Stumble It!
(HT: Andrew at the Club for Growth)
Yes Prime Minister on School choices
By admin | August 21, 2008
Required Viewing on School Choice
No wonder we choose to Home Educate and not send our children to the Government Schools
Topics: Youtube | No Comments »
Please vote for Susan (Certainity) - a homeschooler
By admin | August 21, 2008
Please vote for Susan (Certainity) - a homeschooler (I actually think her video clip is the best - Barbara)
Hi all,
Susan (a home educator) is a finalist in a TV NZ competition. To enter, she had to prepare a 30 second video of herself as a superhero.
The prize is an opportunity to appear on television.
The six finalists appear on the following website:
We are asking you to please take the time to vote, before Sunday. Preferably for Susan (Certainty) 
If you decide to watch all the videos, please be aware that each download begins with an advertisement.
To vote for Susan, look for the link, below the videos on the first page, and vote for Certainty.
Please forward this to anyone else you can think of who might be able to help us out.
Thanks
Vicky
Topics: Challenges and competitions | No Comments »
Nationwide contact for home education enquiries
By admin | August 20, 2008
Greetings all,
There have been a couple of requests lately for people willing to give exemption advice and encouragement.
Just a reminder that this is precisely what we at the Home Education Foundation are here for!
We help with preparing for exemptions and ERO reviews, how to understand and answer the exemption questions, we sit in on ERO Reviews with people, and I’ve even been a witness at a court case involving home educaiton and socialisation. We have tons of material on socialisation, research results in both academic and social areas, ideas on curriculum development and getting into university and links to other information that we send out for free. We have 22 years of experience in teaching our own 8 children aged 28 down to 3 (yes, we’re still at it) and running conferences and speaking in nearly every corner of the country. Barbara just talked a mum who was full of panic through her ERO review preparation, and the mum passed with flying colours! I just wrote a letter to the Hamilton office of the MoE about what I thought was unfair treatment in an exemption application…the mum emailed today to say the exemption just came through!
Being a charitable trust, we do not charge for anything we send out or for our advice, even though most phone calls last between a half hour to a full hour or more. We trust the Lord to move people to make donations as they see fit and to subscribe to Keystone http://hef.org.nz/category/keystone-magazine/ and TEACH Bulletin http://hef.org.nz/category/teach-bulletin/. Although we personally are committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Home Education Foundation is committed to rescuing ANY children out of state schooling institutions and to giving as much help and encouragement as we can to any and all parents and grandparents wanting to have a go at home education.
So don’t hesitate to get people to ring us or send an email. We don’t have an 0800 number but if people ring us on a landline, we can ring them back so we pay for the call since it costs us next to nothing. And we both just signed up with Skype:
craig.s.smith1
and
barbara.e.smith1
Regards,
Craig & Barbara Smith
National Directors
Home Education Foundation
PO Box 9064
Palmerston North 4441
New Zealand
Ph. +64 6 357-4399
Fax +64 6 357-4389
craig@hef.org.nz
http://www.hef.org.nz
Serving, promoting, defending and publishing for Christian and secular home educators in NZ and overseas since 1986.
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/NewZealand/
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/KiwiSmithFamily/
http://www.familyintegrity.org.nz
http://www.issacharian.com/
http://www.photoblog.com/charmagne
http://www.cbworldview.cesbooks.co.nz
Home Education Foundation products of Trademe:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144
Smith personal trademe:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=232813
Topics: Applying for exemption, Contact US, ERO Review, Getting started, Help for HE Families | No Comments »
California Children Still Considered State Property
By admin | August 20, 2008
“Are parents mere drudges whose social duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory indoctrination sessions at government-approved schools? The answer could determine not only the future of homeschooling but the future of education in America.”
And New Zealand…………….
