Persecuted Germans find political asylum in the US

Take note, DMC, that I did not use any personal insults in my initial posts. However, I will not engage in unilateral "personal insult" disarmament.

What seems quite clear is that these lefties cannot "tolerate" aggressive conservative posters and will respond with their typical INtolerent lefty vitriol when challenged. How "tolerant" of them.

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Yes, I saw it. And there were no personal insults in my post which was just above this quoted one. Is it now a "personal insult" to state that you find government policies "offensive" or to point out that another poster's comments are "offensive"?

 

Pre-emptively, just so *I* am the first to fulfil Godwin's Law ...

Hitler!

 

Ragusa also pointed out there are religious schools available - it's not like they're being told SECULAR EDUCATION OR ELSE. The parents believed a religious school was inferior to their home teachings - the implication in this topic and the news report was they rejected schooling options BASED on religious views.

Homeschooling based on the fact the parents believe the textbooks are full of swearing, foul language and blasphemy - along with stating the textbooks are about witches and vampires rather than about their god. Indicating a fair bit of imbalance on the side of the parents to be honest, or perhaps they have been shown fiction rather than a textbook.

 

Oh no you didnt Ragusa, crucis first version of his post and the one which I replied to ended with a "Sieg Heil".

 

LOL!

 

This conversation got ridiculous fast...

I'm not sure where I stand on home schooling. On one hand, I think that the current school system is absolute crap and so home school seems like a decent option if they can do better (I don't honestly think it would be hard to do better). On the other hand, home school is generally an excuse by the batshit crazy to exclusively drill a single ideology into their skulls.

So, yes, I sympathise with both sides. Would ultimately have to lean towards the home schoolers, I guess, even though I find their reasons for doing so abhorrent ('our children must be kept ignorant!').

 

Oh, thank you. Just what we need here.

As Ragusa pointed out there are plenty of private schools.

 

Not plenty but enough.

 

We have plenty of private schools here. In fact, it's big business. I've been opposed to the notion of complusory education for a long time. The reason that the public school system suffers is because it is mostly filled with morons who don't want to be there.

I think that at a certain point, if someone does not want to be in the public school system he/she should either leave, or be asked to leave. Learning is a privilege - the opportunity for a public education should be coveted not forced on those who have no desire to learn. Those "students" tend to ruin it for those who want to be there and want to learn, and they also make it more difficult for teachers to do their jobs.

 

Crucis, just to point this out, saying a policy or even post is offensive is not a personal insult. Saying a person is offensive, however, is.

As for private education, the problem with that option is that it tends to be pricy. So, what, only rich people can shelter their kids from (left, right, communist, capitalist, racist, sexist, humanist, or any other -ist) propaganda? The home-schooling option is a chance for the not-independantly-wealthy parents who aren't happy with the public piss-poor system to attempt to do better themselves. I understand the need for regulation of such home schools, and support it when it's done right, but the schools themselves should stay.

 

That must be at a very late stage though, surely? There's lots of kids from bad backgrounds who don't want to be there. Letting them leave would just create a large underclass of people who would have serious problems with basic reading and maths.

The case itself seems ridiculous. Surely asylum should be reserved for major humanitarian cases?

 

Very nice.... (and, no, that was not a slam... just an acknowledgement of a mildly funny post.)

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Chandros, I understand what you're saying, but I think that there's an after effect that you fail to address. It's all well and good to say that teens who choose not to be educated can refuse. However, you end up with people who will have extremely or no basic skills, and quite likely no job skills... under or un-educated people who liberals like yourself will then likely try to compel everyone else to molly-coddle (through government) with excessive amounts of welfare. People who choose to make themselves unskilled and nearly unemployable shouldn't also be allowed to expect everyone else to pick of the tab for their decision to do so.


It's also worth noting that this sort of belief (not making basic, aka thru High School, education compulsory) might be supportable in a pre-technical society such as in the 1800's or before. However, in today's modern society, it seems to me that a person without even the most minimal of set of basic skills, and more likely some more advanced ones, will be exceptionally hard pressed to support him or herself, at least in an industrialized country.

It's rather questionable if there are enough jobs in this country (the US, that is) for every citizen that has only a HS education. How much worse will the situation be if children (and that's what we're talking about here ... minor children) are not compelled to attain even that minimal level of education? It's not simply a question of will anyone employ them, but would there even be enough such no-skill jobs to be had at all?

And if there are not (and quite possibly even if there were), removing the compulsion to attend school could quite likely create a considerable increase in crime.

