by Linnea Johnson
Do you look on with astonishment at Antifa and other extreme groups rioting and shouting “death to America?” How could all this happen? Where did all these young people come from who hate the US?
Chances are they caught this belief from our public school systems. If you live in California, it’s right in your face. Some are calling it out.
We’ve talked about why homeschooling is an excellent choice from an academic, independence, and character-building standpoint in previous articles. In this discussion, we’ll talk about protecting your children from indoctrination.
Related: Most Schools Won’t Reopen in 2020: Here Are Some Alternatives for Learning
Distance learning is starting to show some of the cracks with schooling.
Reports are starting to surface of parents uncomfortable with the political patina of their children’s online classrooms. Police visited one family because a boy’s BB gun was visible behind him in an online classroom session, and the teacher reported the “gun” to the police.
Another teacher caught a glimpse of a 12-year old’s Nerf gun, and instead of asking him or the parents about it, she reported it to the sheriff. The child was accidentally suspended for a week for having a toy gun at home during a Zoom class!
One teacher expressed that he has to be more careful with his words now that parents can listen to online class sessions. Some school districts have gone so far as to ask parents to sign a disclaimer that they will not watch class sessions with their children to protect other children’s privacy in the online classroom.
Could it be that teachers, their unions, and school administrations are concerned about being exposed as rhetoric spreaders in the classroom?
Have we forgotten our children are our responsibility?
Rearing them, teaching them, caring for them, and loving them is our responsibility. In this country, it seems we have abdicated that responsibility and ceded it over to the state. We believe the government owes our children free education, free medical care, and even free meals. I don’t know about you, but I suspect there is a string attached when I hear something is free. That string is the ability to mold our children’s minds.
I’m not comfortable with people I don’t know taking full responsibility for my children’s care, their thoughts, and their beliefs. Don’t we suspect that this current civil unrest was born in the classroom some years ago? While “it takes a village” has a nice familial ring to it, do we want the state to be that village?
Do we want our children to have our values or someone else’s?
Infuse into your home education a worldview rooted in critical thinking and morality, whether it be the Principle Approach, or an education rich in the study of the US constitution and western philosophy, or Socratic reasoning, or a faith-based curriculum.
If you’re a person of faith, you will undoubtedly want your children to share your faith and not that of a secular system. Teach your children how to think and help them to develop good character.
I know many teachers who take their jobs seriously, who go to work faithfully every day and try to do a good job. The best of them end up being frustrated by a system that doesn’t support them and is heavily influenced by the teacher’s unions and political correctness. They don’t want to be responsible for both their children and yours. They want to educate your children in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Still, their latitude in teaching has been severely limited by common core standards, teaching to the test, and political correctness.
Their job performance is now dependent upon how much your children learn from the required curriculum and how well they can perform on a standardized test. Children spend countless hours preparing for these tests that show only memorized information regurgitated onto the bubble-filled page. Do we want children who can memorize or do we want critical thinkers?
Students are encouraged, “get a good night’s sleep, and eat a good breakfast” on test days, as if this is not important on every other school day.
The teacher’s ability to advance to the next performance level or pay grade depends on your child’s test performance. That’s a lot of pressure for both the teacher and your child. Don’t we want our kids to be able to read, write, and do the math, and when they’ve learned that, to be able to think critically?
As a parent, you have tremendous influence and responsibility
You create an atmosphere of helping your children understand and make sense of the world around them by just listening and having a conversation. Could you do that over breakfast? How about around the dinner table?
If you don’t have a meal together as a family, start now. It’s a time to reconnect with each other, discuss the day’s events, or sort out difficulties someone is having. Mealtime is a time when the family knows everyone will listen to each other.
I’ve seen variations on the family meal. Some families discuss the events of the day. Others will pose a question and ask everyone’s opinion before the parent gives his/her view. Others recite memorized poetry or Bible verses, and others use the time to pray. Mealtime can become a sacred time – a time for the family to lift one another, work through difficulties, and talk about what was essential to each one.
We didn’t realize how important mealtime was until my son had a group of friends over. When it was dinnertime, my son called them to the table. They said they’d come in to eat later. My son explained that we all eat together in our house. Reluctantly, they all came in to eat. At the end of the meal, my son’s friends said they enjoyed eating together. The only time they did that in their homes was during the holidays. I think they wished their own families did the same.
