If you walked into the Museum of History & Culture in Richmond, Va., last April for the Virginia Homeschoolers “unConvention,” you might have been surprised at the lineup of speakers there to guide you through the daunting task of educating your children. Rather than helping parents navigate actual homeschooling — teaching academics at home — the event’s organizers invited attendees to listen to a session on how “forms of decoloniality are shaping families,” to receive training on how to “resolve the ways that unexamined experiences with bias and oppression disrupt families’ and organizations’ capacity to sustain cultures of belonging,” or to attend “All History Is Queer History,” a talk given by a transgender-rights activist (“he/him/his”), who cofounded his local chapter of Drag Story Hour.
Since 2020, the number of homeschoolers in the United States has doubled. This great migration away from public schools has been in part a result of the infiltration of critical race theory (CRT) in curricula and the forced indoctrination of the LGBTQ+ agenda on children. But as evidenced by the unConvention and other such gatherings around the country, these same ideologies have stealthily tunneled into the homeschool community at large, a reflection of the new picture of American homeschooling. The trend toward educating in the home, which has long been associated with politically conservative families, also attracts parents with progressive ideas. Many homeschool organizations and curriculum developers have begun sprinkling their offerings with elements of wokeness in an effort to appeal to a broader audience.
Comments