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German School Official Declares "Homeschooling Illegal"

PADERBORN COUNTY, Germany, January 12, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A German school official has ordered seven families homeschooling their children in Northwest Germany to enroll their children in public schools immediately, or the children will be forcibly removed by police and taken to school. Any resistance on the part of the parents will result in the children being removed from their homes, according to a Home School Legal Defense Association report.

The families argued that, as Christians, they wanted to protect their children from the godless and humanistic values being taught in public schools. They also assured officials that they were providing an adequate education through a German correspondence school.

County education director Heinz Kohler dismissed the families' beliefs, stating, "you and your children are not living in isolation on some island but rather in an environment posing intra- and extracurricular situations where you'll have to accept that your world view will be curtailed."

Kohler further explained that homeschooling could not be allowed as "children should not be encapsulated or kept apart from the outside world. In these cases, the parents' rights to personally educate their children would prevent the children from growing up to be responsible individuals within society…"

The Home School Legal Defense Association is calling all those concerned to contact their German embassy to voice disapproval of the measure:

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

The US embassy can also be e-mailed from its website: http://www.globescope.biz/germany/reg/index.cfm

Christian Pauls, Ambassador
German Embassy – Canada
1 Waverley Street, Ottawa, ON, K2P 0T8
Tel.: 613-232-1101 Fax: 613-594-9330
Email: germanembassyottawa@on.aibn.com

You may also contact the local German officials involved in the case:

Mr. Manfred Mueller landrat@kreis-paderborn.de (county official)

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