http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/washingtontimes/200006140.asp
American home schoolers aid European counterparts: German parents risk jail for teaching their own children
By Andrea Billups
The Washington Times
June 14, 2000
Home-schooled students and their parents in the United States are coming to the rescue of their brethren in Germany, where home schooling is nearly illegal and several families are being threatened with jail.
They have begun a phone-calling and letter-writing campaign directed at officials at the German Embassy in Washington in an effort to encourage that nation to legalize home schooling.
To home school in Germany, parents must meet the same requirements as public and private schools, making it difficult, not impossible for families to teach their youngsters at home, said Chris Klicka, a senior attorney at the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va.
“Home schooling in America is way ahead of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world is looking to the United States as a leader in this thing,” Mr. Klicka said. “We’ve got the statistics to show that it works and we’ve had the legal battles to show that parents want it. We care about this around the world. We want to export our freedom.”
Conditions for home-schoolers in Europe are much the same as they were in the United States 15 years ago, when the movement was in its infancy, Mr. Klicka said.
In Switzerland, for example, parents must be certified as teachers to home school. In France, families must be approved by school officials to home school, and their efforts are supervised with many in-home visits, he said. In the Netherlands, it is illegal.
In Germany, despite government efforts to quash home schooling, an estimated 500 families are actively doing just that, with a growing underground network of home educators who hope to carry on without arrest.
Mr. Klicka is working with lawyers in Germany to put together a similar organization like his in their country, and will return in July to help them organize. There, German home-school families as well as home-schooling American missionaries living abroad have been threatened with steep fines and imprisonment.
“The families being prosecuted desperately need our help,” said Mr. Klicka, who received an impassioned letter from one German home-school leader, Helmut Stücher.
“A consolidated effort and international pressure are truly the only way to force the rigid German authorities to concede,” Mr. Stücher wrote, asking for U.S. support. “The state ministers of family and education will then surely have an open ear for our situation.”
In the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, one father of 11, Johan Harder, who tried to home school his children, had his house ransacked by German authorities in March, Mr. Klicka said. Police broke through the man’s living room window and turned his home upside down as several of the children hid in the attic or jumped out windows for safety.
M. Harder’s 11-year-old daughter was taken from her home and placed in a local school, he said. She was escorted to classes by police for the next two weeks. Mr. harder, who says sending his children to a secular and humanist public school would violate his religious beliefs, is facing imprisonment of fines of $250 per day per child if he continues to teach them at home. His case remains unresolved.
Mr. Klicka said the efforts of U.S. home-schoolers could have an enormous impact on whether home-schoolers in Germany will win their freedom. About seven years ago, a similar U.S. letter-writing campaign helped change the minds of on foreign government where home-schoolers also were persecuted.
In 1993, South African parents Andre and Bokkie Mientjies were sentenced to two years in prison for home schooling their children. After U.S. home-schoolers barraged the South African embassy with letters and calls, the Meintjieses were released from jail. Soon the South African Parliament began considering the issue and home schooling was legalized.
Mr. Klicka also was successful in working with lawmakers in Ireland to amend a bill that would have required Irish home-schooling parents to submit to a home visit by a social worker who would assess whether children were “progressing emotionally, mentally and physically.”
Mr. Klicka hopes similar progress will be made in Germany.
That is why the organization is calling on families here to write letters of support together, describing to German officials the benefits of learning at home.
“This is a great educational opportunity for children to learn the importance of the freedoms we have in the United States and how easily they can be taken away,” said Mr. Klicka, who says the 1-week-old campaign already has touched a chord nationwide. “What home-schoolers in the United States do makes a difference in other countries.”
Officials at the German embassy did not return a call for comment Friday from The Washington Times.
Copyright 2000 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times.
Visit our web site at
http://www.washtimes.com.