As thousands of teachers endorse critical race theory, home schooling surges

What apparently Critical Race Theory sees as for education for elementary school kids.

In the past few months state legislatures across the country have passed resolutions that ban schools from teaching the Marxist and bigoted program dubbed Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Not surprisingly, the leftists who dominate our school systems have fought back. The very leftist Zinn Education Project immediately created a petition calling for teachers to defy such laws and to continue to teach CRT, which teaches children to hate whites and to give minorities privileged status.

In the two months this petition has been on line almost 6,000 teachers have signed it, with many adding comments of defiance. This one is typical:

“Allowing our students to thrive means being honest about the roles that racism, sexism, islamophobia, colonialism, neocolonialism, homophobia and other structures of power that oppress people interact in our communities. To move forward we must receive adequate and honest history and unlearn the mis-education of the last 3 centuries. ” Matt Church, Washington, DC.

Notice how Mr. Church only sees things through “isms” and “structures of power,” which see humans merely as members of groups, not as individuals. I expect this guy would be very comfortable accusing all the white eight-year-olds in his class of being racists and bigots, and demand that everyone else do so also. His thinking puts him only one step away from creating death camps to stone the humans he despises, a step that his badly taught students, grilled in bigotry, will be glad to take.

Nor is this petition all. The nation’s largest teacher unions have all publicly endorsed critical race theory, including the National Educational Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers.

Ironically, these teachers are not entirely wrong. The effort to ban CRT in the schools is a very typical example of Republican failure theater, and exactly the wrong way to get this ugly racist propaganda out of elementary schools. Such bans are a cop-out, since they allow funds to continue to flow to the schools, and to the very teachers who seem quite willing to disobey them.

A better and far more effective approach would be to end funding of any school that taught CRT. Let these teachers and their unions try to teach it, but make them do so on their own dime. If the teaching of CRT is truly desired by Americans, these teachers will have no problem forming private schools independent from government interference, since many parents will flock to send their kids to them.

Of course, we all know that they won’t do this, partly because the cowardly state legislatures are not cutting their funds, and partly because they know parents won’t flock to such schools. Better to remain in the public schools, where their funding remains guaranteed. Their state legislatures have not cut their funding, only made an empty gesture of condemning them.

Parents however understand the difference between empty gestures and taking real action. Even as school unions and teachers have been loudly rallying around CRT, parents in remarkable numbers have responded by taking their kids from the public schools.

First there has been a stunning drop in enrollment in public schools, with the biggest drops in the youngest grades, with the enrollment declines this year in preschool about 22% and kindergarten 13%.

Second, there has been a dramatic surge in the home schooling movement.

The surge has been confirmed by the U.S. Census Bureau, which reported in March that the rate of households homeschooling their children rose to 11% by September 2020, more than doubling from 5.4% just six months earlier. Black households saw the largest jump; their homeschooling rate rose from 3.3% in the spring of 2020 to 16.1% in the fall.

Home schooling: The essense of liberty and freedom.

If their state representatives don’t have the courage to shut down these schools, parents are increasingly doing it on their own, to the betterment of their kids.

The specific reasons vary widely. Some families who spoke with The Associated Press have children with special educational needs; others seek a faith-based curriculum or say their local schools are flawed. The common denominator: They tried homeschooling on what they thought was a temporary basis and found it beneficial to their children.

This movement to home schooling is an expression of liberty and freedom. Free to choose, parents are making conscious choices, and those choices are having them reject the public school establishment and the odious concepts it has been trying to force upon their children.

Eventually, a lack of students in the public schools should finally force a reduction in funding that the state legislatures are presently too cowardly to enact.

Then again, that funding — obtained not by choice but by coercive taxes — gives these leftist schools great power. We should not be surprised if the educational community begins to use that power to squelch the home schooling movement. If our legislators wanted to really fight for parents they would take action now, and cut this funding so that this can’t happen.

Don’t hold your breath. The battle for freedom against modern racism thus has only begun.

Original Content Link