A New Phase for the Homeschooling Movement

https://julieroys.com/how-battle-christian-nationalism-often-starts-with-homeschooling/

This is the kind of frustrating article that has almost become the norm. Everything about it is off. We are thankful that our kids are all past the time of schooling but some of the anxieties and fears being raised today were with us twenty years ago when we started. These tensions are not new. They've just gotten worse.

How many times in post-church discussions have there been those awkward moments when interacting with other Christian homeschoolers?

What curriculum do you use?

We don't.

And then when the various homeschooling materials put out by the likes of American Vision or Abeka were brought up, people seem puzzled and upset that we weren't keen on them and found them to be of little value. In reality such explanations masked our true feelings about them. The same is true with much of the science material and certainly the stuff put out by groups like Answers in Genesis.

Christian Nationalism and Dominionism (which is the real underlying issue) have long dominated these circles and we've rejected it from the beginning. I can only imagine what these new curricula are like in the age of Trump. We recognized an ugly nationalist and racist element to all of this a long time ago. It was patent to us back in the 1990's when we lived in South Carolina and attended Reformed Churches in that context. None of this is new. And we didn't need the bogus 1619 Project to teach us about the racist history of America, nor do we need to re-write the history in order to make slavery the central organizing principle.

In reality the truth is actually far worse. Empires are evil and the United States (the most extensive and powerful in history) had been on that path even before it became an independent country. And without exception all empires are necessarily racist and rely on narratives of superiority that justify their theft and murder.

There has been such a collapse in basic education and knowledge within society – all amplified by the Smartphone/Social Media revolution. And now we have homeschooling parents that have grown up with a steady diet of FOX, along with an Abeka-type curriculum, and maybe they even attended some kind of Dominionist college. They don't know any different and don't seem to understand that they too have been heavily barraged with revisionist history and dumbed-down narratives and thus they are unable to discern that what they're being fed in the Trump era is little more than lies and spiritual filth.

The homeschooling market is so big right now that many of these Right-wing figures simply want to cash-in. Aside from their desire to see a new generation of operatives, devotees and potential foot soldiers, there's an awful lot of money to be made on all this. Homeschooling is not cheap. We never spent much but were frequently amazed to see how much other families were spending.

And for the record even if the vouchers were available in our day – we would have refused. As New Testament Christians we are necessarily counter-cultural and as pilgrims we have another allegiance. As such it would be unethical to take subsidies for our children's education. Contrary to the primary goals of public schooling, we never planned to raise them to be 'good citizens' and consequently taught them not to vote, not to use the courts or police, not to sit on juries, not to join the military, not to work for the state or the main economic institutions that undergird it, and not to invest in its financial system. We don't want the state's money. We would rather just be left alone but we've always been happy to pay school and property taxes - even if (from our standpoint) these funds are squandered. Even wasted, they still serve a purpose and though the state's programmes and goals are godless and wicked they're still better than the alternative of no state at all. Such is life in a fallen world. Our society is a series of rackets and in some cases if the state wants to throw money at one racket in order to make it possible to go to a dentist or something – fine. It's Caesar's coin in the end.

But returning to the topic at hand, with these kinds of growing homeschooling numbers there's going to be a real sense of alarm within the wider society. There were already concerns before the pandemic and the present spike in homeschooling numbers. But now given the growing numbers, radicalism, and potential for violence, their warning alarms must be going off and yet with the public schools in the state they're in – what can be done? The Right is also doing all it can to break the power of public education – even cynically and hypocritically wielding Covid as a weapon to break the unions. It's a real mess.

I don't for a moment sympathize with Public Education system and have even less time for the Christians who work for it. But at the same time this Right-wing (and frankly at times neo-fascist) movement is a cause for concern and in the end they're going to bring down the heavy hand of the state upon them – or break society apart through their forms of violence. They've already done a pretty good job tearing apart what was left of the American Church.

Again, we're done with homeschooling. Our kids have all finished high school but I still watch what's happening. After all, aside from larger Church concerns, I'm thinking ahead when someday (D.V.) we'll have grandchildren and our kids (as parents) will have to wrestle with the landscape – which in some respects will be even more confusing and potentially perilous than what we dealt with.

In many ways I feel like the Trumpite movement is in the process of ruining homeschooling as they have already ruined so much else. To be fair, it can't all be blamed on them. David Barton, Abeka, and Gary DeMar were around long before Trumpism (and yet they all helped lay the groundwork for it), and as mentioned there have always been problems and contentions within the movement. We've never been happy with the 'movement' would be another way to put it. And yet now – I wouldn't want to even be associated with it in some respects. We never joined any associations – there aren't any around us anyway. But I definitely wouldn't at this point even if there were a Christian one that met nearby. At one point in time this kind of spike in homeschooling would have been cause for celebration but for some reason I don't feel like celebrating.

It's right to be cynical when it comes to this new über-Right-wing homeschooling movement and its revisionist history. But it's also right to be cynical regarding the power of the state and public education – and its various permutations of revisionist and in other cases whitewashed history. And reading the article it's also right to be cynical of the reporting and in this case its oh-so-quaint middle class assumptions. As with so many issues vigilance is the order of the day and it seems there are few if any voices that can forge a path of Biblical obedience and wisdom.