#homeschool — Public Fediverse posts

Behind the Scenes: Part 3

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/09/05/behind-the-scenes-part-3/

Behind the Scenes: Part 3

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/09/05/behind-the-scenes-part-3/

Behind the Scenes: Part 3

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/09/05/behind-the-scenes-part-3/

Behind the Scenes: Part 3

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/09/05/behind-the-scenes-part-3/

Behind the Scenes: Part 3

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/09/05/behind-the-scenes-part-3/

Gymnastics Friday!

https://www.wolfandraven.blog/2026/09/gymnastics-friday/

Gymnastics Friday!

https://www.wolfandraven.blog/2026/09/gymnastics-friday/

Blog: I Said There are no Secular Schools and that Public Schools Should be Banned…and the Atheist Leftists are Angry.

A little bit ago, I posted an article on here about how there are no secular schools. In that article, I pointed out that no school is truly free of religion or worldviews, and, in the case of public schools, they mainly subscribe to atheism or other forms of secular humanism. As such, in many ways they operate as something with which to mass convert the youth to atheism/secular humanism, and if we actually want this problem solved, then we should abolish the public school system, make private schools and homeschool more accessible, and allow more school choice.

Naturally, however, there are people who vehemently disagree with this position: atheist leftists (who also claim to be anti-fascist, but that’ll come up later.)

But what arguments do the Leftists have to defend the public school system? What airtight defenses do they have for it?

The first defense is, of course, that secularism isn’t a religion, nor is it connected to religion or spirituality. While that might be true in part, it is a worldview that makes many claims that are treated as fact that are in conflict with other worldviews and religions. For instance, secularists often take an atheistic stance on how the world works. However, the issue with this is that the claims made and treated as fact are really theories.

The most obvious example of this is evolutionary theory, which has been challenged in schools for decades. Evolutionary theory is just that – a theory – yet it is treated as fact in every level of academia, with hardly any room for disagreement. When Christians try to teach their theory about how the world was created and support it with evidence, they’re often shot down, threatened with their jobs, and accused of trying to force religion on students. We Christians are accused of indoctrinating students (and, thus, abusing them, according to some people) even though we’re doing just what the secularists are doing – presenting a theory and supporting it with evidence. We believe that creation is a fact just as secularists believe evolution is a fact. So why aren’t we allowed to teach it as a theory in academics? Why can’t we present both sides and let the students make up their own minds? Why is it abuse when we Christians present what we believe as fact as a theory in an academic context, but it’s not abuse when secularists do it and take it so far as to say that it is fact?

The second defense is that religion is essentially just a fairytale, and is not based in fact, so anyone who teaches from a religious point of view should be fired. The first issue with this argument is what do we define as a fairytale? I can just as easily say teaching from a secular worldview is teaching kids a fairytale about how we just randomly came from nothing, and thus, secular teachers should be fired. I could say that teaching that you can be the opposite gender is a fairytale, and anyone who teaches that should be fired. What definition are we working with here?

The second issue with this defense is, of course, the history of how the public school system even started. While we all know about John Dewey and Horace Mann as being some of the most influential figures in the making of our modern public education system, Protestant Christians did a great deal to build it as well. As the Christian Heritage Fellowship writes:

The foundation for public education, however, was first laid in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the years 1642, 1647, and 1648. The three legislative acts of these three years are known as the Massachusetts School Laws and was the first step toward compulsory government-directed public education in the United States. Not long after these three laws were enacted, similar laws were drafted in the other New England colonies. Following the lead of the New England colonies, most mid-Atlantic colonies enacted similar legislation, though in some Southern colonies nearly a century passed before publicly funded schools were established there. The first law regarding education in the New World was passed by evangelical Christians only twenty-two years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

Why did the Protestant settlers do this? It was because they wanted kids to be well versed, not just in studies like reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. but also in the Bible. They recognized that the ignorance of what the Bible teaches that could be found in the Old World (which was still predominately Catholic at the time) lead in part to various atrocities. They believed that teaching kids the Bible would prevent that. In doing so, Christians literally laid the groundwork for the school system we have today. Had those people who taught “fairytales” as fact never been allowed to teach, perhaps we would not have the system we have today, severely flawed though it is.

Speaking of how flawed the system has become, we get to our third defense: the idea that public schools are good because it shows the world as it is and prevents kids from being brainwashed by their parents, who might not know everything. However, while that sounds good, we should all be wondering what bias our children are taught to view the world through.

It is a well-established fact that everyone has a bias. Our parents have a bias. We have a bias. Our teachers have a bias. Sure, some biases might be rooted more in fact than others, but when one group controls the education and is in charge of teaching your kids their bias, then what happens? Well, more often than not, when your kids spend 8-10 hours a day in school, another several hours on homework, a couple hours on the phone, and maybe thirty minutes chatting with their parents per day, they’re going to adopt the school’s bias.

