The Nazi Party didn’t take control of Germany until 1933, but the Hitler Youth were numbering over one thousand members as early as 1923. By 1925, they ballooned to five thousand members. Less than ten years later, they numbered over two million.

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. – Adolf Hitler

Hitler understood the power of controlling the youth of the country. He used many different methods to increase his influence over the young, from setting himself up as a father figure, to holding huge rallies and directing their focus at a specific “enemy.” He also worked to keep them ignorant, letting them learn only what he felt they needed to know.

In 1937, Hitler ordered all German children into the government schools. He said:

“The Youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of innoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.”

Homeschooling was officially outlawed in Germany. Hitler wanted the state to have total control over the education of the nation’s youth. He knew that they were the key to his success, the key to a totalitarian rule.

Today in Germany, decades after his death, parents are being persecuted for homeschooling. The German government is still enforcing Hitler’s laws. And they are once again becoming more aggressive in their methods of enforcement.

“…bring the child, if necessary by force…”

When Melissa Busekros was 15, she didn’t do so well in math and Latin. Her parents were told she would have to repeat the 7th grade at Ernst High Gymnasium, which was a public school. She and her parents decided to tutor her individually at home, and she continued to participate in music and the school choir.

The school expelled her. Her parents continued to educate her at home.

Social workers, and police officers, knocked on their door in early 2007 and demanded the parents turn her over to them immediately. They offered the parents a ruling by the Erlangen Court, which read:

“The relevant Youth Welfare Office is hereby instructed and authorized to bring the child, if necessary by force, to a hearing and may obtain police support for this purpose.”

Melissa was taken to a psychiatric hospital, interviewed for almost four hours, and then released. However, it was only a few days later that the social workers, with 15 police officers, once again took Melissa into custody. This time she was diagnosed with “school phobia” and placed in a psychiatric hospital. From February 2007 to April of the same year, she was in the custody of the state. When she turned 16, she simply walked away from her foster parents and returned home. The state had no authority in holding her anymore. But they did begin demanding payment from the Busekros family, for the time they held Melissa.

Since then, the situation for homeschoolers in Germany has gotten worse. On July 5, 2008, German President Horst Koehler signed BGB 1666 into law. This law “establishes the standard by which family courts are to determine whether custody of parents can be taken away.” The Jugendamt, the German youth welfare office, now has the power to remove children from the home when they are “endangered.” German administrative agencies and courts claim that failure to send children to school is “endangerment” and the German high court says homeschooling creates “parallel societies” and called it an “abuse of parental rights.”

Jurgen and Rosemary Dudek homeschooled their seven children despite the laws in Germany prohibiting it. When initially brought before a judge, they received a fine. The German prosecutor, Herwig Mueller, appealed the ruling, telling the family, “You don’t need to worry about the fine, because I am going to send you to jail.”

On July 18, the Dudek’s were sentenced to 90 days in jail.

The Gorber family homeschooled their children also. While Mr. Gorber was visiting his wife, who was in the hospital due to complications from the birth of their ninth child, the Jugendamt, with police help, raided the family farm and removed seven of the children from the home. When Mr. Gorber returned home, he found his home empty, save his 21 year old son and paperwork informing him of the seizure of his family.

The siblings reported that the 7-year-old was gripped around the waist by a youth home music teacher, dragged kicking and screaming across the courtyard and thrown into a van. The terrified 3-year-old clung to his 20-year-old sister so tightly that even the police and Jugendamt could not separate them. Both had to be taken to the youth home, where at last the little fellow’s strength gave out and he could be taken into custody.

The children then received psychological exams which all reported that they were normal and well-functioning. Although these evaluations attested to appropriate parenting, the judge indicated that he was unwilling to allow the other children, all of school age, to return home because he did not believe the father’s assurances that he would enroll the children in school.

German homeschoolers have two choices. They can continue to homeschool and hope to remain undetected, or they can flee the country. Some are choosing the latter. The Plett family had their children taken from them and once their children were returned, fled to Austria, then Canada. Klaus and Kathrin Landahl found it necessary to flee Germany when they were informed they had lost custody of their children for homeschooling. They retreated to the Isle of Wight.

The clearest statement on the situation is illustrated by the Mahjoubi Assil family, who fled Germany for the freedom of Iran:

“As a family with a gifted and talented child, we fled Germany … with two suitcases and with the last of our money being spent on our flight to Iran,” a letter from the Mahjoubi Assil family to “supporting friends” said.

