My story about pulling our son out of NC public schools to homeschool him reached far more people than I expected.
So I owe you the full explanation. Fair warning: it's worse than you think.
1) My son was in a class with many kids that could not speak the English language.
Zero English. None. Not a word.
You might be asking yourself... well, how did lessons occur in the classroom?
I'm glad you asked.
In fact, the way the teachers communicated with the Spanish-speaking only students was by using their personal iPhones as translators, speaking instructions into the iPhones, and the iPhones spitting out the Spanish instructions to the Spanish-speaking students, and then the Spanish-speaking students speaking Spanish into the iPhones, and the English questions/answers coming are read out for the teacher.
If you're exhausted just reading that...good. Now hold that feeling.
Imagine you’re an English-speaking student sitting in that same classroom, like my 5 year old son was.
Every lesson is interrupted while translations happen and naturally, the teacher’s attention is constantly divided.
The pace of learning slows DRAMATICALLY for everyone else.
The consequence is that the classroom stops being optimized for the students who can already understand the instruction and instead becomes an exercise in overcoming a language barrier that never should have existed inside an American, English-language classroom in the first place.
A place built to teach kids who are ready to learn quietly becomes a place mostly occupied with bridging a gap in language.
I don't think my five-year-old should spend one irretrievable year of his early schooling waiting at that bridge.
2) I saw the writing on the wall for the future of my county's school system and realized that not only was the future incredibly bleak, but downright aggressively woke in a way words fail to describe.
For multiple months, our school system allowed kids to:
a) Create Anti-ICE protest signs inside of the schools
b) Exit the school grounds, often WITHOUT SUPERVISION by ANYONE
c) Stand along busy highways and scream "FUCK ICE" for a few hours
Most shockingly, it was clearly encouraged by the schools, by leadership, and by many of the teachers.
That was political activism.
It gets worse... for years Buncombe County has forced biological girls to deal with biological males (who call themselves trans) to enter into girls locker rooms and bathrooms.
This has been happening for years and no one dared to try to change or speak up until very very recently... that should tell you a lot about what the school leadership believes and their political bent.
There is an evil lie that I see being spread by many that have condemned our decision to homeschool.
That lie is this:
“Public schools are neutral. By homeschooling, you’re only exposing your child to one side.”
This is a grossly evil lie.
In fact, the opposite is happening.
Schools are not neutral institutions simply because they are publicly funded; every school day has a limited number of hours, and every lesson taught means another lesson isn’t.
There is a finite amount of time in school, everyone understands this, which means priorities matter.
Every hour spent discussing political activism is an hour that isn’t spent on reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, or civics.
So when schools increasingly prioritize activism, identity politics, or current political causes... something else inevitably gets pushed aside.
Guess what? That’s not neutrality, that’s a choice.
What so many parents continue to discover is that their child comes home with a head full of ideas about the world that are purely one-sided because that's all there was time for.
Nuance is lost because nuance is time-consuming.
Is there TIME for nuance when half the class cannot speak English and you're speaking into a translator?
Of course not.
A child who can chant but cannot argue the other side hasn't been educated, they've been conditioned and the conditioners always, ALWAYS believe they're doing the child a kindness.
3) I'm fairly confident that today's school system is not designed for boys at all, it's purely designed for girls.
I'll give an example.
One of the schools in my area noticed that boys were throwing pine-cones (calling them grenades) and playing with sticks (calling them guns and swords).
This made the girls in the class uncomfortable.
So the school banned the boys from playing with sticks or pinecones outside, saying that the boys were playing "violent games" and should stop.
One group's nature (the girls) became the rule.
The other group's nature (the boys) became an problem... and once you see it, you see it everywhere.
Classrooms rewards staying still, staying quiet, non-aggression, obedience.
So ask yourself honestly... if you designed an institution that graded children partly on their ability to sit motionless for six hours, who would you expect to win?
Girls, of course.
Boys "get into trouble" FAR more often than girls, and the "offenses" are things like being too aggressive, not staying in line, fidgeting, or being "defiant" for staying buried in a book instead of the worksheet.
The punishment schools reach for first is often to take AWAY recess, which is literally the physical release every study says he needs, as the penalty for needing it!
At my table, he can stand up when he needs to move. He can go deep on the thing that lights him up instead of being dragged off it. He can build his imaginary armies.
He can be exactly the boy he is and have that be an ASSET instead of someone saying that's a problem.
4) No teacher, no matter how gifted, no matter how well-meaning, walks into that classroom knowing my son the way we know him, and no one ever will.
The single most important qualification for teaching a child isn't a degree or a curriculum or a district budget..
...it's just how much do you actually care whether this SPECIFIC kid makes it?
How far would you go for him?
How late would you stay for him?
How many times would you explain it again and again?
How completely would you refuse to give up on him?
And on that measure, the whole world loses to his mother (who will be homeschooling him), it's not even close.
Nobody on earth will ever love him more than she does.
Nobody will study him, root for him, ache for him, and delight in him the way she does every ordinary day.
There has never been anyone on this earth more qualified to raise my son than the woman whose love for him knows no depths and has no end.
Hope that helps clarify a few things.
@mattvanswol
