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President Obama tried to deport German family that had fled Germany over Hitler’s ban on homeschooling In Germany in 1938, Adolf Hitler outlawed homeschooling. He said “Give me a child when he’s seven and he’s mine forever.”Hitler’s ban on homeschooling is still in effect today. In 2006, Katharina Plett was arrested for homeschooling her own children. Her husband and their children fled the country. In 2008, Juergen and Rosemary Dudek were sentenced to 90 days in jail for homeschooling their own children.Uwe and Hannelore Romeike and their homeschooled children fled Germany after the police showed up at their house to enforce...

"I worry that in a lot of cases students who are homeschooled are not getting the kind of the breadth of instruction experience they would get in school, they're also not getting the opportunity to build relationships with peers unless their parents are very intentional about it," said Education Secretary John B. King Jr. "And they're often not getting those relationships with teachers and mentors other than their parents. I do worry whether home school students are getting the range of opportunities we hope for for all kids," he said slamming the system.

Just when we thought the right to homeschool had been firmly established in California, all of our members in the San Benito High School District received a letter saying, "[U]nder California Law, a home school is not a private school, nor is it a lawful alternative to public school … ." The private school exemption has been used by California homeschoolers since the revival of the movement in the late ’70s. Many school districts and the California Department of Education took the same position that the San Benito High School is now taking. But despite years of official opposition in...

During the keynote of the recent WWDC, Tim Cook argued that every child should be taught a programming language in school. Further, he argued that Apple's Swift programming language is the best choice for the programming language children should learn. He pointed out that SWIFT is open source, is used and useful for Apple developers, is very easy to learn, and creates very fast code In furtherance of the objective of teaching children SWIFT, Apple announced and demonstrated “Swift Playground” for the iPad. Swift Playground will allow the learner to use SWIFT statements to command turns and motion by a...

The Heritage Foundation published a special report with essays from several education experts, detailing the background and the effects of Common Core. Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and William Estrada, director of federal relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association, highlighted the problems with Common Core. Estrada wrote, "Common Core is good for homeschooling.” He pointed out in 2009, there were 850,000 homeschooled students in the U.S. By 2012, the Department of Education found that there were 1.8 million homeschooled students. As you can see, the growth in homeschooling tracks nicely with...

The nation is spending about $46 billion less than what it needs to keep up its school buildings, according to a report Wednesday that pointed out disparities in state support for infrastructure. The report by a trio of school facilities groups said the country needs to keep better track of the state of its schools and find new funding sources for their upkeep so that local districts that now bear the heaviest funding burdens don’t have to divert money from instruction. “U.S. public school infrastructure is funded through a system that is inequitably affecting our nation’s students and this has...

Homeschooling in Brazil: Where Is it Headed? Religious Trends and Esoteric Detours By Julio Severo A prominent Presbyterian blog in Brazil published, on February 5, 2016, an article about homeschooling trends in Brazil. Even though I disagree with them on conservative issues (they consider themselves conservatives, but their Mackenzie Presbyterian University, the largest Protestant university in Brazil, hires pro-abortion and Marxist professors), they were honest enough to mention me as one of the known homeschooling examples in Brazil. Another two homeschooler names mentioned, Josue Bueno and Cleber Nunes, were also reported by me back in 2008 in articles that...

Ted Cruz, Homeschooling, S.306, Dishonesty and Pig-Ignorance ~~~you are making a clown argument, bro~~~ One day, when I am acclaimed Galactic Commander, I will mandate a civics test before allowing people to vote and test of reading comprehension skills before allowing them to access the internet. What is circulating now is a story that Ted Cruz supports the federal regulation of homeschooling. There are two underlying causes of this story: rank dishonesty and pig-ignorance. Let's set the baseline. Ted Cruz supports homeschooling. (So does Marco Rubio, btw.) His support has been full, clear, un-nuanced, and unequivocal. Not all states, however,...

Contrary to what some bloggers (many of whom support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign) and the Internet rumor mill have been saying, Sen. Ted Cruz does not support federal regulation of home schooling.The source of the myth is Cruz’s co-sponsorship of S.306, a bill introduced during this session of Congress by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Some form of the bill has been introduced since 2000, but the measure has never been controversial until presidential campaign politics intervened. What the measure does is expand who can use Coverdell education savings accounts by clarifying that for the purpose of Coverdell expenses only, the...

PLANO (CBSDFW.COM) – The sound of children playing has become the subject of a lawsuit between two Plano homeowners. Kelly Counts placed a playhouse outside her backdoor for her four children enjoy. “One of the big reasons we chose the house was because we would be able to move this playhouse,” says Counts. But the mother says that laughter coming from her kids in their playhouse has been drowned out by music with raunchy lyrics coming from next door. “It’s unfathomable to me. I can’t imagine the sound of kids playing at any age or stage of my life and...

