Homeschooling as the Ultimate Act of Revolution and Societal Preservation, Part II

Reclaiming Education as an Antidote to Tyranny

Since, as we discussed in Part I of this article, public education uses institutionalization, indoctrination, and control as its teachers, the ultimate power move—and the best way to preserve the beauty, individuality, and innate intelligence of your children—is to simply refuse to participate. Homeschooling provides a beautiful solution for families who value integrity, personal responsibility, and the preservation of freedom-based values.

Our family has learned through personal experience (which I will detail in part III of this article) just how life-changing, character-affirming, and intellect-preserving this choice is for children. While the benefits are countless—and the longer we do it, the more we discover—I will endeavor to list the primary ways that homeschooling provides a wonderful antidote to the destructive darkness that defines our public education system.

Preservation of Values

First, homeschooling allows for the nurturing and preservation of the values that matter most, including intelligence, personal responsibility, morality, kindness, and integrity, among others. Sadly, most schools are, at best, ignoring these values and, at worst, actively undermining them (how often do you hear parents lament that their children were sweet, kind, and confident until they started school and were subjected to a destructive system that doesn’t allow for individuality, different learning styles, or a spectrum of sensitivity?). Homeschooling also allows for the development of skills that are seldom taught, yet absolutely critical to being a powerful, ethical, successful adult. These skills include time management, public speaking, conducting proper research, and writing persuasively, but arguably the most important is the ability to think critically. Children are no longer taught to examine and defend their beliefs, reason intelligently, assess the validity of arguments, and identify dubious narratives being peddled by external forces with nefarious intentions. Instead, children are taught from day one to sit still in rows, follow instructions, be quiet, not question authority, do as they’re told, speak when spoken to, and come and go as they are told; in other words, conform, conform, conform.

In order to become capable, confident adults, children must know themselves. It is our duty to cultivate not only their intellect, but their emotional/spiritual intelligence so they possess the strength and clarity to know the difference between right and wrong, and the wherewithal to defend and insist upon righteous action from themselves, their peers, and their leaders. People who truly know themselves are not easily manipulated, and this is, perhaps, the greatest advantage we can give our children in a world where everyone has an agenda.

Cultivation of Intellectual Curiosity

Homeschool cultivates intellectual curiosity and a true, lifelong love of learning. Rather than sitting and being lectured at, homeschool is intimate, hands-on, and fun! Endless curriculum options allow families to choose the presentation and learning style that works best for their child(ren). As children grow up learning hands-on, side by side with loving caregivers, they develop the skills, curiosity, and confidence to become students who self-start, explore freely, and finish their tasks independently. They are more adaptable, more able to ask intelligent questions, and more able to answer those questions on their own through research and discovery. When they encounter a challenge, they not only have the problem-solving skills and emotional resilience to tackle it with confidence, but they also have the luxury of slowing down and proceeding at their own pace, ensuring that they get a thorough understanding of the issue before moving on. Conversely, when they excel in a subject and are curious to explore further, they are encouraged to dive in, investigate, and absorb as much as they’d like!

Our eldest son has great facility in mathematics and is two grade levels ahead of his age, so we support this gift by offering him a rigorous curriculum, extra tutoring, access to great lectures, and new workbooks as fast as he can complete them. Our middle son loves science and robotics and is a very hands-on learner, so rather than make him slog through textbooks, which bores him, we teach him through experiments and STEM games. When he turned eight years old, I ordered him a subscription to Crunch Labs, which is a monthly engineering and robotics kit for kids 8 – 13. However, the company made a mistake and accidentally sent a Hack Pack, the much more advanced adult version of the subscription. After I unwrapped it and realized the error, I was about to send it back when my little boy saw it and exclaimed, “I can build that mama!” I was hesitant, but he was so insistent that I wanted to let him try. The instructions included a link to a step-by-step video, but since we limit screen time, I asked him if he could do it using only the instruction booklet, which said it would take an average of 2 – 3 hours to build the project. Our son insisted he could do it, disappeared into his room with the kit, and—to our astonishment—re-emerged 30 minutes later with a fully functional robot! Needless to say, we hung onto that subscription. Our youngest son became an avid reader at four years old and blows through books faster than we can provide them, so we have become constant fixtures at the library, and make sure he has plenty of time to read every day. The three of them are wildly different people with wildly different gifts and interests, and homeschooling allows each of them to pursue the things that light up their hearts and minds.

