Several blogs recently have asked their readers to help German homeschoolers put a question before their Chancellor regarding homeschooling. Educating Germany provides pretty clear directions. Home Education Magazine even provided a pictorial tutorial. And Dare to Know has a translation of the letter you would be supporting.
This is sort of a democratic aspect to German political discussion, allowing citizens to put questions before the Chancellor and others to vote on the ones they would like answered. (Something like our “Ask the White House.”) When the polling is through, the questions with the most positive votes are answered publicly.
I was a bit slow adding my post to the mix, and in the meantime, it has become an interesting story in its own right. Click on the link to Home Education Magazine and notice the number of votes. They stood at +427 when Valerie took the screen shot. Sunday night, German homeschoolers went to bed with the vote standing at +630, and in third place. Chances were looking pretty good the question would be addressed. They woke up this morning to +75 and 18th place.
This begs a number of questions:
- Is this a question the German government simply does not want to address, thereby causing it to tamper with the vote?
- Did some other party with a little computer savvy spend an hour or two voting the issue down from their own computer?
- I suppose it is possible that someone noticed the number of votes coming from overseas, but since German citizens live all over the world that wouldn’t be very nice. I couldn’t find anything in the rules about citizenship status or nation of origin. Just that you could vote once unless you registered, in which case you could vote a second time.
If you would like to add your vote, go ahead. I am curious if the same thing will happen again if the vote count gets too high.
[tags]homeschooling, homeschool[/tags]
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
Done.
There is a thought that goes something like this:
…from a Navajo perspective
we move collectively, not individually.
i’m trying to raise us all up together–
my family, my community.
I try to keep this in mind when considering supporting an action or cause: does it do more than just for me and mine, does it move the issue forward collectively so that many are affected? I think that in this case, yes it does. Parental rights and choices are an issue that we need to protect as a community of parents, a community of free human beings.
Thanks for publicizing this. Here’s to hoping that it is possible to get that vote count back up where it used to be before something/body caused a very dramatic and rapid drop.
Two bigger questions imo:
1) how many questions are there in this popularity contest of national concerns (at least 18, logical inference from the above account suggests.)
2) is homeschooling law REALLY the most important answer any nation’s leader should be compelled by the public to give? (I can’t imagine we’d get the votes here in the US to make it so, or even that the two to five percent of us hsing and all voting as a block, would use our one precious vote on it, what with the war and the economy and all. . .)
JJRoss, for those who are choosing between leaving their homeland or sending their children to public school, it probably does seem pretty important. My guess is that the war and the economy receive a bit of attention in the media and by government officials there as here.
Everyone has their issue they want discussed on a national level and everyone has their right to try to organize to present a voice.
What I was questioning was suspicions about how the German government might be conspiring to repress the online votes, as if homeschooling were the only controversial question they cared about.
Of course everyone has the right to organize to present a voice. (?) I made no suggestion otherwise. I do think politically “organizing” homeschoolers into “a” voice is nearly always problematic, especially in cultures we don’t understand or share.
The latest news story about fleeing Germany for Iran under Ahmadinejad made no sense to me as any kind of education freedom I can understand, for example. But then I am just one homeshcooler and an American one at that, not an organized voice.
And no doubt I should take my own advice about this online culture, sorry if the comment was unwelcome.
Friendly comments are always welcome, and I don’t mind disagreement. : ) I took your comment as a more general question of why anyone would care, not anything specific to the sudden change in the votes.
I haven’t any clue. I just know a lot of people woke up wondering about it, especially since it occurred over night. But I haven’t a clue what actually happened.
I don’t know much about that case, other than the snippet of a letter I translated. I don’t know what it is about…it seemed a little disorganized to me. But then, a lot of these people are operating without any real legal counsel. The cases I have blogged about have generally included court documents and newspaper reports to validate what is being said.
But I am not going to turn down a request for help when I can provide it, whether or not I have all the information I would like.
The situation in Germany is of particular interest to me because I lived there…with a German family for a year in high school as an exchange student and again for a year in college. My oldest was conceived there. : ) But that is the central reason behind my occasional postings on the subject…that and I was rather frustrated with the fact that there was only one source for news on the situation and I believe it is always good to check sources. The first case I really delved into was for the purpose of helping those concerned see a little more of what was going on than just what was being reported by HSLDA.
I’m rambling now, but Germany will come up around here now and again, and now you know why. : )
Got it, thanks Dana!
I seem to be a context junkie — the more I get, the better I feel. (But maybe that’s not a bad definition of the engaged modern mind?)
The downside being, when I go very long without high-quality context in my system, I get cranky if not a little paranoid.