Homeschooled Children Forced to Attend Government School

These two girls are forced to attend a public school for the fist time in their lives.

Health Impact News Editor Comments:

While this story concerns Germany, parental rights in the U.S. are fast eroding also. We previously reported how a homeschool family in Germany had their children forcibly removed from their home at gunpoint simply because they wanted to homeschool their children. (See: Children Seized in Shocking Raid on Homeschool Family.) The children have now been returned to their home, but only on the condition that their parents force them to attend a government-run public school, and that they do not leave the country.

Germany is the only western country that does not allow homeschooling. The ban on homeschooling began with a Nazi law passed in 1938, and the European Human Rights Court upheld that ban in 2006. Earlier this year, the Obama administration decided to challenge the legal asylum of a German homeschool family here in the U.S. (Story here.) Many people have questioned why the State Department would take time and resources to prosecute a peaceful homeschool family in the U.S. that had already been granted legal asylum?

When children are homeschooled they bypass many subsidized government programs, such as mandatory vaccines, school lunch programs based on subsidized commodity food, and others. A recent study that compared home-educated students to those in traditional schools, found that homeschooled children were less obese and healthier. (See: Home Schooled Children Healthier Than Traditionally Schooled Kids) Since the medical system recently voted to make obesity a disease, which can now be treated with drugs and open up a whole new market for the pharmaceutical companies, it is not hard to see why governments are not big fans of homeschooling.

Judge Blocks Emigration as Seized German Children Now Go to Government School

by HSLDA

A German court that ordered four homeschooled children to be removed at gunpoint over homeschooling has since said he won’t let the family emigrate to another European country where homeschooling is legal. The children were returned three weeks after being taken, following an international outcry spearheaded by HSLDA.

The father of the children, Dirk Wunderlich, has told HSLDA that his lawyers requested confirmation from social workers that they wouldn’t interfere if his family emigrated to a neighboring country where homeschooling is legal. But the judge told his attorneys if he left the country before a scheduled December hearing he would make sure that they were brought back to face criminal sanctions.

The Court had awarded social workers legal custody over the children in 2012, then, in August 2013, a different judge authorized the armed raid to seize the children. The children were placed in a group home where tests showed the children were doing well socially and academically. The judge then made the family promise to send the children to school before he would allow them to go home.

The parents told HSLDA that they had no choice but to agree.

“What other choice did we have?” asked Dirk Wunderlich. “They had our children. We feel ravaged by the government. We don’t want our children in school but we have no choice—we can’t leave and if we don’t comply they will take our children away. We will make the best of it because we know if we tried to leave, the authorities would separate us and we might never see our children again or for a very long time.”

On October 28th all four of the Wunderlich children spent their first-ever day in government school.

Read the Full Story Here.