The family includes the father, Khosrow Mahjoubi Assil, the mother, Lydia Keller-Mahjoubi Assil, and the son, Marian Mahjoubi Assil. It was written by the mother on behalf of the family.

“As things stand now, Germany is unworthy of membership in the European Community, or to speak on Human Rights in the international arena. The shadows of the Third Reich and the ideology of Adolf Hitler – if not worse – still drift over Germany,” the letter said.

When you turn to Iran for an increase in liberty, things are indeed amiss. Luckily for Americans, things are not that serious here. Not yet, anyway.

…through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move… - John Dewey

John Dewey and the NEA

John Dewey, considered the father of modern education, was a fan of the early Soviet Union’s eduactional system. In a December 5, 1928 issue of the New Republic, Dewey wrote of “the marvelous development of progressive educational ideas and practices under the fostering care of the Bolshevist government.”

Dewey is also quoted as saying, “Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.”

In 1932, Dewey wrote “Individualism Old and New”, where he stated, “We are in for some kind of socialism, call it by whatever name we please, and no matter what it will be called when it is realized.” According to Wikipedia, Dewey opined:

…that fixing the problem with culture is one in the same with that of liberating the individual; by abolishing culture driven by private pecuniary gain and reaffirming the importance of community and industrial cooperative control, Dewey argues that the individual will be harmonized with his communities and liberated to achieve true progress.

Two years later, Dewey was named Honorary Life President of the National Education Association (NEA). Today, the NEA is the largest labor union in the United States. It is also one of homeschooling’s biggest enemies.

The National Education Association has voted to abolish homeschooling every year since 1988. NEA resolution B-75, passed in 2007, read:

Instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency, and a curriculum approved by the state department of education should be used. The Association also believes that home-schooled students should not participate in any extracurricular activities in the public schools.

This is similar to other resolutions it has passed. In the eyes of the NEA, the government is the sole authority on what should be taught and who should be allowed to teach it. It is this socialist mentality that has created the negative view of homeschooling in America, as illustrated by the Second District Court of Appeal’s decision.

“…parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children…”

In March of this year, a California court essentially outlawed homeschooling in the state. Justice H. Walter Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeal said, “California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children.”

He continued, “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.” Why, in the court’s eyes, was it necessary to send children to public school rather than educating them at home? Justice Crosky cryptically explained:

“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,”

Compare what a judge in modern day California said with what the Nazi Minister of Education, Bernard Rust said in 1935:

Teachers are directed to instruct their pupils… and to awaken in them a sense of their responsibility toward the community of the nation.

This attitude manifests itself across the nation, from judges to social workers:

• Utah: Judge Scott Johansen threatened to take the children of a homeschool family if they did not have them enrolled in public school and have them in class every day. He told the family that homeschooling fails 100% of the time.
• Tennessee: A homeschool mom is arrested because a relative, her mother, lied to a local attendance officer and told him her grandson was not attending the school he was enrolled in. The boy was never enrolled in school, and even though the attendance officer knew he had yet to reach compulsory attendance age, he prosecuted the family anyway.
• Virginia: Gerald and Angela Balderson of Warsaw, Va were arrested after they removed their eight year old son from public school in order to homeschool him. They had given notice to the superintendent, but the district still called the law on them.

In one instance, a social worker in Michigan demanded entry into the family’s home and that they be allowed to strip search the children. When the mother refused to allow entry, the social worker threatened to get the police and shouted over the mother’s protests. What could have been so important that it was worth violating a citizen’s Constitutional rights?

The family was accused of “only allowing their two boys to listen to Christian music. The tipster said that the children “ate their cheerios dry and received nearly all their “socialization through their church. The tipster asserted the children were not in school. Furthermore, the anonymous tipster said the fourteen- and ten-year-old were seen outside playing without adult supervision and the mother pinched and hit her kids in church to keep them quiet.

Situations involving social workers demanding entry into private homes or demanding to see children without the presence of parents has become such a concern that the Home School Legal Defense Association has written a list of tips on how to handle the situation. Every day there are more parents who need such advice.

Homeschooling is a growing trend in America, “growing at 7 to 12 percent annually, with perhaps more than 2 million students being taught at home.” What is the reason for this? Homeschool dad Benjamin Marshall sums it up best:

“We wanted to be the main and driving influence in our children’s lives.”

As do a majority of homeschoolers. The problem is that there are many who want that title, and are willing to destroy your right to educate your child to get it. Hitler said, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future. That is still true today. It makes you wonder why some fight so hard for ownership of today’s youth. Or, maybe it makes it even clearer.