A letter to the Honorable Ambassador of Germany to the United States

September, 24, 2006

To the Honorable Wolfgang Ischinger
Ambassador
German Embassy
4645 Reservoir Road NW
Washington, DC, 20007-1998
(202) 298-4000


Dear Sir:

About 20 years ago local American governments were reacting to home schooling families in a similar fashion that local German governments are acting now toward German home schooling families. Since then the local American governments have come to realize the great positive impact on society that home schooled children have had, as well as the superior education most receive over the public and even private school counterparts. Our most prestigious universities now seek out these home-educated students. Laws have been challenged and changed to allow this basic principle of liberty for parents to be able to freely educate their own children without state interference.

German governments also need to make home schooling legal. Over 40 families are being prosecuted in Germany merely for teaching their children at home. These families have been given huge fines, some parents have been jailed, some have been forced to flee to other countries, and they are all being threatened to take their children into state custody. This is deplorable and unacceptable for any free nation to persecute Christian families who are providing an excellent education for their children. We ask you to stop prosecuting these families like the Maisches, the Pletts, the Bauers, the Rudolphs, and the many others. We as Americans have learned this lesson. (Though in all honesty we still battle a desire by state bureaucrats to continue to encroach upon these freedoms.) I hope that Germany sees the need to make Home schooling legal as well.

My own children, descendants of German immigrants, are home schooled, and as a public school educator myself, I see the tremendous positive growth my own children enjoy far and beyond what the publicly educated children of my own community enjoy. We have exceptional schools here in my community as evidenced by state test scores and local community sentiment, and yet I would not have my children in that environment any more than I would have my children consume a diet of junk food and soda pop. They would be alive, but not healthy. Please allow German families to provide an educational diet for their children that would not leave the soul of their children malnourished and their minds under-educated, which is typical of any public educational system in any country compared to the home-education model.

Thank you for passing on my concerns to the officials who can rectify this situation.

Sincerely,

Home School father
American Public School Educator
Concerned Global Citizen



This letter is in response to an HSLDA bulletin requesting homeschoolers to respond to this HSLDA E-lert here. This in response to a homeschooling family that had to flee the country while the mother was taken into custody and imprisoned, as well as other atrocities. See link here.

I couldn't help calling myself a "Concerned Global Citizen" . It sounded so.....United Nations or something. I guess that's what happens when you work in an environment that is so "sensitive" to other's predispositions. Please don't call the P.C. police. I'm not really that bad off. Just a little mischievous sometimes. :-)

I do encourage everyone to make contact with the German embassy this week. I think we all would like the German homeschoolers we would be supporting to support us in the same way should we be in similar circumstances. In fact, I'm sure they would feel compelled to do so given their current experiences to help anyone going through what they are enduring now. You can see how I used part of the HSLDA template in my letter and modified it. It's not that hard.

I know some may think that they are not clever or important enough to respond to an embassy of a foreign power, but think of it this way....if you were in the house of the German family invaded by police to cart off their children to the local sewer, I mean public school....Wouldn't you at least voice your outrage to these officials? Put yourself there, then write or call next week. Be diplomatic :-) Maybe just a little honery too. :-). Try not to mention Hitler, though it was his regime that made home education illegal in Germany in the first place in 1938.

Pray for these precious German homeschool families.