We have only to take a quick look at the origins of the public school system to see this. Going back to the Protestant origins of our education system, while well-intentioned, the Protestant teachers taught from a Calvinist-leaning viewpoint. While some of this could be chalked up to being what they had, a lot of this was done for a different reason. They sought to lead their Catholic students to Protestantism in the hopes that it would prevent the atrocities committed in the Old World from happening in America. In other words, their schools weren’t just there for learning, but for converting Catholic kids into Protestantism and even back then, it worked.

However, this system worked so well that it had dire consequences. Fast forward to the 20th century. Totalitarianism is on the rise, with communism taking over Russia and fascism becoming popular in Spain, Italy, and Germany. In every case, one of the first things to be taken over were the education systems. In Nazi Germany, for example, homeschooling was outlawed and parents were forced to send their kids to state-run or approved schools. There, their children were indoctrinated into Nazism, and, starting in 1939, all eligible children were required to join the Hitler Youth. Any parents who objected were heavily fined or thrown into prison.

Today, while parents still have school choice, we see disturbing parallels between the two examples I presented and our current system. The main worldview that our public schools teach from is secular, but it’s further mixed with Leftism. Schools have a particular interest to do this as the Teacher’s Union and the Democrat Party have a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours type of relationship. They donate to the Party (more than any other group), and the party passes laws to benefit them, and many of those laws are meant to restrict school choice, especially for homeschoolers. We have just to look at a recent law in Conneticut to see this.

Funny how the supposedly anti-fascist group wants to continue and strengthen something that while starting out with good intentions, has historically been used quite effectively to indoctrinate entire generations into supporting things that have been detrimental to society.

This leads to the fourth argument that public schools give an even playing field for everyone, and therefore, should remain the standard. If by even playing field, supporters of public education mean that it makes everyone equally dumb and controllable, then their defense is true.

It has been shown over the past several years that kids who go to public school are becoming dumber. One in four young adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate yet are still graduating with a high school diploma. Half of the U.S. population cannot read at an 8th-grade level. About 45% of U.S. high school seniors lack basic math skills. Only 37% of high school students were proficient in science. Only 13% of 8th-graders were proficient in history and 22% were proficient in civics. Yet they’re being passed through the public school system, and graduating, something that teachers are increasingly raising the alarm about.

Meanwhile, private school students and homeschool students have consistently scored better on all points, with homeschoolers scoring above average on academic achievement tests regardless of their parent’s level of education or household income. To illustrate this difference, a friend of the family who is an English professor once said that he could tell immediately who went to public school and who was homeschooled or sent to private school because the public-school kids had no idea what parts of speech were. Meanwhile the homeschooled and private schooled kids understood the assignment and could name various parts of speech.

If you’re worried about society getting dumber, then you should be on the side of school choice and making private and homeschool options more acessible to parents. Not only would everyone have a better education, but it would make the playing field truly equal because there would be more competition. As it is, the private schooled and homeschooled have an advantage in many ways over the public schooled since we actually know how to read, write, do math, understand science, communicate, etc.

But, if you want an “equal playing field” for people at the expense of making society stupid and creating a group of people that can’t critically think and has no diversity of thought, then sure, go for public schools.

Until next time,

M.J.

Blog: I Said There are no Secular Schools and that Public Schools Should be Banned…and the Atheist Leftists are Angry.

A little bit ago, I posted an article on here about how there are no secular schools. In that article, I pointed out that no school is truly free of religion or worldviews, and, in the case of public schools, they mainly subscribe to atheism or other forms of secular humanism. As such, in many ways they operate as something with which to mass convert the youth to atheism/secular humanism, and if we actually want this problem solved, then we should abolish the public school system, make private schools and homeschool more accessible, and allow more school choice.

Naturally, however, there are people who vehemently disagree with this position: atheist leftists (who also claim to be anti-fascist, but that’ll come up later.)

But what arguments do the Leftists have to defend the public school system? What airtight defenses do they have for it?

The first defense is, of course, that secularism isn’t a religion, nor is it connected to religion or spirituality. While that might be true in part, it is a worldview that makes many claims that are treated as fact that are in conflict with other worldviews and religions. For instance, secularists often take an atheistic stance on how the world works. However, the issue with this is that the claims made and treated as fact are really theories.

The most obvious example of this is evolutionary theory, which has been challenged in schools for decades. Evolutionary theory is just that – a theory – yet it is treated as fact in every level of academia, with hardly any room for disagreement. When Christians try to teach their theory about how the world was created and support it with evidence, they’re often shot down, threatened with their jobs, and accused of trying to force religion on students. We Christians are accused of indoctrinating students (and, thus, abusing them, according to some people) even though we’re doing just what the secularists are doing – presenting a theory and supporting it with evidence. We believe that creation is a fact just as secularists believe evolution is a fact. So why aren’t we allowed to teach it as a theory in academics? Why can’t we present both sides and let the students make up their own minds? Why is it abuse when we Christians present what we believe as fact as a theory in an academic context, but it’s not abuse when secularists do it and take it so far as to say that it is fact?

