the homeschooling persecution

A recent article in Time Magazine (March 8, 2010) reminded me sharply of another difference between the education systems in the United States and Germany: homeschooling. In Germany it is illegal, in the United States legal and widely practiced.

The only case of homeschooling I remember from Germany involved a U.S. American family. One of my friends interned at the U.S. Consulate General in Leipzig back then. She mentioned that they now have to mediate between the parents and the German state. The Americans just assumed they can do as back home. Far out. Indeed, as I learnt from the article, school visits are mandatory by law since 1717.

Interestingly, the case that might now cause political tensions between the otherwise firm allied countries involves a highly religious family that felt persecuted by the German police. Meet the Romeikes:

"The Romeikes are not your typical asylum seekers. They did not come to the U.S. to flee war or despotism in their native land. No, these music teachers left Germany because they didn't like what their children were learning in public school — and because homeschooling is illegal there.

"It's our fundamental right to decide how we want to teach our children," says Uwe Romeike, an Evangelical Christian and a concert pianist who sold his treasured Steinway to help pay for the move.

Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. "My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care," Romeike says of the incident.

So why did he seek asylum in the U.S. rather than relocate to nearby Austria or another European country that allows homeschooling? Romeike's wife Hannelore tells TIME the family was contacted by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which suggested they go to the U.S. and settle in Morristown, Tenn. The nonprofit organization, which defends the rights of the U.S. homeschooling community — with its estimated 2 million children, or about 4% of the total school-age population — is expanding its overseas outreach. And on Jan. 26, the HSLDA helped the Romeikes become the first people granted asylum in the U.S. because they were persecuted for homeschooling."

Read more: Give me your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Homeschool. Why the Romeikes Got Political Asylum