The Case for Alternative Schooling
Today’s basic question for young parents, especially Christian parents, is this: “Do you want your children to be educated or indoctrinated?” Assuming it’s the former, you need to keep close watch to make sure they’re being taught what is historically and objectively true, as well as skills that are relevant to getting along and succeeding in the world – and basically HOW to think, not what to think. If there is any indoctrination of your children, it must be by you, the parents, preferably with Judeo-Christian truths, morality, and values.
Since the 1960s, union activity and public apathy have allowed our school systems and education establishment to be gradually infiltrated with atheistic, socialistic, amoral – and, more recently, anti-family and anti-American – faculty and administrators, not to mention government-prescribed curricula that reflect many of these nihilistic and immoral ideologies. As a result, many schools, and most colleges, have become tools of leftist propaganda, promoting beliefs and economic systems that are immoral and/or have demonstrably failed over the years.
Our purpose here is not to advise young parents on how to homeschool their children or choose charter schools, but to influence them to check carefully into all the alternatives before jumping into the government school swamp. For parents of children already in public schools, we suggest keeping a close watch on what the schools are teaching, and then organizing to voice protests where necessary. Here are just a few facts, issues, and cases in point to consider.
(1) As you’d expect, much of the radical drift of public schools has originated in California. For example, just a few years ago Murrieta schools were exposed in their efforts to sexualize children with progressive sex education programs that teach elementary school children about oral sex, masturbation, and other sex acts. Also, for example, the California Board of Education has allowed the ACLU to instruct California teachers on how to help minor children get abortions without their parents’ consent. Moreover, a few years ago the state assembly passed a “resolution” attributing a high LGBTQ suicide rate to religious groups and conversion therapy. These and other outrages didn’t stay in California, and still exist to some extent in other states.
(2) Sexual deviancy is just one prong of the radical left’s recent history of attacks on public education – there is also “revisionist” American history. In 2019, political analyst and former NY lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey said this:
“Across the country, leftists are demanding that public schools teach “ethnic studies.” Don’t be fooled by the title – many of these courses demonize America’s past, label whites as oppressors, and convert students into “social justice organizers.” …[Also] American capitalism is demonized as a system in which “people of color are disproportionately exploited” [by white people]. Never mind that capitalism has lifted billions of people of color out of poverty worldwide. [In short], the curriculum is a one-sided Marxist indoctrination to make students hate America.”
Capitalism is now routinely attacked in schools and colleges. For example, in California again, a proposed “ethnic studies” curriculum, besides gross anti-Israel bias, would teach children that both capitalism and founding father figures are racist. These false claims are resplendent in the late Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” a revisionist history text still used in most public schools.
(3) Parental control is also under progressive attack. In a case that began in 2017, a Minnesota mother testified as follows at a later news conference:
“Last year, without my knowledge or consent, without any court hearings or legal process, without any involvement on my part…a legal aid group [via the local school district] that gives free service to low income people created a notice of emancipation for my 15-year-old son. Suddenly, my son…was no longer under my supervision. Based on that piece of paper alone, he began receiving public assistance [as an adult] …I couldn’t get any information regarding my son. Even the school refused to allow me access to his records. …It was then brought to my knowledge that my son had begun receiving hormone replacement treatments [including narcotics] from [local health services] to transition from male to female….”
Without a doubt, such usurpation of parental authority is unacceptable!
(4) And then, there’s the “old reliable” progressive dogma on climate change, aka saving the planet. Not long ago, Paul Driessen, policy advisor for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow said this:
“From kindergarten onward, our young people are repeatedly told that they, our wildlife, and our planet face unprecedented cataclysms from manmade climate change, resulting from our fossil fuel use. ‘The science is settled,’ they are constantly hoodwinked, and little or no discussion is allowed in classrooms.”
Mr. Driessen went on to point out that students are NOT told about the growing gap between satellite (actual) temperature measurements and the computer model predictions on which the “consensus” of climate alarmism is based; nor are they told about the hundreds of scientists who openly disagree with the “consensus” on manmade climate change. Then, there’s the absence of real-world evidence to support a host of whacky claims that fossil fuel emissions are causing, for example, species extinctions, pigs losing weight, and salmon losing the ability to detect danger. And they are not even told about the other natural forces like ocean currents and temperatures that actually do drive climate and weather.
Moreover, a great many students are still misinformed that storms are getting more frequent and intense, even though recent years’ data on hurricanes and tornadoes clearly refute this claim. And they aren’t told about past climate phenomena in pre-carbon-emissions history – like the Little Ice Age, the Medieval warm period, and long droughts. Instead, they are taught that CO2 is a toxin, rather than the sustainer of life that it is.
Most recently, the left’s narrative is that the disastrous flooding in Nepal was caused by (you guessed it) climate change. Moreover, Bill Gates is now walking back his original support of the manmade climate change story – and European countries are realizing their mistake in abandoning nuclear and other reliable power generation systems. The upshot of all this is that too many of our children are still being exposed to fake science, with the devious socialistic objective of controlling energy use and ultimately the entire economy.
(5) Another creeping menace to education, and potentially to society as a whole, is the embedding in the system of EdTech products by notably left-of-center Silicon Valley firms. Most schools still supply students with laptops or tablets and Internet service – and some of the available content is questionable, like Howard Zinn’s Marxist revisionist history (mentioned above). True, the new tech lets teachers remotely monitor their students’ online activity, but some are remiss in doing so, and others say they find many instances of students straying to video games, YouTube, etc.
EdTech is an entire topic in itself, but suffice it to say that so far, teachers and education experts have found little evidence that EdTech improves student performance – and many say students have lost the ability to focus. In fact, back in 2019, Paris-based Reboot Foundation released an extensive report documenting, among other things, that 4th grade students who used tablets in almost all classes scored 14 points (one grade level) lower in reading than students who never used a tablet. And if that isn’t enough, there’s a potential privacy issue: Google, Apple, and Meta (through Facebook) have already collected detailed records on most American student users. (Now, we read that Meta will be writing the “rules” for kids’ use of social media. Stay tuned.)
The above are just a few examples of creeping progressivism and socialism in our public schools – and in most colleges, these ideologies run rampant. Consequently, parents, especially Christian parents, would do well to at least investigate the alternatives of homeschooling, or a non-union charter school (if available), or a private school (if they can afford it). Homeschooling is now going more mainstream in the US, covering 3.5 million students in 2025 and counting. And interestingly, back in 2012, a survey of homeschooling parents indicated that only 21% gave religious or moral reasons for choosing homeschooling. Presumably, the other 79% strongly believed their children would get a better education at home.
Finally, we note that so-called homeschool charters are popping up around the country, sometimes funded with government money. Sounds like a good idea – but the downside of government funding may be that the government could eventually step in and say: “If you want the money, this is how you have to homeschool.” It might then be just another road to the same landfill.
In conclusion, first PRAY that parents do their homework on this issue and make God-inspired decisions. And then, even if you don’t have kids in school, speak out! As Holocaust chronicler Elie Wiesel has pointed out, silence on issues that could lead to oppression helps only the oppressors, never the victims.
Norbert J. Kuk