The second defense is that religion is essentially just a fairytale, and is not based in fact, so anyone who teaches from a religious point of view should be fired. The first issue with this argument is what do we define as a fairytale? I can just as easily say teaching from a secular worldview is teaching kids a fairytale about how we just randomly came from nothing, and thus, secular teachers should be fired. I could say that teaching that you can be the opposite gender is a fairytale, and anyone who teaches that should be fired. What definition are we working with here?

The second issue with this defense is, of course, the history of how the public school system even started. While we all know about John Dewey and Horace Mann as being some of the most influential figures in the making of our modern public education system, Protestant Christians did a great deal to build it as well. As the Christian Heritage Fellowship writes:

The foundation for public education, however, was first laid in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the years 1642, 1647, and 1648. The three legislative acts of these three years are known as the Massachusetts School Laws and was the first step toward compulsory government-directed public education in the United States. Not long after these three laws were enacted, similar laws were drafted in the other New England colonies. Following the lead of the New England colonies, most mid-Atlantic colonies enacted similar legislation, though in some Southern colonies nearly a century passed before publicly funded schools were established there. The first law regarding education in the New World was passed by evangelical Christians only twenty-two years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

Why did the Protestant settlers do this? It was because they wanted kids to be well versed, not just in studies like reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. but also in the Bible. They recognized that the ignorance of what the Bible teaches that could be found in the Old World (which was still predominately Catholic at the time) lead in part to various atrocities. They believed that teaching kids the Bible would prevent that. In doing so, Christians literally laid the groundwork for the school system we have today. Had those people who taught “fairytales” as fact never been allowed to teach, perhaps we would not have the system we have today, severely flawed though it is.

Speaking of how flawed the system has become, we get to our third defense: the idea that public schools are good because it shows the world as it is and prevents kids from being brainwashed by their parents, who might not know everything. However, while that sounds good, we should all be wondering what bias our children are taught to view the world through.

It is a well-established fact that everyone has a bias. Our parents have a bias. We have a bias. Our teachers have a bias. Sure, some biases might be rooted more in fact than others, but when one group controls the education and is in charge of teaching your kids their bias, then what happens? Well, more often than not, when your kids spend 8-10 hours a day in school, another several hours on homework, a couple hours on the phone, and maybe thirty minutes chatting with their parents per day, they’re going to adopt the school’s bias.

We have only to take a quick look at the origins of the public school system to see this. Going back to the Protestant origins of our education system, while well-intentioned, the Protestant teachers taught from a Calvinist-leaning viewpoint. While some of this could be chalked up to being what they had, a lot of this was done for a different reason. They sought to lead their Catholic students to Protestantism in the hopes that it would prevent the atrocities committed in the Old World from happening in America. In other words, their schools weren’t just there for learning, but for converting Catholic kids into Protestantism and even back then, it worked.

However, this system worked so well that it had dire consequences. Fast forward to the 20th century. Totalitarianism is on the rise, with communism taking over Russia and fascism becoming popular in Spain, Italy, and Germany. In every case, one of the first things to be taken over were the education systems. In Nazi Germany, for example, homeschooling was outlawed and parents were forced to send their kids to state-run or approved schools. There, their children were indoctrinated into Nazism, and, starting in 1939, all eligible children were required to join the Hitler Youth. Any parents who objected were heavily fined or thrown into prison.

Today, while parents still have school choice, we see disturbing parallels between the two examples I presented and our current system. The main worldview that our public schools teach from is secular, but it’s further mixed with Leftism. Schools have a particular interest to do this as the Teacher’s Union and the Democrat Party have a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours type of relationship. They donate to the Party (more than any other group), and the party passes laws to benefit them, and many of those laws are meant to restrict school choice, especially for homeschoolers. We have just to look at a recent law in Conneticut to see this.

Funny how the supposedly anti-fascist group wants to continue and strengthen something that while starting out with good intentions, has historically been used quite effectively to indoctrinate entire generations into supporting things that have been detrimental to society.

This leads to the fourth argument that public schools give an even playing field for everyone, and therefore, should remain the standard. If by even playing field, supporters of public education mean that it makes everyone equally dumb and controllable, then their defense is true.

