Cal Thomas - Power to the homeschoolers

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 4th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Commentator Cal Thomas now on the true source of America’s power and success.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: During the rebellious 1960s, the slogan “power to the people” became a mantra for the young to protest what they saw as oppression from their elders. Now comes a moment when significant numbers of Americans can exercise real power in ways that will improve the country.

Most people will never attain a level of influence comparable to a president, a member of Congress, a Supreme Court justice, a newspaper editor, or a TV network anchor or reporter. But ultimate power does not reside in any of these institutions or professions. It resides in “we the people.”

The pandemic has given especially parents of young children an opportunity to seize power they already possessed but have never fully exercised. With teachers unions dictating when, or if, public schools will open again, parents are discovering the power of educating their children at home. There they cannot only teach the real history of the country (as opposed to the revisionist version now taught in too many schools), but add a moral foundation that secular public schools no longer provide.

According to one estimate, in the spring of 2019 (the last period for which figures are available), 2.5 million children in grades K-12 were homeschooled. The trend over the last few years amounts to an estimated annual homeschooling growth rate of between 2 percent and 8 percent.

That may not sound like much when you consider that 48.6 million K-12 students attend public schools, according to the Census Bureau. But it suggests momentum.

Combine homeschooling families with the 5.7 million students attending private schools and you might call it a movement.

Home schooling is much easier today than it used to be. Not only are there substantial online resources, many parents are combining their skills and backgrounds with other parents. If one is deficient in history or math, another parent with knowledge of these subjects can contribute.

Many of these subjects have been tainted by political correctness and in the case of history, revisionism. Conservatives who want to preserve America from what they regard as incremental socialism should embrace home schooling as a way to rescue the next generation and preserve the country.

I have quoted her before, but this bears repeating. The late Barbara Bush said: “Your success as a family … our success as a nation … depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”

She understood where real power comes from. Now, if more people will only seize that power and use it.

I’m Cal Thomas.

(Photo/iStock)

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