In the wake of the most recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, many parents are at a loss. This might be the shooting that breaks the camel’s proverbial back, primarily because it also recently became so obvious that schools focus less and less on education and more on indoctrination—of materials and ideas that objectively conflict with those of the parents, themselves.
It’s one thing to fight with school boards about pornography in school books or drag queen story time in the school library, but it’s quite another to consider yet one more disturbed young man who had already exhibited aggressive behavior, walking past security protocols and locking himself in a classroom, taking his sweet time to individually shoot his small, helpless victims, while the ineffective police waited outside, misunderstanding the situation and forcibly preventing parents from saving their own children.
It wasn’t even the police who eventually ended the crisis.
The entire scenario is horrific enough to cause a ripple across the United States, and parents, who previously would joke about homeschooling their children, have ceased laughing. They’re now considering their options more seriously.
Recently in Florida, there was an incident that forced a school shutdown, causing the students to file outside the building. Alerted, available parents drove to the school to rescue their children, while other children simply sat before the school building with their packs, waiting for the end of day.
One homeschooling father confided: “When the Stoneman Douglas shooting happened, I knew my kids were safe at home. That’s just one of the many material side-benefits of choosing home ed, and at least the police responded.”
Many people consider with horror what life must be like for the parents of the young children shot in Uvalde, who were outside, waiting impatiently for the impotent police to act while being prevented from doing anything, themselves. “How can they sleep at night?” said a homeschooling mom. “You don’t overcome the death of a child.”
“The situation in Uvalde is a good example of the effectiveness of our schools at rendering us incapable,” one parent said at a recent homeschooling meeting. “‘Trust the expert,’ they teach us, but then experts fail—sometimes spectacularly. Where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know what to do,” confided one parent, facing the decision of sending his 10-year-old back to school in a few weeks. “I like our small Christian school, and my child really likes it, too. But, at the same time, I’m concerned because you never know where the next bullets will come from, and if there’s no one protecting the kids, should I rely on a teacher with a gun, instead?”
“Why don’t they all just homeschool?” one parent whispered at the event. “I know it’s daunting, but aren’t the children worth that much?”
“It’s not that easy,” a more understanding mother answered, shrugging. “Many parents both work and they are too busy to take on yet another responsibility.”
“So, they are willing to ‘take their chances,’ take chances with the lives of their children?” the first responded, frustrated.
Although parents are scared to take on the massive responsibility of the education of their children, they should recognize it’s the most natural thing in the world, and it produces the very best results. Do you think the Founders’ parents were particularly gifted? Yet our Founders were geniuses, not just for their era, but for the millennia. At our event, we are empowering and equipping parents, who have gleaned from schools only their own ineptitude. It’s not simply the physical safety of the child, which, of course, is important. It’s also the mental safety of the child at stake, and any parent who thinks they can’t should know it’s because schools taught them to think that about themselves.
