The Growing Popularity of Homeschooling: Ben Carson Explains Why

In a new opinion piece published Friday by the Washington Examiner, Dr. Ben Carson outlines why homeschooling has become the fastest-growing form of education in the United States and why it shouldn’t be considered the endgame for conservatives.

According to an analysis by The Washington Post, there are now an estimated 1.9 to 2.7 million homeschooled students nationwide.

Carson argued that “there are quite a few reasons” for parents to “shift away from our public school system” and embrace home education.

“Foremost is the shocking mismanagement of our education system during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he wrote. “From stifling mask mandates to the shift to ‘remote learning,’ the quality of education fell precipitously on the tails of the pandemic. As a former neurosurgeon who worked on children’s brains, I can tell you this for a fact: Children cannot learn effectively over a Zoom video call. We did a historic disservice to our young people by altering their education experience from a classroom to a screen — in some districts, for several years.”

The pandemic also gave parents a window into their children’s classrooms, where they could learn “precisely what was going on,” firsthand, Carson pointed out.

“Parents were exposed to the radical ideological agendas that are being forced on so many of our young people in the public school system,” he said. “Divisive concepts such as critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are teaching our children that we are defined primarily by our race. They are taught negative division rather than the positive commonality that we are all Americans.”

“Pornographic imagery in children’s books,” allowing children to use opposite sex bathrooms and “even encouraging children to consider themselves transgender,” — oftentimes hiding this from parents — are all additional reasons, Carson said, why many parents have pulled their children out of public schools and have started teaching them at home.

“When concerned parents stood up to stop this madness at their local school board meetings, they were compared to domestic terrorists by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice,” Carson wrote.

The retired pediatric neurosurgeon then questioned whether young people who are “now swayed by the propaganda of Osama bin Laden” are learning essential “critical thinking skills.”

“We must fix this situation,” Carson said, adding that his think tank, the American Cornerstone Institute, has developed a curriculum called the “Little Patriots Program.”

“Little Patriots is a patriotic education curriculum featuring lesson plans, curriculum guides, video lessons, animations, and activities that teach young people the true history of our country — warts and all, but free from the taint of political bias,” he said. “Alaska recently approved Little Patriots as a supplemental curriculum option.”

While Carson said conservatives must defend the rights of parents to educate their children at home, he argued that homeschooling “isn’t a national solution” to the problems that plague public schools.

“We need to fix our schools so that our young people are prepared to lead our country into the future, and one way we can do that is by supporting school choice measures,” he wrote. “School choice introduces an aspect of competition into our school system and allows parents to find a school best suited to their unique circumstances.”

The future of America depends on the effort invested in the nation’s young people, Carson said.