This is from the website of the ILS, an accredited German distance learning institution.
The ILS has been mandated by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide distance learning to German pupils all over the world, so that they can obtain German school-leaving qualifications. This offer is geared towards German parents who, for private or professional reasons, are planning a long stay abroad and face the dilemma of how to deal with their child’s educational needs, where there is no German school nearby or such a school proves to be unsuitable for their child. The ILS’s solution – take your child’s school with you. German families overseas making use of the ILS’s services also receive financial sponsorship from the German government.
The quote is from one of the ILS’s happy clients, Angelika Schuberth, mother of Niklas and Jan : “While my children are overseas, they should receive the same education as in Germany – this is guaranteed by the ILS.”
Luckily for the Schuberth family, their children are also guaranteed the opportunity of receiving an education in their own language by the fact that no country in the world would prevent them, as expatriates, from doing this. No country, that is, except for their own home country, Germany.
The only guarantees for a foreign family living temporarily in Germany and trying to help their children receive a distance education, seem to be harassment, fines, possible jail sentences and threats of having their children removed by the Jugendamt. Take this statement by a father, whose son attended an English-medium state school in Berlin. (The parents were both academics with temporary positions at a university there). He says : The main problem with the German school was, the denial of our multicultural background. We removed our older child from school because of the unfair treatment received at school: refusal and derision of his vegetarian diet, derision of his parent’s accent in English, disrespect for the family’s non-confessional background, and refusal to court of any form of parental collaboration in view of a gradual adaptation of the child to the new environment. This caused recurrent nightmares, increasing anxiety and fear in the child.
We have been defined by the Jugendamt as people troubling the public order and they threatened to take our children away. Social services tried to enter our home alleging that we neglected our children. They questioned our neighbors and collected or manipulated evidence against us. We produced attestation of school attendance abroad but we were defined as unreliable and unconvincing. We were fined and some legal proceeding was also started against us. We arrived at the point of having to defend ourselves daily from aggression by the Jugendamt. We left the country overnight.
By the way, the education law of Berlin states : The school authorities can exempt a child from compulsory attendance for a particular reason.
15 of the 16 German states have similar exclusion clauses in their compulsory schooling laws. In practice, such clauses are only applied in cases where a child lives in a circus family, is too ill to attend school or for a young person who has achieved celebrity status and has a demanding pop music or acting career. Although the German government recognises the benefit of distance. education for Germans living abroad enough to sponsor it, this is not regarded as a convincing reason to allow an exemption for foreigners living temporarily in Germany.
We are not asking anyone here or in the European Commission to interfere with German law or the German school system. As I have stated, there are numerous opportunities for the German authorities to generously allow the exceptions that already exist in German law. The fact that celebrities who have a thriving pop music or acting career are granted such exceptions without a second glance whilst families such as ours and others whose children have very real educational needs that are not met within the German school system are subjected to draconian measures demonstrates the malicious intent behind such treatment.
The school authorities, in reply to our plea, have stated that “the state makes use of its mandate to educate and has the right to set its own educational goals.” The purpose of this so-called Erziehungsauftrag is to bring up children to be good, tolerant and responsible citizens. According to the court judgements on which this statement is based, this is only possible through physical presence in a school. One wonders then, why, the German Foreign Service supports distance education for German children overseas, if these children are thereby being deprived of the school attendance which is deemed necessary for their future? My plea to you is to help the German government rectify this gross hypocrisy and to recognise that freedom of choice in education is a fundamental human right. Why does the German government feel the need to force mobile Europeans who are only there for a short time to participate in their coercive educational monopoly.
The first time German law actively prohibited home education was in the "reichsschulpflichtgesetz" of 1938 under the Nazis where coercive measures "zwangsmassnahmen" were introduced and were subsequently included in postwar education laws in Germany. Why are the German states still clinging to enforcement of the measures whose original intent is clear. Why are the Germans still rigidly adhering to an element of their totalitarian past in letter and spirit.
The March 2000 Lisbon Council set the goal of turning Europe into “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010”, emphasising the need for more and better trained researchers throughout the European Research Area – a true internal market for science and knowledge. These researchers and other highly skilled professionals whose jobs require frequent moves want to bring their families with them and they want to be sure that their children can receive a stable education not subject to the arbitrary whims of narrow-minded bureaucrats in one European country. If there is no school in their language nearby, or the fees are unaffordable for them or their gifted or special needs child does not fit into this one and only school, then they should be accorded equal treatment with Niklas and Jan and with those teen celebrities who se needs are no more important than theirs.
Article 149 of the Treaty of the European Union states that, whilst respecting the responsibility of the Member States for their own education systems, the Community can take action by developing exchanges of information and experience on issues common to the education systems of the member states. In this spirit, I request the EU Parliament and the EU Commission to act on their responsibility by encouraging Germany to enter into dialogue with those seeking educational alternatives and to look at the experiences of the rest of Europe, which has not collapsed into anarchy, just because a handful of people choose alternatives to outmoded conventional schooling for their children.
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars: general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,….
William Blake
When we applied to the school authority of the state of Niedersachsen for such an exemption for our children (which is possible under law), it was turned down. They stated that “the examples of other children who have come to Germany from other countries illustrate that a successful integration into the German school system would have taken place.” The big picture is totally ignored by the authorities – the fact that we were only temporarily in Germany was meaningless to them. In their justification, they went on to say that, “…A person is regarded as being resident in Niedersachsen and subject to compulsory schooling when he or she has resided here for more than five days, even if he or she does not intend to remain here permanently. This applies regardless of the person’s nationality. The lawmakers have ordered compulsory schooling even for only a short stay in Niedersachsen.”
As far as the second part of that statement is concerned, that the State has the right to set its own educational goals, it makes me wonder why the state tolerates international schools and schools run by the British and US military, in whose educational goals the German government has absolutely no say. German parents who have the financial means are sending their children to these schools in droves, as well as to boarding schools in other European countries. These children are being brought up in a radically different cultural environment, with a different curriculum to that of the German state schools and accredited private schools.
When we first made the decision to enable our children to learn through the medium of home education it was because we felt that this is the best way to help our family to stay together. We knew, that with four children, the fees of international schools were beyond our reach and we were comfortable in the knowledge that we are providing our children with an individualised mode of education that gives each of them the time to explore their own interests and to interact with local people in the country where we happen to be living.
From http://www.odl-liaison.org/pages.php?PN=policy-paper_2004
3. Summary and Recommendations for Action
In view of the previous considerations, the European ODL Liaison Committee urges European institutions to consider the following:
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Re-establish the policy momentum for the eLearning Initiative, but with two adaptations: make sure that the new discourse is more based on societal-economic demand and more coherent, linking eLearning closely to the lifelong learning agenda. Try seriously to achieve coordination of resources and actions in the field, to the benefit of effective use of public resources and higher impact and visibility of the implemented actions. Accept intervention of “other” resources and policy concerns to support eLearning - even though that may cost something in terms of autonomy and administrative procedures - because the public benefit will easily justify the procedural complications.
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Both lifelong learning and eLearning are too important and pervasive in the knowledge society to be the exclusive competence of educational authorities who are used to manage school and higher education systems originally created to serve or accompany the industrial society by providing initial education.
At present institutional competencies should be re-aggregated, at European as well as at national and regional levels, to guarantee coordination and coherence of action in the field.
http://ec.europa.eu/research/press/2004/pr0206en.cfm
But the story is legit - the Houston Chronicle website notes that Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District have approved a district policy change that allows school employees to carry concealed firearms. And listening to Superintendent David Thweatt, the move is a necessary one to to deter and protect against school shootings.
