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Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Absolutely Infuriating:
The lead paragraph says it all:
Earlier this month, a German teen-ager was forcibly taken from her parents and imprisoned in a psychiatric ward. Her crime? She is being home-schooled.
Germany apparently has not learned a great deal from the great Nazi debacle, where Hitler espoused that the state was omniscient, omnipotent, and downright infallible. In fact, the illegality of homeschooling there is so because of a law that Hitler passes almost 70 years ago.
According to the Washington Times article, Europe is very much in agreement that it is the state’s responsibility and not the parents of the child to educate them. Here in America, thankfully, we still have the right to assume responsibility for our children’s education, albeit with several restrictions depending upon the state in which we live.
Forebodingly, the article goes on to ask about the future status of homeschooling in America:
While it is disquieting that Europeans have not learned the lessons from their dictatorial past — upholding Nazi laws and sending dissidents, including children, to psychiatric wards, as the Soviets used to do — there is reason for Americans to worry, too. The United Nations is also restricting the rights of parents. Article 29 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that it is the goal of the state to direct the education of children. In Belgium, the U.N. Convention is currently being used to limit the constitutional right to home-school. In 1995 Britain was told that it violated the U.N. Convention by allowing parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes.
Last year, the American Home School Legal Defense Association warned that the U.N. Convention could make home-schooling illegal in America, even though the Senate has never ratified it. Some lawyers and liberal politicians in the states claim that U.N. conventions are "customary international law" and should be considered part of American jurisprudence.
So should Americans worry about such intrusions? It all depends on whether or not our government accepts international law as precedent. If America becomes a signatory on such U.N. “legislation”, homeschoolers, like my family, will have plenty about which to worry.
.: posted by
Dave
10:47 AM
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