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Latest blog posts from Green fields and Open Horizons

What's happening with the Neubronners
The Neubronner family in Bremen has been having some tough times recently. After they received a letter announcing yet another increase in the fines imposed (now totalling 7 500 euros) and threatening them with other punitive measures (not elaborated on in the letter), they decided to send their... Read more...
Published 10 months ago

Moving away from a pluralistic society
One of the things I was busy with recently was a translation of the recent judgement of the German Federal Court in the matter of a home educating family who had two of their children removed from their custody, which was taken over by the local Jugendamt (something akin to a welfare office for... Read more...
Published 10 months ago

Buying into the Ivy League illusion?
I was chatting to someone who had been reading my blog recently and she made a comment that I thought was really interesting. She asked why homeschoolers often go on about how they (or other homeschoolers) are attending Ivy League Universities in the USA, something she finds a bit of a... Read more...
Published 10 months ago

Germanism
My husband and I were talking about the German government's attitude to homeschoolers (a friend of mine had received a high-handed letter from a bureaucrat), and he commented, "You can see how the Nazis could establish themselves so easily in Germany".Now, before anyone accuses him (or me) of... Read more...
Published a year ago

The thin end of the wedge
Most Germans, even the majority of those who identify with the principles of family life that home educators embody, perceive us as the lunatic fringe. Although these people are also often stay-at-home mothers (and sometimes fathers) who are closely involved with their children, they cannot... Read more...
Published a year ago

What happened to that educational mandate?
In Germany, when you finish school, you are obliged to either study further or undergo vocational training. Up till now, the government has been bemoaning the fact that companies are not providing enough apprenticeship places to fulfil this need. Well now, it seems, according to a recent survey,... Read more...
Published a year ago

Happily unschooling....all over the place
I don't know if I should continue having "Happily unschooling in Northern Germany" as the subtitle of this blog, as we (the children and I) are going to be spending the major portion of our time in Ireland. We were recently in the west of Ireland, househunting, and although we didn't find... Read more...
Published a year ago


I read a letter on a conservative blog to one of the German education ministers in response to the situation of the Dudek family in Hessen. The person who wrote this letter obviously felt very strongly about the German governments' approach (as do I). He wrote,Two times in the twentieth century... Read more...
Published a year ago

Family flees Germany for the sake of handicapped child
What an embarrassment to the German government! Because of their overzealous application of the compulsory schooling laws, another family is forced to flee to neighbouring Austria for asylum. Are the Hessen school authorities scared witless of some kind of parallel society of handicapped people... Read more...
Published a year ago

J K Rowling and Compulsory Schooling
Now that I have outed myself as a Harry Potter fan, and demonstrated that it is not anti-Christian, I suggest that homeschoolers should read, at least, page 173 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Here is what I wrote to J K Rowling about it :Dear Ms RowlingI have just finished reading Harry... Read more...
Published a year ago

Did you ever have an inkling that....
the Harry Potter books might be Christian literature? (gasp!)For all the so-called differences between home educators, when it comes down to it, they can be divided into two groups : Those who are avid Harry Potter fans and those who see Harry Potter as akin to Satanism. Okay, there are the odd... Read more...
Published a year ago

Homebound yes homeschool no
This situation is so fraught with irony. Betsy Loiacono has an autistic son who has been declared by a doctor to be unfit to attend school. She wants him to receive homebound instruction. The school authorities of her local county refuse to recognise the doctor's note and have taken her to court... Read more...
Published a year ago