German Home Schoolers Stand Up To Government

This report is from the neo-conservative web news giant WorldNetDaily. A group of seven fathers, belonging to the Twelve Tribes Community - an Evangelical Protestant sect - were taken to jail for refusing to pay fines to the German government. Why? The fines were imposed on these families because they refuse to cease home-schooling their children, and refuse to send them to the state-run schools.

WorldNetDaily also reported in early September of other instances where the actions of the German government drove two other families out of their homeland because they wanted to home-school. In a third instance, a judge ruling against a home-schooling family claimed parents "had no rights to have input" regarding teaching material and subjects for their children.

He even said that "fundamentalist Christians" who home-school are not protected by Germany's constitution. I repeat, NOT protected.

Belloc - in his work Essays of a Catholic, written in 1931 - saw what was coming down the road regarding big government's interference in education, as well as it's lust to dominate the right to teach children. In Chapter 11 of the book, entitled "The Schools", Belloc points out that...

"The education of the child belongs properly to the parent, and not to the State. The family is prior to the State in right, and this is particularly true of rights over children."

Distributism, historically, has been always against compulsory education laws. This remains true today, and we advocate such laws be repealed worldwide, no matter how long it takes. In the meantime, it is imperative we help to strengthen laws and policies protecting families who home-school their children. And as for the public schools, let them be guided by the lowest level of government, whether twon, city or county.

And as a suggestion on my own part, try to fashion the public schools that they can become - over time - both teacher-run and teacher-managed, like a co-operative of sorts. Let parents and teachers set up the curriculum and studies for their community, so as to further mutual assistance between both groups, rather than antagonism.

As for Germany's policy against home-school education, it must be smashed to pieces. The second WorldNetDaily report has the address for a legal group defending all German home-schoolers. We here at the DR encourage our readers world-wide to contact them. Let's help them fight for the Twelve Tribes families and the right to parental control of a child''s education in Germany.