Fox News (and many other news outlets) passed along an Associated Press report that homeschooling is (still) illegal in Germany and that German homeschooling parents are political refugees seeking the protection of American laws that allow homeschooling under various conditions.
An equivalent article in the German news might be that public nudity is (still) illegal in the United States and that nudist parents caught naked in public, and subsequently fleeing prosecution as sexual criminals in the United States, are political refugees in Germany because of German laws that protect public nudity in specific German places. ("Nacktbaden Special" would roughly translate to "sunbathing special" but with "nackt" being "naked," not "sun")
The AP article is a superficial overview of the situation of German homeschooling families, and appears not to be overly burdened by too much understanding of cultural differences between the United States and Germany, or of the political usefulness in the United States of the plight of German families who homeschool. I wonder if the tactic of 'hardening Pharaoh's heart' that worked so well in in the Pentateuch book of Exodus is in play? If it is, I hope it does not ruin the chances of homeschooling ever winning official German approval. Mixing my Biblical stories, I hope German homeschoolers don't wind up as Isaac almost did. Who will play the angel who showed up in time before the nick?
For the people not up on their stories from the Torah (which is what the first five books of the collection was, and still is, called before it all acquired the moniker of 'the Old Testament'), hardening Pharaoh's heart provoked a reaction among the target audience (the Hebrews who were then sojourning in Egypt). God said to the pharaoh, "Let my people go;" with God's help Pharaoh didn't; so God and his people got up and went.
The plan of invoking an image of 'the scary German' today (and thus hardening the German Bureaucrat's heart) might be in someone's playbook for, perhaps, rallying support for things such as parental rights amendments: "Don't let it happen HERE!"
All well and good, unless you're living THERE.
Other blog posts by me about the situation of German homeschooling families:
Homeschooling in Germany and a comparison of viewpoints
HSLDA epiphany about homeschooling in Germany
Why are Germans leaving Germany?
Homeschool petition presented to European Parliament Petitions Committee
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