Freedom of Thought

According to a recent Gallup poll, the number of parents who say they will choose to homeschool has doubled to 10 percent this year. fizkes/Shutterstock

Commentary

The elegant woman with the beautiful 10-year-old looked forlorn.

“She’d probably love it, and Lord knows, it’s been ... complicated at school since COVID, but we’re too much alike!” She shook her head.

We were casually chatting about homeschooling—my favorite topic—outside a restaurant while waiting dutifully for our take-out orders under a COVID-blamed, unconstitutional lockdown. It amazes me the variety of excuses parents find to send their children away from them. And how difficult it is to reach them with truth. Even self-acknowledged truth-seekers and freedom-lovers unquestioningly believe in government schools.

Do we want freedom or enslavement?

Too late! We are already enslaved by the chains of thought that schooling has instilled in us.

Government schools convinced us that the only way for children to be “educated” is by attending classes and moving at the sound of a bell. Learning happens only inside specifically dedicated institutions, even if test results indicate failure and costs rise disproportionately to value. Socialization is, strangely, more valuable than education.

Homeschooled children outperform public-schooled children by 34 to 39 percentile points. In fact, “Homeschoolers were seen to have an average standardized test score of 87th percentile as per the National Home Education Research Institute’s study.” Public school students were, naturally, at the 50th percentile. The level of education of the parent, according to Home School Legal Defense Association, had little impact on the results for students.

Parents still choose public school because they’ve been schooled in thought and lack brain elasticity to reconsider. Incidentally, the homeschool–public school testing disparity isn’t entirely academic, because performance is linked to students’ fluidity of thought—not simply their ability to regurgitate information.

Lord Bertrand Russell, No. 1 fan of the one-world government, wrote in his 1951 “Impact of Science on Society“:

“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology. ... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called ‘education.’ ... It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.”

As public school students themselves, parents have been “persuaded” that they cannot accomplish the education of their offspring and shouldn’t even desire to try. In fact, to even think it commits a kind of intolerable treason of the revered status quo embedded in every student.

Seeing now the recent depletion of variety and freedom in the marketplace of ideas, where certain philosophies and ideas have been banished (The sitting president of the greatest nation was deplatformed and deleted, and YouTube recently removed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s video with noted medical professionals.), we ought to step back and understand that the censorship we witness today is a product of schools of thought from yesterday, engendered in public schools.

Limiting the free exchange of views and opinions represents a paucity mentality and a control that is anathema to the American way, but remarkably similar to what government schools validate.

For example, taxes from the many fund the schools for the few. Government schools are a socialist structure and train children to sit down and shut up, wait in line, move at the sound of a bell, and never speak out of turn. In fact, children must obtain permission to ask a question, fear being wrong, and rely on the teacher for all the answers. This isn’t the teachers’ fault—it’s the paradigm. Children are naturally inquisitive, but public schools force children to curtail their curiosity to “fit in” and adhere to a schedule.

Children absorb that conformity is the better part of valor. They learn that evolution is the answer to how they got here, i.e., there’s no reason for being and survival of the fittest is the rule. Then, contradictorily, that bullying is bad.

But ... “survival of the fittest!”

Of course, parents should all home educate, so children understand they are loved, created for a purpose as free individuals, and worthy. The only sticking point to this formula is, of course, the parents, who are so trained by a system of schooling (not education) that they can’t hear or digest the message that is ringing clearly in the air.

If you desire freedom for your children, don’t enslave them to the thought-killing government schools.

A public school teacher confessed to me she would never choose to home educate.

“That’s odd,” said I, “because I’d imagine you’d be the perfect candidate to educate your child, since you ‘know what you’re doing.’”

“No,” she answered. “I like the structure it gives the child.”

Sure. Like prison, I thought to myself, snidely. What child doesn’t crave that kind of confinement? Perhaps that’s why we don’t cherish our freedoms as we used to in this nation.

Sam Sorbo is an actress, talk radio hostess, and author of “They’re Your Kids: An Inspirational Journey from Self-Doubter to Home School Advocate.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.