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September 3, 2013
Children Seized: Eroding Education Rights
Armed German
police and special agents raided the Wunderlich home and seized the
children because the parents were keeping them out of the government’s
schools and teaching them at home instead. But the raid did not take
place in 1940. It was just last Thursday. This is a threat to parents of public, private, and home schooled students, and it is coming to America.
Alarmingly, Germany is again trampling this right – as the rest of the world looks on. Sadly, legal scholars in America are pushing the same idea! Catherine Ross, Professor of Law at Georgetown University, has posited that “tolerance for diverse views and values is a foundational principle [and] does not conflict with the notion that the state can and should limit the ability of intolerant homeschoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their children….” (“Fundamentalist Challenges to Core Democratic Values: Exit and Homeschooling,” 18 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts J. 991, 1005 (2010).) She believes measures should be taken to ensure that even home schooling parents teach politically acceptable philosophies to their children. Kimberly Yuracko, Professor of Law at Northwestern University, joins her: “Surprisingly, the social and legal implications of this phenomenon have received almost no scholarly attention. For decades political theorists have worried and argued about what steps a liberal society must take to protect children being raised in illiberal communities.…Virtually absent from the debate has been any discussion of the extent to which a liberal society should condone or constrain homeschooling, particularly as practiced by religious fundamentalist families explicitly seeking to shield their children from liberal values of sex equality, gender role fluidity and critical rationality.” These scholars and many others like them believe that private and home education should be regulated by the government for the purpose of controlling its philosophical content. In the name of promoting “tolerance,” they argue that absolutist worldviews must not be tolerated. But it’s not just scholars in academic towers. Last week, Slate ran an opinion piece titled, “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person” – and it was not a satire. Editor-author Allison Benedikt wrote that many parents “go private for religious reasons, or because their kids have behavioral or learning issues, or simply because the public school in their district is not so hot. None of these are compelling reasons.” (emphasis added) Even more alarmingly, the United States government also agrees. In fact, the Obama administration has already sided with the German government as it denies educational choice to parents. In the Case of Remeike v. Holder, the Attorney General’s office successfully argued before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that the German government’s actions do not constitute “persecution,” even though German courts have acknowledged that their purpose is to suppress “the development of religiously or philosophically motivated ‘parallel societies’….”
As your children start the new school year wherever you have chosen to enroll them, consider this: without the protection of the Parental Rights Amendment, that choice may one day be taken from you. The federal government, which can’t even balance a budget, would decide what is important for your child to read, learn, and believe. The time to stop this is now. The means to stop it is the Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The plan to stop it is to pass this on to your family and friends, and urge them to join the fight for all parents’ freedoms. Sign up today at parentalrights.org/petition. Sincerely, Michael Ramey Director of Communications & Research |
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P.O. Box 1090 Purcellville, VA 20134 * (540)-751-1200 * info@parentalrights.org |
