EU Court Rules German Persecution of Homeschoolers Does Not Violate European Convention on Human Rights
Homeschoolers in Germany suffered another loss today. Germany bans homeschooling, a ban possibly dating back to the Third Reich. See Home School Legal Defense Association E-lert Service, Sep. 22. Germany enforces the ban vigorously, prosecuting persistent homeschoolers with jail and home-raids. Several families have fled Germany to homeschool freely in Austria and other countries.
Today’s setback for parents’ rights came from the European Court of Human Rights. In a case partially funded by ADF, the parents of Rebekka and Josua Konrad asked the Court to hold that Germany’s ban on homeschooling violates their human rights as parents. Rebekka and Josua attended school at home through a privately supervised, but non-Germany-approved, homeschooling organization. Their parents believe that to raise Rebekka and Josua according to the Biblical mandate, they cannot expose the children to the “sex education” and violent peer culture at state schools.
Initially, a court in Frieburg ruled against the Konrads. The court gave lip service to the parents’ religious and educational freedom, but said that the government’s desires trumped both. In particular, the government wanted the children to interact with other children on the government’s terms, in public school, with “children from all backgrounds.” Even worse, the court said that the parents were violating Rebekka’s and Josua’s “rights.” You see, Rebekka and Josua “were unable to foresee the consequences of their parents’ decision” to protect their religious upbringing. Thus the children’s pre-maturity was not a reason to defer to their parents’ wishes, but was a way to impose the government’s child-raising decisions on the whole family. Never mind that Rebekka and Josua are also too young to judge the consequences of government-compelled enculturation. Heads, government wins; tails, parents lose.
German appeals courts affirmed the decision against homeschooling, and today the European Court of Human Rights rejected the Konrads’ application, adopting the reasoning of the Frieburg court. The ECHR added that the government’s interest in “safeguarding pluralism in education,” which “must be realized” through government schools, not only trumps parents rights but is itself a right of children that parents cannot infringe. Moreover, society has an interest in “avoid[ing] the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions and . . . integrating minorities into society.”
The ECHR appeared to be applying deferential review, and perhaps to that extent will be a positive precedent for judicial restraint and state sovereignty. I also wonder if Germany’s emphasis on avoiding “parallel societies” in the same breath with “integrating minorities” is rooted in cultural tension relating to the increasing Muslim population in Germany and Europe in general. Yet the reasoning behind the ECHR’s decision is deeply troubling. It not only elevates the government into the role of primary parent, but it does so under the sympathetic guise of children’s rights. Whatever the government wills is the child’s “right” against the parents. What the parents want is not mentioned as a child’s right. Hmmm. This double standard can only be explained by a fundamentally socialistic, materialistic worldview that places government above all authority.
Perhaps the argument in favor of Rebekka’s and Josua’s “right” to experience peer poison sounds familiar to you. That’s because some secular moderns stylishly refuse to instruct their children in any religion, so that their kids will be “free” to decide what to believe when they grow up. Such parents conveniently ignore the fact that their children are being deprived of the freedom to grow up in a religious tradition. As a great thinker once wrote, “if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.” The lack of religious instruction assumes and establishes a dogma, be it relativism or outright atheism. Likewise, “freeing” children from their parents’ decision to learn at home affirmatively establishes the environment of being enculturated at school. The notion of children’s “rights” in this context is not neutral–it is the government saying that children have the right to learn however the government says, and no other. It is the positive adoption of certain values (learning in the public school culture), to the exclusion of parental rights. Its only justification is the idea that the government is the primary parent.
The prospect of jail and jack-booted thugs snatching homeschooled children in Germany naturally raises the issue of whether German parents could seek asylum in the United States. The standard for “persecution” under immigration law is rather high, so such a case could be difficult. Even more explosive would be the political implications of accepting religious refugees from Germany in the 21st century. But the reality is that Germany, in the commonly understood sense of the term, is “persecuting” devout Christians who seek to exercise their basic right to be the primary educators of their children.