A good ending to this episode.

A campaign of telephone calls and e-mails from American homeschoolers is being credited with convincing legislators in France to withdraw a plan that would have made such home instruction efforts there illegal, according to the Home School Legal Defense Fund.

“Thank you so much for your calls and e-mails to the French Embassy,” an alert from the organization said. “In an incredible turnaround of events, the sponsor of the restrictive amendments which would have outlawed homeschooling has withdrawn his amendments.”

An earlier alert had gone out just a few days ago, noting that a “draconian” plan had been proposed in the French parliament that would shut down homeschooling across the nation.

(Story continues below)

The specifics would be that “no parent would be allowed to homeschool unless they showed that the health or handicap of their child makes it necessary for him or her to be taught at home.”

Even if a family qualified under such restrictions, the HSLDA said the proposal would have required the family to submit to a home visit by a government official each year, and their curriculum would have to come from the “National Center of Correspondent Teaching” or from an approved source.

Once again, the failing wished to regulate the successful

French education officials earlier told lawmakers that 80,000 children start secondary school without really knowing how to read, write or count, and that is one of the main reasons for “parents who decide to homeschool their children.”

And, of course, the catch phrase for this almost-loss of freedom was one you’ve heard before and will hear again. It’s the same in any language. (Emphasis mine.)

“The French Minister of the Family, Philippe Bas, vocally opposed several articles of this huge bill entitled ‘Protection de L’Enfance,’ which means for “Protection of the Children,'” [Senior Counsel Christopher] Klicka wrote. “He specifically opposed the sections regulating and essentially prohibiting homeschooling, saying in the French parliament: ‘As they are, I am not favorable to these amendments [numbers 127 and 128], I find them too restrictive…'”

“We want to force you to use an inferior system for the children.” Once again, good intentions from the Left trump actual results or actions.

In Germany, where homeschooling is illegal, one homeschool advocacy group got quite the threatening letter from their government.

That threat from a state education official was reported in an English translation at the Homeschoolblogger.com website.

“The Minister of Education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling…,” said a government letter in response to a request for consideration for a family whose children were taken to school by police.

“You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers on the basis of paragraph 86 of the education law as a measure of the execution of authority. It is known to the ministry of education that primary school students can be particularly burdened by the related contradiction between the norms of the parent-house and that of the public school through such forced escorts.”

Want a real chill up your spine? Listen to the government’s proposed solution to the problem.

In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.

(Emphasis mine.) Besides the veiled threat, the blogger notes the irony.

It is interesting that in a state whose constitution is dominated by religious language and quotes the necessity of building Christian character, as well as guaranteeing the natural right of parents to have a say in the education of their children AND religious freedom, that the state would specifically mention that they are working to “bring the religious convictions of the family in line” with the goals of the state.

But as we know here, religious influence and language in a founding document is easily ignored and cheerfully misinterpreted when it interferes with greater governmental power.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschooling, France, Germany

PBS did a story about homeschooling last Wednesday. My favorite quote from the transcript is this, in response to a professor suggesting that homeschooling get “good regulations” applied to it:

Mr. [Bruce] SHORTT [author of “The Harsh Truth About Public Schools”]: I think it’s ironic that someone with an obviously authoritarian agenda is attempting to lecture others, and unfortunately education seems to be one of those areas in which the failures astonishingly insist upon trying to regulate the successful.

An interesting statistic that they mention is that the number of homeschoolers in the country is growing at a rate 10 times that of the general school-age population. People are fleeing the government-run schools in droves, and it’s the government that thinks it should regulate those alternatives.

Instead of figuring out what’s wrong, they seek to regulate what’s working. And they’d never let you keep your own money–directly or in the form of vouchers–to help you out. That’s government at work.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschool, PBS, Bruce Shortt

From LaShawn Barber:

I feel for Christians who can’t afford private schools and for whatever reason aren’t equipped to homeschool. I don’t believe in fighting the government for piecemeal concessions like “prayer in schools.” Children don’t need permission to pray. It is a private matter that can be done without formalities and protests, which in my view cheapen and obscure the whole purpose of prayer.

At the same time, I do believe taxpaying parents have a right to complain and seek change in government schools. I just don’t think it’s worth the effort for Christians to get themselves worked up over problems in a corrupted, Democratic party-controlled (teachers unions), monopolized, government propaganda machine like the public school system.

She also poses 3 questions for readers to answer.

Technorati Tags: education, homeschool, Christian, public school

In the case of homeschoolers in Germany, previously covered here and here, the kids are now being forcibly carted off to public school.

A Nazi-era law requiring all children to attend public school, to avoid “the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions” that could be taught by parents at home, apparently is triggering a Nazi-like response from police.

The word comes from Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, or Network for Freedom in Education, which confirmed that children in a family in Bissingen, in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, have been forcibly hauled to a public school.

“On Friday 20 October 2006 at around 7:30 a.m. the children of a home educating family … were brought under duress to school by police,” the organization, which describes itself as politically and religiously neutral, confirmed.

A separate weblog in the United States noted the same tragedy.

Homeschoolblogger.com noted that the “three children were picked up by the police and escorted to school in Baden-Wurttemberg, with the ‘promise’ that it would happen again this week.”