You have the power to create a safe and comforting place in your home at mealtime, not just for your children but also for their friends. Even if the food is simple, or God forbid, scarce, don’t discard the opportunity to reconnect.
What about homeschooling?
The decision of whether to homeschool – or even if they’re qualified to do so – has been a difficult one for many parents. I’ve read that parents are concerned about the cost of homeschooling, hiring a tutor or a teacher for their micro-school or learning pod of children. They are desperate to keep working and earning to pay someone else to educate their children and maintain their same lifestyle.
If you can afford to hire a teacher, even part-time, to educate your and your friend’s kids in a one-room schoolhouse in your converted garage, more power to you. Many don’t have that financial flexibility to hire someone else to teach.
My advice to you would be to join forces with other parents, share the load, learn to teach your children, and teach them to learn from you. Here are some tips to help you do so.
- Be flexible. Some parents may be able to teach during part of the day, and some may be available for tutoring at night. Another parent may teach archery, bushcraft skills, gardening, food preservation, or backpacking on the weekend.
- Be creative. Pull together something that works for you and the other families. A kitchen table is all you need.
- Divide the work fairly. I belonged to a babysitting co-op, and we created laminated cards to exchange babysitting services. One card for one hour of babysitting for up to two children was the baseline. We all started with the same number of cards and exchanged and received them as we used and provided babysitting to the other co-op members. Parent educators could design a similar system—one card per adult for two hours of teaching for up to four children.
Using an established system, you could help one another in other ways. Perhaps one family gardens, another knows how to do car maintenance, another has an abundance of chicken eggs, and another has skills in the medical field.
Could you exchange what you have or know for what another family has or knows? Could you save money by exchanging for needs?
Think about it because this kind of system could help you navigate not only homeschooling, but also a collapse in the supply chain, rapid inflationary pressures on food or medicine, or securing neighborhoods from civil unrest.
Related: Sometimes Survival is not About What You Know: It’s About Who you Know
Why do I push homeschooling?
Homeschooling can form the baseline for all other thought processes. Homeschooling creates solid values in your children, supporting one another through thick and thin, and finding others who are like-minded. Homeschooling can be your lifeline, not just for your children, but also for your entire family. It’s also the best way I know to have a stable and fulfilling relationship with your grown children.
Homeschooling is just part of a mindset that is undergirded by a belief in self-sufficiency. And by self-sufficiency, I don’t necessarily mean going it all alone. I mean figuring out a way to make it a win-win for others with a similar mindset to you and getting what both you and they need. Some people find a group of like-minded people in a church, within your own family, and others find them on a blog like this. Find your people and figure out a way to help one another, not just in homeschooling, but also in doing life together.
I used to say it was time to leave this country if homeschooling was outlawed because I believed that was the final step in indoctrination and in limiting our freedom. While it is not outlawed, it may become more and more regulated. I urge you to take this time to explore your options, to understand what you want for your family’s future, and to take action now to achieve that.
I believe we have a window of opportunity that may close in the years ahead. Learn to protect your children from the indoctrination of others who don’t have their best interests in mind.
About Linnea
Linnea Johnson has her MA in Curriculum and Instruction and has taught preschool students through adults on topics including music, English as a 2nd language, technology, business and personal finance. She and her husband homeschooled their two active sons, who both went on to careers in entrepreneurship. Her greatest joy is spending time with her family, cultivating an urban farm, creating fused glass items and enameled jewelry, and traveling with her husband. Linnea authors StartHomeschoolNow.com.
Indoctrination comes from people regardless.
Parents teach their children 9-11 wasn’t real, it was the government and not muslim terrorism, it was the U.S. military who did it, it was American politicians who did it for control and NWO, that America had it coming because they deserved it, it was aliens, it was muslim terrorism etc etc etc.
You don’t need to blame public schools when parents aren’t paying attention to start with. Not everyone has these issues in public schools. Teachers are payed to teach not to police. Make examples of those that cross the line. If teachers are still communicating with kids after hours that’s an issue to. Stop it. Those hours are the parents and nothing good is going to come from it. Again those hours are the parents to be involved not to watch “reality tv”.
