During the last year of his life, John and I exchanged a good number of emails, and in one of those emails, for the first time, I believe, he wrote emphatically that it was time to get our children out of government schools.
Until then, he painted the picture of why we should get our children out of government schools, but he never told the parents what to do. He trusted they had the intelligence to realize that they would need to do something but that “something” was up to them to decide.
“School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”
That email exchange happened eight years ago. Things are far worse today than even John could have imagined.
We must get our children out of these fraudulent institutions in order to protect their hearts and minds.
Here are a few facts about schools to illustrate just how urgent the situation is:
PORNOGRAPHY
Sixty-nine percent of male adolescents and 39% of females watch pornography.
My friend enrolled her son in high school, and he was considered odd because he was the only boy who had never watched pornography. He discovered that it was the latest “in” thing to do.
EXPOSURE TO SEX
About half (54%) of adolescents age 15-19 have had some type of sexual experience.
Your child might be exposed to early sexual experiences you may not approve of. Check out this article to read the stats about what teens are up to regarding cardinal pleasures.
TRANSGENDER PHENOMENON
Youth aged 13 to 17 comprise 25.3% of those who identify as transgender (aged 13 and older) compared to 7.7% of the U.S. population.
Why are so many of our youth now claiming to be transgender?
And please spare us the line that our youth "feel safer to speak out now."
Rubbish.
When I was growing up, no one had trouble understanding their gender. If it was simply a matter of being free to speak out, they would have spoken out by now.
Here's an interesting article that sheds light on how government schools are a breeding ground for the transgender craze.
ILLITERACY
By the time a child reaches his teens, his chance of reading for enjoyment drops to 12%, yet reading is the key to a good education.
The US literacy rates are no longer an accurate indicator because the standards no longer reflect true literacy. When half the population cannot read at or above a sixth grade level, we have a problem.
“Government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker; ruined formal religion with its hard-sell exclusion of God; set the class structure in stone by dividing children into classes and setting them against one another; and has been midwife to an alarming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a fraction of the national community.”
The Price We Pay for a Tax-Dollars’ Education
Putting our children into public school is a gamble we take, and we better be prepared to lose, because 75% of parents do lose.
I base that number on a study done in the Christian community where 75% of public school children no longer share the beliefs of their parents by the time they graduate from high school.
When our children are being educated in a system that does not share our values or behaviors, and then they are influenced by peer-pressure, it is no wonder that 75% of them will adopt the values and behaviors encouraged in the system, such as the ones described above.
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
A Low-Cost Alternative to School
Homeschooling is the obvious answer, but what if you can't homeschool? Personally, I would sit my kids down in a room full of excellent books and tell them to read anything they want for as long as they want.
In addition to that, I would give them household chores, put them into volunteer programs, and have them develop a minimum of at least one skill to an advanced level, such as a sport, musical instrument, or foreign language.
Then, I would sit back and watch them bloom.
Oh, I would teach them a few manners too. "Yes, please," and "no, thank you" will work wonders for their social and emotional development.
In 10 years, they'll emerge, kinder, wiser, more skilled, and better read than most adults you'll meet, not to mention their schooled peers.
“Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.”
To raise excellent children, we have to keep them in a bubble for as long as possible. By the time they witness any of the aforementioned behaviors, their heads will have been screwed on so tightly that they'll see things for what they are.
The last thing they'll ever be confused about is their gender, because they’ll be too wise and self-assured to fall for such nonsense.
Don’t miss your free download:
Get a copy of Liz’s “could not homeschool without” book, Education’s Not the Point: How Schools Fail to Train Children’s Minds and Nurture Their Characters with Essays by John Taylor Gatto and Dorothy Sayers.
About Elizabeth Y. Hanson
Liz Hanson helps parents raise and educate whole children by bridging timeless wisdom with modern research.
As an educator, writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 23 years of experience, Liz specializes in guiding families through the transformative early years and the homeschooling journey. After successfully homeschooling her own children, she now devotes her expertise to helping other parents get it right from the start.
Liz is a homeschooling thought-leader, as well as the creator of three unique online courses:
Whether you're navigating early childhood, considering homeschooling, or wanting to nurture a genuine love of learning in your child, Liz offers practical guidance rooted in proven principles.
One-on-one consultations available.
"I know Elizabeth Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”
—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. For a copy of The Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling, click here.
