Major setback for homeschoolers

Look, it’s become so big and burgeoning a movement that Time magazine did a cover story on it a few years back. Homeschooling is getting respect.

Except in Germany.

Homeschooling, along with any educational institution other than state-run schools, was outlawed by Adolf Hitler in 1938. But a recent decline, both academically and morally, in the country’s public school system has more and more German parents looking for better ways to educate their children.

“The German people want options,” said Christopher J. Klicka, senior counsel at the Virgina-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) which consults with homeschooling organizations in Germany and other nations. “They want to get out of the public school system so they’re testing the limits, and the German government is slamming their fingers as soon as they try.”

It’s bad there, and it has serious ramifications beyond the borders of that country.

The situation became even more grave on Sept. 27, when the European Court of Human Rights delivered a stunning defeat to another German couple, Fritz and Marianna Konrad, who had argued for the right to homeschool their two children.

The Konrads contended that Germany’s compulsory school attendance laws were a violation of their human rights.

The human rights court ruled: “Parents may not refuse the right to education of a child on the basis of their convictions,” adding that the right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the state.”

Chilling wording in that statement.

Klicka said his association was “very disappointed” by the ruling. “When you look at the language of the European Union (EU) human rights constitution — which is a higher law over all the 25 countries of the European Union — they have a reference to a parent’s right to educate their children. When you look at wording of the constitution, it looks pretty good.

“But when I looked at the opinion of this Court, and how they interpreted the German situation, I was incredulous at how they took the plain language of the human rights constitution and just twisted it up to come up with this ruling.”

That’s how secular orthodoxy is spreading its belief system. Since it does not follow reason or intellectual honesty, secularists have to twist plain language into incoherent mandates and then enforce them as law. It’s happening across the spectrum of cultural issues that threaten traditional respect for natural law and moral order.

The first and critical step is to take back the language and enforce that.