Parenting doesn’t stop because they went to learn. Find out what is being taught. Same with church. Find out what’s being taught, no or little communication afterwards even or especially with the youth ministry. That time is yours and nothing good is going to come from extended communications and use the time wisely.
Parenting is the hardest job with the biggest reward there is.
There’s nothing wrong with homeschooling either IF you can handle it and do it properly. But again it’s hard and a sacrifice.
This gets to the crux of the culture war going on right now. Will parents remove their children from those who teach their kids morals and values other than what they believe or want taught?
In pre-Revolutionary war times, the colonists refused anything British right down to straight pins and fabric. These decisions made thing just a little bit less comfortable for them, but the fight was worth it.
200 plus years later, we don’t even have the will to do something so simple as turn off Facebook or “unfriend” the relatives and friends who spew foolishness and hatred. We can’t turn off You Tube and so many other anti-American companies – let alone defund the liberal colleges that our kids are going to, or go after the FCC licenses of lying news media. We can’t even stop spending our money at companies that stand against morality and decency. On the contrary, we MUST keep giving them our money because it contributes to our comfort.
If we can’t even do the very simple things, then there’s probably no chance of winning this culture war that is waging across America right now.
I’d blame conservative and libertarian types, who profess belief in liberty, for not countering the ridiculous narratives of leftists, and especially for doing little or nothing to reverse our degeneration toward Marxist despotism.
You have two sides here, essentially – (1) believers in totalitarianism who have no morals or conscience and think anything they do, any lie, any theft, any murder of their opponents is justified, and (2) rational people who wouldn’t do these things and insist on following the rules – voting, thinking the government will protect them, etc.
So you have one side that believes in doing absolutely anything, and another that believes in being polite and hasn’t yet really fought back at all, at least not effectively.
Allowing believers in communism and gulags to call themselves “progressive” as one example is completely ridiculous. Why isn’t there widespread condemnation of this false label, and why haven’t believers in liberty taken upon themselves this label to show that you can “progress” toward something good like peace and liberty rather than toward a mass murdering dictatorship?
Part of the problem also is that most Republicans only want their own version of totalitarianism rather than truly believing in liberty. Hence the murder worship (military, war) and the worship of enforcers of tyranny (police). So they are already ruled out as being able to do anything to counter Democrats and Marxists.
So the real situation we have is (1) too few believers in liberty, (2) those who do haven’t been effective in stopping the “progression” toward China-like or Stalin-like tyranny and terror. They’ve typically voted Republican which does nothing, or voted third party which does nothing, or not voted which does nothing either.
Voting is definitely not the answer. Getting people to understand and believe in liberty is. And that means voluntaryism and the non-aggression principle, and the idea that nobody has a right to rule over you, and exposing governments that claim to have the consent of the governed as frauds because they don’t. You’re not allowed to not consent!
You’re a slave and only allowed to do what they permit. Nobody has that right – to tell you what you may and may not do, to take your money to fund themselves (taxation is theft), to constantly threaten you if you don’t do what they demand, etc. Belief in government authority IS the #1 problem.
Excellent summary of the problem! As a former leftist who has “walked away” from the left, people now assume that I am a conservative. Although I believe that people on the right are currently more aware of the looming tyranny, that does not mean that I believe conservatism is the full answer, for exactly the reasons you mention. The solution is to get out of the left/right paradigm altogether (while monitoring both sides), join together with freedom-minded people whatever their former political background, and become as independent of this toxic system as possible.
Great post.
Only problem I see is that in this day and age, finding that middle ground, is getting harder and harder.
Fiscally I am very conservative and I think our government at all levels should also be. If I have to be responsible for my financial accounts, so should they. Granted CV19 was a black swan no one could of taken the right course of action (except maybe Sweden).
But I have some liberal ideas/leanings too.
Thing is, if you are not 100% on their side, then you are a white supremacist nazi! (note, I am more brown than white) or a leftist snowflake!
Some of the mental gymnastics some make are truly amazing. Like, perfect scores, even from the Russian judge.
Having a parental rights amendment will help with this.
https://parentalrights.org/amendment/
Seems to me some out there believe it is their responsibility to teach students things outside of the basic reading, writing, math, science.
