German Police Storm Home, Seize Children... Scary.

That's true of any story that is embarrassing for liberals, or doesn't support their particular biases. It's similar to how MSNBC refused to cover the Benghazi hearings. Or how most mainstream American liberal media didn't cover the IRS harassing and terrorizing conservatives. Or the Justice Department wire-tapping the phones of the Associated Press. (Can you imagine if Bush pulled that shit?!) Incidentally, all three scandals happened in the same week in May!

Because your precious liberal media outlets didn't cover those stories, they never happened, right? By the way, that's the biggest thing a state-run newspaper can do. Not just deliver news with a slant, but simply not report embarrassing stories at all.

Since you're recycling bad arguments, I will recycle my first reply;

So enforcing a draconian, totalitarian law by violently kidnapping a family's children is justified then, right?

I imagine people in the South justifying Rosa Parks' arrest and imprisonment used the same logic. "She was warned several times to get to the back of the bus! She didn't comply and broke the law!"

 

Somehow, this consideration hasn't prevented you from making far-reaching judgments about the US while living in Australia...

 

Too much straw there to bother with, sorry.

 

Who wrote this article? It's not written very well. Just take the quoted section:

1 - Nice use of the harsh B sound of 'battering ram' to bring the intended effect home.
2 - Overtly dramatic word betraying the political bias.
3 - Seized - ditto the last. Also, the emphasis on children because of vulnerability is telling.
4 - Emphasis on family (small unit) against the nation (large unit).
5 - The use of the word 'throng' here makes it read like bad war fiction.
6 - This is one of those words journalists should just forget exists. If the bias was clear before, it's annoying now.
7 - Again, emphasis on children and family, but now in a different way. It's emphasizing the homeliness and thus 'unfairness' of the incident.
8 - Do I really need to comment on this bit?
9 - This line is utterly irreverent. It's also not clear who it refers to really. But still. A law was broken, the police took action. Who needs to know this? No one, it's just another way of extracting pathos.

Good journalism should be neutral - just the facts - not this. I learned this when I worked as a journalist for my regional broadsheet, and I know for a fact if I handed this article to my editor it would not have printed. This reads in the same sensationalist, tabloid style as notable publications like The Sun here in England. Trust me, you do not want to get your information from tabloid newspapers, try the broadsheets, they are comparatively free of tripe.

I'll be honest, if I were in his position I could see myself doing the same thing. But we need to be cool about this, the law was in place, guy broke the law, action was taken. What he should have done if he wasn't happy was write to his representative, get a petition together, talk to friends and neighbors, get people talking about it. That's how democracy works. He can now appeal against it, and if the court rules in his favor the law could be changed, but until that happens the man is legally in the wrong.

The modern German state is in no way 'totalitarian'. The politicization of that word's use here is crystal-clear. The UK is more of a 'totalitarian' state than Germany in all honesty, you'd be surprised about some of the stuff that goes on here in the UK. Stuff even a lot of British people do not know about.


I think everyone needs to reread a little essay called 'Politics and the English Language'. Oh, and before anyone mentions Nineteen Eighty-Four, don't. Please.

 

No, actually. I'm aware that the UK is a very socialist society as well.

It's probably my favorite essay ever. Orwell would have a field day with all the obfuscation and rationalization for the State violently kidnapping a family's children.

 

The UK is not a socialist country. It has a few collectivized economic policies, especally with regards to the 'public sector'. This collectivization is a result of successive Labour governments, a good deal of these are countered with policies by successive Conservative governments like the one in power now. (I know it claims to be a coalition, but it's not, they stopped trying to shovel that years ago). Socialism is the collectivized, social ownership of means of production, that is the exact opposite of what happens here.

Well, he was a journalist, he would have had to. I find it unwise to ponder what someone who died 60 years ago would think of the world today. People often forget, though, that he also wasn't against all forms government, he was a Democratic Socialist. What he was concerned about was the abuse power, that isn't the same thing as an admittedly rather harsh social policy.

 

Sure it is. Single payer healthcare, an extremely high, very progressive tax system, liberal courts, and the government censoring and banning entertainment media that doesn't fit their lofty standards.

