Golden Rule
4 hours ago
German owned magazine since 1986. Germany does not allow homeschooling.

anon-055q Golden Rule
2 hours ago
In Germany, any "rights" that citizens have are bestowed by Daddy Government.

Indeed. In that respect, the term "Fatherland" assumes an almost literal meaning!

This has, alas, been a leitmotif of German social thought for centuries.

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) devastated Germany. The aftermath of that brutal conflict witnessed the widespread development of political thought that emphasized the need for a strong state to protect against, inter alia, the prospect of rampant invasions by foreign armies slaughtering the local populations and plundering the countryside.

This was a central theme of Thomas Hobbes, "Leviathan", and directly inspired, (albeit, from afar) by the horrific events of that conflict.

That war had profound effect on German thought - starting in its immediate aftermath. The Saxon jurist, Samuel Pufendorf, strongly influenced by Hobbes, wrote in, "The Elements of Essential Jurisprudence" of the empirically demonstrated need for a strong political authority to acquire and maintain the military and financial means of protecting the polity from such depredations by foreign powers and actors. This, in turn, provided the justification for royal absolutism of the monarch over the rest of society - to the detriment, alas, of the status of individual rights that have been the basis of (especially, but not exclusively, American political thought.

The idea of individual rights that could be legitimately claimed against the desires and interior the state, has, thus, never really taken hold in Germany - even with the advent of the Republic of Germany after World War II.

And,I haven't even touched upon other historical factors that further buttressed authoritarian political thought in Germany, such as the Reformation.

Unfortunately, Martin Luther was a servant believer in absolute submission to state authority. This, ultimately, also had the unfortunate effect of rendering the Lutheran Church largely subservient to the monarch and state - in sharp contrast to the American experience.

All of these (and more) military, political, religious, legal, and cultural developments in Germany eventually combi ed to produce a social milieu where the author of the state was almost invariably presumed to be dispositive over the preparative of the individual.

Given that, is is not surprising (unfortunately) that the rights of parents with respect to their children's education have been historically weak in Germany.

And more's the pity!