They want to re-make history into something different. Taking a different perspective, to broaden a students mind is not a bad thing. But if it goes against what values a parent or family have, then that could be an issue.
I would like to see more taught about critical thinking, and real world skills to help them make good decisions, mainly about finances. What was taught in my school’s Home Economics, was next to nothing about Economics (how to manage money, balance a check book, credit score, the pros and cons of a credit card, how student/home/car loans work).
Look. We will answer one way or another for neglecting our responsibility as parents. “Do unto others as you would have done unto you; is a double edged sword. One need only look up to see what selfishness has wrought. 11 1/2 years now I asked The Most High, Why? Who? Our enemy screams in pain, while they consume our respective lands, then puts them to the torch to cover their crimes! As far as the public Commie camps known as schools! SURPRISE!!! Your children hate you! They hate The Most High! They hate white people! They hate themselves! They hate Babies! & as a cherry on top, they hate America too! The one thing we have always been aware of, is the Land of The Free is Yah’s country, & we are MOST blessed to have landed here to RUN OUR RACE!! Teach them to read write, & basic math. Learn over this time what the child is interested in with a view toward training as a secondary education. 911 was real, but they LIED about circumstances. That’s how they roll.
My wife is a home school evaluator and she is already expecting a large increase in home school families that will opt out of public indoctrination. It is one of the few benefits of the lockdown slaying of America.
Before the pandemic I volunteered once a week at a local elementary public school. My grandchildren go to a private Christian School. It was like night and day. Public school children do not have to stand up for the pledge to the flag some classrooms had no flag in it at all. Also the parents drop the children off and expect the teacher to do everything. I was teaching 2nd graders to read what my kindergartener grandchild was already reading. When I asked these little ones if their mommy or daddy read to them they said no when I asked them if their Grandma read to them they said they didn’t have one. I really believe that this pandemic will be an eye-opener for parents and more will take a keen interest in their education. We are their first teachers. When my daughter was in elementary school I worked part-time but I volunteered at the school. I took them on field trips to historical sites I took them to the port to see the Navy ships. We need to be involved. These are our children and our grandchildren.
If we are going to teach our children, we must be open to learning ourselves. So often, as a former teacher, I hear parents say something is “X” and we have learned recently that it is actually “Y”. We may have heard it wrong, or just plain were not taught that bit of information. We also have a framework on which our knowledge was built and we must build that framework in our children. Also, no matter how hard we try, we introduce our biases into our children. We indoctrinate them from an early age based on our beliefs and our comments. It is a challenge to recognize those blinders and open up the world so our children can make their own decisions. My parents, two very different people raised in different states, raised two very different children. One that was biased toward narrow old fashioned rules and one that was open to new experiences and people. If you can recognize a bias in yourself, while not saying you are wrong or right you can introduce the ability to research and understand other opinions and encourage your child to make a decision based on facts. Discourse and acceptance of other people’s opinions, leading to cooperation, and their right to have that opinion!, seems to be lost today.
You make a great point, Cinnamon Grammy!
This is the result of parents adoring their children instead of teaching them. Giving each a participation trophy so no one’s feelings get hurt instead of encouraging being your best. Allowing television, Disney, the internet and communist indoctrination centers also known as public schools, college and universities to “educate” their kids while they soak up reality tv and sports.
The parents of these brainwashed spoiled little brats never said no, never administered any discipline, allowed the kids to run the house and now the rest of us are stuck dealing with their failures. Hopefully these same parents will have to depend on these self-centered little ****s for care in their old age and they end up dumping them at a government run nursing home that resembles a Russian gulag.
I am a 66yo grandfather …my daughter just chose to home school my 9 yo grandson. Not because on Covid but because of the crap the teachers are teaching them. At first I was horrified but now I think it was a a very wise choice. I was an employee for 28 yrs of a large Long Island school district and the liberals are running it right into the trash bin
We homeschooled our children K-12 and they are delightful, productive adults. On my deathbed, I will never say, “I wish I had spent more time with my children” because I couldn’t possibly have spent any more time with them than I did. We work together as a team and enjoy one another’s company. We were able to instill our values into our children and gave them the freedom to find their own hobbies and careers. One of the things that I think is lost in sending children to traditional school for 5-8 hours per day is that the children never learn how to entertain themselves and don’t have time to learn what THEY want to learn, so the thrill for learning is drilled out of them. My children had many hours outside of “schoolwork” to learn how to knit, sew, play multiple instruments, cook, play multiple sports, run, ride bikes, smoke meat, perform in plays, play outside, garden, or just THINK in the quiet of their own minds. They are never “bored.” They have learned how to entertain themselves.