It has been shown over the past several years that kids who go to public school are becoming dumber. One in four young adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate yet are still graduating with a high school diploma. Half of the U.S. population cannot read at an 8th-grade level. About 45% of U.S. high school seniors lack basic math skills. Only 37% of high school students were proficient in science. Only 13% of 8th-graders were proficient in history and 22% were proficient in civics. Yet they’re being passed through the public school system, and graduating, something that teachers are increasingly raising the alarm about.

Meanwhile, private school students and homeschool students have consistently scored better on all points, with homeschoolers scoring above average on academic achievement tests regardless of their parent’s level of education or household income. To illustrate this difference, a friend of the family who is an English professor once said that he could tell immediately who went to public school and who was homeschooled or sent to private school because the public-school kids had no idea what parts of speech were. Meanwhile the homeschooled and private schooled kids understood the assignment and could name various parts of speech.

If you’re worried about society getting dumber, then you should be on the side of school choice and making private and homeschool options more acessible to parents. Not only would everyone have a better education, but it would make the playing field truly equal because there would be more competition. As it is, the private schooled and homeschooled have an advantage in many ways over the public schooled since we actually know how to read, write, do math, understand science, communicate, etc.

But, if you want an “equal playing field” for people at the expense of making society stupid and creating a group of people that can’t critically think and has no diversity of thought, then sure, go for public schools.

Until next time,

M.J.

Blog: I Said There are no Secular Schools and that Public Schools Should be Banned…and the Atheist Leftists are Angry.

A little bit ago, I posted an article on here about how there are no secular schools. In that article, I pointed out that no school is truly free of religion or worldviews, and, in the case of public schools, they mainly subscribe to atheism or other forms of secular humanism. As such, in many ways they operate as something with which to mass convert the youth to atheism/secular humanism, and if we actually want this problem solved, then we should abolish the public school system, make private schools and homeschool more accessible, and allow more school choice.

Naturally, however, there are people who vehemently disagree with this position: atheist leftists (who also claim to be anti-fascist, but that’ll come up later.)

But what arguments do the Leftists have to defend the public school system? What airtight defenses do they have for it?

The first defense is, of course, that secularism isn’t a religion, nor is it connected to religion or spirituality. While that might be true in part, it is a worldview that makes many claims that are treated as fact that are in conflict with other worldviews and religions. For instance, secularists often take an atheistic stance on how the world works. However, the issue with this is that the claims made and treated as fact are really theories.

The most obvious example of this is evolutionary theory, which has been challenged in schools for decades. Evolutionary theory is just that – a theory – yet it is treated as fact in every level of academia, with hardly any room for disagreement. When Christians try to teach their theory about how the world was created and support it with evidence, they’re often shot down, threatened with their jobs, and accused of trying to force religion on students. We Christians are accused of indoctrinating students (and, thus, abusing them, according to some people) even though we’re doing just what the secularists are doing – presenting a theory and supporting it with evidence. We believe that creation is a fact just as secularists believe evolution is a fact. So why aren’t we allowed to teach it as a theory in academics? Why can’t we present both sides and let the students make up their own minds? Why is it abuse when we Christians present what we believe as fact as a theory in an academic context, but it’s not abuse when secularists do it and take it so far as to say that it is fact?

The second defense is that religion is essentially just a fairytale, and is not based in fact, so anyone who teaches from a religious point of view should be fired. The first issue with this argument is what do we define as a fairytale? I can just as easily say teaching from a secular worldview is teaching kids a fairytale about how we just randomly came from nothing, and thus, secular teachers should be fired. I could say that teaching that you can be the opposite gender is a fairytale, and anyone who teaches that should be fired. What definition are we working with here?

The second issue with this defense is, of course, the history of how the public school system even started. While we all know about John Dewey and Horace Mann as being some of the most influential figures in the making of our modern public education system, Protestant Christians did a great deal to build it as well. As the Christian Heritage Fellowship writes:

The foundation for public education, however, was first laid in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the years 1642, 1647, and 1648. The three legislative acts of these three years are known as the Massachusetts School Laws and was the first step toward compulsory government-directed public education in the United States. Not long after these three laws were enacted, similar laws were drafted in the other New England colonies. Following the lead of the New England colonies, most mid-Atlantic colonies enacted similar legislation, though in some Southern colonies nearly a century passed before publicly funded schools were established there. The first law regarding education in the New World was passed by evangelical Christians only twenty-two years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

Why did the Protestant settlers do this? It was because they wanted kids to be well versed, not just in studies like reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. but also in the Bible. They recognized that the ignorance of what the Bible teaches that could be found in the Old World (which was still predominately Catholic at the time) lead in part to various atrocities. They believed that teaching kids the Bible would prevent that. In doing so, Christians literally laid the groundwork for the school system we have today. Had those people who taught “fairytales” as fact never been allowed to teach, perhaps we would not have the system we have today, severely flawed though it is.