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike came to the United States in 2008 seeking political asylum. They fled their German homeland in the face of religious persecution for homeschooling their children. They wanted to live in a country where they could raise their children in accordance with their Christian beliefs. The Romeikes were initially given asylum, but the Obama administration objected – claiming that German laws that outlaw homeschooling do not constitute persecution.

Homeschoolers in Wisconsin will soon be able to participate in public school sports, thanks to a new measure recently signed into law by Governor Scott Walker. Previously, homeschooled students in Wisconsin were not allowed to play on public school sports teams. But Scott Woodruff of the Home School Legal Defense Association says the new law allows them to try out for teams at public schools. “I think for many folks who were initially opposed to it, it was almost kind of a turf issue,” he says. “People thought, Okay, homeschool students might be part of our community, but they don’t...

It's a rare, if not historic pushback—tens of thousands of people across the Canadian province of Ontario are announcing loudly that they oppose the new sex education curriculum proposed by the province’s premier, Kathleen Wynne. Large numbers of protestors have made their voices heard in front of Wynne's office, in front of the provincial legislature at Queen's Park, and at the offices of Members of Provincial Parliament across the province. Harking from every culture and ethnic group, the protestors are demanding one thing: Let kids be kids. The entire phenomenon is startling for a number of reasons. First of all,...

Millions of people who can read today owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Samuel L. Blumenfeld (shown), America’s foremost apostle of phonics over the past half century, who died on June 1, one day after his 89th birthday. I was privileged to know him, as a friend and colleague, for more than 30 years.I first became acquainted with Sam Blumenfeld’s writings in the early 1970s. I was a college student at the time and had switched my course of study from pre-veterinary medicine to psychology and education. The “reading controversy” that had been launched in 1955 with the...

But the curriculum he developed is still in place. To begin with, the lessons seem to remove blame from the perpetrator and instead shift it onto the victim, as well as the parents. In one example, where a boy molests his younger sisters, the sisters are condemned for dressing immodestly, and the parents are also shamed for “exposing the boy to temptation” through the act of having him change his sister’s diapers. “Modesty was a factor. It was not at the level it should have been in my family. It was not uncommon for my younger siblings to come out...

It all started with an unwanted knock on the door by a government worker and it’s being answered with a $60 million lawsuit. A New Jersey family is suing the state child-protection agency after it allegedly sent a caseworker to their home to interrogate them on everything from their son’s homeschool education to questions about vaccines and guns in the house. Christopher Zimmer and his wife Nicole of Belvidere filed a civil rights complaint in April in U.S. District Court in Trenton alleging “unlawful and unconstitutional home intrusion.” “I won’t forget that morning for a long, long time,” said Christopher...

Every home schooling parent has been asked the S-Question: “What about socialization?” The implications (real or imagined) of the question are less than flattering: Students who attend schools outside the home are socialized better because they spend so much time with their immature peers, whereas students who attend school within the home are poorly socialized because they spend so much time with their mature parents. Home school families do not interact with one another. Socialization that occurs on the soccer field, during debate rounds, and in church doesn’t count (or is somehow inferior). Students who attend school outside the...

The next time they appear in court for homeschooling, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich could face four years in prison—each. “I am sad today,” said Dirk Wunderlich, recounting how on April 28 he lost his most recent case in the German state of Hesse, and also heard dire warnings from the presiding judge. “We had hoped the judge, who seemed open-minded and friendly, might give us a chance,” Wunderlich added. “But no, he said he could not: The law is the law.” In their most recent court appearance, Dirk and Petra Wunderlich were fined 450 euros each (about $1,000) for not...

ANKENY, IA, May 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a private e-mail exchange with a concerned parent, Republican state legislator Josh Byrnes of Iowa said there is “nothing worse than homeschool parents” making their views known on public school policy.The statement came as Jeff Moorman took exception to a pending bill allegedly dealing with “bullying,” the “Bully Free Iowa Act of 2015” (HSB 39).The proposal would allow school districts to monitor students outside of school hours and punish – or contact law enforcement officials and state bureaucratic agencies over – any communication it deems “bullying” – even if that behavior takes...

A 12-year-old Michigan girl who just made it through the biggest fight of her life has been dealt another blow. In August 2012, Rose McGrath, of Battle Creek, was diagnosed with leukemia. But last week, her family received a letter from her school that would turn her world upside down. As CBS affiliate WWMT reports, the letter addressed concerns regarding Rose's attendance and academic performance, and stated that Rose had been dismissed from St. Joseph Middle School. "I didn't do anything wrong, but they still got rid of me," Rose said. screen-shot-2015-04-24-at-11-24-21-am.png Rose McGrath WWMT Rose has been with the...