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2008/08/19/california-children-still-considered-state-property/
Thomas A. Bowden
In a decision being widely hailed as a victory for parental rights, a Los Angeles County court has confirmed, grudgingly, that homeschooling “is permitted under California statutes.” In so ruling, the court reversed an earlier decision that ordered the parents of “Rachel L.” to send her away to a public or private school, where she could get a “legal education.”
But where’s the real victory for parents’ rights? Rights identify actions you can take without permission. A true victory would have been a judicial declaration that parents have an absolute right to control their children’s upbringing–and that they therefore don’t need government permission to educate their children as they see fit.
Instead, as this decision makes clear, California’s parents are expected to accept the status of perpetual supplicants, knees bent and backs bowed down to an all-powerful legislature that can decide at any moment to revoke its homeschooling “permission.”
Neither the state nor “society as a whole” has any interests of its own in your child’s education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the government’s only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, including yours and your children’s, against physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can override your rights.
To give parents a permanent victory, California would need to make its law consistent with America’s founding principles. Parents are sovereign individuals whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness includes the right to control their child’s upbringing. Other citizens, however numerous or politically powerful, have no moral right to substitute their views on child-raising for those of the father and mother who created that child.
Instead, a proper legal system recognizes and protects parents’ moral right to pursue the personal rewards and joys of child-raising. At every stage, you have a right to set your own standards and act on them without government permission. This parental right to control your child’s upbringing includes the right to manage his education, by choosing an appropriate school or personally educating him at home.
Of course, there are certain situations in which government must step in to protect the rights of a child, as in cases of physical abuse or neglect. But no such concern for individual rights can account for California’s arrogant assertion of state control over the minds of all school-age children residing within its borders.
Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a child’s parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias.
By confirming that homeschooling is legal in California (at least for the time being), the recent court decision will undoubtedly quiet the shockwaves that were threatening to impact the apologists for government education–teachers’ unions, educational bureaucrats, and politicians. Their political and financial survival depends on a policy that treats children as, in effect, state property–but they have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, when the undiluted collectivism of that policy is trumpeted publicly.
The defenders of public schooling can now go back to papering over their system’s own failures??the very failures that helped fuel the homeschooling movement, by driving desperate parents to seek refuge from the irrationality, violence, and mediocrity that have come to characterize government education, in California and elsewhere.
But what if parents stopped groveling and started asking whether the state has any right at all to be running schools, dictating educational standards for children, and “permitting” parents to homeschool their own kids? This would call into question the moral foundation of public education as such.
As the smoke clears from the current round of litigation, the battle lines remain as they were, clearly drawn. Are parents mere drudges whose social duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory indoctrination sessions at government-approved schools? Or are they sovereign individuals whose right to guide their children’s development the state may not infringe?
The answer could determine not only the future of homeschooling but the future of education in America.
Thomas A. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes.
Topics: International Home Education | No Comments »
German Youth Authorities Allow Gorber Children Home ‘Temporarily’
By admin | August 19, 2008
Germany |
August 19, 2008
German Youth Authorities Allow Gorber Children Home ‘Temporarily’
In a surprise decision earlier this week, the Youth Welfare Authorities in Germany, the “Jugendamt,” have allowed the remaining five Gorber children to return home until the beginning of September. The five girls have been kept in youth homes for the last eight months with minimal visitation from their family.
The family’s attorneys have been arguing that there is no valid reason for the Jugendamt to retain custody of the girls. Earlier this month, a German family court judge ordered that the Jugendamt retain custody of the school-age children because the judge feared the parents would refuse to enroll the children in school and undergo court-ordered psychiatric examinations.
Mr. and Mrs. Gorber are so pleased that their children are now home with them. A person close to the family reported that the “children have held up well under the circumstances and have not been susceptible to manipulation by the Jugendamt or other children in the homes. This is a real testimony of the strength of the family and the parents.”
Despite Germany’s inhospitable education laws, the Gorbers have homeschooled there for quite some time, motivated by their sincere religious convictions. In January, authorities seized the Gorbers’ seven minor children in an aggressive raid of the family home conducted while the parents were absent. At the time of the raid, Mr. Gorber was visiting his wife, who was hospitalized due to a complicated pregnancy. The seizure was conducted without advanced notice and required authorities to carry off at least one child “kicking and screaming.”
