on 16-05-2013 12:54 PM
for the family to be awarded Asylum.
A US appeals court has denied asylum to a Christian family who fled Germany so they could home-school their children, ruling that immigration laws do not grant a safe haven to people everywhere who face restrictions that would be prohibited under the Constitution.
Many US home-school families and evangelical Christians have taken up the cause of Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, who faced fines and the threat of losing custody of their children because they refused to comply with Germany's compulsory school attendance law.
In 2008, the Romeikes moved from Germany to the US and applied for asylum. That request was initially granted by an immigration judge in 2010. But the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned that ruling, and the Romeikes appealed.
On Tuesday, a three-member panel of US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Romeikes do not meet the criteria for asylum.
"The question is not whether Germany's policy violates the American Constitution, whether it violates the parameters of an international treaty or whether Germany's law is a good idea. It is whether the Romeikes have established the prerequisites of an asylum claim - a well-founded fear of persecution on account of a protected ground," the court wrote. In this case, that protected ground is religious freedom.
The court found that the German government treats all truants the same, regardless of their reasons for not attending school.
The Home School Legal Defence Association represented the Romeikes in court. Mike Donnelly, its director of international relations, said the Romeikes planned to appeal.
"The court ignored the evidence that Germany targets people for religious or philosophical reasons," Donnelly said, referring to a 2003 German Supreme Court decision that found the compulsory attendance law served a legitimate government interest of counteracting the development of parallel societies.
The 6th Circuit considered this argument but dismissed it, stating, "Any compulsory-attendance law could be said to have this effect."
The US government said in court documents the Romeikes did not belong to any particular Christian denomination and described the parents' objections to the government-approved schools as vague.
For instance, Uwe Romeike claimed that the schools taught witchcraft based on a game played by classmates of his wife when she was in school "that involved pushing chairs and glasses around, and dangling a pendulum."
on 16-05-2013 09:56 PM
She ele I believe homeschooled children can sit Naplan in Vic (not sure of other states) if they approach their local school and the local school allows it.
Homeschooling can be part time at home and school or full-time home-schooled. The VRQA Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority are the ones that homeschoolers must be registered with. They have the power to review home-school records in the state of Victoria. Different states have different processes, some are stricter than others.
My DD does Distance Education which is the states curriculum and they are brilliant. The kids have access to teachers and work comes in packages for them to complete. Under this system kids access Naplan and are supervised by the parent. The school has guidelines and work must be submitted on time.
My older two girls were homeschooled and I developed a lot of their curriculum in line with therapy, speech, physio and OT. I also had a lot of information on the required curriculum and spent many hours developing something that worked for them in line with the KLA's.
However in saying that they were very disabled and autistic but I still taught them to read and write. They both attend High School two days a week now and do brilliantly with an aide. Due to the level of disability they were exempt from Naplan when it came in.
on 16-05-2013 11:32 PM
Like Bella's girls, my son is enrolled with Distance Ed in Victoria.
He will be doing his Yr 9 NAPLAN tests next week under my supervision.
He is exempt from the writing task as he is not allowed to use a word processor and physically cannot write more than a few words at a time by hand.
As for the question in the OP, I don't know. If we were German, my son would be in all sorts of strife as mainstream schooling did not work for him. Mind you, the German system may be different to our mess.
on 17-05-2013 06:53 AM
I so admire any one who home schools.
Me, those 6 hours a day without them was what kept me sane :^O