A New York Times article yesterday (Judge Grants Asylum to German Home Schoolers) discussed the petition for asylum submitted by the devoutly Christian Romeike family, seeking asylum in the US because they feared persecution in Germany for their decision to homeschool their children. The story of the Romeike family and the decision to grant them political asylum is also featured in an article in Time (Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Homeschool).
On 26 January 2010, federal immigration Judge Lawrence Burman granted the Romeikes political asylum, ruling that they had a reasonable fear of persecution for their beliefs if they returned to Germany. The ruling has since been appealed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This case is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of all for drawing renewed attention to the connections among homeschooling families, cultural and political conservatism and Tea Party "values."
The Case
Both the NYT article and the Time article provide background on the Romeike family, the petition for asylum and Judge Burman’s ruling, but I will summarize the key points here.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, Evangelical Christians from Bissingen in state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany, chose to homeschool their five children citing both their concern for the possibility of bullying in local schools as well as their perception that the German curriculum "goes against our Christian values," and noting in particular that "German schools use textbooks that force inappropriate subject matter onto young children and tell stories with characters that promote profanity and disrespect."
Homeschooling is not permitted in Germany, and in 2007 Germany's Federal Supreme Court ruled that parents could lose custody of their children if they continued to homeschool them. That ruling seems to have motivated the Romeike family’s move to Morristown, Tennessee in August 2008.
On 17 November 2008 the Romeikes filed their I-589 forms (Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal) with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and on 13 January 2009 their I-589s were referred to Immigration Court.
The Romeike family were represented legally by the Home School Legal Defense Association. In the pre-hearing brief in support of asylum filed by the HSLDA the following arguments supporting the requirements for granting asylum were advanced. First, that the Romeikes were members of a "particular social group," i.e. homeschoolers, in Germany. Second, as members of this group the Romeikes had been "persecuted" by German authorities. Third, German opposition to homeschooling is rooted in political beliefs rather educational concerns, and thus the persecution suffered by the Romeikes was political in nature, discriminatory and contrary to international opinions of basic human rights. The brief concludes:
"If Mr. And Mrs. Romeike return to Germany and homeschool, obeying their consciences and exercising their fundamental human rights as parents, German officials will levy ever-increasing fines against them, seize their property to pay the fines, take their children away from them, and put them in prison. This constitutes persecution on account of a protected ground."
Federal Immigration Court (Memphis, TN) Judge Lawrence Burman agreed, denouncing the German policies toward homeschooling as "utterly repellent to everything we believe as Americans." Burman ruled that should the Romeikes return to Germany they would face persecution on account of their religious beliefs and because they were members of a "particular social group" of homeschoolers, both criteria for supporting the petition for political asylum.
The HSLDA Defense Team
In the NYT article concerning this case and ruling, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is described somewhat innocuously as "a Virginia-based advocacy organization." In reality, the HSLDA is the cutting-edge for advancing the cause of conservative Christian homeschooling in the US, providing legal resources and lobbying at both the state and federal levels. The board-of-directors of HSLDA founded Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, catering to Christian homeschoolers, with the mission to provide a "focused education that fully explains the founding of America" in order to produce "virtuous citizens who will be dedicated to renewing the culture." The HSLDA also founded a program called Generation Joshua, designed to train Christian teenagers about their civic and political duties.
One of the ambiguities concerning the HSLDA involvement in the defense of the Romeike family is the question of how the two parties first met. The NYT article notes that Mr. Romeike "saw" Mike Donnelly, an HSLDA lawyer, at a homeschooling conference in 2007, at a time when the HSLDA was already consulting on legal briefs involving homeschooling in Germany. According to the Time article, the Romeikes were contacted by attorneys at the HSLDA (no date provided) and it was at the suggestion of the HSLDA that the Romeikes moved to the United States, specifically Morristown, Tennessee. Did the Romeikes initiate contact with the HSLDA, or did the HSLDA initiate contact with the Romeikes, having found a test-case for their political defense of homeschooling?
Homeschooling and Wingnuttery
In their report entitled The Condition of Education 2009, the National Center for Education Statistics attempted to construct a demography of the the burgeoning homeschool movement in the United States. The overwhelming majority of homeschooling families are white (76.8%), the majority have three or more children (60.3%), the majority are two-parent homes (89.4%) in which one parent works in the labor force (53.6%). In terms of their decision to homeschool, the most important reason was "a desire to provide religious or moral instruction" (35.8%), followed by "a concern about environment (safety, bullying, drugs, peer-pressure, etc.) of other schools" (20.5%), then by "a dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools" (17.1%).
I highlight this report because it draws attention to the demographic similarities between the homeschooling movement in the United States and the Tea Party movement, as documented by the recent (and admittedly problematic) CNN / Opinion Research poll. Of course, many may already have sensed the symbiotic relationship among the two thanks to the "Homescholers (sic) for Perry" sign at the Palin / Perry rally in February. And I draw attention to this report in the context of a discussion of the Romeike family’s asylum case because of the HSLDA’s involvement in their legal defense.
The wingnuts want government out of education, period. In states where homeschooling is fairly well-regulated, efforts are underway, including involvement by the HSLDA, to weaken those regulations. Having successfully argued now that the right to homeschooling is a basic political right, I believe that we can anticipate further attacks against public education in the United States and stronger defenses of the right, nay the obligation, to homeschool. Much as the new for-profit corporate model of higher education is a conservative reaction to the perceived "liberal bias in higher education," so the homeschooling movement is a socially and politically conservative alternative to public education at the primary and secondary levels.
Don’t get me wrong, there are instances in which homeschooling really is the best option available to a family. However, I believe that the modern homeschool movement in the United States is largely subversive, dovetailing as it does with the aims of religious fundamentalists, the Konstitutional Konservative Klub and the host of fringers denominated as the Tea Party Movement.