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Comment by uasm | Hacker News Reader

> "My children will now always have the right to study, work, live and love abroad. That can’t be taken away from them. I am incredibly proud I have given that to them. And now that I have the personal, individual right to do the same – a right that no politician can take away from me – I find my horizons widening too."

I share her happiness and enthusiasm, and commend her for acting on her beliefs. But this quote from the very end of the article is what many Brits believed to be the truth, up until Brexit. One important lesson here - nothing is forever. A wave of xenophobia and nationalism is sweeping the world and separatism is back in fashion. Freedom is under threat.

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I know this is hard to belive for some people but you don't need to be a xenophobe/nastionalist to have voted for "leave". The insults really don't help anyone.

Not all the people who voted leave are xenophobe/nationalist/racist, but all the xenophobes/nationalists/racists voted to leave.

Not all people who voted remain want to exploit immigrants to keep wages down. But all people who want to exploit immigrants to keep wages down voted for remain.

I think that someone wishing to exploit immigrants and keeping wages down would actually vote for Brexit.

With Brexit, a "race to the bottom" and bonfire of EU work regulations is more likely.

Agreed, above commenter is a bloody loon.

> "I know this is hard to belive for some people but you don't need to be a xenophobe/nastionalist to have voted for "leave". The insults really don't help anyone."

You are absolutely right and I wasn't trying to equate the two. To be clear - I will not label leave voters as xenophobes or nationalists, and I don't dispute the legitimacy of voting "leave". My concrete point was: having a German passport is not necessarily a guarantee of all the freedoms she's seeking for herself and her children.

I have made friends with a German family that homeschooled their children. They had to escape Germany (early 2000s) because the German government was going to take their children from them.

They successfully applied for political asylum in the US.

Germany is hardly a bastion of freedom some may think.

Depending on your definition of freedom.

Regarding the case of home schooling, the German position is that the state is required legally to ensure equal opportunity education for everyone. Parents therefore are legally required to send their kids to (public/approved/registered) schools.

While debatable, I‘d vote that‘s a good thing, as it ensures a minimum level of education for every kids.

Are you saying state sponsored kidnapping (Germany) is preferable to state monitored home schooling (US)?

A democratic society agrees on laws, that can be changed through a certain process. Germany decided that not only the parents are responsible for the education of the next generation, but also the government. Therefore the equivalent to the US child protective service has the right to enforce that law, just like in the US, where kids are separated from their parents if they break the child protection law. This has nothing to do with kidnapping.

All I am saying is that kids have rights too. And it's society as a whole who defines those rights and provides government with the rights and means to ensure those rights are provided to the kids, even if this means to separate them from their parents.

Just a side note on state sponsored kidnapping:

> While a court order in June 2018 required the Department of Health and Human Services to reunite more than 2,700 children in its custody with their parents, that number is only a "subset" of the overall separations, said Ann Maxwell, an inspector at the HHS inspector general’s office.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-07/number-of...

It makes me nervous. Public schools and attempts at mandatory attendance have been weaponized against ethnic and religious minorities in the US. I think it’s fair to say English only laws and corporal punishment for speaking languages other than English in Louisiana schools, along with laws of dubious constitutionality requiring kids to attend these schools, are partly why French will be functionally extinct in Louisiana soon.

> Depending on your definition of freedom.

There aren't many definitions of freedom that include state control of your children.

> I‘d vote that‘s a good thing, as it ensures a minimum level of education for every kids.

Whether that's good or bad depends on what that "minimum level of education" is. I know nothing of German schools, but in the US, public schools can (at least in some places) provide a "minimum level of education" that is much more "minimum" than it is "education". It also can be very unsafe.

It also depends on what the "education" is. Imagine that it's 1940 in Germany, or 1970 in East Germany. You have to send your children to public school so that they can receive their education. But the education in question is going to include a fair amount of indoctrination. When you can't opt your children out of being indoctrinated, it's pretty clear that you're not free.

Note well: I'm not claiming that current German education is indoctrination. What I am claiming is that totalitarian regimes make the same argument, and in their case, it is clear that mandatory public education is part of the totalitarian control. So the argument that this gives "opportunity to everyone" is at least suspect, because it may be the "opportunity" to be controlled and indoctrinated.

> What I am claiming is that totalitarian regimes make the same argument, and in their case, it is clear that mandatory public education is part of the totalitarian control.

I think the recent totalitarian regimes and their education clearly defines how this is not possible. Many of Nobel Prize-winners, army of scientists who raged against the regime or fled are from totalitarian countries.

But even if they didn't rebel, still they could have been a remarkable scientist or just a decent human being.

> There aren't many definitions of freedom that include state control of your children.

There are some: freedom from violence in the family, freedom from mistreatment, child labor, indoctrination, ...

Essentially this is about balancing the freedoms of the parents to raise their children according to their rules against the freedoms of the children to receive a certain kind of education. I am quite happy this is something I do not have to do, as I fear it’s a very delicate decision to make. And I doubt anyone involved takes such a decision lightly.

> When you can't opt your children out of being indoctrinated, it's pretty clear that you're not free.

True, but then indoctrination of your children might be the least of your problems.

> > When you can't opt your children out of being indoctrinated, it's pretty clear that you're not free.

> True, but then indoctrination of your children might be the least of your problems.

I have never been in such a position. However, I suspect that I would not regard that as the least of my problems. It would be closer to the worst of them.

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