You deny it about Britain for the same reasons many Americans do so about the US. You don't realize how much the laws, news media, and even the language mirrors those used in the USSR in my parents' time. Britain is not at the level of the 70's era Soviet Union under Brezhnev (which itself is not as terrifying as the Soviet Union under Stalin), but it's even further along than the US, and getting closer to that destination all the time.

While I can't predict what Orwell would write, he would have said something about you referring to a forcible, armed kidnapping of little children for being educated at home as an "admittedly rather harsh social policy".

 

I'm perfectly aware of how and where the UK might mirror certain Soviet media, but there is a reason or that. Sensationalism sells, and what is sensationalism if not propaganda?

Also, 'liberal courts'? No, nice try but no. Government censorship? This is not a defining characteristic of Socialist governments but a characteristic of how they operate. If you can distinguish between those two things (and I dare say you can, for I'll not insult you) then you'll have to concede that this is typical of all governments - was even before this Capitalist v Socalist dichotomy was even dreamed up. Besides, it's just as much as anywhere else. Also, an extremely high tax system? We have a conservative government battling one of the worst economic recessions in financial history. 'Single player healthcare', I am unfamiliar with the term, but we do have a national health care system. However, this is again not Socialism.

I'm not bending the definition of Socialism here, it is what it is: an economic policy of collectivization and common ownership of products and production. The UK doesn't have anything like this, it has a mixture of collectivism and free market, and it wavers between successive governments. What the UK is is a republic that is headed by a monarchy. Somehow I don't think the queen would allow the country to 'slip into socialism'.

That's the thing, I can't even predict he would have seen it that way. Orwell was a smart man, and he was also a product of the higher English middle class regardless of if he liked it or not. He had a respect for law, was educated at Eton (his french teacher was Aldous Huxley) and his family, the Blairs (his real name was Eric Arthur Blair) were administrators and officials for the British Empire. He was many things, but a firebrand, anarchistic libertarian he most certainly was not.

If Germany has adopted this social policy it wasn't just for the lolz, it was because they saw a reason to do it. If someone doesn't comply they can be branded a criminal and have their children taken into care under German law. This Wunderlich chap broke the law.

 

As much as the article was written to serve an agenda, I do find it intriguing that home-schooling is illegal in Germany. I had no idea. Sure, there are dangers to home-schooling (forever burnt on my retinae; that documentary about neo-Nazis homeschooling their kids in the US), but to actually illegalize it is quite surprising. I have to read more about the subject.

I doubt you can speak for all Europeans or people who have lived in Europe Depends a lot on what type of rights you want, depends on where in Europe you live, considering there're quite a few countries here that are run very differently. We may come off as the United States of Europe, but in reality we are still a long way from that (and hopefully never get there).

 

Same here. Apparently it's because the government thinks it's in the children's best interest to become a part of society and claim that school represents society. However, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union states that parents have the right to teach their children based on their own beliefs, so I'm interested to know why German courts upheld the ban on homeschooling. I might have to take a closer look at the court cases.

 

I find this interesting too. I don't know where EU law and each EU member's national laws cross exactly. I'd kind of like to find out too, as this was also brought up when France banned the Burka.

 

The outrage over sex ed is ridiculous and misplaced. They are not teaching 5 year olds how to perform sexual intercourse. They are teaching them proper names, about improper touching (something that sadly needs to be discussed -- better to teach a 5 year old not to allow an adult to touch their private parts than to have them raped for years). They are also teaching awareness of different family types. No matter how much you disagree, for example, with the idea of gay parents with families, the fact is, they exist. Even if you hate the parents with all your being, is it really necessary to ostracize, upset, and ridicule their children? I don't see the harm in teaching children that there are all sorts of families -- some families with a mom and a dad, some with 2 moms, some with 2 dads, some with just a mom, and some with just a dad.

 

Holy crap, homeschooling is also banned in Sweden.
This is just one article on the issue, and to me it looks like families who aren't planning to raise religious fundamentalists suffer too...

Comprehensive and objective? Says who? I know that in Finland, despite a national curriculum, schools have different agendas, a lot of freedom, and can reflect the attitudes of the principal (like the gross overreaction of the principal who sacked a special ed teacher who used light force to control an aggressive male student, the incident was even caught on video), so I doubt in Sweden the state schools manage to be equally objective and comprehensive.

