On the morning of September 7, a female plain-clothes officer knocked on the door of Mrs. Plett’s house. When she answered the knock, other police officers who had hidden outside forced their way into the house and arrested Mrs. Plett for the crime of…homeschooling her children. The German police then took Mrs. Plett to a jail in Gelsenkirchen, where she was apparently given a ten-day sentence.
Four days later, Mrs. Plett’s husband gathered their children and fled to a Christian family center in Wolfgangsee, Austria. Another homeschooling family from Hamburg, Germany also took refuge there after a Paderborn court ordered the seizure of their children. In Austria, parents are allowed to homeschool their children over a one year trial period, after which the authorities determine whether or not the parents can continue homeschooling.
Since Hitler banned it in 1938, homeschooling has been illegal in Germany, and this recent arrest of Mrs. Plett has shown that Nazi law still hovers over Germany. There were seven Christian homeschooling families in Paderborn who had been struggling with the local county board of education for the freedom to educate their children on their own. Heinz Kohler, the board’s director, told the families that “the parents’ right to personally educate their children would prevent the children from growing up to be responsible individuals within society.” When the families tried a compromise by asking for permission to set up a private school, the authorities refused, saying, “The living room is not a class room.”
Can we read this and not be ashamed? Not be ashamed at our own selfish complaints for “more freedom?” We think that as human beings, we deserve certain rights, when families in other countries are torn apart and arrested for an activity we hardly think twice about. We may be able to come up with numerous legitimate complaints against our family and our country, but we should take a long moment first to value the freedom we have been given in America.
Sources:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1330
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/06091407.html
I’m glad to see this article. I’ve noticed, over the past few years, that there are many areas of life where the German government is not so far from their National Socialist days. Thank you for giving this aspect (a most important one) publicity. I hope and pray that our government will never follow Germany’s lead, and I hope people will be praying for the beleaguered homeschoolers over there.