Topic: WorldNetDaily
It seems to be a requirement to be a WorldNetDaily employee that employees' children must be homeschooled, and WND is a major source of homeschooling propaganda -- to the point where it tacitly approved of child abuse in order to preserve homeschooling rights.
Bob Unruh (who, yes, homeschools his children) rehashed several homeschooling falsehoods in a Sept. 24 WND article.
Unruh goes Godwin right off the bat, stating in the lead paragraph that "Among major democratic nations, homeschooling already is banned in Germany, under a Hitler-era law." This is a fallacy WND has repeated for years, and it sleazily implies that anyone who doesn't support homeschooling as zealously as WND does is a Nazi. In fact, compulsory schooling in Germany has been a tradition for a good 200 years.
Unruh then recaps one prominent homeschooling case:
In the Romeike case, the family fled to the United States because German barred them from homeschooling. They obtained asylum, but the Obama administration appealed and obtained an order from a higher court that the family must return to Germany.
The dispute now is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Obama administration has argued in court that parents essentially have no right to determine how and what their children are taught, leaving the authority with the government.
Unruh does not mention that the Romeikes have also rejected private and religious schools in Germany, claming that they were "just as bad or even worse" than public schools. The Romeikes could have also chosen to work toward creating a school in Germany that more closely aligns with their claimed "Christian faith," but they apparently chose not to.
And the Obama administration did not claim in the Romeike case, as Unruh asserts, that "parents essentially have no right to determine how and what their children are taught, leaving the authority with the government."Unruh simply made that up.
Rather, the administration argued that "Romeike did not meet his burden of proving a well-founded fear of persecution" and "the Romeikes’ experiences with the police and legal system in Germany were a direct result of their failure to comply with German law prohibiting truancy, and were not the result of the German government’s desire to punish them for their membership in a protected group under the INA." The administration also pointed out that the Romeikes were not disproportionately singled out for persecution, and that the parents of homeschooled children and truants alike are treated the same under German law.
Finally, as one would expect from a homeschooling activist, Unruh's entire article is permeated with a pro-homeschooling bias, copiously quoting pro-homeschool activists and framing the opposition as intolerant Nazis.
In short: Another day, another reason nobody belives WND.
