On Monday, April 7th, Arthur Wiens was jailed for opting his child out of a sex education class in which nine-year-olds are taught about sexual intercourse with a plush vagina and rubber penis. Wiens spent a week behind bars, and his wife is threatened with a similar punishment.
On May 22nd the district court sentenced the parents of nine to pay a fine of 700 Euro each for their violation of the compulsory school attendance for all children in Germany. The public prosecution department demanded six months in prison for the married couple due to their repeated offense. An appeal was rejected in October.
In the early morning of September 5th, a massive police raid of 100 police and 60 social workers descended on two of the Christian Twelve Tribes Communities of Klosterzimmern and Wörnitz. The police seized 40 children from 16 families and took them away in 25 vans on allegations of physical abuse.
Parental consent with regard to abortion virtually does not exist. There is no legal requirement to inform the parents of a minor wanting abortion. However, if the minor needs full anaesthesia, the parents will need to give their consent.
The state is very strict with regard to political correctness in schools. It is very difficult for Christian teachers to debate with their pupils about abortion. One of the most striking cases was Philippe Hisnard, a French Catholic teacher who was revoked and suspended from teaching because he organised a debate about abortion in a class of “civic education”.
“Home-schooling” is prohibited. Parents’ rights are commonly understood to include the right to choose the form of education of one’s children, including the possibility of non-institutional education, such as so-called home-schooling. Germany, however, allows home-schooling only in the most exceptional circumstances. In general, parents do not have the option to home-school their children. Offenders have to pay fines, and occasionally prison sentences are pronounced.
Home-schooling is severely limited in Slovakia. In fact, it is allowed only for pupils of 1st - 4th class in basic schools, for disabled children, or for children in custody and who are not able to go to school for longer than two months for health reasons. Permission for “individual education” must be granted by the director of the district school of the pupil. Another major problem is that the person who teaches the pupils must have a pedagogical university qualification. As a consequence, home-schooling is very rare in Slovakia.
Spanish educational law includes a set of mandatory subjects under the generic category of Education for Citizenship which are indoctrinatory and violates the rights of parents. The Education for Citizenship curriculum is mandatory for primary and secondary education (children ages 10-16), and must be implemented into all Spanish schools (public and private).
According to the Education Act (2010:800) home-schooling is practically forbidden in Sweden. Home-schooling is allowed only when exceptional circumstances apply, which is hardly ever granted. According to the preparatory work of the government bill, permissions should be granted with great restraint, stating explicitly that religious and philosophical reasons are not to be considered as exceptional circumstances.
In 2011, the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company, a public service company (UR), launched a sex education campaign in Swedish schools, called “Putting sex on the map” (co-produced by RFSU, a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation), targeting children of lower secondary school age. Parents objected to the content of the materials, including explicit images and sex scenes, and scientific information, including physical and psychological risks of early sex debut and many sexual partners or abortion.
There is no parental consent with regard to abortion. Much attention was drawn to a case where an eleven-year-old girl had undergone two abortions in a very short period of time without parental consent. The Parliamentary Ombudsman held that it had gone too far and concluded that “it is obvious that a child of this age (11 years) does not have the maturity to consider the consequences of an abortion by herself.”
Alliance Defending Freedom and the Home School Legal Defence Association have asked the European Court of Human Rights to hear the case of a Swedish family heavily fined for home-schooling their daughter. Although the 13-year-old girl flourished in her home-schooling environment, local Swedish authorities fined her family the equivalent of more than $28,000.
A child at a Catholic school in France was punished for refusing to memorise a verse of the Koran in January 2013. At the school of Notre Dame de St Mihiel in the Meuse, Lorraine, a pupil refused to memorise a verse of the Koran as a part of a class on Islam. Two mothers arranged a meeting with the teacher to explain their disagreement with the punishment. Instead of removing the punishment or allowing the student to opt-out of the class the school director informed the mother of the punished child that she considers removing the child from the school.
Christian parents are outraged over the contents of the governments new sex ed. programme. The government insisted and made opting out illegal, until the constitutional court found that the contents were against the law.
The Recommendation by the Minister of Science, Education and Sports, Mr. Ž. Jovanović, on conducting religious instruction in elementary schools during the first and last hours of the day (as of April 3, 2012), is still in force. This Recommendation discriminates against the regular nature of religious instruction which was agreed upon in international contracts.
The British Parliamentary Undersecretary of State, Liz Truss, states she was not able to rule out the possibility that teachers refusing to use stories or textbooks favoring same sex- marriage face disciplinary consequences.
A district court in Darmstadt, Germany has revoked custody of four children from their parents and ordered it turned over to the Jugendamt, Germany’s child protective agency.
Parents rights are commonly understood to include the right to chose the form of education of one’s children, including the possibility of non-institutional education, such as the so-called homeschooling. Not so in Germany.
Germany’s strict federal laws on compulsory school attendance do not allow any opt out with regard to sexual education.
Prime minister David Cameron thinks that faith schools should not be allowed to teach that homosexuality is a sin, according to a quote featured by the Daily Mail.