When children have ownership of their own exploration and get to decide how and at what pace they learn best, they truly internalize concepts rather than quickly memorizing facts for a test and then forgetting them days later, or glossing over concepts because a strict school schedule doesn’t allow time to dive any deeper. The system of institutionalized education accustoms students to getting only shallow exposure to a vast array of topics, which often creates adults that are inclined to choose the easier path and accept whatever they are told rather than search for deeper truth and understanding.

Healthier Minds, Healthier Bodies

The homeschool environment cultivates less stress and more respect for emotional regulation and personal physical needs—resulting in better lifelong health. Despite the fact that research clearly shows that puberty-aged children undergo biological shifts in their sleep cycles that make it difficult to fall asleep before 11pm, many schools still start before 7:30am. Since children need at least 8 – 12 hours of sleep nightly (depending on their age), this cycle leads to chronic sleep deprivation, which negatively impacts mental health, physical health, and of course, academic performance. Homeschool eliminates this issue since there is no pressure to get up and be at school by a particular time. In our family, we encourage our children to let their bodies dictate their sleep cycles (and all of their needs, for that matter), and we never wake them up unless we need to catch a plane! We aim to gather around the breakfast table to begin our studies by roughly 8:30 – 9am every morning, but our boys know that if they need more rest, they are welcome—and expected—to stay in bed and get it, and they are free to complete their work whenever they come out. They know that a sharp mind begins with a well-rested body.

Beyond sleep, homeschool gives children agency over their bodies and education about how they work. They get to learn what learning styles and what learning environments work for them. Unsurprisingly, our three very different children have very different learning styles. Our eldest is very visual and prefers to learn by reading and studying pictures. He is largely self-directed and prefers to work outside. Our middle child is very auditory and tactile and will remember every word he hears as long as he is building or creating something with his hands. He strongly prefers to work alone or one-on-one with me. Our youngest learns by doing, and absolutely insists on figuring everything out himself (and God help you if you get in his way by trying to help him or demonstrate anything . . .you will earn yourself a spirited lecture on independence from a pint-sized Mensa member wearing Spiderman wellies and a cape). He also needs an audience and refuses to do any work if nobody is there to cheer him on. The other day, he finished a set of math problems and looked up at me expectantly. When I smiled at him and turned the page, he looked horrified and said, “What, no claps?” Homeschooling allows us to give each of our sweet boys the environment they need in order to thrive.

Additionally, they get to learn about the importance of good nutrition and help prepare meals that nourish their bodies and minds. Sometimes, it feels like we spend half our homeschool day cooking and eating, but our children are getting an invaluable education about the relationship between the food they put in their bodies and how those bodies, in turn, function. They know how their minds and bodies feel when they eat nutrient-rich, clean foods, and they know how their minds and bodies feel when they eat cheap, processed garbage. Even our youngest has developed some insight into the value of putting good things in your body and the consequences of feeding your body poorly. We were recently at a birthday party when my little one walked up to the birthday treat table, which was covered with bags of Lay’s chips, dingdongs, and Hershey’s bars, and hollered (at the very top of his lungs across a room packed full of people, naturally), “MOM! Everything here has GMOs in it! Nobody should be eating this stuff unless they wanna barf! Can I have your emergency apple?” Clearly, we need to work on tact next, but at least I know the child can feed himself. Meanwhile, public school children are being poisoned every day with the full blessing of our government.

As a result of getting acquainted with their physical and emotional needs early in life,homeschooled children tend to be well-rested, well-fed, and well-rounded, and better prepared to become healthy, happy, self-sufficient adults.

