Western North Carolina – Homeschooling is surging. According to a recent report from Fox News using Associated Press surveys, “In 18 states that shared data through the current school year, the number of homeschooling students increased by 63% in the 2020-2021 school year. While the report says in the 2021-2022 school year, the level “…fell by only 17%.”
It is certainly understandable that during the pandemic that parents wanted to keep their children safe from the COVID-19 virus and tyrannical mask mandates, but what is keeping the interest level so high in homeschooling?
Could it be the new “woke” instructional curriculum that students have to listen to and be indoctrinated within today’s classrooms? What I mean by “woke” is a cultural trend that promotes the notion that all white people are racist and there are more than two genders and similar such indoctrination.
School boards in North Carolina keep telling parents that “woke” indoctrination is not going on, but a recent incident at North Henderson High School indicates differently. Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, who’s no fan of “wokeness” in school, sits on the state school board but seems powerless to root out all the “wokeness” in the system, which is likely proving a significant undertaking but perhaps a hopeless endeavor.
Even teachers are fed up with listening to Critical Race Theory (CRT) and LGBTQ+ wokeness at weekly teachers’ meetings. I had a teacher from the state of Ohio tell me she quit her public teaching job because she was tired of weekly CRT meetings she was required to attend. She is now teaching at a Catholic school. She is not Catholic herself and now is earning less money and benefits because sometimes it’s not about the money.
Also, the recent presentation by controversial author Ibram X Kendi, a purveyor of CRT, to an Asheville School System class is another example of the public school indoctrination.
Look, I am a product of the public education system. II had some pretty good teachers, most of whom were nonpolitical and non-religious in their teaching. However, when I became a parent, I sacrificed to send my children to a Christian school and also to homeschool them. This horse manure that homeschool kids are “socially handicapped” because of a lack of interaction within their own age group is a highly contestable assertion, dare I say lie.
My kids interacted with other kids and adults more than they would have at school. There was also no bullying going on at our homeschool, either. My oldest two didn’t go to public school until their sophomore year in high school and then only because they were going to Madison Early College and getting a two-year college degree to boot. Same with my youngest.
At the high school age, I believe they are old enough to recognize indoctrination coming, but there would be no way public schools would get my impressionable five to 15-year-old child.
Until schools get back to teaching skills like reading, writing and arithmetic and leave the formation of children’s social and sexual development to parents, I will never be able to recommend public school for parents of kindergarten through middle school children again.