Speaking of how flawed the system has become, we get to our third defense: the idea that public schools are good because it shows the world as it is and prevents kids from being brainwashed by their parents, who might not know everything. However, while that sounds good, we should all be wondering what bias our children are taught to view the world through.

It is a well-established fact that everyone has a bias. Our parents have a bias. We have a bias. Our teachers have a bias. Sure, some biases might be rooted more in fact than others, but when one group controls the education and is in charge of teaching your kids their bias, then what happens? Well, more often than not, when your kids spend 8-10 hours a day in school, another several hours on homework, a couple hours on the phone, and maybe thirty minutes chatting with their parents per day, they’re going to adopt the school’s bias.

We have only to take a quick look at the origins of the public school system to see this. Going back to the Protestant origins of our education system, while well-intentioned, the Protestant teachers taught from a Calvinist-leaning viewpoint. While some of this could be chalked up to being what they had, a lot of this was done for a different reason. They sought to lead their Catholic students to Protestantism in the hopes that it would prevent the atrocities committed in the Old World from happening in America. In other words, their schools weren’t just there for learning, but for converting Catholic kids into Protestantism and even back then, it worked.

However, this system worked so well that it had dire consequences. Fast forward to the 20th century. Totalitarianism is on the rise, with communism taking over Russia and fascism becoming popular in Spain, Italy, and Germany. In every case, one of the first things to be taken over were the education systems. In Nazi Germany, for example, homeschooling was outlawed and parents were forced to send their kids to state-run or approved schools. There, their children were indoctrinated into Nazism, and, starting in 1939, all eligible children were required to join the Hitler Youth. Any parents who objected were heavily fined or thrown into prison.

Today, while parents still have school choice, we see disturbing parallels between the two examples I presented and our current system. The main worldview that our public schools teach from is secular, but it’s further mixed with Leftism. Schools have a particular interest to do this as the Teacher’s Union and the Democrat Party have a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours type of relationship. They donate to the Party (more than any other group), and the party passes laws to benefit them, and many of those laws are meant to restrict school choice, especially for homeschoolers. We have just to look at a recent law in Conneticut to see this.

Funny how the supposedly anti-fascist group wants to continue and strengthen something that while starting out with good intentions, has historically been used quite effectively to indoctrinate entire generations into supporting things that have been detrimental to society.

This leads to the fourth argument that public schools give an even playing field for everyone, and therefore, should remain the standard. If by even playing field, supporters of public education mean that it makes everyone equally dumb and controllable, then their defense is true.

It has been shown over the past several years that kids who go to public school are becoming dumber. One in four young adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate yet are still graduating with a high school diploma. Half of the U.S. population cannot read at an 8th-grade level. About 45% of U.S. high school seniors lack basic math skills. Only 37% of high school students were proficient in science. Only 13% of 8th-graders were proficient in history and 22% were proficient in civics. Yet they’re being passed through the public school system, and graduating, something that teachers are increasingly raising the alarm about.

Meanwhile, private school students and homeschool students have consistently scored better on all points, with homeschoolers scoring above average on academic achievement tests regardless of their parent’s level of education or household income. To illustrate this difference, a friend of the family who is an English professor once said that he could tell immediately who went to public school and who was homeschooled or sent to private school because the public-school kids had no idea what parts of speech were. Meanwhile the homeschooled and private schooled kids understood the assignment and could name various parts of speech.

If you’re worried about society getting dumber, then you should be on the side of school choice and making private and homeschool options more acessible to parents. Not only would everyone have a better education, but it would make the playing field truly equal because there would be more competition. As it is, the private schooled and homeschooled have an advantage in many ways over the public schooled since we actually know how to read, write, do math, understand science, communicate, etc.

But, if you want an “equal playing field” for people at the expense of making society stupid and creating a group of people that can’t critically think and has no diversity of thought, then sure, go for public schools.

Until next time,

M.J.

Blog: I Said There are no Secular Schools and that Public Schools Should be Banned…and the Atheist Leftists are Angry.

A little bit ago, I posted an article on here about how there are no secular schools. In that article, I pointed out that no school is truly free of religion or worldviews, and, in the case of public schools, they mainly subscribe to atheism or other forms of secular humanism. As such, in many ways they operate as something with which to mass convert the youth to atheism/secular humanism, and if we actually want this problem solved, then we should abolish the public school system, make private schools and homeschool more accessible, and allow more school choice.

Naturally, however, there are people who vehemently disagree with this position: atheist leftists (who also claim to be anti-fascist, but that’ll come up later.)

But what arguments do the Leftists have to defend the public school system? What airtight defenses do they have for it?

The first defense is, of course, that secularism isn’t a religion, nor is it connected to religion or spirituality. While that might be true in part, it is a worldview that makes many claims that are treated as fact that are in conflict with other worldviews and religions. For instance, secularists often take an atheistic stance on how the world works. However, the issue with this is that the claims made and treated as fact are really theories.

