All homeschoolers would qualify for asylum
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 2:12PM The Christian Science Monitor printed their story about the German homeschooling family who received political asylum in the US yesterday and it contained two rather interesting nuggets of information. The first is the decision, if upheld on appeal, will grant asylum to any sincere homeschooler. From the article: “Homeschoolers are a movement of sorts,” says Peter Spiro, an expert on international immigration law at Temple University Law School in Philadelphia. “The immigration judge looking at this claim said there is a coherence to this group ... and that denying the rights of this group [to homeschool] is persecution.”
The article claims Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) has already been contacted by other German homeschoolers who want political asylum. Here is where the second interesting nugget turns up, when Mike Donnelly, an attorney for the HSLDA, is paraphrased:
"Donnelly says his group is not directly affiliated with a Christian church, but his website mentions staff members’ faith. He also said the homeschooling movement in the US was not just Christian – the National Center for Education Statistics says only 36 percent of homeschooled students are kept home for religious reasons."
It has been well noted that as homeschooling has surged in growth—74% in less than a decade—it has also significantly diversified, thereby diminishing the influence of evangelical homeschooling leaders. However, to read that HSLDA is downplaying its religious orientation a bit, or at least downplaying it for this article, makes me feel even more that we are entering a stage where inclusive and global homeschooling associations are the next stage of development we face.
Reader Comments (5)
Pat: I hope you don't mind too much, but I want to post 4 entries which I just published in blogs here in Canada. We definitely call it a "movement" here, and I just posted a 5th item in your story about the videos of John Holt. In that one I said how home education is the single most important movement today standing up against the growth and encroachment of the state into our lives. In my 4th post I will bring you up to date about a German home educating family seeking political asylum in Canada.
The Birth of the Home Education Movement – 1972 – Mexico (Part One)
I remember people ardently ranting and raging against oppressive compulsory schooling. About poverty and the thwarted aspirations of the poor. About the escalation of school restrictions and demands being as destructive as the escalation of weapons. About school and medical systems showing declining results as more money was being poured in …
These were the heady discussions students and academics enjoyed at CIDOC (Center for Intercultural Documentation) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the Spring and Summer of 1972. I had just completed teacher training at Ottawa Teachers College and was there (two young daughters in tow) to listen to the lectures of Ivan Illich who had just published the book “Deschooling Society”. His ideas had already spread via many articles in magazines and book reviews.
His complete book is available, all short 116 pages, for reading online or downloading at http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/
If you dare comprehend the book, you will be a different person.
“School is obligatory and becomes schooling for schooling’s sake: an enforced stay in the company of teachers.”
“Unquestionably, the educational process will gain from the deschooling of society even though this demand sounds to many schoolmen like treason to the enlightenment. But it is enlightenment itself that is now being snuffed out in the schools.”
“Two centuries ago the United States led the world in a movement to disestablish the monopoly of a single church. Now we need the constitutional disestablishment of the monopoly of the school.”
These words were spoken way before we had online education. If people pride themselves now on the advances of this technological magic, just read the chapter of 40 years ago, “Learning Webs”.
“Everywhere the hidden curriculum of schooling initiates the citizen to the myth that bureaucracies guided by scientific knowledge are efficient and benevolent. … a huge professional apparatus of educators and buildings which in fact restricts the public’s chances for learning … It should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational.”
Illich was a priest, a philosopher, an inspired prophet. He laced his talks with Greek myths and poetry. When we heard his version of how Prometheus tricked the gods out of their monopoly of fire, we tried to project that concept to health, education, welfare and other fields monopolized by the state.
The Birth of the Home Education Movement – 1972 – Mexico (Part Two)
Neither Illich nor any of our discussions at that time ever conceived of the notion of home education as a “movement”, though we frequently talked about home care of the sick as a movement. It was not till I had a discussion with John Holt, the author of such books as “How Children Learn” and “How Children Fail” that the movement toward home education started to percolate.
So, one morning, beneath a heavily-laden mango tree from which John partook, this was our conversation in January, 1972.
John: Now that you have completed teacher training, where are you going to teach?
Tunya: I didn’t get training to teach in a school. I took it to teach my own children.
J: Is it legal”
T: Yes, I’ve studied the legislations. It’s possible across North America and England. Parents are to cause their children to obtain an education at a school or elsewhere. It’s this “elsewhere” clause that allows home education.
J: Well, at least you’re now qualified to teach them.
T: I also found out that you don’t need a qualification to teach your own children.
J. What about socialization? They’ll be different.
T: Kids should be individuals. They’ll have plenty of friends from the groups we belong to. Besides, there is a lot of negative socialization in school …
J: What if they want to go to college?