The Network for Freedom in Education, through spokesman Joerg Grosseluemern, said the Remeike family has been “home educating their children since the start of the school year, something which is legal in practically the whole of the (European Union).”

Technorati Tags: education, homeschooling, Germany

Now here’s an idea for all those previous-edition schoolbooks.

With school shootings a growing concern across the country, a candidate for state superintendent of schools in Oklahoma is running on a platform of defense.

His idea? Storing old textbooks beneath the desks of all public school children for use as shields from gunfire.

In a videotaped experiment, Bill Crozier even went so far as to test various books and various firearms.

Crozier, a Union City Republican challenging incumbent Democrat Sandy Garrett, said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use in self-defense.

Crozier’s experiment began with shots fired at a calculus textbook from an AK-47 Russian-style assault rifle. The shot penetrated two textbooks at once. Shots from handguns were generally stopped by thick books.

And people suggest that kids who get homeschooled aren’t getting socialized. Well, they’re wrong, but even if they were right, they’re also not getting shot at.

Technorati Tags: homeschool, guns, education, Oklahoma

…it must be true.

The 9/11 terrorist attack on America which left almost 3,000 people dead was an “inside job”, according to a group of leading academics.

Around 75 top professors and leading scientists believe the attacks were puppeteered by war mongers in the White House to justify the invasion and the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries.

And of course, they blame the dreaded Neo-Cons(tm)!

They believe a group of US neo-conservatives called the Project for a New American Century, set on US world dominance, orchestrated the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to hit Iraq, Afghanistan and later Iran.

The group says scientific evidence over the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon is conclusive proof.

And Popular Mechanics has already disproven these “proofs”. These are scientists and academics, the very folks who are supposed to be more dispassionate than the rest of us in their review and debate of the facts. But as it turns out, they differ little from any of us who have our core beliefs tested.

But University of Wisconsin assistant professor, Kevin Barrett, said experts are unwilling to believe theories which don’t fit into their belief systems.

This could just as easily apply to the man-made global warming debate as to nutty 9/11 conspiracy theories. Politics is trumping science and learning.

Technorati Tags: science, conspiracy, neo-con

Joseph Farah, on why the recent ruling requiring the condoning of homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality in California institutions that get government money is a big deal.

I don’t want to overstate this, but this is the end of religious freedom in the biggest state in the union. The only alternative left for Christians and Jews and people of other faiths in California is quite literally to drop out. That means homeschooling. It means creating new institutions that won’t touch any public funding – even when it is as tenuous as one student accepting a state grant. When you submit yourself or your institution to government regulation in California now, you tacitly accept the official state religion of paganism.

And don’t think it will end here. It never does.

When more people choose to drop out, as they inevitably will, the coercive state will find new creative ways to come after them as well.

Just ask German homeschoolers. Yes, Farah’s editorials are generally overheated, but this time I think he’s really on to something. How far of a stretch is it, really, to imagine a law that makes this sort of coercion required for any business or institution simply operating in California, regardless of whether it gets state money? Not that much, in my mind.

Technorati Tags: homosexuality, California, education

It’s now illegal in California schools to criticize homosexuality.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has tossed out all sexual moral conduct codes at colleges, private and Christian schools, daycare centers and other facilities throughout his state, if the institutions have any students who get state assistance.

The governor yesterday signed a bill that would require all businesses and groups receiving state funding — even if it’s a state grant for a student — to condone homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality.

Note the phrase I bolded. Not only does this affect state-run schools, but it affects any private institution that has students who get state education grant money.

There is no exception for faith-based organizations or business owners with sincerely held religious convictions, critics note.

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Technorati Tags: California, Schwarzenegger, homosexuality

This sounds like the title of a bad sci-fi flick, and the following sounds like an overused plot–on the run from government compulsion–but it’s happening today in Germany. They don’t trust their citizens to do what’s best for their childrens’ education, even the highly qualified ones.

Hamburg- A German couple who are determined to educate their six children entirely at home have fled the city of Hamburg after the father, Andre R, 44, was jailed for a week for refusing to enrol his offspring in a public school. The R family are evangelical Christians who believe that public schools are a bad moral influence on children. Father R has a university degree in teaching, so he thought he could teach his five daughters and one son their reading, writing and arithmetic at home.

But the couple have hit a brick wall with German school authorities, who say they will apply the full power of the state until the R family yields to compulsory-education laws.

In February, Andre R and wife Frauke, 39, were hauled into court and fined 840 euros (1,090 dollars) for defying education laws. This month, five police showed up at the family’s rented, suburban row- house and hauled Andre R off to the Hamburg city prison.

Andre R refused to give in, so after a week among murderers and drug dealers, he was released and the authorities tried a new tack.

Officials last week began fetching the children each morning from the R home and taking them to school. Custody of the children is to taken away from the parents and the children will become wards of the state.

On Monday, no one answered when officials came knocking at the door of the R home.

Armin Eckermann, president of the German Home-Schooling Association, who is advising the family, said, “They have left Hamburg.” He declined further details.

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Technorati Tags: Germany, education