Parents’ rights shouldn’t include lessons on extremism

An investigation into a neo-Nazi home school network based in Ohio is shedding light on how loosely regulated home schooling allows parents to indoctrinate children with extremist ideology.  

In November 2021, Sandusky, Ohio parents calling themselves “Mr. and Mrs. Saxon,” founded the “Dissident Homeschool” network.   

In an appearance on the neo-Nazi podcast “Achtung Amerikaner” [attention Americans in German], a woman claiming to be Mrs. Saxon explained their motives: “We are so deeply invested into making sure that that child becomes a wonderful Nazi, and by home schooling we are going to do that.”  

The network, which has at least 2,400 members, distributes overtly racist and antisemitic content. One lesson plan titled “IQ Unit Study” teaches, contrary to facts, that Blacks have a much lower average IQ than whites.   

Home schooling has increased dramatically in recent years. The percentage of children ages 5-17 who were home schooled increased from 1.7 in 1999 to 3.3 in 2016. By 2022, the percentage had increased to at least 5.22 percent and perhaps as much as 6.6 percent, depending on the data source.  

Some parents have valid reasons to home school children. Half of those questioned in a 2020 survey identified safety as the reason for teaching their children at home. The preponderance of bullying in junior and senior high schools, gun violence and the presence of gangs provide compelling reasons for home schooling in some areas.  

According to the same survey, 35 percent of home schooling parents said their children did not receive the individual attention they needed in traditional schools. Unfortunately, many districts fail in their responsibility to provide adequate services for special needs children in particular, leaving parents little choice but to teach them at home.  

While some parents home school for valid safety and pedagogical reasons, a much larger group does so for ideological reasons. A 2019 National Center for Education Statistics study revealed that 74.7 percent of parents surveyed home schooled their children because of “a desire to provide moral instruction” while 58.9 percent said they wanted them to have “religious instruction.”  

Most of these home schooling parents do not indoctrinate their children with extremist ideology. However, white Christians make up a disproportionate number of home schoolers. Many of them often object to sex education that provides information on birth control and abortion and promotes LGQT+ equality. Many espouse traditional gender roles and embrace an exclusionary religious worldview. Several home school curricula promote Christian nationalism.  

In truth, the public knows little about what home schooling parents teach. Most states provide minimal regulation and even less oversight. Only 13 states plus the District of Columbia stipulate requirements for parents to home school their children (usually a high school diploma). Twenty-nine states, including Ohio, mandate subjects but do not regulate curriculum or adequately monitor compliance.  

While Ohio law does require teaching particular subjects, it does not specify methods or materials to be used. As a result, the Dissident Homeschool movement may have acted within the law.  

Home schooling is just one manifestation of the larger “parents’ rights” movement sweeping the country. This broad campaign rests on two dubious premises: public schools indoctrinate rather than educate students and parents know best what their children should learn.   

Parental rights advocates are more distinguishable by what they oppose than by what they support. The Parental Rights in Education (PRIE) organization lays out a list of objectional content. PRIE opposes teaching “comprehensive sexuality,” which it claims is “designed to change traditional sexual and gender norms.”   

The organization also objects to “radical theologies” such as “critical race theory,” erroneously interpreted as promoting white guilt. Designating a legal theory from the 1980s as a “theology” is both absurd and indicative of the group’s religious bent.  

PRIE further wants to ban teaching “any anti-American, anti-capitalism and Marxist ideology,” but it presents no evidence that public schools are actually promoting such ideas.  

Conservative Republicans have weaponized the parental rights movement for political gain. Gov. Glen Youngkin (R-Va.) frequently invoked it in his successful 2021 gubernatorial campaign.   

Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis (R) has also used the parental rights issue. “Parents’ rights have been increasingly under assault around the nation,” he asserted without evidence as he signed the 2022 Parental Rights in Education Act, “but in Florida, we stand up for the rights of parents and the fundamental role they play in the education of their children.”   

The law prohibits “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grade levels or in a specified manner.” Critics have appropriately dubbed it the “don’t say gay bill.”  

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), head of the “Protect the Kids Caucus” in the House of Representatives, repeated DeSantis’s unsubstantiated allegation: “Parental rights are under attack across our nation.”   

In November, Lesko introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing “the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children.” The amendment further stipulates the right of parents to “choose, as an alternative to public education, private, religious, or home schools, and the right to make reasonable choices within public schools for one’s child.”  

Ironically, many parents’ rights advocates, including many home schoolers, do the very thing they claim to oppose. Instead of providing children with a broad-based education and the critical thinking skills necessary to make informed choices and be good citizens, they promote a narrow ideological worldview with no room for discussion or dissent.  

Parents’ rights advocates and home schoolers frequently quote the 1925 Supreme Court decision that proclaimed, “The child is not the mere creature of the state.” True enough, but the child is not the property of the parent either. Society as a whole has a vested interest in the education of its citizens.  

Parents must have a voice in determining education policy, a voice best expressed through school board elections, not by exercising veto power over curriculum. Children are our most valuable resource. Public education should help them become informed, tolerant, compassionate adults. Educating children at home or in homogenous, sectarian schools may leave them unprepared to live in the diverse world of 21st century America.  

Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”