Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

A Right to Home-School?

A U.S. immigration court creates a new persecuted group in Europe: Christian home-schoolers.


Home School Legal Defense Association is defending families who take their children out of public schools. (J. Hensdill/flickr.com)
April 27, 2010 • By • 6 Comments
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At the start of this year, in Tennessee, a funny thing happened to Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, members of a German family that sought asylum in the U.S., based on what they said was persecution by the government in a stable, modern, democratic European country. A U.S. court granted it.

A federal immigration judge in Tennessee found that the Romeikes were at risk of persecution by German authorities because they wanted to home-school their kids. Now Uwe and Hannelore can raise their five Christian kids in Morristown, Tenn., not far from Knoxville, instead of facing fines or fearing a knock on the door from German cops.

At first glance, the case resembles an old-fashioned story of peculiar Christians persecuted in the Old World striking out for the New. But the Virginia-based group that defended the Romeikes, the Home School Legal Defense Association, points out that the case isn’t strictly about religious freedom. As evangelical Christians, the Romeikes were perfectly free to worship in Bissingen, Baden-Württemberg, in southwestern Germany. But in 2006 the Romeikes pulled their kids from local public schools because they objected to the curriculum. There was more in textbooks “about vampires and witches than God,” they said in 2007.

After state authorities tried to levy more than $10,000 in fines and finally sent police to the Romeikes’ home, the Home School Legal Defense Association suggested a deal: Move to Tennessee, apply for asylum, and we’ll take your case in the name of home-schoolers around the world.

Which is just what happened. “This decision,” Mike Donnelly, the lawyer who defended the Romeikes, said in a statement, “finally recognizes that German home-schoolers are a specific social group that is being persecuted by a Western democracy. … It is embarrassing for Germany, since a Western nation should uphold basic human rights, which include allowing parents to raise and educate their own children.”

The HSLDA is an unusual organization. Part of its work is to pressure foreign governments on home schooling. And its rhetoric can stoop pretty low. One speech Donnelly offers on the topic is titled “A Hitlerian Legacy?: Germany’s Treatment of Home-Schoolers,” and Donnelly’s boss, Michael Farris, who founded the legal group, said in a 2007 interview: “Germany’s behavior in this area is the edge of the coming night. … One person we met with said … it wasn’t so much that the [Berlin] Wall came down after the fall of communism, but that the wall moved to the West.”

This is wild talk. The German public school tradition predates both Nazis and Communists. It goes back, actually, to a 1524 letter by Martin Luther, titled “To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany That They Establish and Maintain Christian Schools.”

The basis for current policy on public schooling, according to Brügelmann, is a Germany-wide law from the Weimar Republic in 1919. The intent at the time was to democratize education and make sure all kids could participate in the German democratic experiment. “It was about integrating children into the new democracy,” Brügelmann says, “but there was also this idea that all children had a right to education.”

The Home School Legal Defense Association might argue that German public schools have drifted from the intent of Martin Luther’s letter because the schools are no longer Christian. What the group can’t argue seriously is that German laws against home schooling are modern totalitarian ideas.

The justifications in Germany for the laws haven’t changed much since 1919, according to Brügelmann — they still involve integrating and socializing kids and ensuring the right to an education.

In that sense the laws are an example of Europe’s odd habit of forcing people to conform to certain democratic standards. These laws are counterintuitive to Americans — and to me they seem flat wrong. But the requirement to attend school in Germany rests on the same rhetoric as proposed laws in France against full Muslim veils. “The wearing of the full veil,” declared a French parliamentary committee early this year, recommending a new dress code for women in public buildings, “is a challenge to our republic.”

Europeans believe in creating a clear civic space, where differences fall away to let citizens interact, without veils or prejudice or undue privilege, under democratic laws. Whether Europe lives up to these ideals is another question, but these arguments for conformity in European public life are no different from arguments in America for making English the official language.

“We have one language here,” Teddy Roosevelt once said, as official English activists in America will remind you, “and that is the English language, and we intend to see that the crucible [of immigration] turns our people out as Americans.”

Germans — harsh as it may sound — believe the same about their schools.

More like this: Culture & Society, Education, European Dispatch, May-June 2010
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  • Jonathan Snow

    The parents had many other types of schools, private schools, religious schools, waldorf schools and so forth to choose from, not just the Government financed public school. It’s a sign of their great religious conviction that none of these schools was sufficiently fundamentalist for them.

    I’m impressed how accommodating the US system is for these people, when so many others who fear death, mutilation and rape wait for years and years. How wonderful that justice has come at least in this case.

  • Crimson Wife

    Children absolutely have the right to an education. The child welfare authorities ought to step in when parents are proven to be neglecting their child’s education. There is no evidence that the Romeikes were doing that. According to reports, their children were academically ahead of grade level (which research has shown is very common among homeschoolers).

    The government has an interest in making sure children receive an education that will allow them to function as productive members of society when they grow up. But children belong to their parents, not the State and the parents are the ones who should make the decision about where that education takes place.

  • Mike Donnelly

    The writer’s observation that Luther’s letter indicates a long standing “tradition” for compulsory education in the German Culture is accurate. Germany, however has not been a unified state for nearly that long – although the Germanic culture certainly goes much further back. The historical tradition is that private education done by parents or tutors has been long tolerated in the country. It was not criminalized until 1938 when the German Parliament passed the “Reich Schulegesetz” (“National School Law”) which essentially nationalized the German education system for obvious reasons and made it criminal not to send your children to school. Not until the rise of the modern homeschooling movement did parents consider alternatives to the public or private schools in Germany. In the United States, homeschooling has now, after nearly 40 years of practice and study, been demonstrated to be an effective, even superior in some ways, and mainstream educational alternative to both. Now, some parents in Germany for religious and non-religious reasons have sought to undertake this effort of educating their own children. They ought to be permitted to do so by a government that is based on western notions of justice and liberty – even if those notions are not as free as our own. And if they will not permit it, then it is appropriate that our country should serve as a refuge. Political Asylum is not simply for those who face physical persecution, although those cases should be heard. I am not aware, as one commenter suggests, of cases where they have not been. In America it may take years to get your day in immigration court – but you will get it, and, in the meantime, in most cases, you get to stay legally in the country. Finally, the “rhetoric” used by myself and Mike Farris is neither “low”, “stooped” nor “wild”. Our assessment is based on the facts as they are. What is “low” is that a western country like Germany chooses to harshly persecute parents who wish to exercise a natural right to determine what is the best form of education and upbringing for their children. A right, by the way, that is recognized in many international treaties and declarations regarding human rights, and one that is either tolerated or explicitly recognized in most western nations.

  • andrea

    It’s a common misconception to thinks of homeschoolers as Christians. Research shows parents decided to unschool or homeschool for different reasons. Families cover a wide spectrum of ideologies and religious views. From political right to left, from believers to atheists. The question here is if school is compulsory and if it is synonymous of education and the only path to be educated. (I apologized for my grammar, English is not my native language)

  • Michael Scott Moore

    For the record: I agree that Germany should allow responsible home-schooling, but the HLSDA’s rhetoric about Nazis and Communists is as electric to American audiences as it is misleading.

  • http://lesliecarbone.blogspot.com Leslie Carbone

    Where does this alleged right to an education originate?