I recommend approaching people who want to homeschool with an open mind and a little empathy. They are not bible thumpers who want to eschew science, many of them are just normal people who do not like the bias and worldview that is being applied to education.

As someone for whom the pandemic inverted the hierarchy of needs around school, we are still homeschooling because public school around here is a glorified day care full of busy work. The one thing we are missing is the socialization part and are working to address it. But I promise you, we ware not bible thumpers, nor concerned about the curriculum per-se. Rather, the slow plodding movement through the curriculum and soul-crushing aspects of bored kids.

Obviously, not all of them are homeschooling for religious separatism reasons, and whenever there's a homeschooling article on HN, you'll see all the success stories post in defense of the practice. For every one of those successful individuals, how many are not so successful? We may never know, because most states don't even measure outcomes and/or make it illegal to even check on the progress of homeschooled children.

>> and skip all that science and math "liberal indoctrination

If find this ironic considering liberals think math is racist and don't believe in biology, statistics and especially not in economics.

>> Education is, for most people, their only shot at achieving the ever-shrinking middle class.

You believe education can only be attained in a school?

> And, a surprising number of my wife's friends from church have opted for homeschooling, so they can teach their kids from the Bible and skip all that science and math "liberal indoctrination".

I can assure you, the people newly complaining about "liberal indoctrination" in schools don't mean science and math. It's fine to disagree with people about what should be taught, but it's not productive to ignore how much education has changed and why people object to it, and then disingenuously mischaracterize them.

This. Even if I don’t fully agree with the motives, it’s dishonest to say they are just afraid of science and math ignoring the politicized atmosphere we’ve been dealing with in recent years across all spectrums of society.

Gah, it's not even the politicization! I dare you to sit through a 3rd grade class at your neighborhood school. Nothing gets done. They do projects with little to no mooring to curriculum. That is, unless you live in a top percentile district that values curriculum mapping, but then you were already going to be in the middle class at least. In the meantime, most of these schools are day cares so parents can work. Marx wasn't that wrong.

At my daughter's kindergarten they provide hours per week of ESL support, in addition to the regular material. The walls are covered in curriculum, including more about phonics than I was taught in my first 2 years growing up in the southeast. (Thankfully that era's anti-phonics fad passed by and even those schools got better.)

Things aren't always getting worse. And IME the schools tend to get better in the long term.

I'm pretty sure most of them have no real idea what they're complaining about, other than what the angry man on TV told them. See the giant, nonsensical hubbub over "critical race theory" a few years ago, as well as stuff like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/us/desantis-florida-ap-af...

There are probably legitimate criticisms of recent changes to public education, but it's never the things that Republican politicians harp on.

Also, for what it's worth, much of what my generation was taught in school was utter bullshit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me. If anything, the idea that my children would be taught that the Pilgrims and Indians were best friends, that Columbus was someone to look up to, or that the Civil War was really about states' rights is what would compel me to homeschool, not "liberal indoctrination." But many, like DeSantis, still appear to believe that these lies should be taught.

Critical race theory is not some made up Boogeyman. It's real, it's used to influence the curriculum being taught, and it's just as bad as described

Bullshit:

"Opposition to what was purported to be critical race theory has been adopted as a major theme by several conservative think tanks and pressure groups, including The Heritage Foundation, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and organizations funded by the Koch brothers. [...] In 2021 [Christopher Rufo] wrote on Twitter, 'The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory'' and 'We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.'"

"The Economist and Reuters have conducted polls on how much the general public understands CRT, a 'once-obscure academic concept', and they found that most people are unfamiliar with CRT and misunderstand it."

(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020s_controversies_around_cri....)

It is absolutely a conservative boogeyman and (for the most part) has never been a taught subject outside of college.

CRT is mainstream, and the foundation of tainted beliefs like "whiteness" being "evil" and somehow being the root of problems. It's a foundation in what teachers learn in training and apply in their teachings.

I would assume you also oppose teachers getting their Master's in education? After all, that's not a subject that has never been taught in any primary school ...

> And, a surprising number of my wife's friends from church have opted for homeschooling, so they can teach their kids from the Bible and skip all that science and math "liberal indoctrination".

Thank god (ha, ha) for immigrants I guess.

The Internet’s been a disaster for civil society.

>Just look at the comments in this article dunking on the school system! Education is, for most people, their only shot at achieving the ever-shrinking middle class.

You're equating attending public school with "Education". The two can be mutually exclusive.

Having experienced how home schooling is in the Midwest, I'd say education and homeschooling is usually more mutually exclusive there than the vast majority of public schools. (Sample size: 10 public schools, 3 home school groups)

You're painting with a wide brush.