Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Govt may deny homeschool families custody to teach tolerance: ECHR
Govt may deny homeschool families custody to teach tolerance: ECHR
Jul 18, 2025 8:11 PM

The government has the right to remove children who are homeschooled from their parents’ custody if authorities believe their parents will not teach children “tolerance,” the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled last week.

The Wunderlich family had claimed German authorities violated their innate human rights by denying them custody and forcibly enrolling their children in public schools to further their “social integration.” But the ECHR disagreed.

Nearly three dozen police and social workers stormed the family’s home in August 2013 when the parents, Dick and Petra Wunderlich, refused to stop homeschooling their four children. Homeschooling faces tight legal constriction in Germany, which permits the practice only for children who suffer severe illnesses, the children of diplomats, and child actors.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) described the ruling of the court that set the motion in process – the Darmstadt Family Court’s decision of September 6, 2012 – which held that the Wunderlich family “risked damaging the children’s best interests in the long term,” because not attending a government-run school prevented them from “learning social skills such as tolerance.”

“The court found that the children needed to be exposed to influences other than those of their parental home to acquire those skills,” the ECHR added.

Officials claimed they had feared the Wunderlich children had no contact with anyone outside the family and that their father might kill them because he once referred to them as his “property” – rather than that of the State. Armed with those allegations and a desire to enforce its social values, the state leapt into action.

“The children had to be carried out of the house individually with the help of police officers after they had refused ply with the court bailiff’s requests e out voluntarily,” the ECHR notes.

Assessments later determined that the children faced no physical danger, did not have poor educational attainment, and had contacts outside the family. Yet the government ruled the family relationship “symbiotic.”

Officials returned the children to their home three weeks later – after the parents promised to send them to public school.

To assure the Wunderlichs did not flee the country, the court denied the parents full custody, specifically the right to determine where their children lived. Should they move to a nation that allows homeschooling, like neighboring France, the court promised criminal prosecution.

The family said the ruling violated their right to raise their children according to their own beliefs and appealed all the way to the ECHR – which ruled against them on Thursday, January 10.

It is small consolation that the ECHR ruled “the fact that a child could be placed in a more beneficial environment for his or her upbringing will not on its own justify pulsory measure of removal from the care of the biological parents.” (Emphasis added.)

If public authorities reasonably believe children run the risk of abuse, they have the right to intervene – even if that belief proves false. However, the ECHR went further than that. In the court’s mind, “the enforcement pulsory school attendance, to prevent social isolation of the applicants’ children and ensure their integration into society, was a relevant reason for justifying the partial withdrawal of parental authority.”

The state’s concern that Christian parents may raise “intolerant” children whose values isolate them from most of their peers justifies their forcible removal from parental custody, the court seems to indicate.

Furthermore, the ECHR ruled that “the State should take measures to rehabilitate the child and parent, where possible.” To this end, the court notes that “the children were returned to their parents after … the applicants had agreed to send their children to [government-run] school.”

State officials are right to return children to their parents … once those parents agree with the government’s aims.

This ruling conflicts with inalienable human rights recognized by Christian and secular authorities.

Parental rights in education are “fundamental”

The Christian tradition holds parental rights to outweigh those of political authorities. “As those first responsible for the education of their children, parents have the right tochoose a school for themwhich corresponds to their own convictions. This right is fundamental,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “Public authorities have the duty of guaranteeing this parental right and of ensuring the concrete conditions for its exercise.”

Reflecting this Christian influence, Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that “the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.” Article 8 bars officials from interfering in family life – except as deemed “necessary in a democratic society … for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

Christians should affirm the right of parents to raise their children according to their own religious beliefs, even if the ECHR will not. The state should not use its monopoly on power to overrule Christian religious principles.

Moreover, empirical evidence weighs against the ECHR’s decision.

Homeschool children are more tolerant than their peers: Studies

In a 2014 study, Albert pared the level of political tolerance of homeschooled students with those who attended public schools. He asked college students if they would allow the government to bug the phones, ban the books, or prohibit from living in their neighborhoods members of disfavored political groups. After performing multivariate analysis, Cheng found, “Those [college students] with more exposure to homeschooling relative to public schooling tend to be more politically tolerant.”

Late last year, the OIDEL’s “Freedom of Education Index 2018” tested this proposition paring its FEI ratings against the OECD’s measure of social cohesion. The NGO found “a positive tendency” for homeschooling to increase tolerance, “but with a low correlation.” The report concluded, “We cannot affirm that freedom of education has a negative effect on social cohesion.”

Mike Donnelly, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), said the data prove that “allowing parents more choices in educating their children is an overall positive.”

“Protecting the right of parents to homeschool is a necessary ingredient in a democratic, free country,” he said. “Conversely, a country that does not promote freedom of education is intolerant and not truly pluralistic.”

