Parallel Societies

Most of the homeschool community is probably aware of the situation involving Melissa Busekros, a 15-year-old German girl who has been forcefully removed from her family because her parents started illegally teaching her at home. I’ve appreciated the in-depth coverage of the situation on this blog, which I recommend to anyone looking for more details.

This story is disturbing to me on many levels. As a homeschooler, I’m disturbed by the treatment of my fellow homeschoolers as criminals. As an American, I’m appalled at the violation of what seems to me to be a basic human right: the right to bring up one’s own children as one sees fit. As a Christian, I’m saddened by the fact that the anti-homeschooling movement in Germany seems driven in large part by a concern regarding children being brought up religiously.

It’s easy for me to simply condemn the German government for its attitude and action in enforcing a law that was put into place during Hitler’s Third Reich as an attempt to control the education of the nation’s children. However, I think it’s worth taking a deeper look into why this law is being enforced.

According to one German official quoted in the blog I referenced earlier, “The public has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole.” In other words, the government claims a compelling interest in making sure everyone fits into society. To a point, this makes sense. A certain amount of national solidarity is certainly desirable, and there’s also the concern of anti-social groups developing.

The first question I think we have to consider is this: Does homeschooling create a parallel society? It’s not an easy question to answer. On the one hand, homeschoolers are notoriously independent. We’re all different, we have different reasons for homeschooling, different approaches to education, etc. That’s why it’s so hard to collect data on homeschoolers: we’re not one coherent group, but individual families. On the other hand, we tend to band together either to cooperate in providing educational opportunities or in a way similar to alumni of a particular school. We’ve shared similar experiences and we often have similar attitudes. I would tend to think that we’re different enough, independent enough, and geographically scattered enough that we don’t pose any serious threat to society, but I will acknowledge that in general there is a typical homeschool mindset.

The question that follows, then, is: Is it in the best interests of a nation to prevent homeschooling and any parallel society it might produce? Again, there are a couple of sides to this. It is easier to control the masses if the masses all have the same social conditioning. It’s easier to understand where people are coming from, and everyone shares more or less the same perspective. At some point, though, it seems like this would create dangerous blind spots in society. I’m reminded of a short story by Isaac Asimov, titled “Strikebreaker.” In the story, a man from Earth visits a planet which, during his visit, is threatened with destruction because the man who controls the waste reclamation system goes on strike. Because of the social system of this planet, no one else can bear the thought of operating the machinery which would solve the problem — it’s just too distasteful. Not having been socialized on this planet, however, the visitor has no qualms about pulling a few switches to rectify the problem, thus saving the planet. Obviously Germany isn’t likely to face that particular situation, but my point is that there is a certain danger in uniform socialization. What if, for example, it was discovered some years down the road that the German education system was lacking in a particular aspect? Because it’s so uniform, how would anyone be able to step up to fill the gap?

Furthermore, I think homeschoolers at least in America have proven to be good citizens. German officials don’t seem concerned with test scores, so we’ll leave that alone and just assume homeschoolers can be well educated. We also tend to be very involved in our communities and government. According to a study in America titled “Homeschooling Grows Up,” 71 percent of homeschool graduates participate in an ongoing community service activity (such as coaching a youth sports team) and 88 percent are members of some type of organization (community, religious, professional, etc.). Additionally, 76 percent of homeschool graduates ages 18 to 24 reported voting in the last five years, compared to 29 percent of the same age group in the general population, and the percentage increases with age. These seem like desirable characteristics to me.

All things considered, I respectfully disagree with the German government that homeschooling creates undesirable parallel societies. My prayers are with Melissa and her family.