The Left is Panicking That the Pandemic Will Encourage Homeschooling

by Mark Tapson

Can’t have parents teaching children to think for themselves now, can we?

Mark Tapson is the Shillman Fellow on Popular Culture for the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

One of the more significant social and political consequences of the coronavirus pandemic is the fact that countless American parents of public school-enrolled children suddenly find themselves faced with the daunting prospect of having to homeschool those kids for an indefinite period of time. When normalcy returns, most of those families, who for various reasons are unable or unwilling to continue homeschooling, will simply fall back into their old groove and schooling will resume as before. But many parents may find themselves enlightened and excited about homeschooling’s benefits and how it actually operates, as opposed to common misconceptions, which are usually pejorative. This is a possibility that the secular leftist elites in education will not tolerate.

Decades ago progressive activists realized that revolution was best brought about not through overt attacks on the Establishment, but through subversion from within its structures – in particular, the field of education. After all, children are the future, and thus the surest and most direct way to mold the future is to mold impressionable young minds who are a captive audience for progressive, social justice indoctrination. This is why domestic terrorists like Barack Obama’s ghostwriter Bill Ayres and his (literal) partner-in-crime Bernardine Dohrn abandoned bombmaking for the Weather Underground and became respected, credentialed educators working primarily with children (Ayres earned two master’s degrees in Early Childhood Education and a doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction; the law professor Dorhn is one of the founders of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law).

The secular left is terrified of losing control of America’s children to homeschoolers, who tend to be (but are not always) conservative and often religious. The secular left also resents the notion of parental control; after all, as former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry put it bluntly in a network promo several years ago, “We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.” Harris-Perry too was a college educator. In light of developments due to the pandemic, the left is gearing up to clamp down on any increased interest in homeschooling.

One example of the left’s offensive against homeschoolers: the Daily Caller reports that in June, Harvard Law School will be hosting an invite-only “homeschooling summit” to discuss the “problems of educational deprivation and child maltreatment that too often occur under the guise of homeschooling, in a legal environment of minimal or no oversight.” The event, which will host speakers from education and child welfare policy backgrounds as well as academics, policy advocates, and legislators, is sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Child Advocacy Program, in cooperation with the Academy on Violence and Abuse, the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, the Institute for Human Services, the New York Foundling, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Institute, and the Zero Abuse Project. Note how many of those organizations focus on child abuse. That’s because homeschooling parents are often demonized as abusers of their own children in order to justify government intrusion – oops, I mean “oversight” – into private homes.

full story at https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/left-panicking-pandemic-will-encourage-mark-tapson/