German authorities physically removed crying, clinging children from their parents in order to prevent them from being manhandled. They prevented their parents from regarding them as “property” by temporarily making the children wards of the state. And they preemptively crushed potential “intolerance” by denying a family the right to raise its children according to its own educational and religious beliefs.

If the German government wants to prevent schooling from forcibly denying children opportunity, it might begin with its own schools. The OECD found in 2000 that Germany’s two-track educational system furthered social inequality by denying educational opportunities to some children.

And the problem persists, both due to families’ socioeconomic background and the strain placed on finite resources by population growth largely driven by immigration.

By forcing all children into government-run schools, the government may be doing more harm than that alleged against the Wunderlich parents.

Defending Freedom.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
How were people On Call in Culture 165 years ago?
What is so special about 1837? That was the year Abraham Kuyper was born. September 29th is his 165th birthday. So we thought we would go back to 1837 and see how people were being On Call in Culture back then. We don’t know if they were all believers on a mission to bless the world, but by seeing what was going on 165 years ago, we hope you are encouraged to engage your world in 2012! How did people...
Is it really ‘aid’ if it goes to relatively wealthy nations?
Alan Duncan, an aid minister in the UK, says his government is “forced” to hand over large amounts of money to the EU’s foreign aid budget, but has no say in how the money is spent. The problem is that much of the $2 billion+ “aid” money (one-sixth of the British budget) goes to projects such as making a Moroccan water park more eco-friendly, an art project in St. Petersburg, and building a hotel and plex in Barbados. Britain’s International...
Want to Help the Poor? Promote a Free Market in Health Care
Want to help the poor? Promote a free market in health care. That’s the argument made by John C. Goodman, author of the new book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. Timothy Dalrymple recently talked with Goodman about the best approach for restoring free-market pricing mechanisms into the market for medical care and health insurance: Aren’t there some people, however, who have little of money and lots of time, and would prefer to wait in order to receive cheaper care? There...
Markets and culture: A time to play, a time to pray
Faced with the prospect of a professional athletic career, a nearly-half million dollar salary, and a perfect lady, what’s not to like? Apparently, for Grant Desme, it was the noise and unrest of the world. Can a culture of life and the noise and tumult of the marketplace co-exist? Rev. Robert Sirico, reflecting on this, says they can, so long as it is not a place where: [C]apitalism…places the human person at the mercy of blind economic forces…What we propose,...
Rev. Sirico on Life, Work, and Human Flourishing
J.Q. Tomanek of Ignitum Today interviewed Rev. Sirico about life, work, human flourishing, and his new book, Defending the Free Market: JQ Tomanek: Back in the day, holiness was misinterpreted as a cleric or religious life thing. How can a lay Catholic practice their faith? What are some ways to sanctify our work as lay Catholics? Is “ora et labora” just a monk thing? Reverend Sirico: Yes, religious people are often tempted to e so “heavenly minded they are no...
On Call with Dr. Pamela Casson
Dr. Pamela Casson, a pediatrician in Colorado Springs, knows what it means literally to be “On Call.” This week she shares with us in this video interview with Jon Hirst how she sees God working through her in her work with families, children and the world around her. Thank you Pamela for giving us an inside look at how you see your work as blessing the world. ...
Dodd-Frank: The Other Serious Threat
At least es at us head on. The greater legislative threat may be the one that most Americans have never heard of. Economist Scott Powell and Acton friend Jay Richards explain in a new piece in Barron’s: While Obamacare received more attention, the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also known as Dodd-Frank after its Senate and House sponsors, … unleashed a new regulatory body, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to operate with unprecedented power. Dodd-Frank became law in...
Did 2,362 Millionaires Get Unemployment Checks in 2009? (Answer: Yes they did.)
The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a group that works exclusively for the U.S. Congress, issued a report with one of the greatest titles I’ve ever seen on a government document: Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by e Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”) Now the first nine words are nothing special, typical policy-wonk speak. But whoever added in the word “millionaires” with scare quotes and parentheses is a genius. Most people would have been nodding off around the word “Insurance” but seeing millionaires (that’s...
Counting the Profit of a Third Party Choice
Joe Carter recently highlighted the discussion at Ethika Politika, the journal of the Center for Morality in Public Life, about the value of (not) voting, particularly the suggestion by Andrew Haines that in some cases there is a moral duty not to vote. This morning I respond with an analysis of the consequences of not voting, ultimately arguing that one must not neglect to count the cost of abstaining to vote for any particular office. One issue, however, that I...
Stop Apologizing for Our Liberties
You cannot apologize to a fanatic, says Lee Harris. It only serves to convince him that he was right all along: The last few weeks have witnessed a peculiar and disturbing spectacle: An American administration that has spent a great deal of time and energy apologizing for our liberties—in particular, for what many would regard as the foundation of all our other liberties, namely, the freedom to express our minds as we see fit. This signature freedom, of which Americans...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved