One of the difficult things about being a parent is the crazy basket of horrible dark thoughts one does battle with daily.  Particularly haunting are thoughts involving someone taking away a child, but usually government isn't the evildoer.  Unfortunately a family in Germany is facing a version of this terrible nightmare.  The German government removed their 15 year old daughter from parental custody and placed her in foster care -- location unknown (to her parents).   The girl was forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation (as were her parents) for "school phobia" and the status of her case remains in question.

While I'm not a huge fan of homeschooling, I find it hard to believe that the German government has outlawed it all together, causing some families to leave the country to pursue homeschooling for their children.  International homeschooling organizations as well as human rights groups are attempting to intervene on behalf of the Busekros family and daily updates are kept on the Gottsegnet blog.

In defense of government actions, Wolfgang Drautz argues that the government 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." One of the fairer qualities of a civil society is its ability to tolerate differences and not require lockstep within all sectors.  The German effort to control education and punish those not willing to abide by state defined acceptable modes of educational traditions sounds hauntingly familiar.  Hitler originally made homeschooling illegal.  Need I say more?