When Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), posted on X on Sunday, “What’s behind the increase in homeschooling?” she attached an article from far-left Axios with the same question.
She got so many answers that she disabled comments.
Axios covered every possible answer except the real one: Parents are taking their kids out of public schools, and keeping them out, to keep them from being indoctrinated with Marxist ideology.
It has little to do with low scores, although they are dismal. The International Student Assessment (ISA), the world’s scorecard, showed American students ranking 35th among 70 countries in math, 16th in science, and 11th in reading. Unfortunately that study was before the Covid lockdowns. In 2022, the ISA recorded the largest-ever drop in math scores, along with other declines.
It has little to do with crime and safety, although that is a good reason to be concerned.
It has little to do with talented and gifted children not getting the specialized help they need. They’ve been largely ignored for decades.
The real reason, according to former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, is the indoctrination public-school students are getting under Weingarten and the educational establishment:
This focus on indoctrination over education is why Weingarten and the leftist establishment she represents are so dangerous; their malfeasance directly empowers Xi, Putin, and Ali Khamenei, who look to our schools to accelerate the decline upon which they build their global narrative….
Critical race theory (CRT) and the 1619 Project derive from Marxist precepts.
Weingarten no doubt knows this. As Will Estrada, senior counsel at the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HLDA), said:
Parents are no longer willing to place their children on the front lines of culture wars over religion, world politics, transgender issues or how history is taught. They’re seeking alternatives to the aggressive march of public schools replacing academics with ideology, regardless of political alignment.
Weingarten is merely the latest iteration of those who have recognized the importance of getting to the children during their formative years. That would include the “Father of American Education,” Horace Mann. As The New American noted:
Although John Dewey is often reported to have had an undue influence on American education, it was Horace Mann who is called “The Father of American Education” for inflicting the present public-school system onto the country.
In 1837, he became chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and from that moment on devoted his entire energy toward removing religious influence from schools.
He persuaded his fellow “modernizers” to push for tax-supported elementary schools, with one of the primary principles being “that this education must be non-sectarian.”
The purpose, according to Mann, was to “equalize the conditions of men” by teaching them early “obedience to authority.”
He publicly declared that “our Public Schools are not Theological Seminaries” and made sure that books that were “calculated to favor the tenets of any particular set of Christians” were proscribed.
Mann and Dewey sowed the seeds, and Weingarten is tending the garden.
But there is abundant good news. As the responses to Weingarten’s post revealed before she shut them down, readers knew the answer. “You are!” wrote one responder. “The policies you’ve advocated,” wrote another.
Still others agreed, saying that her policies are driving the homeschool revolution. As Young Americans for Liberty posted, “Homeschooling is now the fastest-growing form of education in the U.S. Randi still doesn’t realize [that] she is one of the greatest homeschool advocates in American history.”
Moms for Liberty also responded to Weingarten’s query before it was shut down:
Parents learned during covid that they often can’t trust schools to teach children effectively or respect their fundamental parental rights.
You closed schools and left many parents with no other options.
Now they know they can handle homeschooling. We should be thanking you.
In 1970 there were only about 10,000 homeschooled children in the country, thanks to laws in every state prohibiting homeschooling. Enter the Homeschool Legal Defense Association in 1983, and now there are more than four million, doubling just since 2016.
Weingarten may be clueless as to why homeschooling is exploding, but the parents aren’t. And they’re seizing the opportunity presented by homeschooling.
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