Mike Farris:
Does home education foster a dangerous tendency to create a parallel society? The European Court of Human Rights’ decision upholding Germany’s move to ban homeschooling, used this concern to rule against the right of parents to homeschool their children. The court held that Germany was within its “margin of appreciation”—that is, the flexibility allowed to nations who have subjected themselves to the oversight of international tribunals.

When a segment of society refuses to obey the law and mocks the norms of the country in which they live, that’s truly a parallel society. But that’s not what homeschoolers want. We don’t want to be isolated in our own barricaded neighborhoods. We don’t want to make our own rules.

We want just a different form of education—as is our right. But in other spheres of life, we want to be integrated with our children in sports and church and cultural activities.

One wise German homeschool leader said the biggest parallel society in that nation is the one created by the public schools. As a result of twelve years of academic isolation on the basis of age, German teens are more loyal to the youth culture than they are to their families or their nation. Of course, the same can be said about the teens in any western nation including the United States. Because of their age-based peer dependency, teens have created their own parallel society that dissents from and undermines the historic culture of nearly every nation.

I’m Mike Farris.