Opinion

IZUMI: Classroom Indoctrination Is Causing A Rise In Homeschooling

REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

Lance Izumi Pacific Research Institute
Font Size:

Watching leftist politicians such as New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio goading students to go on “strike” to protest climate change underscored for many American parents the increasing political indoctrination going on in the nation’s public schools, which will likely cause many of them to more seriously consider taking their kids out of government-run schools and homeschooling them.

The climate-change indoctrination push was coast to coast, with the San Diego school board canceling school for a day so that students could join protest rallies and passing a resolution promoting the Green New Deal.

Teacher and author Rebecca Friedrichs rightly observed, “San Diego’s school board should be more concerned with educating its students than canceling classes to send little kids to fill a picket line in support of a partisan agenda.”

The bias in public schools, however, goes even deeper than support for one-day protest marches.

School curriculum is now being infused with leftist social-justice issues and bias that is alarming legions of parents.

In Texas, parent Caryl Ayala criticized one such curriculum, saying it “pits one student against another and violates students’ right to hold a different opinion.”

Surveying the education landscape that parents face, Joy Pullman, executive editor of The Federalist, has observed, “All trends in U.S. public education have been irreversibly left for more than a century.”

“Parents just need to get their kids out, and fast,” urges Pullman.

Which brings us to homeschooling.

A just released federal report on school choice found that while the proportion of students enrolled in public schools has remained roughly unchanged in the last two decades, there has been an explosion in the number of children homeschooled over that same time period.

In 1999, there were 850,000 children who were being homeschooled. By 2016, that number had doubled to 1.7 million.

Author and homeschooling expert Kerry McDonald notes that recent estimates “indicate that there are over two million homeschoolers in the United States.”

While many people associate homeschooling with parents who want to give their children religious instruction, the federal report found that larger percentages of homeschool parents cited poor school environment and dissatisfaction with instruction rather than religious instruction as top reasons why they decided to homeschool their children.

Concern with school environment could include biased political atmosphere, while dissatisfaction with instruction could include indoctrinating curricula and teaching.

Thus, with these two factors driving many parents to leave the public schools and with public schools doubling down on their bias and indoctrination, it is no stretch to predict that more parents will make the decision to homeschool their children to keep the politics out of their education.

Homeschool groups have noted homeschooling spikes after highly publicized mass shootings at public schools.

High-profile indoctrination moves by public schools may have a similar impact on parents, resulting in a greater rise in homeschooling in coming years.

Pullman points out that teaching and curricula, especially K-12 humanities, “have turned towards breeding ignorant political activists rather than informed citizens.”

She warns, “expecting anything to change within the current generation’s school years is a fool’s game.”

Further, by pushing political activism untethered to facts and evidence, the public schools are also breeding political intolerance for dissenting views.

In contrast, by avoiding the one-size-fits-all politics of the public schools, homeschooling actually promotes greater political tolerance.

According to a University of Arkansas study, “Students with greater exposure to homeschooling tend to be more politically tolerant.”

Add in the fact that homeschoolers score at higher levels on various achievement indicators and the appeal of homeschooling will only grow.

With education technology making homeschooling possible for more and more families, and with the public schools opting to indoctrinate rather than educate children, homeschooling may be the future of education.

Lance Izumi is senior director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute and author of the new book, “Choosing Diversity: How Charter Schools Promote Diverse Learning Models and Meet the Diverse Needs of Parents and Children.”


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel