Authored by Alice Salles via The Libertarian Institute & Mises.org,
Parents across America were caught unprepared for the mass closure of government schools in 2020. Soon after, however, many decided they and their children had had enough of the status quo. Now at a crossroads, will they choose reform or repudiation?
The wave of ill-advised school shutdowns last year compelled tens of thousands of parents to rethink their children’s education. When the classroom was virtually forced into their homes via Zoom, parents realized just how abysmal the curricula and tutelage were. Statistics on families fleeing to homeschooling must be worrying the education establishment.
From 2012 to 2019, the homeschooling rate hovered around 3.3 percent of K–12 US students. That figure rose to 5.4 percent in spring 2020. By the following fall, that figure had more than doubled to 11.1 percent.
Among black families, the increase was particularly noteworthy considering only 3.3 percent of black children were homeschooled in spring 2020 versus 16.1 percent in the fall.
While legacy media focused on cases of parents keeping their kids home out of fear of covid, longtime critics of the public school system argued that the pandemic actually helped to expose parents to the abuses and shortcomings that have long plagued public education.
Some chose homeschooling, but many other parents took to school board meetings, facing the beast head-on and ripping apart the deceptive social engineering with the public comment microphone. All the glory, glitz, and glam has so far gone to the latter group.
They grew a decentralized movement with immediate political consequences not only in Virginia’s gubernatorial election but also in school board races across the country earlier this month.
Axios, the popular DC-based news outlet run by former Politico journalists, recently reported on the growth of the 1776 Project, a new political action committee focused on reforming public school systems at the local level. “My PAC is campaigning on behalf of everyday moms and dads who want to have better access to their children’s education,” the PAC’s founder Ryan Girdusky told Axios.
The 1776 Project won three-fourths of its fifty-eight races across seven states, proving the populist Right’s focus on the culture wars to be smart politicking. Now Republicans in Congress are pushing a “parents bill of rights” ahead of their 2022 primary elections. Included are so-called rights to know what’s taught at school, the right to be heard, and the right to transparent school budgets and spending.
“This list of rights will make clear to parents what their rights are and clear to schools what their duties to parents are,” their flier states. The reform position focuses on schools’ duty to parents and ipso facto their children. But what of the duties parents owe to their children?
What if, instead of pointing their collective finger at the school boards, parents looked in the mirror? What if they asked themselves how or why they feel entitled to have a place to drop their kids off for thirteen years of government brainwashing?
Any taxpayer has a perfect reason to object to school mask mandates or the teaching of racist and queer ideologies. Parents must start thinking more deeply about the situation, though.
Certainly for some, running for school board positions is their best shot at helping to provide their children and their neighbors’ children with better education. The problem is that in too many places, there’s an absolute crisis in education that can’t wait any longer for reform, no matter how severe.
Every family and community ultimately applies the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, the notion that the best way to organize society is for each action or decision to be taken at the smallest scale necessary, in assessing what must be done about things such as education.
By simply refusing to accept what federal or state authorities peddled throughout 2020, parents rightfully accepted more responsibility, clearly demonstrating that when things get personal, people will do what it takes to take back control.
Whatever step in that direction is taken, the child is better off. In his great essay “Education: Free and Compulsory,” Murray Rothbard argued that public school and compulsory schooling laws tend to victimize the child: “The effect of the State’s compulsory schooling laws is not only to repress the growth of specialized partly individualized private schools for the needs of various types of children. It also prevents the education of the child by the people who, in many respects, are best qualified—his parents.”
Unfortunately, far too few parents think of themselves as qualified, much less the best qualified educators of their children. They are easily led to believe simple reforms will “fix the system” they grew up dependent upon as children themselves.
“We always hear, Oh it’s broken. It’s not broken. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do,” Katie Phipps Hague told Mises Institute supporters at the latest summit in Florida last month.
Hague shared her experience homeschooling her seven kids and encouraged other parents to give it a try, essentially asking, What have you got to lose?
I know this sounds like I’m a crazy person, but if you pulled your children out of school… for a whole year, then include them in everything that you do in all of your trips and all of your conversations, put them around the intelligent, capable people that you all have in your circles and let them become comfortable around those people, you’d probably do better for them than maybe anything else you could ever do.
It’s wonderful that the populist movement on the right is targeting the educational bureaucracy, one of the great roots of societal decay. There is a lot of potential for good in populism, but not if it sets its sights on mere reforms. A much brighter future lies in a libertarian populism where parents free themselves from these decrepit statist systems altogether and grow alternative institutions.
Parents must be responsible for their children’s education precisely so that children learn to be autonomous. Autonomous people don’t support tyrannical policies, so the sooner parents embrace their own power, the sooner their children will be able to unleash their own.
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Any move towards depriving the day prison system more victims is great. But a couple of concerns. First, the links to the data go to the census bureau. Are these numbers really measuring actual homeschooling, or parents who think that kids being at home is homeschooling? And then there is companies like K-12 and Connections Academy which are still taxpayer-funded (theft) and still use government approved curricula. Are parents in s3lf-reporting to the census bureau including this? I would hope that the questions would distinguish, but who knows? Now obviously, any parent using these government curricula at home, could quite easily switch to something better. Bottom line is that parents are finally going to need to realize that government has no business educating their children, and that their kids are more important than whatever they might have to do without to afford to educate them properly.
“and still use government approved curricula.”
That’s the question. I don’t think it’s going to matter but why even bring up the topic if we are going to teach the kid’s government approved poison.
The title implies we have a future as a country. I don’t believe anything will or should try to save this mess. Half the people will have to be murdered to ever have peace. What a statement huh? No amount of reeducation will change the citizens of Karenistan. They will have to be removed so they can’t polute our progeny the moment we relax our guard. Who is going to do that. We aren’t human hating Bolsheviks and if we became like that what was the point.
Pry our Lord Jesus returns sooner than later.
That was pretty much my point. Homeschooling in its real and valuable sense, is way more than simply replacing the worthless teachers with a parent who shovels the same bullshit or assists while the bullshit is shoveled. Any TRUE measure of an increase in homeschooling needs to properly define homeschooling. But to be fair, most PRIVATE schools are morphing into overpriced counterparts of the “free” government prisons. Even the private school I attended in the 70s was imposing grades and the like in order to provide for a more “seamless” transition when kids left and went onto other schools (private included). The Montessori I first attended not only didn’t give out grades, but never even defined students by grade level (the goal was that you actually learned a subject, not that you moved on to the next grade, and multiple knowledge levels existed in each classroom, so every student could learn at their own pace). I have no idea what they do these days, but I can bet that they too have dropped some of the things that made them superior and have adopted much of what makes the government schools inferior. And why would that surprise anyone? Government billing codes, etc. dictate how virtually everything is done in medicine today, all because so much money is involved. True homeschooling, based on curricula purchased privately and applied by caring parents, etc. is the only thing that will truly improve education. And indeed, some serious “house cleaning” is going to be required to truly fix things.
Mr. L, I assumed that was your point and I was just trying to reinforce it. Didn’t mean to sound like I was challenging it.
Mine was reinforcement as well.
Wilbur (or anyone)…if you were designing education for teens right now, from your perspective, what are some of the important things they should be learning for their future? From a teacher, not their parents.
This is part of my job to figure out. It is quite the challenge with an uncertain future.
Abigail the kids -30 is see today can’t read for comprehension. They can read over a page and not really know what’s being said. Especially if it’s pre 1960 literature. Words don’t have meaning to todays -30’s crowd. That’s why You see me correcting people who mislabel or abuse words like Fascism, communism, capitalism, to name a few. We can’t allow words to mean anything we want them to mean and still communicate. By design I might add.
Positive outcome ed etc. New math. I was in my 20 the last time I used a cash registor but I was reading about a decade ago how a company specialized in cash register prompts that told the cashier how to count out the change and to say things like thank you and come again.
They also need to be taught how to reason and understand that there really is a right and wrong. It’s not relative or optinal. Good luck.
Gotcha. Thanks. The hard part is getting it ok’d by their parents.
Reason and logic (some great books on basic logic) are imperative. Just look at the horrifically-contradictory “truths” that are now ALL accepted as valid by much of society. I only took one logic class probably 40 or more years ago, but the basics of syllogisms and logic still influence how I evaluate the path from A to B to C that is presented to me. It happens without conscious intent.
Financial responsibility.
Natural Law & objective morality…
My sister found teaching her 5 kids her own curriculum didn’t take much time. It took her even less time to teach them to state certified tests. So the children spent most of the time learning about real life from tireless and ceaseless parenting and they are all fantastic young men and women in every way. She did keep them active in some formal training at all times based on their own interests (sports or other lessons). Her husband is his own boss so they get plenty of time with both, but both have extensive formal training in teaching and training.
I started homeschooling in the early 90’s. From that point and going forward, we told new parents that government curriculum was unacceptable for a homeschool and why. We didn’t try to persuade them, we instructed them that this is how it is. There was no snowflake reaction. No one that I knew of used any government curriculum at all. New homeschoolers were open to learning how to return to our nation’s freedom loving roots.
