Archive for the ‘education’ Category

The Prussian system of education, on which the US model was based, was designed to crank out good, obedient soldiers, loyal to the state.  Well, that’s all well and good for the state but not necessarily good for the family, is it?

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are not like other asylum seekers, people fleeing war or torture in places like Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. They’re music teachers from a village in southern Germany. And yet, in what appears to be the first case of its kind, the couple and their five children were granted asylum in the U.S. last week by an immigration judge who ruled that they had a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country for engaging in what has become a popular albeit somewhat controversial American practice – homeschooling their children.

The Romeikes, who are Evangelical Christians, took their three eldest children out of school in the town of Bissingen in 2006 because they were concerned about the impact the government-approved curriculum and the public-school environment would have on their social development. “Over the past 10 to 20 years, the curriculum in public schools in Germany has been more and more against Christian values, and my eldest children were having problems with violence, bullying and peer pressure. It’s important for parents to have the freedom to choose the way their children can be taught,” Uwe Romeike said in a statement provided by the couple’s attorney, Michael Donnelly of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).


But here’s the problem: in Germany it’s compulsory for children to attend school, and the Romeikes soon found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Local authorities slapped the couple with a $10,000 fine, and police even took their children to school when the Romeikes refused to send them. Fearing that they could lose custody of their kids or even be put in jail, the Romeikes fled to the U.S. in 2008, looking for a community where they could educate their kids as they saw fit.

That’s exactly what they found in Morristown, Tenn., a town of about 27,000 deep in the Bible Belt. Donnelly says the Romeikes flourished in the environment, becoming “very disciplined” teachers tackling subjects like math, history and social science with the help of textbooks and other teaching materials, all in accordance with state law. The couple also joined a local group that organizes activities and field trips for homeschooled children in the area. Once they were settled in their new community, they applied for asylum in the U.S., claiming they’d be persecuted if they were sent back to Germany. (See pictures of Detroit school kids’ dreams of the future.)

Memphis judge Lawrence Burman’s ruling sparked outrage in Germany. Authorities in the state of Baden-WÜrttemberg, where the Romeikes had lived, angrily dismissed suggestions that the couple had been persecuted. “We have compulsory schooling, and this law applies to everyone, including the Romeikes,” says Thomas Hilsenbeck, a spokesman for the state Education Ministry. “If parents don’t want to send their children to a public school, they can send them to alternative private schools.”

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

Uwe Romeike and his wife Hannelore work with their children at home in Morristown, Tenn.

Juergen and Rosemary Dudek of Archfeldt, Germany, were sentenced to 90 days in prison in July 2008 because they homeschool their children. Their sentence was overturned by an appeals court because of a legal error, and a new trial was ordered. Their new trial began November 16. German news reports indicate the judge appears disposed to seek a compromise. But prosecutor Herwig Mueller has vowed to appeal any sentence that does not include jail time for these parents, who have been in the spotlight for years because of their insistence on homeschooling. This was the same prosecutor who appealed the lower court sentence of only a fine, saying to the family, “You don’t have to worry about the fine because I will send you to jail.”

Source/Full Story: HSLDA

From: The Chalcedon Foundation

Once again, the Southern Baptist Convention has failed to stand up for Christian children.

Once again, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has agreed to leave Christian children in anti-Christian schools.

At the SBC’s annual meeting last week, the church’s Resolutions Committee stifled a resolution calling on the SBC to urge the removal of Christian children from California public schools. The resolution was not allowed out of committee for a vote on the convention floor.

The SBC has rejected similar resolutions at recent annual meetings. But this time the resolution addressed specific circumstances in a specific state.

Under a new state law, SB 777, California public schools are now required to teach the moral equivalency of all forms of sexual behavior, including homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. (for details, see “Now It’s the Law! California Schools Must Push Homosexuality). Schools are not given any options. They are forbidden to say or do anything that might imply that one sexual “lifestyle choice” is morally preferable to another.
Amendment Shot Down, Too

The SBC did pass a resolution “supporting a ballot initiative in California that will define marriage as only between one man and one woman” (see http://www.onenewsnow.com/Church/Default.aspx?id=137062)—but even in that action, rejected an amendment calling on California’s Christians to remove their children from the public schools “which are the main training ground for the teaching of same-sex marriage.”

The amendment was defeated, said church leaders, because the Resolutions Committee was “trying to stay focused” on the marriage issue and did not want to be distracted by “the corollary issues of the education system at this time.”

It is hard to imagine anything more pusillanimous.

Hmmm…

A judge instead set bond at just $46,000, which Stuart posted and then walked free.”There is no reason for him to be on the street,” said Beasley family attorney John Doyle.  “They found a small arsenal in his home which included assault weapons, and shotguns among other things.”Doyle went on to accuse Beasley of belonging to the ultra-right wing group, The Montana Freeman and pointed to that allegation as another reason Stuart does not deserve such a low bond.”Clearly I have concerns that someone charged with the crimes he is and is affiliated with organizations that are essentially Warren Jeffs organizations where they can disappear into the woodwork,” said Doyle.The topic of Stuart’s bond will be discussed during a hearing set for March 3rd.

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9
Feb

And yet another addition…

   Posted by: talitha

The Joshuah’s House network grows and grows…  Our latest addition is a collection of herbal household remedies for common illnesses.  It is a work still in progress (we reached the letter C in the alphabet of symptoms and illnesses so far) which started as a blog, and when we began to see more traffic we decided to buy the domain to have more control over the design etc.

Have a look:

Herbal Household Remedies

23
Jan

Don’t vaccinate!

   Posted by: talitha

I wrote a short article on why our children aren’t and won’t be given the usual shots against any number of illnesses, including childhood diseases. Good thing they are home schooled, as schools require your children to be vaccinated. Funnily enough, if they aren’t, they allegedly pose a threat to all the other (vaccinated) children who might get infected if your child falls ill even though they got their shots precisely to protect them- figure that one out. But oh well, let schools do what they see fit, we have nothing to do with them.

Have a look at why we oppose vaccination, you will find the biblical foundation for our position first, as usual.

Don’t vaccinate your children !

19
Nov

And who is surprised by this?

   Posted by: joshuah

We know what young people are doing more of: watching television, surfing the Web, listening to their iPods, talking on cellphones, and instant-messaging their friends. But a new report released today by the National Endowment for the Arts makes clear what they’re doing a lot less of: reading.The report – a 99-page compendium of more than 40 studies by universities, foundations, business groups, and government agencies since 2004 – paints a dire picture of plummeting levels of reading among young people over the past two decades. Among the findings:

Only 30 percent of 13-year-olds read almost every day.

The number of 17-year-olds who never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004.

Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure.

The average person between ages 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 1/2 hours a day watching TV and 7 minutes reading.

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