Homeschooling: German Family Gets Political Asylum in U.S.
By TRISTANA MOORE
The Romeikes are not your typical asylum seekers. They did not come to the U.S. to flee war or despotism in their native land. No, these music teachers left Germany because they didn't like what their children were learning in public school - and because homeschooling is illegal there.

"It's our fundamental right to decide how we want to teach our children," says Uwe Romeike, an Evangelical Christian and a concert pianist who sold his treasured Steinway to help pay for the move.

Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. "My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care," Romeike says of the incident.

So why did he seek asylum in the U.S. rather than relocate to nearby Austria or another European country that allows homeschooling? Romeike's wife Hannelore tells TIME the family was contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which suggested they go to the U.S. and settle in Morristown, Tenn. The nonprofit organization, which defends the rights of the U.S. homeschooling community - with its estimated 2 million children, or about 4% of the total school-age population - is expanding its overseas outreach. And on Jan. 26, the HSLDA helped the Romeikes become the first people granted asylum in the U.S. because they were persecuted for homeschooling.

The ruling is tricky politically for Washington and its allies in Europe, where several countries - including Spain and the Netherlands - allow homeschooling only under exceptional circumstances, such as when a child is extremely ill. That helps explain why in late February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement formally appealed the Romeike ruling, which was issued by an immigration judge in Memphis, Tenn. His unprecedented decision has raised concerns that the already heavily backlogged immigration courts will be flooded with asylum petitions from homeschoolers in countries typically regarded as having nonrepressive governments.

"It's very unusual for people from Western countries to be granted asylum in the U.S.," says David Piver, an immigration attorney with offices in a Philadelphia suburb and Flagstaff, Ariz. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, only five Germans received asylum in the U.S. (The Justice Department declined to comment on specific cases.) Piver, who is not involved in the Romeike case, predicted the U.S. government would appeal the decision "so as not to offend a close ally."

Successful asylum petitions typically involve applicants whose situations are more dire, such as women who were forced to undergo abortions or genital mutilation and men whose lives were threatened because they are homosexuals or political dissidents. But Piver believes the Memphis judge was right to grant the Romeikes asylum, since the law covers social groups with "a well-founded fear of persecution" in their home country.

In Germany, mandatory school attendance dates back to 1717, when it was introduced in Prussia, and the policy has traditionally been viewed as a social good. "This law protects children," says Josef Kraus, president of the German Teachers' Association. The European Court of Human Rights agrees with him. In 2006, the court threw out a homeschooling family's case when it deemed Germany's compulsory-schooling law as compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, an international treaty drafted in 1950. Given this backdrop, it's little wonder the Romeikes came up against a wall of opposition when they tried to talk to their school principal about the merits of homeschooling.

One of the Romeikes' concerns was about their kids getting bullied. But their main objection involved what was being taught in the classroom. "The curriculum goes against our Christian values," Uwe says. "German schools use textbooks that force inappropriate subject matter onto young children and tell stories with characters that promote profanity and disrespect."
While there are no official figures, it's estimated that up to 1,000 German families are homeschooling their children. Elisabeth Kuhnle, a spokeswoman for a German advocacy group called the Network for the Freedom of Education, says a recent homeschooling meeting attracted about 50 families in the state of Baden-Württemberg, where the Romeikes used to live. She also reckons many German homeschooling families have relocated to countries like France and Britain, where homeschooling is allowed.

In 2007, Germany's Federal Supreme Court issued a ruling - which did not specifically involve the Romeikes - that parents could lose custody of their children if they continued to homeschool them. "We were under constant pressure, and we were scared the German authorities would take our children away," Romeike says. "So we decided to leave and go to the U.S."
German officials, for their part, note that the Romeikes had other options. "If parents don't want to send their children to a public school, they can send them to alternative private schools," says Thomas Hilsenbeck, a spokesman for the Baden-Württemberg education ministry. Homeschooling advocates counter that there are few private schools in Germany, and they tend to be expensive. But beyond that, many religious parents have problems with sex education and other curricular requirements. "Whether it's a state school or a private school, there's still a curriculum that is forced onto children," says Kuhnle.

And then there are the social aspects of going to school. Homeschooling parents tend to want to shield their children from negative influences. But this quest often runs counter to the idea that schools represent society and help promote tolerance. "No parental couple can offer a breadth of education [that can] replace experienced teachers," says Kraus, of the German Teachers' Association. "Kids also lose contact with their peers."

Concerns that homeschooling could lead to insularity - or worse, as Kraus puts it, "could help foster the development of a sect" - are shaping policy debates in European countries. In Britain, for example, Parliament is considering legislation that would create a new monitoring system to ensure that homeschooled kids get a suitable education.

In Sweden, where parents have to apply for permission to teach their children at home, the government is planning to impose even tougher restrictions on homeschoolers. And in Spain, parents are not allowed to educate their children at home. Period. If a child has special needs that prevent him from attending school, a teacher will be sent to his home.
By contrast, homeschooling is legal in all 50 U.S. states, some of which don't require families to notify authorities of their intent to teach their children at home. Tennessee is among the states that require some form of notice as well as periodic assessment tests.