News flash – you are indoctrinating your children also. I know no one who home schools for reasons other than they “don’t want their children “exposed” to “. At some point in their lives, your children will be on their own. Filling their heads with ” hates America”, ” wants to abolish religion” ” wants to take your guns”, is no different than what you claim “others” are trying to do to our children.
It is the rare home school parent(s) who can teach the material children need to succeed in today’s world. Face it – no matter how self sufficient one is, some income will be required. Do my kids a favor – send your kid to public school or a non-religious school – no charter schools either. If you can’t handle talking to kids about ANY topic, perhaps you shouldn’t have had kids.
“It is the rare home school parent(s) who can teach the material children need to succeed in today’s world.”
Hog wash. Test results say otherwise. They are stomping public schools into the ground, and that is why homeschoolers are heavily recruited by colleges. I personally know of several who have received full academic scholarships.
I successfully homeschooled three children. One now is an operating manager for a business, one is an engineer firefighter at 25, and one is in the army and scored extremely high on his testing before enlisting. All have good relationships with their spouses and us. Don’t tell me it can’t be done because I proved you wrong.
When I was living in New Orleans, charter schools were the best chance a lot of those kids had to get out of poverty.
By forcing no choice on those parents (many POC single moms) was forcing increased income inequality.
Charter schools have blown up in size here. I’ll admit I don’t know much about them other than the state keeps accusing them of fraud etc but never had filed charges in multiple cases over several years.
Looks like a vendetta by government at this point to me.
So what’s the deal with them?
Selena I support choice. I work with grown folks that have been both home schooled and public. There’s little difference and you can’t tell except through conversation.
Selena,
You are way off base saying “send you kid to public school”. That was the whole point of the article. Homeschooling my sons for 2 years didn’t “costs” me a dime. I used free internet sites for testing and focused on math, science and writing. By homeschooling you give your kids a fighting chance to not buy into the indoctrination of how “bad” this country is. Once they become adults they will be stronger and better equipped to face the “new normal”. My sons age 19 and 22 will never fall for media lies of white privilege, feel “guilty” for being straight, white males and are clear thinkers.
All I really got out of this is “gubment good.” Disregarded. Have fun with your children guzzling soy milk lmao
Many families, perhaps the majority, have abandoned the tasks of parenthood, especially that of teaching their children with essential values. A large number of families no longer think that it’s their job to feed, house, clothe and train their children to do the right thing. They are entirely willing to turn those responsibilities over to others, and as a result, their children have been indoctrinated by Socialists, Communists and Anarchists who have wormed their way into the academic structures of our nation. Billions of our own American tax dollars have been misused to fund this academic brain-washing.
Since COVID-19 has altered our reality, things have gotten worse. People have been telling us that they are unable to feed their children without school-provided meals. Indeed, the propaganda line from the NEA is that entire families rely on school-provided meals. Really? How can responsible society allow children to live in households without any food? Is this reality, or just exaggeration intended to support more social welfare legislation?
When I was going through the American educational system in the 1950’s-1960’s, the National Educational Association (NEA) was a professional standards organization, focused on improving education and teacher professionalism. Now the NEA is essentially an arm of the Democrat-Socialist Party, and is focused on liberal-progressive political objectives. In 2016, the NEA comprised 35% of the Democratic Party National Convention delegates. They are no longer an objective professional organization, they are instead focused on achieving liberal-progressive political aims.
Now we have a national political party, the Democrat-Socialist Party, that is all but endorsing the violence and left-wing madness in our big cities. Will the American citizens reward them by voting for the most radical left-wing platform in history? God, I hope not.
