Dear friends,
I wrote a short summary of our recent situation. Thank you for forwarding this to people who might be interested.

If the text needs any corrections please do not hesitate to inform us - we are greatful for this help. If you want further informations to write articles or something, just contact us.

We are one of the most prominent Homeschooling families in Germany. We grant to our sons (8 and 10 years old) their wish to stay and learn at home since October 2005. This is regarded illegal by German authorities.
 
1) Our sons have been monitored (about once a month) by two school teachers during the last school year, wrote tests and received positive school reports on the basis of this monitoring. The teachers are willing to continue. Nevertheless this procedure is not tolerated any longer. We are acutely threatened with 6000 € fine (jail if we do not pay this sum) in case we do not force our unwilling children to school and make sure they go every day from  August 30 2007 on. We cannot and do not want to pay this amount, so we will possibly get imprisoned. We are ready to endure this because it could be a strong signal for the public discussion if  well-educated, well-integrated, intellectual [Kann es sein, dass intellectual hier nicht ganz passt? Ist vielmehr “rational” bzw. “rationally thinking“ gemeint?] parents (no trace of a "parallel society") get imprisoned because of compulsory schooling. We need strong public attention and support by letters, newsletter articles and so on. We will keep you informed.

2) We sued against our education authority, lost the first trial but were admitted to appeal, which we did. The appeal court denies us the usual financial legal aid for poor complainants because of "missing prospect of success", so we will have to pay for all court costs. Since the appeal court who denies us legal aid is the same who will judge about our case there is little hope that we will win this appeal trial. We made a constitutional complaint against this discrimination - not giving us legal aid for "missing prospect of success", although appeal was admitted because of "general, fundamental importance of the case" - at the Federal Constitutional Court but do not know if we will succeed. If we really will have to pay all court and attorney costs, these will be several thousand €. We will need help with this, but it is not acute yet.

3) Authorities in Germany always claim a constitutionally based  "state responsibility for education" (Erziehungsauftrag) which is said to be of (at least) equal rank with the education responsibility of the parents. This is not true, article 6 of the German constitution says that it is in the first place the right and duty of the parents to take care for their children. Article 7 only says that the state has “supervision about the school system”. Nevertheless, German Federal Constitutional Court Justices decided in several  cases there was an independent state responsibility for education. We engaged a young constitution specialist, jurist Johannes Goldbecher (Rostock, Germany), to write a detailed scientific expertise. This expertise will be of great value for all Homeschooling families in Germany and their attorneys. The price for this lengthy report is only 1500 €, because the author is young and wants to help us. But our recent income as independent publishers is very low (less then welfare aid in Germany), so we need help, especially since there are lots of other court costs threatening us as described above.

If you need further information please contact us: bildungsfreiheit@web.de. Financial help is welcome and can be directed to our account:
Dagmar and Tilman Neubronner
Postbank Dortmund
BLZ:     440 100 46
Account No.    353738 465
BIC:     PBNKDEFF
IBAN:    De78 4401 0046 0353 7384 65
Thank you!