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A podcast host named Jennifer Welch recently decided to share her thoughts on Christian schools and homeschooling for all the internet to see. Her assessment was disturbing: she called Christian schools "hate academies" and "crazy indoctrination factories," and described homeschooling as what people turn to when that crazy “isn't strong enough." Her co-host helpfully added that she does not trust anyone who wants to be with their children twenty-four hours a day, and that for "dumb people," keeping kids home is simply easier.
There it is. No couched language, just the unfiltered view of a elitist progressive commentators — that parents who reject the state school system are an untrustworthy problem to be managed, and that the children they are raising are wards of the state who happen to be temporarily in parental custody.
The scary part is this is not fringe thinking. It is the operating assumption of the professional educational class, and we’re seeing it play out in policy. In Colorado, a budget shortage is being used to justify eliminating homeschool enrichment programs, charter schools, and hybrid options. The budget problem is real, but it’s not the whole story. The deeper issue is a worldview that finds it intolerable for something as critical as education to fall outside state control.
The real question to address underneath these policies and radical statements is to whom do children belong? Do they belong to parents, who may choose to delegate education to the state? Or do they belong to the state, which graciously allows parents temporary custody? Most every policy fight over school choice, homeschooling regulation, and parental rights ultimately comes back to that question.
America's founding vision answers it clearly. The most important institution between citizens and government has always been the family. When the American home is strong and sovereign, liberty follows. When the state usurps that role, our freedom shrinks.
As for the data? Nationwide studies consistently show that homeschooled students outperform their public school peers on standardized tests, including college admissions exams. The "dumb people" keeping their kids home are producing some of the best-educated young Americans in the country.
When it comes to raising kids, parents are not the state's partners — they are the primary authority. The state's role is to support, not replace them.
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