A similar raid occurred in 2007 when the Jugendamt and police authorities seized Melissa Busekros from her home in Erlangen and kept her in foster homes for months with minimal visitation from her family. Melissa escaped from her foster home in April 2007, and is now at home. She is pressing her case against the state for breaching her and her family’s civil rights.
The Gorbers, too, have vowed to fight on until they regain permanent custody of all of their children.
Homeschoolers in Germany remain gravely concerned about recent changes in federal law that have made it easier for the Jugendamt to seize children from families who homeschool. In July, German President Horst Kohler signed a law that made it easier for the Jugendamt to take German children from families where the children were “endangered.” The term “endangered” is not defined in the law, and German Courts have already ruled that homeschooling is “an abuse of parental rights.”
Another homeschool family in Germany, the Dudeks, were sentenced to 90 days each in jail in July for homeschooling their children. The Dudeks, who receive daily letters of encouragement, told HSLDA that “they so appreciate the letters from American homeschoolers. Some days we are quite depressed about the situation in Germany, and then we go to the mailbox and we read a wonderful note of encouragement from an American homeschooling family. Our children love the letters and have already several pen-pals.”
The Dudeks’ attorneys will be filing their appeal of the conviction this week with the state appeals court in the German state of Hesse. The Dudeks are hopeful that their appeal will overturn their conviction. “Sending people to jail because they homeschool is wrong,” says Juergen Dudek. “We are educating our children well. They are well-adjusted and not deprived in anyway. We have again applied for status of a private school in Hesse. We are willing to work with the authorities to come to an understanding how we can educate our children, but we will not compromise on whether we, as their parents, will educate them. It is our duty and responsibility and our conscience will not allow us to give that up.”
Other families have fled Germany under threat of extraordinary fines, threat of jail and the possible loss of custody of their children. Some have fled to Canada, England, New Zealand, the United States and even Iran to be able to homeschool their children.
“Families should not have to choose between their homeland and homeschooling,” said HSLDA Staff Attorney Michael Donnelly, who coordinates HSLDA’s involvement in Germany, “These families are following their conscience, and Germany is simply out of step to treat parents who choose to educate their own children in this dramatically autocratic way. This kind of behavior by the Federal Republic of Germany is very disturbing. HSLDA is committed to helping persecuted homeschoolers in Germany and calls on state legislators in Germany to take action to change their laws to make homeschooling legal. Homeschooling works and is legal all over Europe—Germany should not be allowed to get away with this kind of repression of a fundamental human right.”
Topics: International Home Education | No Comments »
Introducing ENN
By admin | August 19, 2008
Topics: Youtube | Comments Off
SAICFF and CFA on YouTube now
By admin | August 18, 2008
Dear Friends,
The San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival (SAICFF) and the Christian Filmmakers Academy (CFA) are pleased to announce the inauguration of our very own YouTube channel dedicated to film clips and updates on past and future SAICFF events. The channel features television interviews, film clips from past and present semi-finalist films, and more.
Sincerely,
The SAICFF Team
(888) 6SA-ICFF (888-672-4233)
Topics: Youtube | No Comments »
Home Schooling in Brazil
By admin | August 17, 2008
The latest on Home Schooling in Brazil:
http://lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com/2008/08/homeschooling-in-brazilian-congress.html
Topics: International Home Education | No Comments »
Father of the Year 2008
By admin | August 15, 2008
Topics: Challenges and competitions | 1 Comment »
CBN news: Germany Declares War on Home-Schoolers plus video
By admin | August 11, 2008
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/425122.aspx
Click on link above to watch the video in Broadband and Low Band
Scroll down to read the article:
Germany Declares War on
Home-Schoolers
By Dale Hurd
CBN News Senior Reporter
August 11, 2008
CBNNews.com - NUREMBURG, Germany - It certainly looks as if the German government has declared open season on Germany’s tiny home-schooling community.