When Uwe and Hannelore heard that the judge had ruled in their favor, they celebrated by taking their five children - who range in age from 4 to 12 - to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. But the next day, they were back to their regular schedule. Lessons start at 9 a.m. and end at around 4 p.m. The school-age kids are learning all the usual subjects - math, science, etc. - with the help of textbooks and other teaching materials, in compliance with state law. The family has also joined a local group that organizes activities and field trips once a week for homeschooled children.

Meanwhile, the HSLDA says it is working to defend a homeschooling family in Sweden and is investigating cases in Brazil, where homeschooling is banned - all good fodder for a comparative-government class, whether it's taught in school or at home.

A very troubling article, as much for the disingenuous posture of neutrality as for the facts exposed. The article, however it may try to hold up the façade of journalistic objectivity, presents the Romeikes’ case solely with their own quotes and offers no supporting evidence, while presenting the other side in a manner either intended to make the Romeikes seem unreasonable or out of touch, and in some cases, inaccurately. For instance, they present the tradition of mandatory school attendance in Germany by citing a law in a different country! In 1717, Prussia was not a part of the Holy Roman Empire (or First Reich, to give it some relative historical perspective), while the Romeikes' home state was. Citing a Prussian law of 1717 regarding a Baden-Wurttemberg is like claiming that someone from Massachusetts has no business being opposed to slavery because in 1717, it was legal in Georgia. Without the time or inclination to delve into outmoded legal precedents of a foreign country to determine the truth of the implication that the Romeikes are bucking a nearly 300-year-old tradition, suffice it to say, various kingdoms, republics and reichs, many of them among the most infamous religious persecutors of their times, have ruled Prussia and/or Baden-Wurttemberg since then, and the citation of that old law, is either deceitful or woefully ignorant reporting.
As for other examples of skewed perspective, the article asserts flatly that compulsory schooling is seen as a social good, rather that citing it as a contention of one side, and in support of this universally accepted truth, they cite a member of a Teacher’s Association, as if they were some sort of non-profit, neutral party, rather than a group with a specific interest in compulsory schooling! On what other topic could an article credibly cite a member of a business as evidence that people should be made to use its’ services, rather than do things on their own? No one would, for example, quote a chef as saying people should eat out rather than go to restaurants, or a car salesman’s claims that mass transportation is a greatly inferior mode of travel.
What Europeans chose to do about their education is not my business, or that of the USA, but the parents are correct about their fundamental rights, and this certainly counts as persecution, if people are threatening to take their children or do what their parents consider harm to them. The article actually seems to think that physical harm is a legitimate reason, but threats to lose your children are not! I have neither children, nor much in the way of paternal instincts, but as I understand it, most parents would prefer genital mutilation to the loss of their children. These people are being punished for their beliefs and private practices, and they are indirectly threatened with the break-up of their families - the very factor that supposedly drove Abraham Lincoln into the anit-slavery camp!

Meanwhile, our Federal immigration officials, unable to stem the swarm of MS-13 operatives expanding their territory, are settling for picking on well-educated, successful people who come here openly and lawfully when their laws become intolerable. Tennessee said they could stay, so why the hell is ICE trying to swoop in and save Tennessee from its own generosity? A state that has more monuments to the founder of the KKK than to the three native sons it elected to the presidency combined is not going to be turned into New Germany by a music teacher & his brood. And hey! We have the Von Trapps as an historical precedent! I thought the Justice Department was all in favor of keeping kids with their parents, to the point of storming a Miami home on Easter in tactical rig with automatic weapons pointed at unarmed civilians in their own residences?
More sinister is the idea that the country would oppose their asylum "so as not to offend a close ally." Yes, the last country we declared war against, which WE have deployed troops to defend, and has not exactly been famous for their reciprocity towards us is “a close ally.” What is the point of the USA if we are going to throw over a bedrock principle to maintain friendship with a country that would turn on us in order to maintain their intrusion into the private lives of their citizens’ families? And what is Germany going to do to us anyway? Cozy up to Russia? Good luck with that. There are many reasons to reject immigrants who come here. “It would make their former government happy,” is NEVER an acceptable one.

As far as the homeschooling goes, my mother is an elementary school teacher who loathes having homeschooled kids in her class (and never did it for us), but she concedes that when done properly, it is just fine. The regular schedule attributed to the Romeikes is the main factor she always cites as necessary for effective homeschooling, and aren’t the teacher’s unions always making a big deal about small class size and low ratio of students to teachers being critical? The absurd notion cited by the German teachers’ mouthpiece that a mass-consumption curriculum administered by government-employed time servers can provide a superior “breadth of education” than dedicated parents who are willing to change countries, continents and languages to educate their children should have been laughed at, rather than written up in a reputable national magazine.