The most obvious example of this is evolutionary theory, which has been challenged in schools for decades. Evolutionary theory is just that – a theory – yet it is treated as fact in every level of academia, with hardly any room for disagreement. When Christians try to teach their theory about how the world was created and support it with evidence, they’re often shot down, threatened with their jobs, and accused of trying to force religion on students. We Christians are accused of indoctrinating students (and, thus, abusing them, according to some people) even though we’re doing just what the secularists are doing – presenting a theory and supporting it with evidence. We believe that creation is a fact just as secularists believe evolution is a fact. So why aren’t we allowed to teach it as a theory in academics? Why can’t we present both sides and let the students make up their own minds? Why is it abuse when we Christians present what we believe as fact as a theory in an academic context, but it’s not abuse when secularists do it and take it so far as to say that it is fact?

The second defense is that religion is essentially just a fairytale, and is not based in fact, so anyone who teaches from a religious point of view should be fired. The first issue with this argument is what do we define as a fairytale? I can just as easily say teaching from a secular worldview is teaching kids a fairytale about how we just randomly came from nothing, and thus, secular teachers should be fired. I could say that teaching that you can be the opposite gender is a fairytale, and anyone who teaches that should be fired. What definition are we working with here?

The second issue with this defense is, of course, the history of how the public school system even started. While we all know about John Dewey and Horace Mann as being some of the most influential figures in the making of our modern public education system, Protestant Christians did a great deal to build it as well. As the Christian Heritage Fellowship writes:

The foundation for public education, however, was first laid in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the years 1642, 1647, and 1648. The three legislative acts of these three years are known as the Massachusetts School Laws and was the first step toward compulsory government-directed public education in the United States. Not long after these three laws were enacted, similar laws were drafted in the other New England colonies. Following the lead of the New England colonies, most mid-Atlantic colonies enacted similar legislation, though in some Southern colonies nearly a century passed before publicly funded schools were established there. The first law regarding education in the New World was passed by evangelical Christians only twenty-two years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

Why did the Protestant settlers do this? It was because they wanted kids to be well versed, not just in studies like reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. but also in the Bible. They recognized that the ignorance of what the Bible teaches that could be found in the Old World (which was still predominately Catholic at the time) lead in part to various atrocities. They believed that teaching kids the Bible would prevent that. In doing so, Christians literally laid the groundwork for the school system we have today. Had those people who taught “fairytales” as fact never been allowed to teach, perhaps we would not have the system we have today, severely flawed though it is.

Speaking of how flawed the system has become, we get to our third defense: the idea that public schools are good because it shows the world as it is and prevents kids from being brainwashed by their parents, who might not know everything. However, while that sounds good, we should all be wondering what bias our children are taught to view the world through.

It is a well-established fact that everyone has a bias. Our parents have a bias. We have a bias. Our teachers have a bias. Sure, some biases might be rooted more in fact than others, but when one group controls the education and is in charge of teaching your kids their bias, then what happens? Well, more often than not, when your kids spend 8-10 hours a day in school, another several hours on homework, a couple hours on the phone, and maybe thirty minutes chatting with their parents per day, they’re going to adopt the school’s bias.

We have only to take a quick look at the origins of the public school system to see this. Going back to the Protestant origins of our education system, while well-intentioned, the Protestant teachers taught from a Calvinist-leaning viewpoint. While some of this could be chalked up to being what they had, a lot of this was done for a different reason. They sought to lead their Catholic students to Protestantism in the hopes that it would prevent the atrocities committed in the Old World from happening in America. In other words, their schools weren’t just there for learning, but for converting Catholic kids into Protestantism and even back then, it worked.

However, this system worked so well that it had dire consequences. Fast forward to the 20th century. Totalitarianism is on the rise, with communism taking over Russia and fascism becoming popular in Spain, Italy, and Germany. In every case, one of the first things to be taken over were the education systems. In Nazi Germany, for example, homeschooling was outlawed and parents were forced to send their kids to state-run or approved schools. There, their children were indoctrinated into Nazism, and, starting in 1939, all eligible children were required to join the Hitler Youth. Any parents who objected were heavily fined or thrown into prison.

Today, while parents still have school choice, we see disturbing parallels between the two examples I presented and our current system. The main worldview that our public schools teach from is secular, but it’s further mixed with Leftism. Schools have a particular interest to do this as the Teacher’s Union and the Democrat Party have a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours type of relationship. They donate to the Party (more than any other group), and the party passes laws to benefit them, and many of those laws are meant to restrict school choice, especially for homeschoolers. We have just to look at a recent law in Conneticut to see this.

