Oh, friends, we’ve got ourselves A Cause now. To hear Fox News tell it, the lovely Romeike family is about to be kicked out of the Glorious U. S. of A. and booted back to Germany by The Heartless Dictator-in-Chief himself just for home-schooling their six innocent and beautiful kids. (And y’all thought only the Liberal-Communist-Socialist-Wack-a-Doo-Environmental-Nut-Job Media liked to incite their base with inflammatory headlines. Wrong.)
He solves problems.
Grab the Sharpies and some poster board. Put a call in to Winston the Wolf. Brew another pot of the Good Coffee. Tell the kids to set aside those ABeka books and that Rosetta Stone. Call the Prayer Chain and the Co-Op: there’s signs to make, and marches to attend. (Art, Current Events, Civics, and P.E. Check!) Somebody get me the President’s head-shot; I gotta get one of the kids to make A Biting Viral Meme…(computer graphics, creative writing, check!)
Wait just a dang minute.
Perhaps (and I am just spit-balling here) we should look into this a bit further before we all start flipping out and signing another petition to secede. Maybe the lesson to be learned from this story is this: all available news sources are in some way attempting to manipulate your thinking. All of them wish to sway their readers in one way or another. The fact that a media outlet more or less holds your same world-view does not make them Always Trustworthy or Always Right. Our news sources have exploded in number, and they are all seeking to find their niche (read: loyal audience who believes every word they say). With so much competition, sensationalism seems to rule the day. Now, more than ever, we must be thoughtful gatherers of information. One of the biggest fears of home-schoolers is the government taking away the right to educate our children at home. If you think FoxNews and other conservative media outlets are not above exploiting that fear to get higher ratings, you’re crazy.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their six children.
Upon digging into this story further, the family in question are citizens of Germany, not the United States. (This is a conservative story, as the majority of home-schoolers are typically conservative, and so balanced views of the facts are difficult to find: liberal news outlets aren’t covering it, although I did see this piece in the Huffington Post.) Rights of U. S. citizens do not apply to the Romeike family, no matter how much their family portrait makes them appear to be Perfect Home-school-y Duggar-ish Types Who Would Vote Republican and Send Their Kids to Hillsdale, and no matter how rotten they perceive the German public school system to be. The family pulled their kids out of German schools in 2006. They were sent letters and visited by the authorities many times The Romeikes have been in the country since 2008, and were granted political refugee status in 2010.
The Romeikes said they felt the school was “turning the children against the family’s Christian values.” Because of this feeling, they removed their children from the school in 2006, an action that clearly violated the law, and is not under dispute. I can certainly understand wanting to protect one’s children from harmful influences (this is one reason we chose to home-school, as well), however, the Romeike’s reasoning for this drastic action is rather vague. What do they mean by “turning the children against the family’s Christian values”? Did one or more of the kids renounce their faith as a direct result of the school’s curriculum? If not, what constitutes enough of a turning to merit such flagrant rejection of the law? Did the Romeikes attempt to counter any teaching they felt to be contradictory to their faith at home? Were such attempts so unsuccessful that only removal from the school could save their children’s souls?
Michael Farris, of the HSLDA, has been quoted as saying, “Families that want to have an alternative education can’t get it in Germany. Even the private schools have to teach public school curriculum.” But, I would argue that Farris is wrong. Families can not *solely* have an alternative education in Germany under its current laws: all students are required to attend German public schools. Personally, I don’t see how this law prevents parents or students from pursuing alternative educational options in addition to their required public school subjects.
We’re not the boss of them.
The issue here, as I see it, is not educational freedom. It is national sovereignty. The Romeikes can teach their children anything they wish; but as German citizens, they are subject to the laws of Germany, and so they must also send their children to German schools. They have refused to comply with this law, saying it violates their parental and religious liberties. The family broke the law, and then fled to the United States. No matter how zealously we Americans believe in the rights of parents to educate their children in the way they see fit, we do not have the right to demand another sovereign nation follow our laws in this regard. Germany is not forcing the Romeikes to denounce their faith. They are not saying they can’t teach their children at home. They are only saying that German children must attend German public schools.
If the Romeikes were to renounce their German citizenship and apply to become legal citizens of the United States (I have seen nothing that indicates this to be the case), I would feel more sympathetic, but the fact is that this story sounds like just a way to incite the conservative home-school wing of the Republican party (as if they aren’t incensed enough already), and the Romeikes seem perfectly willing to be used in this manner if it means they can stay here. Especially with the overabundance of headlines reading like this: The Obama Administration Wants to Deport Christian Homeschoolers. Yeah, that’s not inflammatory. The administration isn’t even involved in any sort of hands-on way, except for the fact that the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security operate as a part of the Obama Administration until 2017. No one from the Executive branch has uttered a peep about this case that I can find.
The United States does not have the legal or moral authority to tell Germany, or any other country for that matter, how to run its public school systems. What if the situation were reversed? Would Americans tolerate Germany telling us how we should be educating our kids? What do you think?