Well, I'd move out of the country too if I wanted to homeschool my future kids (which I won't, though, unless they had some health condition etc. that'd absolutely require that or if we, the parents, had to travel a lot for some reason).

The amount of homeschooled kids still seems to be so marginal, that this type of bans make little sense to me, and even if your kid was homeschooled, it doesn't necessarily turn them into antisocial religious bigots. Granted, I only know one who's currently being homeschooled (in Austria), and he happens to one of the brightest, least prejudiced kids I know.

 

In a link I posted earlier about the matter, Germans have appealed to the EU under the Charter you cite and the EU ruled in Germany's favor.

 

Here are some debate points about the pros and cons of banning homeschooling:
"Loss of opportunity"

"Breeds separatism"

"Unschooling"

There is a more thorough discussion on the site including the debate points against a ban on homeschooling.

It's easy to reflexively see only the parental rights and religious freedom issues in this debate. It's worth taking the time to think about the matter more broadly.

At what point is a parent exercising freedom to believe, and at what point are they harming their child with unhealthy indoctrination? A person with extremist religious views is never going to see the State's side of the debate. But parental rights are not absolute. In Western countries you are not free to sell your child. Your child is not your property. In addition, the State does indeed have a vested interest in your child's education.

In the US we try to manage that by regulating home schools. In Germany they simply require a child receive an education from persons in addition to the parents.

I'll see what else I can find on outcomes. I know in the past some home schooled kids did well in college in one study.

But I've also seen biology teachers trying to deal with kids, schooled at home and in public or private schools, who've been taught Biblical beliefs in lieu of biology. Science is a process not a set of facts. You can't just make up your own scientific facts, or start with the facts and pretend the evidence supports said facts. So religious education is not always without harm to the child.

Then there's the issue that a lot of the objections are based on false premises such as the misconceptions about sex education, or claiming teaching tolerance teaches sin. Again, parents do not own their children. Parental rights is not a license to indoctrinate your children. One can easily see why Germany might be especially sensitive when it comes to indoctrinating children.

I would wager the German citizens are not concerned about State indoctrination via mandatory school attendance unless a parent's Evangelical Christian beliefs are the basis of the concern.

 

I find this very interesting. I've considered homeschooling my children, especially my son, several times. And the jury is still out. I may still do it at some point. It has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the school. He has ADHD and he's incredibly intelligent. When he gets bored (which he often does with the repetition of current curriculum) he stops paying attention. Every day when he gets home I have to go over everything, make sure he knows what he needs to do, and find something to keep him learning. The school refuses to keep up, the classes are too damned big, and he gets exhausted hearing the same crap again and again. He's smarter than their damned curriculum and they're dumbing him down to fit in with the rest of the mediocre pack. It's redundant and useless. The kids that need that repetition, great, but he doesn't. It's making him hate school.

He schools the teachers when they screw shit up. He deserves better than what they're giving him, and if I have to do it every day AFTER school, maybe I should just do it entirely.

 

Slippery slope, there. If government claims the role of protecting children from their parents, who protects the children from government?

Courts have agreed, such as in the landmark Roe vs. Wade:

It is the very crux of America's personal and religious liberty that every parent has the fundamental right to raise their children how they see fit. When the Court talks about 'compelling subordinate interest' it refers to gross neglect or abuse, not whether a parent takes their children to church, or mosque, or temple.

The individual right of human beings to raise, educate, and nourish our children, is an unmovable cornerstone of a free society.

 

Education quality is a legitimate concern and private schools are not always affordable, plus there's the issue of degrading the public schools when the cream flees the milk.

Most people that homeschool (I just saw a >80% figure) do so because the school curriculum doesn't match their ideological beliefs. That's when you have the issue of the child needing to be exposed to the community he/she will eventually have to join.

Have you considered getting a professional involved that might be able to offer you some help, Trish?

 

The state does have a compelling interest in protecting children's rights as well as the parents. You can't slip an abortion argument in here where the issue is the status of the fetus as an individual because that's not the same deciding principle. Roe v Wade says the mother is the individual, and the fetus is not yet a separate entity. If you want to argue that, start another thread, I'm not taking the bait.

