The Education Revolution
What is the future of our school system?
The public school is as American as apple pie. From the one-room schoolhouse on the prairie to the big 5A football powerhouses throughout the country, the public school system is fully ingrained in our culture and our heritage.
It is surprising, then, to realize that the public school system in America is barely a century old. For most of human history, education happened at home. If a family was wealthy enough, they could hire a private tutor, or send their children to a boarding school. The idea of free public education being required for all children is fairly new. 19th century Prussia instituted a public school system to turn out good citizens, good factory workers, and especially good soldiers. The United States imitated this system, as left-wing thinkers such as John Dewey saw the value of a program that could transform children from all walks of American life into good citizens.
Public education has long had a leftist bent. Before he was President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson presided over Princeton University and believed his mission was to transform young men into something as far away from their fathers as possible. Modern educators seek the same result. Christian conservative families dutifully send their children to public schools and universities and are shocked to find that their little boys and girls have grown up to become socialist revolutionaries.
The Covid-19 lockdowns should have been the greatest gift to Christian conservative families in American history. After years of decrying the low standards and awful indoctrination coming out of our public schools, suddenly they were closed down. The opportunities for disruption were endless. This was a time for private schools to flourish, and for a renaissance in homeschooling. Yet many families completely ignored the opportunity. Rather than seeing the chance to build something new, they demanded schools reopen immediately. They appealed to the government to allow them to send their sons and daughters back into the left-wing propaganda mills that they had so recently derided.
Yet even many of those parents were horrified by what they saw in their children’s Zoom classes. They surely knew at some level that classrooms were left-leaning, but now they witnessed first hand how our public schools were castigating white children because of their skin color, promoting LGBTQ issues to grade schoolers, and outright admitting that they wanted to turn our children into left-wing activists.
Furious parents began attending school board meetings, demanding to see the curricula. The left responded by labeling such parents domestic terrorists while proclaiming that parents have no right to determine what their children should be taught. Parental outrage became a political flashpoint, propelling Glenn Youngkin to victory over longtime Democrat operative Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race. School choice, an idea that had been around since at least the early 2000s, suddenly gained new life.
What is school choice? It is a plan by which taxpayer funding follows the student rather than the public school district. In our current system, state and local governments allocate a certain amount of money to a school district based on how many students are enrolled. Wealthy neighborhoods might spend more than twenty thousand of dollars per student while poorer regions spend less. Idaho ranks near the bottom on most lists, a fact that is used by public education advocates to demand more, despite there being no correlation between per-pupil spending and student achievement.
The school choice movement aims to take that money that would be going to the public school system on behalf of your child and give it to you. Under this system, parents would have the choice of what to do with those funds, whether to use them to enroll their children in a private school or to purchase supplies and curricula to do school at home. The idea of funding students rather than public schools has gained tremendous traction in the last two years and has been passed by several states. Idaho’s measure was defeated in a House committee last month, but it will surely be reintroduced next year.
Conservatives across the country are enthusiastic about these measures, which I believe have a chance to break the insidious public school system once and for all. But there are some reasons for concern.
I recently had the opportunity to speak to a homeschooling family that came to Idaho precisely because of our liberal homeschooling laws. In California, where they once lived, parents who wish to teach their children at home are required to register with the state and submit to government oversight of their lessons and testing. Idaho is different. The laws of our state assume that parents know best for their families, and do not require families to ask the government for permission to teach their own children.
The school choice measure that died in committee last month included provisions for homeschooling families to be reimbursed for equipment and curricula. While this might sound reasonable in theory, in practice it means that a bureaucracy must be created to oversee the process. That bureaucracy would not only have the power to decide what counts as educational expenses, but also maintain a list of homeschooling families in our state.
Families who began homeschooling after the lockdowns of 2020 seem to be more supportive of school choice measures than those who were already there. Transitioning away from the public school mindset can be quite an ordeal, and families in this situation will surely appreciate government assistance. For Idaho families who were dedicated to homeschooling prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, this is a non-starter. Many came to this state precisely because Idaho does not require homeschooling families to register with the government. They want to stay off the grid, so to speak. "People don't understand that when they take funding, they become accountable to the government,” said one longtime homeschooling parent.
This is perhaps a blind spot for supporters of school choice, who see it as a way to give parents more options, provide financial help for families, and weaken the teacher unions that have caused so many problems in our society. They do not see any downside to giving parents money and flexibility in their educational choices. When gubernatorial candidate Ed Humphreys spoke to a group of homeschooling families recently, he was unprepared for the icy reception they gave to his school choice proposal. In their zeal, reformers might not realize that hardcore homeschoolers see any government help as unwelcome. "We don't want an advisory board, we don't want permission, we don't want to get together, we just want people to leave us alone," another parent told me.
The way forward is to pursue our goal of disrupting the ossified public school system while allowing families the freedom to live without government interference. Idaho’s liberal homeschooling laws are an explicit declaration that parents have first choice in how they educate their children, and it needs to stay that way. Homeschooling families that want to stay off government lists must give up on the idea that they can benefit from vouchers or funding without sacrificing their independence. Any program involving taxpayer money is by definition a poison pill. On the other hand, politicians who want to disrupt the public school system must realize that most homeschooling families just want to be left alone.
The American education system is due for a revolution. Millions of families throughout the country are making the choice to educate their children in private schools, at home, or in other nontraditional ways. The school choice movement is a good idea, so long as it protects the rights of families to stay off the government’s radar. But there are even more outside-the-box ideas that could be considered to create an environment where families can flourish.
We must maintain oversight of our public schools. Attend school board meetings, or even run for school board yourself if you have the time. Even if you do not have children of your own in the system, it is imperative to influence the future leaders of our community. If we do not do it, then the teacher unions, LGBTQ activists, and Critical Race Theorists will.
We must build strong communities. Get to know your neighbors, and form coalitions of like-minded families. The homeschooling community is growing and thriving, and is not only a great resource for figuring out how to teach your own children at home, but can also be a source of strength when times get tough. Building communities outside of the government framework is necessary to survive the tumultuous years ahead.
The public school system is the point of the spear in the Marxist plan to transform our society away from its traditional foundation. The left counts on you to be complacent while they use media, entertainment, and academia to indoctrinate the next generation. Your children are a gift from God, and they are your posterity, a piece of you that will live on after you are gone. Do not sacrifice them to a broken and degenerate system in the name of convenience. There can be no compromise when it comes to raising the next generation - not with the left, nor with even the most benevolent government.