Funny how the supposedly anti-fascist group wants to continue and strengthen something that while starting out with good intentions, has historically been used quite effectively to indoctrinate entire generations into supporting things that have been detrimental to society.

This leads to the fourth argument that public schools give an even playing field for everyone, and therefore, should remain the standard. If by even playing field, supporters of public education mean that it makes everyone equally dumb and controllable, then their defense is true.

It has been shown over the past several years that kids who go to public school are becoming dumber. One in four young adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate yet are still graduating with a high school diploma. Half of the U.S. population cannot read at an 8th-grade level. About 45% of U.S. high school seniors lack basic math skills. Only 37% of high school students were proficient in science. Only 13% of 8th-graders were proficient in history and 22% were proficient in civics. Yet they’re being passed through the public school system, and graduating, something that teachers are increasingly raising the alarm about.

Meanwhile, private school students and homeschool students have consistently scored better on all points, with homeschoolers scoring above average on academic achievement tests regardless of their parent’s level of education or household income. To illustrate this difference, a friend of the family who is an English professor once said that he could tell immediately who went to public school and who was homeschooled or sent to private school because the public-school kids had no idea what parts of speech were. Meanwhile the homeschooled and private schooled kids understood the assignment and could name various parts of speech.

If you’re worried about society getting dumber, then you should be on the side of school choice and making private and homeschool options more acessible to parents. Not only would everyone have a better education, but it would make the playing field truly equal because there would be more competition. As it is, the private schooled and homeschooled have an advantage in many ways over the public schooled since we actually know how to read, write, do math, understand science, communicate, etc.

But, if you want an “equal playing field” for people at the expense of making society stupid and creating a group of people that can’t critically think and has no diversity of thought, then sure, go for public schools.

Until next time,

M.J.

Blog: I Said There are no Secular Schools and that Public Schools Should be Banned…and the Atheist Leftists are Angry.

A little bit ago, I posted an article on here about how there are no secular schools. In that article, I pointed out that no school is truly free of religion or worldviews, and, in the case of public schools, they mainly subscribe to atheism or other forms of secular humanism. As such, in many ways they operate as something with which to mass convert the youth to atheism/secular humanism, and if we actually want this problem solved, then we should abolish the public school system, make private schools and homeschool more accessible, and allow more school choice.

Naturally, however, there are people who vehemently disagree with this position: atheist leftists (who also claim to be anti-fascist, but that’ll come up later.)

But what arguments do the Leftists have to defend the public school system? What airtight defenses do they have for it?

The first defense is, of course, that secularism isn’t a religion, nor is it connected to religion or spirituality. While that might be true in part, it is a worldview that makes many claims that are treated as fact that are in conflict with other worldviews and religions. For instance, secularists often take an atheistic stance on how the world works. However, the issue with this is that the claims made and treated as fact are really theories.

The most obvious example of this is evolutionary theory, which has been challenged in schools for decades. Evolutionary theory is just that – a theory – yet it is treated as fact in every level of academia, with hardly any room for disagreement. When Christians try to teach their theory about how the world was created and support it with evidence, they’re often shot down, threatened with their jobs, and accused of trying to force religion on students. We Christians are accused of indoctrinating students (and, thus, abusing them, according to some people) even though we’re doing just what the secularists are doing – presenting a theory and supporting it with evidence. We believe that creation is a fact just as secularists believe evolution is a fact. So why aren’t we allowed to teach it as a theory in academics? Why can’t we present both sides and let the students make up their own minds? Why is it abuse when we Christians present what we believe as fact as a theory in an academic context, but it’s not abuse when secularists do it and take it so far as to say that it is fact?

The second defense is that religion is essentially just a fairytale, and is not based in fact, so anyone who teaches from a religious point of view should be fired. The first issue with this argument is what do we define as a fairytale? I can just as easily say teaching from a secular worldview is teaching kids a fairytale about how we just randomly came from nothing, and thus, secular teachers should be fired. I could say that teaching that you can be the opposite gender is a fairytale, and anyone who teaches that should be fired. What definition are we working with here?

The second issue with this defense is, of course, the history of how the public school system even started. While we all know about John Dewey and Horace Mann as being some of the most influential figures in the making of our modern public education system, Protestant Christians did a great deal to build it as well. As the Christian Heritage Fellowship writes:

The foundation for public education, however, was first laid in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the years 1642, 1647, and 1648. The three legislative acts of these three years are known as the Massachusetts School Laws and was the first step toward compulsory government-directed public education in the United States. Not long after these three laws were enacted, similar laws were drafted in the other New England colonies. Following the lead of the New England colonies, most mid-Atlantic colonies enacted similar legislation, though in some Southern colonies nearly a century passed before publicly funded schools were established there. The first law regarding education in the New World was passed by evangelical Christians only twenty-two years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

Why did the Protestant settlers do this? It was because they wanted kids to be well versed, not just in studies like reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. but also in the Bible. They recognized that the ignorance of what the Bible teaches that could be found in the Old World (which was still predominately Catholic at the time) lead in part to various atrocities. They believed that teaching kids the Bible would prevent that. In doing so, Christians literally laid the groundwork for the school system we have today. Had those people who taught “fairytales” as fact never been allowed to teach, perhaps we would not have the system we have today, severely flawed though it is.

