that learning and that means they will be more of a social outcast when they grow up.

There's no reason for point 1. And point 2 seems to assume that no other social exposure outside of school exists.
 
There's no reason for point 1.

That is the law as far as I know in anti-homes school countries.. so deal with it.

And point 2 seems to assume that no other social exposure outside of school exists.

Not a big assumption...
 
Germany and the Netherlands have "leerplicht"/Schulpflicht" which means it is mandatory to go to school. Homeschooling is not allowed as a rule. In the Netherlands it is allowed only if a permit has been acquired. Usually this is only given if a child is mentally or physically unable to visit schools or when the parents have a live view that dictates the child goes to a school of that live view and cannot go to a general school. If the distance to such a school is that extremely far away from where the parents live, the parents can apply for homeschooling.

In all other situations the child had to visit school and if you deny that you are failing in the "leerplicht/Schulpflicht" you can get monetary fines and even jail time.
 
"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"



This is not written as a news story. It is written as agitprop, and to just blindly accept the statement of an advocacy group seems pretty silly to me. Just because a group claims that this "shocking" raid was conducted "only" because of the homeschooling do to the "indoctrination", do we really have to react in such Pavlovian fashion as to all get outraged without questioning anything?

It is easy to elicit the result one wants by seizing upon language, but if any "indoctrination" was involved, why don't people ask what, exactly is being "indoctrinated" in German schools? Considering Germany's past, the desire to prevent a repeat of such runs strong, and so if that is the "indoctrination" being rejected by this advocacy group, I wonder why they think this is such a bad thing? Creating such negative aspersions to a process with a noble cause while attempting to make as victims those who reject such is not exactly going to gain MY sympathy.

Quite the opposite, in fact.
 
I notice this is another WND sourced OP.

Has anyone here checked yet to see if they got a fact right on this one?
 
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.

So you approve of the Govt's actions here?
 
Back
Top Bottom