Emotional Maturity

Homeschool cultivates emotional maturity. Rather than being separated from their parents and sent off to school during critical stages of emotional and cognitive development, homeschooled children usually get more one-on-one attention, have their individual learning styles respected and nurtured, and spend much more time forming healthy attachments to their parents. Healthy attachment is crucial for developing empathy, resilience, strong social skills, self-worth, self-direction, and emotional well-being—all qualities that, I’m sorry to say, seem to be rapidly disappearing from many children coming up through the public school system today.

Since we have three small children, we spend a lot of time going on field trips, participating in group activities, and hanging out with other families, and it stuns me how easy it often is to pick out the kids who are homeschooled vs. those who are in the public education system (and please know that this is in no way an indictment of the children; it’s an indictment of the system). The kids in the system are often apathetic, moody, glued to their devices, unable to interact with anyone outside their own age group, unwilling to make eye contact, sullen, withdrawn, disrespectful, unhelpful, and lacking individual identity.

I believe the engineered decline of our youth has been percolating for quite awhile, as I have also interviewed dozens of teen and twenty-something babysitters over the last decade, and 95% of them were no better off: they couldn’t look my husband or I in the eyes while speaking to us, they could not express themselves clearly or intelligently, they were dressed inappropriately for both interviewing OR childcare (think crop tops and hot pants), and couldn’t be bothered to put their phones down long enough to play with our kids! Too many of these young people have no confidence, no life skills, no motivation, and perhaps saddest of all, none of the joy or effervescence that used to epitomize childhood.

Conversely, homeschooled kids are usually confident, conscious, present, attentive, kind, helpful, look you straight in the eye, speak clearly and intelligently, and can easily interact with people of any age—including adults. These days, it’s so rare to encounter a child with these qualities that it’s always a pleasant surprise, and nearly every time it has happened, it has turned out that the child in question is homeschooled. Again, I am not maligning any student, school, or teacher, but rather pointing out that the system is inherently flawed, and generally does not benefit children—or the society they are destined to join.

Individuality and Immunity to Indoctrination

Institutionalized education wastes an incredible amount of time. Students often sit, bored, in a classroom with a frustrated, underpaid, and likely unappreciated teacher and unruly classmates, learning nothing while waiting for attendance to be taken, waiting for announcements to be completed, waiting for teachers to deal with behavioral problems, waiting in line for the school’s pitiful excuse for a lunch, etc. Waiting, waiting, waiting. It seems that more time is spent on tedious trivialities than genuine learning.

Instead, homeschool students get to use all those extra hours to learn useful life skills, like emotional intelligence, cooking healthy meals, and financial literacy; explore subjects not covered in school, like relationship skills, civic responsibility, and media literacy; and pursue their own interests by working, traveling, or creating small businesses. Every homeschool family gets to create their own ideal experience. For example, we love to go on field trips (to museums, zoos, aquariums, theater, science club, etc.), garden, plan and cook meals together, play sports, study martial arts, study music, and travel together. This approach—which honors the needs, interests, and talents of the individual—results in much more well-rounded, well-adjusted kids who actually know themselves.

This strong sense of individuality and knowledge of self results in natural immunity to indoctrination and control-based narratives. When people know themselves and have the ability to think critically, they cannot be easily manipulated, and are not as susceptible to being pushed past the boundaries of decency, liberty, and morality.

The unexamined life is not worth living. - Socrates

Community and Social Responsibility

Children who have strong respect and appreciation for themselves naturally have a stronger sense of community and social responsibility. Homeschool communities embody a nostalgic return to the village model of raising children (from which, I contend, we never should have strayed): a strong, diverse network of caregivers and community members provide support, offer guidance, and foster security and resilience in the collective’s children. One of the misconceptions about homeschool that I hear most often (and we will explore this in-depth in part III of this article) is that it’s lonely or that there’s not enough support, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. In a homeschool community, everybody helps! The adults help each other, their own children, and each other’s children, and those children in turn learn to help others.

