Christian fundamentalists have challenged the ban of home-schooling in Germany in German courts as well as before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and have never succeeded. In 2006, the ECHR declared an appeal against a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court and against Administrative Courts' decisions inadmissible (Konrad v. Germany).

Christian fundamentalists have launched a campaign to legalize home-schooling in Germany a few years ago which has been totally unsuccessful by now. One of the main arguments for legalizing home schooling is that compulsory school education had been introduced by Hitler in the Reich Compulsory School Education Act (Reichsschulpflichtgesetz) of 1938. This is, of course, a lie. As far as I can see, everay time Christian fundamentalists use the words Hitler or Nazi, they are lying. Until the establishment of the Third Reich, education had been subject so state (Länder) legislation. It is true that until the establishment of the Weimar Republic in 1919, German state laws allowed home schooling to some extent. But compulsory school education was not introduced by Hitler in 1938. It was introduced by the several German states following the coming into effect of the Weimar Constitution which provided in its Article 145 that school education is compulsory.

Attempts to make school education compulsory in Germany date back as early as the late 17th and the early 18th century. In 1717, the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I. issued an order commanding "that the parents send their kids to school". The problem at that time was that the states were very weak and unable to enforce such legislation. The royal orders mandating parents to send their kids to school couldn't be enforced simply because there weren't enough schools. Public schools had to be built and funded by the local nobility which simply refused to do so. It took until the late 19th century until a public school system that was able to school all German kids had been established.

One of the reasons for the introduction of compulsory school education after World War I was that home schooling was seen as a privilege of the upper class before the revolution of 1918. One motive for the democratic parties in the Weimar Republic to outlaw home schooling was to abolish that privilege. Hitler's law simply standardized the different state laws that had already widely outlawed home-schooling. After World War II, the ban of home-schooling that was introduced during the Weimar Republic was upheld in post-war state laws.

Another fact that the Christian fundamentalists don't mention is that compulsory school education doesn't mean that children have to be sent to public schools. The German constitution, the Basic Law, guarantees the right to establish private schools in its Article 7. It especially mentions the right to build a confessional school. Christian fundamentalists who don't want their kids to get sexual education in public schools are free to build their own school, and Christian fundamentalists are doing so around the country. Although private schools have to operate under the supervision of government authorities, they enjoy a large degree of freedom even to teach their kids a lot of religious garbage, and they are heavily subsidized by the state governments.

Following the U.S. immigration judges decision, Mike Donnelly, the attorney for the Home School Legal Defense Association, said he hopes Tuesday's ruling will influence public opinion in Germany. Ad far as I can see it, it doesn't. To the contrary, it strengthens the image of the U.S. to be the land of the religious loons. Here in Europe, Christian fundamentalist beliefs don't enjoy the same respect that they have in North America. Someone who would go on the street to preach that we'd be living in the end times and that the Antichrist will conquer Jerusalem, that all believers would be raptured and the rest would suffer the tribulation would likely end up in a mental hospital. The vast majority of the population here is either atheist or agnostic or has a very vague faith and strictly refuses to take scripture seriously. So should we legalize home-schooling to satisfy these evangelical loons? Hell no!

On the other hand, I'm not really happy with the German courts' decisions against home schooling. The main argument of the Federal Constitutional Court is that education in schools is necessary because kids can't get social skills when they get their education at home. This doesn't convince me because home-schooling doesn't necessarily mean that children are isolated from the rest of the world. Religious people very likely put their kids into religious groups where they have to interact with other kids and develop social skills. It may be reasonable to force parents to send their kids to a (public or private) school if parents totally isolate their children, but if they don't, I don't see a valid reason to outlaw home-schooling completely. Contrary to Germany, Austria only mandates that kids have to get an education, be it in a school or at home. In Austria, kids may be home-schooled, but they are required to pass regular tests before state authorities (Externistenprüfungen) , and Austrian authorities will only deny the parents the right to home-school their children if these tests show that the parents are unable to give their children a sufficient education. In my opinion, the Austrian model provides a much better balance of the parents' rights to raise their children and the children's' rights to get an education.

There's one thing about this that really, really, really pisses me off: Once again, these American right wing Christian fundamentalist idiots couldn't resist to make an utterly stupid argumentum ad Hitlerum that shows that they are too uneducated get even the simplest lesson that one should learn from the German history of the first half of the 20th century. What the fuck do these self-centered American religious extremists think who they are? Do these idiots really believe that their Glenn-Beck-Pat-Robertson-Sa rah-Palin-Fox-Noise style bullshit will be taken seriously here? If you Americans are taken in by this crap, fine, that's your problem. We Europeans are above that that.

Links: The Guardian - Spiegel Online (English) - Deutsche Welle (English) - Heinrich Ricking: Schulabsentismus als Forschungsgegenstand (PDF, German)