Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Vote to Support German Homeschoolers

From various UK home educating lists:

On a German website where people can put questions to Angela Merkel, someone has asked why homeschooling is not possible in Germany. Only those questions with the highest number of points will be answered. You can support this questioner by adding to the number of points.

By way of a rough translation of the full question:

The questioner is asking the authorities to change the legal situation so that homeschooling is permitted in Germany. She says that the legal judgement and behaviour of the authorities will result in more families leaving Germany and that this is not in the interests of the country. She asks if homeschooling is really a security risk for the country or a risk for children, and says that there is nowhere else in the EU where homeschoolers are persecuted as they are there.

She says that her own daughter is unable to attend school but that she would certainly send her to school if she did not know that the effects of doing so would be negative, but that she would like the legal option of keeping her daughter at home until she is able to handle school. She says there have been positive developments in education in the last 20 years but that it would be unfortunate if those children who need it were unable to refuel at home until they were able to handle the large class groups. She asks to be informed by the co-workers (of the person she's writing to) what is necessary for legalisation of homeschooling to occur.

Go here if you would like to support the fight for legalisation of home education in Germany. Simply click on the + sign. That's it.

If this link is broken, go to the home page and click on "Beiträge Abstimmen". This will take you to a number of pages with questions. Somewhere in these pages, you will find the following amongst the questions there:

"Von Susanne Volkmann Über Bildung Am 20. JanuarWarum ist Heimunterricht nicht möglich? Sehr geehrte Frau Bundeskanzlerin, ich bitte Sie von Herzen, die gesetzlichen Bedingungen dafür zu schaffen,dass Homeschooling in Deutschland legalisiert wird. mehr..."

Click on "mehr" and on the next page (where the whole of the question appears) click on the right hand side of the coloured line, where the + sign is.

That's all folks! Good deed done.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

The vote count showed a rather drastic drop overnight...from over 600 to less than 100. Quite a drop in a short period.

Shawna said...

Done!

It moved from 106 to 107

Carlotta said...

Ouch re the drop. Has some determined anti-home schooler worked out how to get round their cookies, I wonder.

And thanks Shawna. Every vote should count.

Anonymous said...

Well, it looks like it hit the US homeschooler scene. Count now up to 1584. :):):)

By the way, I don't think they're using cookies, since different accounts on one PC and even different PCs on the same home network can't vote again. I think its based on IP address.

Anonymous said...

PS: Here's a more direct link:

http://www.direktzu.de/kanzlerin/messages/15673

Carlotta said...

Thanks. Have added the addy to the post.

Great to see that the question now has a serious chance of being asked.

Bother about the IP addy, though yes, that makes sense. Seems sad though...we have had several people here recently who, being of Luddite inclination, don't have their own PCs and yet would have liked to have voted. And of course, this means that other members of this family couldn't vote when they otherwise would have done.

Anonymous said...

Well, it looks like the Germans finally figured out that there were a lot of votes coming from outside the Fatherland. They locked down the voting page so that one MUST register (create a passworded account) in order to vote. :(

But at least the count got run up pretty high (1883) before they caught on. :)

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see the response by Merkel. Will she refuse to accept the question, claiming the vote wasn't representative of German sentiment? Will she respond with a standard "we-know-best-and-we're-here-to-help" government defense, caveated with claims of external interference? Or will she actually address the issue head-on?

BTW, the voting was definitely tied to IP addresses. However, in Germany most home internet access is by phone line (typically ISDN). When you break/remake the connection, you get a new IP address. So its real easy (though perhaps time-consuming) to manipulate the system by voting many times. I'd say its real clear from your ealier observations about the count fluctuations that this was happening (individual anti-homeschoolers).

Here in the States, many people have cable internet - much more difficult to get a new IP address issued. So the votes from here were likely 1vote/1person.

dude said...

one word nice

Unknown said...

I really feel home schooling is to be used in case of emergency, when a student can't attend the college for some reason. Else, we need to attend the college, sitting in home makes people very lazy to understand outside world! anyways thanks


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