If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Regulate ‘Em, Part Deux

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incredible turnaround of events, the sponsor of the restrictive amendments which would have outlawed homeschooling has withdrawn his amendments.”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

Filed under: Education • Homeschooling

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