CBN News was first to bring the story of Melissa Busekros to American television last year. The home-schooled teenager was snatched from her family by police in a SWAT style raid and put in a psychiatric ward. After an international uproar, Melissa was returned to her family.
But other home-schooling families face even worse persecution. More and more parents are being sent to prison. Heavy fines are leaving home-schooling families destitute. And more and more children have been taken into state custody.
Throw Back to the Third Reich
It’s been 70 years since compulsory education was made law by Adolf Hitler’s government. And in what is eerily reminiscent of the 1930s, more and more home-schooling families have been forced to flee Germany or risk losing their children.
Klaus and Kathryn Landahl fled to England after they were tipped off that authorities were going to take custody of their kids.
The Gorber family, who reside in southern Germany, have had six of their children taken from them by the state.
And Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek each face 3-month jail terms, and are economically ruined from heavy fines.
These are just a few of the cases. But there are only about 400 home-schooling families left in Germany now.
The home-schooling experts CBN News spoke to believe the government wants to wipe out the small home-schooling community here, before it can become popular, like it has in the United States.
“What you’re having now is legitimate full blown persecution. They’re trying to eradicate this movement before it can gain traction and become a popular movement like it has in America,” explained attorney Joel Thornton, President and CEO of the International Human Rights Group, which defends German homeschoolers in court.
In the Bavarian town of Schwabach, attorney Johannes Hildebrandt, who also represents home-schoolers, says the movement is at a critical point.
“In the courts, it is in danger. Home schooling is very strange to the German people. They have no experience with this kind of education,” Hildebrandt said.
The German government’s argument against home schooling as stated by Wolfgang Drautz, German Consul General is that “The public has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole.”
“Germany does not want the kind of citizens that home schooling produces. They’ve seen how the home-schooling movement in the U.S. developed and they’re very keen on that not happening here,” said German academic Klaus Guenther, who is also an American citizen and was home schooled.
Home schooling Barred to Non-Germans
The Germans don’t even want non-Germans home schooling in Germany.
American missionaries Clint and Susan Robinson moved their family to Germany only to have their visa application turned down because they home school. They now have to leave the country, and are looking to move to Austria, which allows home schooling.
“What we’re trying to do is get a house just across the border so we’re living in Austria, where our visa comes from so the government can’t control us with home schooling,” says Clint Robinson.
Susan added tearfully, “We left our home country and came over here and God supplied this house and the environment and just everything, and now they’re saying ‘no, you can’t stay, you’ve got to leave.’ It’s hard.”
And at the same time that the German government is persecuting home-schoolers in Germany, including Americans who want to homeschool there, Berlin is encouraging its diplomats abroad, including its diplomats in Washington, to home school their children with a state homeschooling curriculum.
Thornton said, “Their officials are actually encouraged to home school and not put their children into American schools and into foreign schools.”
A Questionable Education
A lot of American Christians would have good reason not to want their kids subjected to German state schools. The sex education curriculum is often pornographic, even for young ages, and the occult is often celebrated.
Missionary Robinson told CBN News, “I know of schools right in our area where it’s not just mixed swimming but mixed showering after the swim class is over and mixed locker rooms and then they leave and go to the next class.”
German home-schooler Heiko Krautter told us he would be sinning to put his children in a state school.
He said, “These things in the school, the official state school, they destroy the children. And we teach the children in the things of God. And the people in the official school teach the children in other things, against God.”
Krautter fled Germany after this interview and took his family to Norway.
Thornton believes Germany’s war on home-schooling is just a part of Europe’s war against Christianity.
“This is a battle to eradicate spiritual life from every person in Europe, to eradicate spirituality and Christianity from the culture,” he said.
And the unfortunate victims in this battle are the families who believe educating their children is their God-given right.
Topics: International Home Education | No Comments »