Please read the following media release of the South African Homeschool Association, If there are German education institutions in your country, think about creating similar actions there. 
Learning Freely Network and it’s parent ALO /SAL support this action.

 

Media Statement by the Association for Homeschooling South Africa
 
The Association for Homeschooling, in co-operation with the Pestalozzi Trust legal defence fund for home education, has applied to the Tshwane Metro Police for permission to hold a protest meeting outside  the Deutsche Schule (German School) in Pretoria on 30th November 2007.
 
The purpose of the meeting is to inform the German community of  Pretoria of our protest against the persecution of homeschoolers in Germany under the pretext that they are establishing or continuing so-called "parallel societies".
 
The German government has informed the Association and others who have  expressed their concern, that it is persuaded of the educational  merits of home education. However, it holds that children in Germany  (including children of German families), need to be compelled by force  into German schools in order to be duly integrated into the kind of  German society approved by the German state.
 
This includes the children of South African and other families  residing in Germany.
 
Last year, home learner Melissa Busekros was forcefully removed from  her family. In order to counter the "family influence", she was first interned in a state psychiatric facility where she was diagnosed with  "school phobia" and subsequently placed in foster care. On the night  of her sixteenth birthday, when she obtained the right to choose her  own residence, she fled from foster care and returned to her family home. 

 More recently, the Neubronner family who homeschool their children in  the "free" city of Bremen, were allowed to do so last year, only to be  fined 4500 Euro (more than R45 000) this year for homeschooling. When  the authorities did not find sufficient possessions in their home to be sold in execution of the fine, this week the bank accounts of the  family’s small publishing business were frozen.
 
This has destroyed the means of economic survival of the family, reducing them to beggarhood. This not only endangers their ability to retain the family home, but has created "justification" for authorities to remove the children from the family.
 
The family was compelled to obtain a protective court order to prevent the removal of the children from their care – an action that the German authorities have taken in the case of other homeschooling families.
 
The Association for Homeschooling condemns these actions, which the German government justifies in its quest to prevent "parallel societies" and asserts that the German government is guilty of gross human rights abuses.
 
The Association also points out that the German state funds and supports the Deutsche Schule in Pretoria and similar German schools elsewhere in Africa, and even provides German homeschooling families in Africa with learning programmes. Clearly, the government of Germany is sustaining German "parallel societies" in Africa while oppressing homeschoolers in Germany under the pretext that homeschoolers (so they claim) are doing in Germany what Germany itself is in fact doing in African countries!
 
Homeschoolers in Pretoria hope to enlist the support of the German "parallel" community in our city for our protest against these dual standards being applied by the German government in such a cruel and inhumane manner.
 
For further information contact Bouwe van der Eems 082 907 9696 or Leendert van Oostrum 082 8262 675.