I’ve got one school-age son left and his homeschool experience consists of spending between 30 and 40 hours a week with me. We read books and watch movies then discuss them at length and in detail. I ask him to write short essays weekly on a variety of topics then review them for grammar and punctuation, but otherwise allow him to follow whatever style or format he thinks the piece calls for. We build things together, take things apart, clean and maintain systems, buildings, tools and equipment and talk about their history and uses while we work. We focus on history and philosophy as much as the practical aspects of day to day life as well. We prepare meals together, and eat them at the same table where we discuss life, philosophy, current events, the weather, whatever we like. He has individual projects like building furniture and a brick barbecue and participates in physical activities like boxing, hiking, and snowboarding. He helps with daily care of livestock, keeps a journal, works on projects with family friends for pay when offered and has a summer job washing dishes at a local resort. Sometimes we take a day off and go to a museum or climb one of the nearby mountains with the dogs. It doesn’t feel forced, I learn as much as he does, we’ve formed a much deeper bond with one another. There is no downside that I can think of. I’ll ask him in the morning what he thinks.
It might not meet the standards that the modern educational establishment would approve of, but he is well-adjusted, loquacious, mature, responsible, contributes to our family success with pride, has solid friendships within the community, is comfortable talking with adults on a variety of topics and is- in short- everything we could hope for in a boy his age, especially in the midst of a societal collapse where the majority of adults have lost their shit and act like we’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
I get the feeling that virtually all of our historic child-rearing was like this up until America started to go off the rails in the last century. To spend your time and energy helping to raise children to be honorable adults with a curious nature about life and the world we live in seems to me to be the most important thing you can do. It isn’t a chore and it doesn’t require a degree or 15K annually to provide a solid learning experience for a young mind. And in the end there aren’t going to be any of those Cats in the Cradle regrets for either of us. Being there is probably more important than anything I have ever taught them and my guess is that all three of them will be wonderful parents to their children when the time comes.
Who could ask for more?
I think you just defined FAMILY.
Math? Science? How are you handling those?
What you describe sounds wonderful to me. A description to bookmark and send to every parent who says “Homeschooling, I couldn’t do THAT!” Well, can you do LIFE? Then you can do homeschooling.
Our children constantly astound us. Our oldest hates writing. When he was younger, if I asked him to write just one sentence, he would have written “I run.”, because it has the least amount of letters.
Last month, I found him an online course on video game coding, offered for free by a Finnish university in English language. If he completes it, he gets 9 college credits, transferable to any college in the US or worldwide. This is a serious course, with in-depth coding in Java and many essays to write. Currently, he is working on another essay, and all of a sudden, 1500-2000 word essays are no problem for him, as long as it is topic he is interested in.
I am certain that he can learn whatever it is he needs or wants in life. Sometimes all we have to do is step aside.
This is exactly what homeschooling was meant to be, the return to a rich life full of real world experiences and relationships. It’s not supposed to be about the books, it’s about developing skills and building strong families.
120 years ago a persons children were the only retirement policy one had. Cheat your kids and cheat yourself.
Social Security changed all that but what began happening in ernest 120 years ago to make such an evil program possible. 1900 to 1920 changed everything.
“What if they [parents] asked themselves how or why they feel entitled to have a place to drop their kids off for thirteen years of government brainwashing?”
Exactly. If it’s free, YOU are the product.
In the early homeschool movement, many parents believed that no schooling was still better than government indoctrination. There was even an unschooling movement, where you taught the children based on what their interests were and what motivated them. TEACHING LIFE SKILLS was very important, and I hope that that emphasis has continued up until the present day.
Gad, I hate these stupid popups!! Anyway, hello everyone, I’m soo glad to see that most of you who have sent in a reply are of the opinion that most parents are quite qualified to teach their own children! What’s really needed is for the majority of parents to stop looking at the outside world to determine if they are qualified. No, we don’t all have the aptitude, or level of intelligence. But I do know that most people that homeschool don’t try to do it all on their own if they can find others wanting to do the same thing. It’s called a coop. I wish back in the 70’s when I was raising my family, that the Feminist movement could’ve taken a flying leap! It definitely hasn’t helped anyone’s children! Fortunately 2 of my 3 kids were able to take advantage of parochial school for at least half of their schooling. And 1 child has homeschooled all 6 of her children and is helping teach her grandchildren! And 1 child has been able to provide his children with private and parochial training for all 3 of his children. And 1 child sent all 3 of her children to public school. They have all turned out well. But the children who have had parental oversight are more prepared to deal with the problems in today’s world. Thank you letting me speak.
I do totally agree with Wilbur Ross. Jesus is the only one that can fix this mess!!!