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Shouldn't religious persecution (well, at least "perceived" persecution by the parents) be worthy of asylum? If some family converted to Christianity or even Atheism in a Muslim country and was under the threat of death for doing so, would you not think that worthy of asylum? I sure would. Granted, comparing that to the case of these german parents is a bit extreme, but it's still religious persecution. How extreme does the persecution have to be before it warrants asylum?

And BTW, I'm not all that sure that it was necessary to grant asylum to these german parents. I'm not sure that their "persecution" was so severe that it warranted being thought of as requiring "asylum". Could not the situation been sufficiently rectified by just letting them emigrate to the US? Generally, I think of "asylum" as something that occurs when the person needs to "escape" from a country that either doesn't want to let them leave, or wants to kill them. I have a hard time believing that Germany wouldn't have just let the family emigrate to the US (or wherever) if it was their desire to go to a more friendly environment towards home schooling, whatever their reason for wishing to home school their children might be.

 

..And that would be different in what way?

I had considered a career in teaching very seriously. I questioned a number of teachers very closely to find out what their experieces were in the public school system. It varies quite a bit from district to district.

Nevertheless, they spend half their time babysitting problem students, even in the best scenarios. In the worst ones, the teachers had their lives threatened for not giving students a passing grade. One complained that when she failed a student who threatened her, she found the windows in her car smashed in and later her tires were flattened. She came to the conclusion it was just easier to pass failing students rather than put up with the threats.

When I was selling computers in the early days, we had a guy come on with us part-time over Xmas. He had been teaching (I can't remember how many years, but it was quite a few) in one of the worst districts in the area, and received a little more in compensation becasue the district was known to be pretty rough - sort of "combat" pay.

After working with us over Xmas he quit his job teaching and stayed on with us. He was a very good salesmen and had also occasionally worked in the computer lab in his school district so he had some good product knowledge. His was elated to be with us, because so many students had threatened him over the years, and he was tired of fearing for his life. One of his students was caught with a handgun in the school. That was 6th grade!

Later I had befriended a German lady who was teaching German in the same district. I knew she hated it, because of how disrespectful the students had been towards her. When I last saw her she had had enough and said she was returning to Germany because she clamied she had never seen kids so out of control.

My point is that many of these students will never attain minimal standards anyway so why bother. They drive off good teachers and prevent good students from learning by disrupting classes. In fact, they are lowering standards in our schools by their very presence.

 

'Minimal standards' is stuff like, say, being able to read a bus timetable. I've never met anybody around my age who would be incapable of basic tasks like that but go back two or four generations and you would find a minority who couldn't do that. That's a colossal handicap and I wouldn't like to see people like that making a reappearance.

I'm very curious as to why they went to the US. According to rather dodgy site which does give a nice list homeschooling is legal in most EU states, all of which the family could have freely moved to without any hassle. Austria would presumably have had the benefit of speaking the same language. It just seems strange to me. Although I get the impression the US is much more accepting of home schooling, just because it's legal elsewhere doesn't mean it isn't frowned upon.

 

Déise, you aren't creating it if it already exists. My bet is the numbers wouldn't even increase much, sadly. And, yes, I'm including reading skills in that. And basic math. And telling time.

 

My 8-year-old, who is in 2nd grade, could probably do that now. That's not what I would consider minimal standard.

 

Here, here!

 

Public schools don't generally have a different system of teaching than private schools. It's the system that I think is crap.

I agree with you about mandatory attendance though - even if children were forced to be in school until a certain age, there's no reason they should be in the classroom if they don't want to be. That's not helpful to anyone.

 

I don't know, I think that in many cases the problem is that deadbeat parents wouldn't bother their kid to school so they can skimp on the (minimal) costs involved. Besides, many of my classmates considered school boring and a waste of time at the time... I think that their perspective might have shifted somewhat since.

Anyway, that couple is definitely weird. I can understand emigrating, but actually requesting asylum? It might be some trick to speed the process up or increase their chances of getting visas, but it's still, to put it plainly, odd. I also find it a little odd that they didn't enroll the kid in a religious school, I do remember hearing about those when I was in Germany. Maybe they were of a rare denomination that didn't have a school of their own, and didn't want the kids raised by heretics ?

All in all, it's a rather odd ruling imo. Also, the court cited a, I quote "a well-founded fear of persecution". I find this rather confusing - what constituted this persecution, exactly? Sending your kids to school - private or public, religious or otherwise, as long as it is sanctioned - is mandatory; if you consider it persecution there's no "well-founded fear" about it, it exists. Obviously if it's illegal to keep your kids at home without an official reason the school authorities may inform the police.