Raids

If you read through the international news today.....there were raids down in Bavaria yesterday.  The basic story is this Christian group (of a fairly unusual nature).....were accused of physical and emotional abuse with the kids in the farming group community.  Reports indicate around thirty kids.  Part of the issue also centered on the educational requirements that Germany mandates.....either public or private school (no home-schooling).  Number of cops involved?  News report indicate a hundred cops were involved....with a substantial number of social welfare folks.

The general rule in Germany is that you can run up just about any religion you want, and keep it transparent to the public, and there's no issue.  For schooling?  Well....you can have a public school setting or a private school setting.  The key element is that you have accredited school teachers.  You can't just yank your kids out of a German school and do the home-schooling thing.  Based on some reports.....it appears that the accredited teachers that the religious group had for last year.....left.  And there's no clear sign that any accredited teachers were hired for the new year.  Maybe this was wrongly understood by the authorities....but it's mentioned in several news sources.

What drives the no home-schooling business?

Germans have a simple basis for education.  Around the ninth grade....you are basically finished with formal school.  Some kids go onto college-pre or a more technical environment.  The bulk (around sixty percent) go to the apprentice program (figure 25 hours of work each week and 15 hours of classroom work).  The bulk of what you learned at age 15.....is finished except for the trade crafts.

What Germans will tell you is that they really can't see the sense of allowing folks who basically have a ninth-grade education.....instructing their kids.  It doesn't make logical sense.

Toss in the fact that the whole apprentice program is based on you being prepared around age fifteen and sixteen.....there's some steps that you really need to go through and be ready.

Finally, folks have this negative feeling about giving out social benefits.  They don't want to see some idiot show up at age thirty at the welfare office and say that he can't get a job in life.....because he doesn't have a real education background or trade background.

There's a bit of pondering and thinking that the Germans have put into this whole business of home-schooling.  If you polled folks in Germany.....I doubt that you'd find more than one person in twenty who is fully supportive of home-schooling.

The news media?  They generally tell the pro-government side of the story, and point out the radical religious nature of these groups asking for home-schooling.  I'll admit.....it's easier for the public to understand the episode....if they think these folks involved are radicals.  That might be a problem in some ways.

What happens now?  Court action.  Some folks from the religious group will make a break from the group and clean up their act.  Some of the kids in the next couple of months will go back to their parents.