DOJ: Governments can punish homeschoolers

 The U.S. Department of Justice has revealed in a court filing it agrees with the philosophy of the German government that bureaucrats can punish homeschooling parents.

The agency contended parental rights to keep children free from instruction that violates faith essentially are negligible when the government’s goal is an “open society.”

The arguments were made in a pleading before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that urges the judges to send a German homeschooling family, the Romeikes, back to Germany where members likely would face persecution.

“The goal in Germany is for an ‘open, pluralistic society,’” wrote the government’s pleading, signed by Senior Litigation Counsel Robert N. Markle in Washington.

German law, he argued, requires attendance at government schools, and punishment is levied against anyone failing to comply, even due to  religious objections.

His argument to the appellate court cited a German court decision, which stated: “The general public has a justified interest in counteracting the development of religiously or philosophically motivated ‘parallel societies’ and in integrating minorities in this area. Integration does not only require that the majority of the population does not exclude religious or ideological minorities, but, in fact, that these minorities do not segregate themselves and that they do not close themselves off to a dialogue with dissenters and people of other beliefs. Dialogue with such minorities is an enrichment for an open pluralistic society.

The learning and practicing of this in the sense of experienced tolerance is an important lesson right from the elementary school stage. The presence of a broad spectrum of convictions in a classroom can sustainably develop the ability of all pupils in being tolerant and exercising the dialogue that is a basic requirement of democratic decision-making process.”

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DOJ: Governments can punish homeschoolers