This is a startling tale about the anti home school attitude in Germany and a German family that was granted asylum.
Many have commented positively on this site about home schooling.
Now we are going to send this nice German family back so the government can take their kids away?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368245/dont-destroy-family-kevin-d-williamson
I didn’t put words in your mouth. I asked if I had understood your intentions. As I apparently didn’t, it would seem more “unmuddying” is required if you care to have people like me who lack “reading comprehension skills” understand what it is you’re driving at. I would suggest you leave out terms like “Hey, Krauts” or “closet Muslim-in-Chief” as it is apparently too nuanced a phrase for me to distinguish it from blatant prejudice. Maybe I’m merely misinformed about the definition of the terms “rude, crude, and socially unacceptable”.
Perhaps I am “as thick as [I] appear to be”, but I am unable to detect in your rambling, angry, diatribe anything approaching a point that relates to the topic at hand. Why did you bring up the insolvency of social programs, aging populations, and the “the Clash of Civilizations risk”? If I am wrong about my original summation, what do any of these topics have to do with what I wrote about homeschool in general or the deportation of this family specifically?
You wrote “these educators have a legitimate concern that they dare not speak in public. What if Muslim immigrant parents are allowed to homeschool their children too?” Why do you see this as a problem if not for the reasons I asked about earlier? To avoid further complication I’ll avoid restating your point and ask a question. Do you feel it is appropriate to use public school as a tool to assimilate and culturally homogenize children?
GH05T | January 17, 2014 at 2:49 pm | wrote:
“You’re against homeschool . . . ” Blah, blah, blah. “Have I got that right?.”
No, you did not get that right. I never said any of those things, and I never suggested any of those things. You really need to work on your reading comprehension skills. Apparently, your brain is a nuance-free zone.
On the other hand, if you’re not as thick as you appear to be, you need to stop putting words into the mouths of those with whom you disagree. That’s intellectually dishonest, as well as being rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.
Wow, you consider that “unmuddying” do you? Let me just see if I have this straight. You’re against homeschool because you want to use public school as a means of culturally indoctrinating the children of immigrants that you think we have to let in to fix the problem of an aging population putting unbearable stress on our social security system, but who cannot be trusted to stay out of socio/political affairs.
Conversely, you think that the solution to social security insolvency is to create a population of second-class citizens by inviting in a bunch of immigrants without letting them bring their cultural beliefs with them, and you need public school to keep an eye on their children in case they start getting ideas above their station.
Have I got that right?
GH05T | January 15, 2014 at 10:39 am wrote:
“I think the risk of a large band of home-schooled, sharia law enforcing revolutionaries is relatively small and easily mitigated, but it’s an impressive attempt to muddy the waters of the debate.”
In that case, let’s do some unmuddying, shall we? You claim that the risk is small. Yes, that’s the risk today. What else is new?
The long-term risk is a different ball of wax. How so? I’m glad that you asked.
Birthrates in Britain and in most of Western Europe are significantly less than replacement levels. The upshot: Relatively fewer working people are funding the social security of retired people. Old saying:
The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
There are two approaches to the Shrinking Pie Problem. The Japanese are taking a “to thine own self be true” approach. They are toughing it out, and do not view immigration as any kind of long-term solution. Fortunately, they have a high savings rate.
Brits and most W Europeans are very reluctant to tighten their social security belts. This leaves immigration as the most politically expedient option in the short term.
Now let’s return to the Clash of Civilizations risk. In the long term, the magnitude of that risk depends on two parameters for which I do not have hard data. First, what is the immigration rate?
Second, what is the true assimilation rate for Muslim immigrants? We could crassly rephrase this question as follows: What is the immigrants’ rate of defection from hard core, intolerant, jihadist Islam to Western values?
If Rate 1 is appreciably bigger than Rate 2, then we could say: Houston, we have a problem. Welcome to Britistan and Euristan. To parody our closet Muslim-in-Chief:
If you like your Saudi-style religious police, you can keep your religious police.
