German Homeschooling Refugees Can Stay in U.S. for Another Year
https://reason.com/2024/10/30/german-homeschooling-refugees-can-stay-in-u-s-for-another-year/

Wow, Germany's pretty authoritarian huh

@admitsWrongIfProven I was homeschooled before secondary school and I turned out fine.

“The police were knocking at the door, and one day they took the children to school, and the children were crying because the policemen took the schoolbags by force,” Uwe Romeike told Deutsche Welle in 2009.

The family also faced “fines eventually totaling over $11,000” and “threats that they would lose custody of their children,” according to The New York Times.

The Romeikes had run afoul of schulpflicht, Germany’s legal duty to send children to state-approved schools. The intent, explains the country’s Federal Constitutional Court, is to prevent “the emergence of religious or ideologically motivated ‘parallel societies’” that disagree with prevailing ideas.

(Bold emphasis mine; but I don’t speak German so I can’t judge whether Reason’s interpretation of the law is accurate)

If this isn’t authoritarian to you then I don’t know what to say.

@Hyolobrika @admitsWrongIfProven they're talking about Jehovah's Witness and sects and stuff like that

parents obviously still ideologically influence their kid but some groups just outright try to keep their kids away from ever encountering real life, to brainwash them

@lizzy @admitsWrongIfProven What do you mean?
I was part of a "home education group" as a child and there was one family there who were Catholic and educated their kids in their religion (creationism and everything probably). Is that what you're talking about? Because they seem to have turned out alright too.

@Hyolobrika @admitsWrongIfProven i mean, if it's just elementary school it's probably not that big of a problem.

I'm not saying that homeschooling in general is automatically bad, but I'm saying that there's a risk of sects using it to keep their children away from the outside world.