>
> Hi,
>
>
> I don't know anything about Germany but I wanted to touch on some things.
>
>
There is a group here
> in the USA trying to oppose the signing and implementation of these so
> called Child's Rights. I get updates from them all the time about this
> insanity. If Germany has signed onto this treaty then what is being said
> here is no surprise at all and would be pretty recent. How long have your
> friends been out of Germany, Bill? Parents Rights Group
> http://www.parentalrights.org/
I have no particular opinion about whether it would be a good idea to implement this treaty, but I just want to point out that the alleged imposed changes in our way of life are precisely the kind of thing that happens when you impose one definition of what basic human rights entails on another society without considering that society's views on the matter. To put it as clearly as possible, many Germans may see home-schooling as child abuse where the state steps in to protect the child, while we may see it as a right that the state must respect. We can and should argue about this, but both views are motivated by the question of human rights and considered views about the appropriate role of the state.
>
> 2) This is an interesting article on centralized education which takes
> the position that it is NOT to create more educated people for a democratic
> society to function. that's just the spin they put on it. Instead it is a
> mode for the state to control and mold our children and from my experience
> in public schools that's exactly what they do.
I don't think it is an either/or question--the emergence of modern democracies with universal suffrage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a state project and the state gets something out of it. Modern democracies are tied to the growth in the size and power of the state, no doubt about it.
>
> 3) Also I did a lot of reading an research on German schooling system
> and the method they have set up does require a testing exam and that
> determines if you go on to higher education or a vocational school. It says
> it varies state by state on the actual rules and in East Germany things are
> still stuck in a lot of ways in the past practices.
I mentioned this exam--doesn't seem different to me than the SATs and ACTs, which are generally required for admission to college. The U.S. historically has done a better job than most at access to higher education, but that is changing--we are massively cutting back on funding for education. The biases in the system in the U.S. are also disguised by the fact that there are different tiers of colleges that will get you to different stations in life. Going to community college and the local university will not get you even considered at the places that hire Harvard MBAs, for instance. And we track our students in a very vicious, but disguised way--local funding for schools results in vastly inferior public schools for poor and minorities.
> But I wouldn't totally
> negate what she is saying and say she's wrong or been misled.
> Discrimination still happens here in the USA all the time but not across the
> board and it might surprise someone who is not experiencing it themselves.
> I am subjected to it on a daily basis.
Certainly I agree there is still widespread gender discrimination in both the U.S. and Germany. The German state seems to have many protections in this regard, but discrimination doesn't go away that easily. In fact, formal equality came to West Germans in the decade or so after WWII, combined with stay-at-home mothers much the same as the U.S., and has changed in the same way that it has in the U.S.--a slow, fitful cultural change accompanied by political and legal demands. The East Germans actually had more female participation and advancement in the work force, actually reflecting their authoritarian state's ability to demand it despite traditional resistance. In general, the participation in the workplace and the status of women is comparable to the U.S., though I'm sure it varies from region to region.
>
> 5) Here when on unemployment if there is a job available and you do not
> apply for it you can lose the unemployment insurance benefits. No matter if
> that job is distasteful or difficult for you. If prostitution were legal
> employment.. Well, it's always possible. I know in Nevada where it is legal
> it is licensed so you can't get a job doing it legally without the license I
> would assume. Perhaps it was a job working at a place of prostitution as a
> clerk or cashier or whatever which many people would still have serious
> moral objections too. I worked for a credit card company and the things
> they had us doing to customers. made me hate myself.
I have not been able to find references to the case she mentioned, but I assume there was something and that Germans were suitably scandalized by it. This is an anomaly, not the norm, like the judge in the south who recently denied a marriage license to a mixed-race couple. Usually Americans complain about the German welfare system because they can stay on unemployment indefinitely, not because they are kicked off of it and forced to take unpleasant jobs. The social protections that Germans see as rights include this kind of extensive unemployment protection, requirements for six weeks of vacation for all kinds of jobs, and the like.
There are periodic efforts by business leaders to change to the American model to drive down the unemployment rate and force people to take lower wage jobs. It is up to you to decide which system you prefer--all I'll note is that we'd react badly in this country to attempts to enforce this system on the U.S. in the name of human rights, though that is exactly how most people around the world think about it. Shows you the dangerous game that would result from cherry-picking individual policies of other countries and demanding that they conform to our own in the name of human rights. (I'm not denying that there should be human rights across the board, simply stating the obvious--there is disagreement about what ought to be included in these rights and how much they ought to impact specific policies, rather than the general orientation, of individual countries.)
Bill
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