T: They will probably be strong, independent learners and will have an advantage to transfer in …
J: SMART CITY!
5 years later John Holt, who already had a large mailing list of people interested in education reform, started the Home Education Movement with his newsletter, “Growing without Schooling” and the rest is history …
The Birth of the Home Education Movement – 1972 – Mexico (Part Three)
Meanwhile, Dr. Raymond Moore was spreading the word amongst his mainly Christian audience (The Learning Home) and paid frequent visits to Vancouver, Canada, especially when we held Home Learning Fairs in the 80’s.
Besides jump-starting the home education movement John Holt had the wisdom and foresight to caution against the threats and antagonisms that arise from people splitting off from conventional schooling. This quote is worth posting front and center on our bulletin boards, and worth a lot of pondering in our present day (March 2010):
“Today freedom has different enemies. It must be fought for in different ways. It will take very different qualities of mind and heart to save it.”
The link to my 1987 article which helped validate the movement in Canada is here: Home Education – The Third Option http://education-advisory.org/Involved/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/home-education-third-option.pdf Please note, at the end of this article, how I suggest that home education is a good way to retrieve individual responsibility from “disabling” professionals and the predatory state and at the same time restoring parents to their central role in the education of their children.
(What I have written about is the “movement”, not exactly a crusade or campaign, but a gathering force in the 70’s and 80’s that policy-makers had to take notice of. It was legal and spoke to a pent-up demand of frustrated parents. While I always refer to it as home education, others speak of homeschooling. Others, like Wendy Priesnitz in Ontario, called it unschooling. She has written a best selling book: School Free - The Homeschooling Handbook and one I’m really looking forward to reading: “Challenging Assumptions in Education”. See her website: http://www.wendypriesnitz.com/index.html)
PS: About the funding question. While Alberta is generous in comparison to other provinces in helping home educators (if registered in distance learning you might qualify for up to $1,000 for supplies), BC also provides some assistance. Here is their description:
Funding Grants for Home Schooled Children
Provincial funding grants are sent to the registering school; no funding is sent to parents. The provincial funding grant amounts are as follows:
- Public schools receive $250 for each registered homeschooled child.
- An independent school authority holding a certificate of group 1 or group 2 classification receive $175 for each registered homeschooled child.
(The experience is that parents might get help in purchasing a computer via the school or other such help.)
Home Education as a "Movement" (Part Four)
Home Education Helps Crystallize the Issues
Individual rights and freedoms can easily be threatened by the state, especially in matters relating to the family. Yes, the state, with all its special interest groups dependent on public service jobs, seems to increasingly encroach on individual and family freedoms. Look at how early learning programs are being sold, pushed, and subtly and insidiously coerced.
With the recent case of the German homeschooling family being granted political asylum in the United States (Tennessee) we are seeing more interest in the politics of home education. The family with five children was granted refugee status because in Germany home education is forbidden and the children were subject to state seizure. (Time magazine, Mar 2, 2010)
The decision from immigration judge Lawrence O. Burman in Memphis said the German government violated the Romeike family’s “basic human rights … Homeschoolers are a particular social group that the German government is trying to suppress … This family has a well-founded fear of persecution … therefore, they are eligible for asylum.“
Today, March 22, 2010, a front page story in the Globe and Mail describes how another German family is seeking asylum in Alberta for the same reasons of persecution and possible seizure of their three children. While the Romeike’s were homeschooling for religious reasons (they are Christian) this family in Alberta had conscience and medical/academic reasons why they chose to homeschool. This case before the Immigration and Refugee board can take months before a decision is rendered.
See Globe and Mail story plus over 200 comments http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/german-home-schoolers-seek-asylum-in-canada/article1507683/
The issue of state versus home educators was not unforeseen in Canada. In 1988 we had the report of the Royal Commission on Education in BC reporting the following:
“The home schooling issue clearly contains within it some of the most fundamental tensions between competing ideals and values to be found in educational and social policy today. It involves the question of parental rights in schooling versus those of the state, questions about where the public good should supersede private interest, questions about who should be accountable for children’s education and well-being, and questions about the limits of individual choice and participation in schooling.” (p204, A Legacy for Learners, Report of the Royal Commission in Education, BC, 1988)
The School Act was changed to provide for formal and legal acceptance of home education in BC.
Tunya,
Thanks for this useful and interesting information and history, particularly around the words "movement" and "homeschooling." It's good to know how other countries work with, or against, homeschoolers if only to know what options exist for us.
Pat