Social upheaval and shifting values systems are not new, historically speaking. However, I concurn with many here that the “indoctrination” of our students over the last several decades is reaping what it’s sown now. I would place blame on a culture focused on material weath, driving us to work 60+ hours a week, and the lack of focus on family as either a unit or a concept. The fundamental issue I see is an over-reliance upon the “state” to take care of you. The idea that the “government is here to help” has been a snake slowly digesting the mouse of America for the last 60-80 years. If you go back to post-WWII, we began our national myth of the nuclear family, a chicken on every table, the destruction of the family farm, and a societal concept that the government could “save you”- and so it should. All countries have a national myth, and those who lose theirs find themselves in the situation we are facing right now. China lost its nationalist flavor for several reasons, but one was their national identity was unappealing to those generations who remembered the Emperor (its obviously more complex than that) but it played a key role in the defeat of the Kuomingtan and the rise of Mao. Similar issues have happened in South Africa, Bolivia, and Iraq. I would argue that the initial foundation for this upheaval goes back to Wilson- although some like to start with FDR.
We’ve been conned into inviting the state into our homes, even when it wasn’t really an invitation. We fall prey to phrases such as “federally mandated”, and still hold onto the idea that our elected servants represent our interests- even when it’s obvious they don’t. But that is also a key point- who are “we”, “our”, and “they”? As humans, we have an innate need to categorize- it helps us organize our relationships and engagements. These engagements we see now are a direct result of complacency, government over-reach, and a failing in adherence to community values. And the more we stand by in horror, the more we are promoting this behaviour- even tactily- until it is upon us and too late to stop.
Great article. Online classes have definitely shown me a birds eye view into what they are teaching at my 19 year olds college. I sent him to the most conservative Texas public university in the nation and yet while monitoring his Sociology class the professor constantly uses profanity in the videos, denounces Trump at every opportunity as examples of what’s wrong with “society”, goes into detail on Marxism, socialism, communism, gay researchers showing how bad capitalism is and so on. I see from the comments that the students getting sociology degrees are really budding Marxist. I tell him to fight back by posting comments in support of hard work, religious beliefs and conservative view points. He’s afraid of getting a bad grade. I don’t want him reading articles about women’s vagina’s needing a new social respect from doctors. Really? God forgive me but I couldn’t stand it and took over his online class for him so he doesn’t have this bs put in his head. And yes it was required for his major.
enjoyed this
Check out: https://podeducation.ca/
Many years ago when the D.A.R.E. Program came to our sons elementary school, he became very rude and combative with my wife for several days. He finally admitted that he was going to turn her in to the police for drugs – because wine was a drug and that made her a bad person who should go to jail.
A couple of years later he was having difficulty understanding how he was supposed to do division in math class. I showed him how to do long division because the Common Core method he had been taught was ridiculous. He loved it as it made sense to him and was much easier for him to do.
His teacher sent a note home the next day informing me that I was not allowed to teach him that.
I see comments all over the place but for me it comes to one simple thing. Teach your children to think and question things. I watch Prepper related movies with my children, Captain Fantastic is a great one for how to live. Red Dawn 1984 is another good one. Teach them this could happen and why you prepare. The pandemic is a perfect learning tool. Show them how the stores where empty in April, explain why you have food stored and why instead of going to Disney World you took them camping with just a small bag of gear and you had to make your shelter.
I moved closer to my child ages, 10, 12, 14 and 25 this year and have spent a lot more time with them than other years. I have listened in with school chats and I am not hearing what other hear speak of on this is schools in Milwaukee WI, so maybe they are lucky.
One thing I quote to my 14 YO son is Mark Twain I heard said he never let school get in the way of his education. Explain to them school is a needed part of life, part only a part. Like I hope all the adults here, your job is only part of your life. Have a solid life outside of work. Enjoy life and prepare. I liked the comment about meals together. I have a 30 minutes drive picking my children up and rarely is the radio on or they are on their electronics. We talk and share ideas.
Teach them how to be adults and if you watch movies and TVs shows wit them, try to find ones that you can use to explain life.
I do agree with the person that mentioned it is all indoctrination at some level. Like I first stated teaching your children to think and question things as well as research things is most important. I am not going to get into religious views but I personally do not force any view on my children but if something is brought up I find something kind of video/movie to explain what I am not an expect in. I could go on but I hope everyone understands the concept.
Brainwashing and indoctrination starts very early. Protect your young child with this book, I Am Free To Learn By Charles Stampul. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XB6XY8S