In every homeschool community we’ve been blessed to be part of, I’ve seen this dynamic play out over and over. On the playground, the bigger kids push the little ones on the swings and help them down the slides. In the classroom, everybody helps set up in the morning, and everybody helps clean up in the afternoon. During show and tell, younger siblings proudly run and fetch their older siblings from their classrooms to watch their presentations. At lunchtime, everybody sits together, shares food, sings songs, and plays together. On weekends, we all meet up at a park or a house or the beach and talk, play, eat, and enjoy each other’s company. On field trips, all of the adults take responsibility for watching all of the community’s kids, so even if your little one wanders off, you can rest assured that there are easily ten other parents with eyes on them at all times. It’s an absolutely beautiful way to do life, and everything I wanted for my children.

I’ll never forget the very first time we went on a homeschool field trip with our Florida co-op. We were visiting a farm during their fall pumpkin festival, and when I first pulled into the parking lot, I was overwhelmed by the number of people there and wished I had brought my husband to help me better keep track of our three boys. No sooner had we gotten out of the car, when our youngest (barely five at the time), spotted an enormous tree and sprinted toward it, determined to summit the giant oak. As my little guy climbed higher and higher, I inadvertently muttered, “Oh boy, I hope he doesn’t fall,” to no one in particular. To my surprise, I heard a voice to my left say, “don’t worry ma’am, I’ll spot him!” And I watched as a well-groomed, smiling teenage boy trotted over to the tree, took Max’s hand, helped him the rest of the way up, and then coaxed him safely back down again. At first, though very grateful for the assist, I was confused, as I had never seen a teenager behave this way toward a stranger before. But as the day went on, I saw many more examples of uncharacteristically chivalrous, kind, responsible behavior from kids of all ages. In fact, it’s all I saw. It was, by far, the most pleasant trip we had ever had because every single person we met, whether adult or child, was lovely, caring, and considerate. Finally, I asked another mom what was going on, and she said, “Oh, didn’t you know? It’s homeschool day at the farm—these are all homeschool families.”

I quickly learned that this behavior is very typical of homeschoolers. We got hit hard by hurricanes Helene and Milton last year, and our whole island was destroyed. The day after Helene, our homeschool community showed up in our driveway with trucks full of food and supplies—not just for us, but for all of our neighbors too! The kids worked together to fill care packages with sandwiches, fruit, water bottles, snacks, batteries, and other goodies, and walked them to every house still standing on the island. They chatted up our neighbors, hugged those who were distraught and weeping, and helped clean up the wreckage that was left of people’s homes. I watched them, deeply moved by their selflessness, their grace, and their love for others. It was clear that those beautiful children truly understood that what affects one affects the entire community, and as a result, they naturally took care of each other. This level of empathy and social consciousness is much more difficult to achieve in a public school environment, as the system is designed to force children into survival mode, so they often have to focus on self-preservation in order to survive the narcissistic myopia cultivated by the system.

I am not suggesting that homeschooling is the only answer, or that it’s right for everyone, but it is undoubtedly a beautiful gift to give your children and one of the greatest acts of protest one can perpetrate against a system that seeks to rob our children of their agency, individuality, and power. Our ability to raise children with empathy, integrity, and morality is paramount; the future of the human race literally depends on it. We want our children to be thinkers, creators, and innovators—not mindless, hapless products of a system designed to create worker bees. If humanity is going to survive the dire situation in which we’ve allowed ourselves to descend, we need future generations who refuse to be told what to do or accept “because I said so” as reason enough for ignoring their ethics and silencing their souls. In the absence of that, we are left with sheep who will be led to the slaughter.

In part III of this article, I will discuss our family’s personal homeschool journey in detail, including how and why we ultimately left the school system, common misconceptions about homeschool, mistakes we’ve made along the way, what it actually looks like to homeschool three rambunctious boys with wildly different needs when both parents work and travel, and why, despite all the challenges we’ve faced, it’s the best thing we’ve ever done for our family.