I never took “social studies.” To this day, I’m not really sure what it even is! But every year when we took the state-standardized test as homeschoolers, my scores – as well as those of my siblings – came back in the 90th percentile or higher for all subjects, including social studies. This had nothing to do with luck or even smarts, but it had everything to do with the fact that we didn’t waste time on the social studies curriculum taught in schools in the first place.

If we were finishing up the school year in the spring and encountered an unseasonably warm day, we wouldn’t even crack open the books that day. As homeschoolers, we didn’t take off school for the bad weather, we took off for the good weather. We started our semester later and ended it earlier than our public school counterparts. And until high school, we rarely spent longer than a couple hours a day on schoolwork. Yet from such schooling, my siblings and I have managed to start businesses, attend law school, get masters degrees, and become private school teachers.

From an early age I knew something was seriously wrong with how children were educated in public schools. As we drove past the sterile, gray buildings on our way to a fun afternoon at the park, I wondered what the poor kids inside them were doing for almost eight hours. Furthermore, the idea of coming home around 4 p.m. only to do homework until bedtime – and then start all over again the next day – sounded like misery.

What shocked me then – and still does today – was that the system that had them working such long hours was still failing to educate them. It would make more sense if students were attending elite, rigorous private schools. Instead, literacy levels are in a freefall, and have been since the 1990s, while only a third of American high school seniors are prepared for college-level math courses.

There’s a lot of controversy online whenever a high-profile influencer who homeschools posts about unplanned break days or weeks, or how often they skip certain subjects. One woman recently went viral for posting about how she “forgot” to teach her kids science or social studies the past two months. The quotes were filled with bitter naysayers accusing homeschoolers of “raising idiots” or saying that homeschooling is “almost always the worst option for kids.”

But as long as the academic records of public school alternatives remain as abysmal as those mentioned above, no one should join the chorus – least of all other homeschoolers – in denouncing these moms. The reality is that even the most mediocre of homeschool parents are giving their children a better education and a better childhood than if they went the “traditional” route of government-funded schools.

And while academic rigor is extremely important, it’s not as important as protecting our kids from predatory teachers, LGBT propaganda, and race essentialism. That hippie homeschool kid who never took a test in her life? She’s still better off than she would be with a “better education” in a public school.

So until public schools get their act together, homeschoolers shouldn’t be given any grief about how they operate, because if the bar really is public schools, then the bar is on the floor. Homeschoolers should definitely hold themselves to a higher standard than the failing government schools … but all the angry commenters ranting about homeschooling are in for a surprise when they find out that “uneducated” homeschoolers are their future bosses and managers.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: Freepik