Mimi Rothschild - Home School Support & Home Education News

By Mimi Rothschild

Although we supposedly live in a demand-based economy, our system of education is little more free and democratic than that of North Korea or Cuba. As the New York Sun’s John Stossel pointed out in yesterday’s paper, the government dictates where your children will go to school, what they should learn, their level of learning, and much more. This leaves no room for the parent to make decisions. Can you imagine if the government told you how to take care of your family dog? And aren’t your children that much more precious?

Stossel does an expert job of reminding us that it doesn’t have to be this way. He even throws homeschoolers a bone, something the mainstream media tends to shy away from. Stossel has been fighting the good fight for many years and deals with protests and pickets from the teachers’ unions every time he conveys some truth in a public forum. His recent ABC News expose, Stupid in America, is a biting criticism of our country’s schools. Stossel’s reporters were given access to Woodrow Wilson High, noted by Newsweek for being one of the best schools in America. What they found was appalling. I would encourage you to order the special report.

It always amazes me that homeschoolers perform 15-20% better on aptitude tests when they are taught by regular moms and dads with no education degrees. On top of that, they do it for dirt cheap! The price of textbooks and online courses is miniscule compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on each and every public school student.

I hate to throw out the “C” word. The last thing I want is to perpetuate the perception that fundamentalist Christians are a bunch of red-baiting McCarthyists. In this case, there’s no way around it. Our current system of public education is a communist institution. It’s straight up Marxism. We’ve doubled per-pupil funding over the last 30 years, pouring money into a failed monopoly. Despite the massive inflow of funding, test scores continue to plummet. Teachers, no matter how they perform, are protected by their unions, perpetuating mediocrity.

Fortunately, we’ve got a way out. We might still have to pay for a public education if we aren’t using it, but we don’t have to suffer the consequences of participating. Contact your legislators and pray for the day when America wakes up.