One of the issues most likely to be on voters’ minds this November is education. With test scores falling and indoctrination rising, parents have had just about enough of public education and the teachers’ unions who lord over it. In the past several years, homeschooling has steadily been on the rise. Parents want an alternative to government schools. But now, a popular publication is calling to impose on homeschooling the very thing that those who do homeschool are trying to get away from: federal regulations. But is it really a veiled attempt at something else that has nothing to do with education?
If government doesn’t stay out of homeschooling it will go underground.
Parents have the God-given right to educate their own children.— AvaArmstrong,🇺🇸Author (@MsAvaArmstrong) June 19, 2024
In a June 17 newsletter, “Scientific American” Magazine, based on numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), suggested that federal regulations be put on homeschooling. NCES shows that almost three percent of American students are homeschooled, roughly 1.5 million kids. But it is not the call for federal regulations that is the most disturbing thing about Scientific American’s suggestion; the best part is that they also suggest that parents of homeschooled kids “undergo a background check.” First, just one question: What does this have to do with “science?”
The newsletter goes on to concede that homeschooled students do excel. Test scores are consistently 15 to 20 percentile points higher than their public education counterparts, and homeschooled students also tend to score higher on SAT and ACT tests. However, Scientific American points out that “most states don’t require the same assessment of homeschooled kids that are required for their public school peers.” But it seems that the real problem Scientific American has is with the parents’ level of education, and the publication engages in a bit of fearmongering, saying:
“Parents are not required to have an education themselves to direct instruction, and in most states, no one checks to see that children are receiving an education at all. In the worst cases, homeschooling can hide abuse.”
It was here that Scientific American declared the need for federal mandates, saying, “Homeschooling should be subject to some basic federal mandates,” and then, seemingly equating homeschooling parents with K-12 teachers, dropped the creepiest part of the newsletter: “Homeschool parents should be required to undergo a background check — the same as K-12 teachers.” Scientific American continued:
“Additionally, homeschool instructors could be required to submit documents every year to their local school district or to a state agency to show that their children are learning. Education is a basic right. We need to make sure kids have chances to investigate what makes them curious, study history and science and reading.”
When they want to regulate homeschooling,
what they’re really regulating is parenting.
When they say,
“Homeschool kids need to be checked on”,
what they’re really saying is,
“Parents can’t be trusted with their kids”. pic.twitter.com/A9z1V5gXiP
— Fatherhood Reforged (@fathersreforged) June 18, 2024
While the editors of Scientific American channel their inner Nancy Pelosi and tell us it is all “for the children,” nothing could be further from the truth. Traditionally, it is conservatives who choose homeschooling for their children. A September 2023 Washington Post/George Mason University poll showed that 46 percent of those polled said they homeschool their kids because “local schools are influenced too much by liberal viewpoints,” and the crowd at Scientific American knows it. What better way to create a comprehensive database of conservatives and be able to know exactly where they are than to require them to undergo a background check? What sort of information would be required from a background check? Political affiliations, ownership of firearms? Imagine what the Biden administration would do with a database of conservatives — think January 6, and we already have a pretty good idea.
Seemingly, the Biden administration, the same people who want to determine what kind of car you drive, what type of stove you have in your house, and how much water you can use in your dishwasher and washing machine, would be on board with being able to regulate what parents teach their own children in the privacy of their own home, especially if that includes a background check of parents.
Parents are pulling their kids out of public school for reasons — such as the Los Angeles Unified School District hosting a “Rainbow Club” to teach kids as young as five about LGBTQ topics in 2023 and the prevalence of what parents nationwide say is pornographic material being made available to students. The call for federal regulations and background checks has nothing to do with assessing whether parents are “qualified” to teach their children and everything to do with making sure as many American students as possible are indoctrinated into left-wing ideology.
BREAKING: “Scientific American” calls for federal homeschooling regulations. Hell no. pic.twitter.com/ksHMTDTMfz
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) June 18, 2024
