Homeschooling Ugliness

lobotero

Feb 3

If you have been a loyal reader of IST you know I have strong opinions on the phenom known as 'homeschooling'....to me it is just a way for parents to make sure their children retain the racism that their parents are so proud of....but read it for yourself.....

https://lobotero.com/2015/09/10/home-schooled-and-illiterate/

....and a recent story just reinforces my opinion.

Earlier this month, while the rest of the country was celebrating the achievements of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., parents and children in the "Dissident Homeschool" network opened a lesson plan and were greeted with the words: "As Adolf Hitler wrote…"

The contents of the MLK lesson plan would be shocking for almost anyone, but for members of the 2,400-member "Dissident Homeschool" Telegram channel, this was a regular Monday at school.

Earlier this month, while the rest of the country was celebrating the achievements of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., parents and children in the "Dissident Homeschool" network opened a lesson plan and were greeted with the words: "As Adolf Hitler wrote…"

The contents of the MLK lesson plan would be shocking for almost anyone, but for members of the 2,400-member "Dissident Homeschool" Telegram channel, this was a regular Monday at school.

VICE News joined the group simply by clicking on a link, though the list of members was not publicly visible.

What's even more disturbing, however, is that the couple who run the channel are not only teaching parents how to indoctrinate their children into this fascist ideology, they're also encouraging them to meet up in real life and join even more radical groups, which could further reinforce their beliefs and potentially push them toward violent action.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34ane/neo-nazi-homeschool-ohio

Just a good illustration how the internet can be used to misinform and promote racism, homophobia, antisemitism and other forms of hate....none of which does anything to heal a fractured country and population.

The state of Ohio has launched an investigation into this assault on decency.

Though state officials are now reviewing "compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements," CNN reports they don't actually have authority over homeschool curriculum. Parents of homeschooled students are asked to present a brief outline of the curriculum and a list of teaching materials to the local public school superintendent, but "there's little to no enforcement mechanism to ensure that parents are actually teaching the curriculum they submitted," reports HuffPost. Under state law, education officials can only intervene if there is "substantial evidence of cessation of home education," though people are now calling for change, per CNN.

The outlet found "a number of racist, anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi and homophobic posts that span back to the group's creation in October 2021." In the lead-up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day last month, Katja Lawrence, using the pseudonym "Mrs. Saxon," allegedly posted what she described as "a unit study for elementary ages," designed "to ensure our children know [MLK Jr.] for the deceitful, dishonest, riot-inciting negro he actually was." The user went on to describe the civil rights hero as "the face of a movement which ethnically cleansed whites out of urban areas and precipitated the anti-white regime that we are now fighting to free ourselves from."

"We have our children's best interest at heart," Netherlands-born Katja Lawrence, a mother of four, told a neo-Nazi podcast last year, per Vice. "We are so deeply invested into making sure that that child becomes a wonderful Nazi." According to a Telegram post in December, "Without homeschooling the children, our children are left defenseless to the schools and the Gay Afro Zionist scum that run them." Vice reports Lawrence recently worked as office manager at a law firm that lists "LGBT law" among its specialties. She has also helped design websites for the local sheriff's office and a prosecutor's office, according to the outlet.

I think that homeschooling is a disservice to children....but I guess that matters not as long as the bigotry gets implanted in the minds of the children.

Then there are the closet Nazis in state government.....

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may not want a reputation as a book banner, but that's not slowing down the Republican's efforts to knock as many books out of the hands of students, both college-age and younger. In fact, Florida Republicans' war on reading is only escalating, with the GOP engaged in a full-scale gaslighting project to deny what is clearly a campaign of threats and intimidation to keep teachers from letting kids read.

Last week, the investigative journalism team at Popular Info published a report showing that teachers in Florida are being told to lock up their classroom libraries or risk felony prosecution. Images of bookshelves being put behind barriers and stories of children crying quickly went viral. That's when the gaslighting began.

DeSantis' lieutenant and Florida Commissioner of Education, Manny Diaz Jr., called the story "fake news" and accused the teachers of overreacting. But, as Judd Legum of Popular Info confirmed in a follow-up report, "Diaz's recommendations to teachers directly contradicts the training produced by his own agency," which requires all books to be prescreened and warns that the censors must "err on the side of caution" when deciding if a book fits the very right-wing definition of "harmful to minors." As Legum points out, one author that has been frequently targeted by Republican censors is Pulitzer Prize winner Toni Morrison, making it clear that it's not "pornography" that is in dispute here — which no one actually thinks teachers were providing — but internationally renowned literature. That explains why books about the Holocaust and Martin Luther King Jr. have also been frequently targeted by Republicans for bans.