Homeschooling illegal in Germany

Who would have believed that home schooling your children is considered to be psychological abuse – step right up Germany:

Homeschooling is illegal in Germany (with rare exceptions). Children cannot be exempted from formal school attendance on religious grounds. The requirement for children from an age of about 6 years through the age of 18 to attend school has been upheld, on challenge from parents, by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. Penalties against parents who allow their children to break the mandatory attendance laws may include fines (around €5,000), actions to revoke the parents' custody of their children, and jail time.

Many German homeschoolers have moved abroad to the UK, and USA amongst other places. The US HSLDA is currently giving legal aid to a German homeschooling family seeking political asylum (due to political persecution in Germany for homeschooling), there are also recent cases of 3-month jail sentences given to homeschooling parents in Germany, and removal of children from their parents into state custody.

Example Recent Case: Hubert and Gundrun Busekros, the parents of Melissa Busekros, the fifteen year-old homeschooled girl removed from her home by government authorities, have been ordered by the courts to undergo psychiatric testing, World Net Daily (WND) reports. Melissa was removed by court order in early February and placed in a mental institution by German youth authorities who claimed that she suffered from “school phobia” the treatment for which was complete isolation from her family and home. She is now being kept in a foster home in a location unknown to her family who are allowed to visit her for an hour a week.

Homeschooling is illegal in Germany since it was outlawed for ideological reasons by Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime in 1938. In more recent times, the German government has a strong interest in instilling through the public school system the new statist ideology promoted from Brussels in the European Union.

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