The number of Americans choosing to homeschool their children has risen dramatically in 2020 according to a survey carried out by the Census Bureau. The percentage of households with at least one child being homeschooled grew from about 5.4% in the spring of 2020 to 11.1% in the fall of that year. This appears to indicate that homeschooling more than doubled in popularity with parents of school aged children.
Homeschooling increasingly popular
The data appears to show that it isn’t just the pandemic which drove parents away from public schools in 2020 and sparked the surge in homeschooling.
The first phase of the Census Bureau survey took place in late April and early May. This is well after the beginning of the pandemic, to which the Bureau attributes the homeschool change.
This seems unlikely as the exclusive cause for the change because the most dramatic rise evidently took place after the following summer, leading to the numbers found in the second phase of the survey.
At the time of the first phase schools already were overwhelmingly holding classes remotely. Parents may have simply intended to wait for the end of the semester but this still leaves the question of why they subsequently chose to commit to homeschooling in the fall.
It is difficult to imagine that the political and social upheaval which took place in the months between the phases of the survey did not play a key role in parents being unwilling to send their children back to school.
California, it should be noted, saw effectively no change in homeschooling according to the survey. California numbers exceeded most other states in spring but did not see a noticeable increase in fall.
Pandemic gives parents an opportunity
The pandemic likely provided an opportunity for many parents to try homeschooling for the first time. Many of these parents may not intend to go back to the public school system.
Children whose parents took advantage of lockdowns and closures to give homeschooling a try were subsequently not exposed to the sorts of radical anti-white propaganda and perverse sexual messaging which most of their public school peers experienced.
There has been much lamentation about the fact that mothers have been forced during the pandemic to quit their jobs and stay home with children as a result of school closures.
Perhaps the homeschooling data shows that many of those mothers who could afford to make that choice realized that they actually preferred their new lifestyle.
Some Republicans have at times clamored for schools to reopen so that mothers can return to the workforce. Perhaps we should rethink this.
The homeschool survey clearly shows that many parents are discovering the benefits of homeschooling. Encouraging this trend might strengthen families, ease unemployment, and protect children from leftist propaganda. There is much to approve of here from a conservative perspective.
