Aug31 German schools: Integrating children into society
You know, I always thought that the purpose of public schools and compulsory educations laws was to ensure that children are educated. Not so in Germany. Andre R lives in Hamburg with his wife Frauke. Andre has a university degree in teaching, which he got for his children’s sake. Andre and his wife, both evangelical Christians, home school their children, believing the public schools to be a bad moral influence on their children.
Andre is far more qualified to educate his kids than my parents are. Washington State allows my parents to educate their kids at home anyway, but the German authorities have applied to seize custody of Andre’s children, making them wards of the state.
When do you draw the line? When is a parent qualified to educate their own children? Apparently a college degree that probably allows you to teach at a public school is not good enough to educate your own children in Germany.
I argue that parents need no special training to educate their children. The home education model has been proven for literally hundreds of years, with uneducated parents educating their children and uneducated people educating themselves. Our modern form of schooling is still relatively new compared to home schooling. Sure, schools and teachers have been around for a long time, but the “one size fits all” system with no specialization until college is a recent concept.
But it’s not even about the education of the children, according to German educators.
A majority of home-schooling parents are concerned that schools will undermine the religious commitment of their children. German educators argue in reply that schools are a means to integrate children into society.
How wrong I’ve been! Here I was thinking that the purpose of public education was to educate people. But the German system has opened my eyes. Boy, I hope us Americans take a leaf out of their book!
Beware, people. If we fail to stand up for our convictions and advocate freedom of choice for others besides pregnant sixteen-year-olds we just might end up taking a leaf out of the book of the Germans.
(Thanks Spunky for originally posting on this subject)
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 8:58 am in Politics. You can subscribe to the comment feed to follow replies or leave a trackback from your own site.