Jail Time for Homeschooling Parents

We made it back from a week long family vacation in Switzerland (a post on that later); and are getting ready to move from Mannheim to Wiesbaden which is the state capital of Hesse.

Speaking of Hesse...I read an article posted on Worldnetdaily.com about some German homeschooling parents living in Hesse, that are getting prison time for homeschooling their children. Read it here. The German government is anti-homeschooling to say the least and according to this article federal prosecutors are taking it to these parents.

A mother and father who have been homeschooling their children each have been ordered by a German judge to serve three-month prison terms after a prosecutor said he was unhappy with fines the family paid and he wanted the parents jailed. It was just a year ago when WND reported the prosecutor, Herwig Muller, appealed a lower court's imposition of fines against the Dudeks.

I'm a little concerned (more about the perception of 'homschoolers') but thankful my family and I do not fall under German jurisdiction for homeschooling. BTW, there is a large American homeschooling community serving here. However, this should not be a big surprise. Afterall, Germany is a socialistic state.

Of note: One of the first acts by Hitler when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of Education and give it control of all schools and school-related issues. In 1937, the dictator said, "The youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."

What gives big government? I like what Joerg Grosseleumern, a spokesman for the the Netzwork-Bildungsfreiheit, a German homeschool advocacy group, said: in Hesse a family's failure to follow the mandatory public school attendance laws violates not only administration regulations but the criminal code.

"It is embarrassing the German officials put parents into jail whose children are well educated and where the family is in good order," he wrote in an earlier alert about the situation. "We personally know the Dudeks as such a family."

What does the government have to fear about well educated, good citizens? Nothing.

But according to Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion."

The government certainly doesn't want your children to be socialized in religion (read Christianity; perhaps Islam and others are on the hit list too); but it's ok to socialize your children into secular humanism, materialism, etc-- the religion of atheism is straight all right for your children.

I'm raising and teaching my children to be followers of Jesus Christ, students of God's word, and to be good citizens of whatever state they serve. This is not a parallel society; at least not according to our founding Fathers (read what some of them had to say about Christianity and citizenship). In the end, my family lives in two cities: The City of God and the City of Man. We will do our civic duties for the rulers of the City of Man but ultimately we serve the Christ, the ruler of the City of God .