In this case, my advise for British and European politicians would be to remember The First Rule of Holes:
When you find yourself in one, stop digging!
The price of personal freedom is dealing with other people’s personal freedom. Utopia doesn’t exist and never will. All policies and practices have down-sides and unintended consequences. I think the risk of a large band of home-schooled, sharia law enforcing revolutionaries is relatively small and easily mitigated, but it’s an impressive attempt to muddy the waters of the debate. Allowing one group religious freedom and denying another wouldn’t be “perceived” as discriminatory, it IS discriminatory by definition. The question then is whether you support granting the government the power to pick and choose who gets what rights.
As for public school, it is simply inefficient by its nature. Almost an hour a day is spent simply walking from one place to another. Add in the time wasted complying with every special interest educational requirement and it’s no wonder they have to assign 8 hours’ worth of homework they couldn’t get to during the 9 hours they had the kids during the day. You could argue that it’s worth it if the children were actually learning, but many simply aren’t. The system’s solution to any child that fails to thrive is to classify them as “special needs” even if the problem is the child being too smart for the teacher.
The positive arguments for public school were never meant to be applied as a blanket solution for every child. Before public school the rich and powerful educated their children the same way they do now; private schools and tutors. Public school is a form of social welfare. I firmly believe that ensuring the education of the populace is of immeasurable benefit to society, but, like all welfare, the charity comes with long strings attached. Children spend more time in school than they do with their parents. What little time they spend with their parents is often consumed by homework. A child’s entire world view is crafted or heavily influenced by the people that control what the school presents to the child. So again the question is “who gets to choose?”
As for the original post, it’s not a homeschool debate. It’s a foreign policy debate. It’s disturbing that the administration would pursue deportation of a family legally residing in the country in the same week that they are glorifying the benefits of amnesty for millions. I suppose if the family involved were willing to do some of those “jobs Americans won’t do” we could let them stay.
Larry’s long-winded comment:
Hey, Krauts! Can you say, “Sieg heil?” Actually, I’m being slightly unfair for singling out the Germans. The otherwise nice Swedish people are just as bad in this respect.
In my experience there are two main categories of homeschoolers. Religious people comprise the largest group. They’re very turned off by secular education in the public schools.
There are also pragmatists, who know that public education in the USA is tenth rate, by international norms. Yes, we can take cold comfort in the fact that Spain and Italy do a worse job of edjumacating their children. Many pragmatists are also aware that the primary effect of maths education in the USA is to convince people that they’re stupid — partly because the people who teach the subject are not the brightest bulbs on the tree.
On standardized tests, homeschooled children in the USA perform better, on average, than publicly schooled children. And this fact scares the bejesus out of the bureaucrats in the child warehousing industry.
Nevertheless some school districts are making good-faith efforts to accommodate parents who take their responsibilities seriously. Unfortunately, this is not the case in either Germany or Sweden.
To be fair, these educators have a legitimate concern that they dare not speak in public. What if Muslim immigrant parents are allowed to homeschool their children too? What would these children be learning?
That it’s OK for husbands to beat — or even murder — wives who are accused of adultery? Call me provincial, but I believe that ‘Honor’ Killing is NOT a wonderful thing.
And giving Christian parents permission to homeschool, while denying that right to Muslim parents, would be perceived as discriminatory. Old saying: Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
Public schooling was centralized in Germany with the formation of the German Empire in 1871. The predecessor was the Kingdom of Prussia, that established general “free” public schools with compulsory education during the 18th Century. The school system was usesd by the central government to instill “social obedience” through indoctrination. The Progressives in the U.S. adopted the German system of public schools as its idea with the intent to indoctrinate “good citizenship” in our students. Of course “good citizenship” meant hewing to Progressive ideals. The spread of “progressive education” had successfully completed its takeover of the U.S. education system by the mid 20th century.
Government schools should be abolished and all schooling ought to be deregulated so that parents could choose to send their kids to schools that reflect their values — or to home school their children without Government interference.