Back from the derail to addressing a child now living independent of its mother's body, the state has an interest in representing the child's rights as well as the parents. Much as it drives you up the walls, the crux of the matter here is, you don't own your children. Your children are not your property.

The society at large protects children from government overreach. As a matter of fact, in a healthy democracy the community at large is the government.

As for slippery slopes, they lean in more than one direction: Fred Phelps, David Koresh, Jim Jones and Sun Myung Moon come to mind.

 

Children aren't owned by the government, either. In fact, I would say that parents have more of a right to teach their kids a particular ideology than the government does. Of course, when you have things like physical abuse, I believe the government should step in. But this issue boils down to whether or not instilling children with certain ideas constitutes child abuse.

 

No, I'm not saying they are. I'm saying the government has a legitimate interest that isn't overridden 100% by parental rights, akin to saying the parents own the child.

It's more than simply instilling one's beliefs and morals in one's children. There is also the matter of depriving them of exposure to other ideas and other people's beliefs. Parents with extremist views* often fear such exposure. If one is confident one's beliefs are correct one should expect one's children to come to the same conclusions without such isolation from other points of view.

*I say this because views that aren't extremely different from the society don't present the motive to isolate children from exposure to other views. Someone like Trish who is frustrated with her child's fit in the school is a different issue than we are talking about here.

 

Exactly my point. I wasn't bringing up abortion, and I didn't even mentioned the term. The quote was a general statement from the Courts that the State has to meet an extremely high burden to interfere with a parents right to raise their child.

Ginger, predictably I might add, doesn't say what her exact opinion is. I wonder if she would condone state seizures of children being raised Christian or Muslim or Mormon or Hindu, since she believes these teachings are detrimental to the children.

 

Member states can vote against the EU laws, and have wider powers than the UK government, UKIP, and the Daily Mail would have you believe.

An (unrelated to this topic) example: Germany still has not fully implemented the European wide smoking ban (or hadn't last time I was there - in February 2013), because they think it is unconstitutional. Bars and restaurants there have to have a separate smoking area (unless the bar is so small that it can not create one, in which case smoking has to be allowed in the bar).

 

Row v Wade was not about the State interfering with children's rights, it was about the State interfering with a mother's right to make decisions about her body.

What is predictable here is you imagining personal persecution of your Christian beliefs.

The issue is not about instilling religious beliefs in one's children much as you'd like that to be the argument. The reasoning for the German government to prohibit home schooling was spelled out in the cited links above, they believe the child should be exposed to the community at large in addition to the parent's religious teachings, and not be isolated from other beliefs. In the US we mandate home school curriculum, in Germany they simply mandate school attendance.

Freedom of religion in Germany has been well documented in this thread. No one is saying you should not be able to teach your children the beliefs you hold and you want them to hold. Why would a parent need to isolate their children from other beliefs? How prepared will that child be when they reach adulthood and find themselves in a society they've had very little exposure to? Will they be able to work in a job where they can't tolerate their coworkers who the children have been taught are immoral sinners?

As for my beliefs? I have no qualms stating my beliefs: The evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion all gods are mythical beings. And I sent my son to public schools where he was exposed to religious beliefs of others. His best friend in grade school was from a very strong Christian believing family. It did not worry me he was exposed to his friend's parent's beliefs.

The only time I complained to the school was when my son got one of those "Candy Cane Symbolizes Jesus" mythical stories with a candy cane attached from school because he believed his teacher gave them out.

Know how I dealt with it? I looked up the real origin of the story, (much as it's touted that candy canes have a religious origin, the story came from a fictional children's book that is fairly recent), and I documented where candy canes really originated from (couple centuries ago in Europe, nothing to do with Jesus). Then I took the evidence and confronted the teacher. Turned out she was not the one who had given out the candy canes with the attached story. All was well. That was fine with me since it came from another student and I had a chance to demonstrate to my son how to evaluate things told to him as truth.

The best thing you can do for your child is not try to protect them from hearing other people's beliefs.

 

Thanks kindly. I didn't know this.