Speaking of how flawed the system has become, we get to our third defense: the idea that public schools are good because it shows the world as it is and prevents kids from being brainwashed by their parents, who might not know everything. However, while that sounds good, we should all be wondering what bias our children are taught to view the world through.

It is a well-established fact that everyone has a bias. Our parents have a bias. We have a bias. Our teachers have a bias. Sure, some biases might be rooted more in fact than others, but when one group controls the education and is in charge of teaching your kids their bias, then what happens? Well, more often than not, when your kids spend 8-10 hours a day in school, another several hours on homework, a couple hours on the phone, and maybe thirty minutes chatting with their parents per day, they’re going to adopt the school’s bias.

We have only to take a quick look at the origins of the public school system to see this. Going back to the Protestant origins of our education system, while well-intentioned, the Protestant teachers taught from a Calvinist-leaning viewpoint. While some of this could be chalked up to being what they had, a lot of this was done for a different reason. They sought to lead their Catholic students to Protestantism in the hopes that it would prevent the atrocities committed in the Old World from happening in America. In other words, their schools weren’t just there for learning, but for converting Catholic kids into Protestantism and even back then, it worked.

However, this system worked so well that it had dire consequences. Fast forward to the 20th century. Totalitarianism is on the rise, with communism taking over Russia and fascism becoming popular in Spain, Italy, and Germany. In every case, one of the first things to be taken over were the education systems. In Nazi Germany, for example, homeschooling was outlawed and parents were forced to send their kids to state-run or approved schools. There, their children were indoctrinated into Nazism, and, starting in 1939, all eligible children were required to join the Hitler Youth. Any parents who objected were heavily fined or thrown into prison.

Today, while parents still have school choice, we see disturbing parallels between the two examples I presented and our current system. The main worldview that our public schools teach from is secular, but it’s further mixed with Leftism. Schools have a particular interest to do this as the Teacher’s Union and the Democrat Party have a you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours type of relationship. They donate to the Party (more than any other group), and the party passes laws to benefit them, and many of those laws are meant to restrict school choice, especially for homeschoolers. We have just to look at a recent law in Conneticut to see this.

Funny how the supposedly anti-fascist group wants to continue and strengthen something that while starting out with good intentions, has historically been used quite effectively to indoctrinate entire generations into supporting things that have been detrimental to society.

This leads to the fourth argument that public schools give an even playing field for everyone, and therefore, should remain the standard. If by even playing field, supporters of public education mean that it makes everyone equally dumb and controllable, then their defense is true.

It has been shown over the past several years that kids who go to public school are becoming dumber. One in four young adults in the U.S. are functionally illiterate yet are still graduating with a high school diploma. Half of the U.S. population cannot read at an 8th-grade level. About 45% of U.S. high school seniors lack basic math skills. Only 37% of high school students were proficient in science. Only 13% of 8th-graders were proficient in history and 22% were proficient in civics. Yet they’re being passed through the public school system, and graduating, something that teachers are increasingly raising the alarm about.

Meanwhile, private school students and homeschool students have consistently scored better on all points, with homeschoolers scoring above average on academic achievement tests regardless of their parent’s level of education or household income. To illustrate this difference, a friend of the family who is an English professor once said that he could tell immediately who went to public school and who was homeschooled or sent to private school because the public-school kids had no idea what parts of speech were. Meanwhile the homeschooled and private schooled kids understood the assignment and could name various parts of speech.

If you’re worried about society getting dumber, then you should be on the side of school choice and making private and homeschool options more acessible to parents. Not only would everyone have a better education, but it would make the playing field truly equal because there would be more competition. As it is, the private schooled and homeschooled have an advantage in many ways over the public schooled since we actually know how to read, write, do math, understand science, communicate, etc.

But, if you want an “equal playing field” for people at the expense of making society stupid and creating a group of people that can’t critically think and has no diversity of thought, then sure, go for public schools.

Until next time,

M.J.

Texas Farm Bureau names 2024-25 homeschool garden grant recipients https://www.allforgardening.com/1936559/texas-farm-bureau-names-2024-25-homeschool-garden-grant-recipients/ #AgriculturalLiteracy #GardeningTexas #grant #homeschool #HomeschoolGardenGrant #texas

⭐️ Shape Matching ⭐️

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/09/02/%e2%ad%90%ef%b8%8f-shape-matching-%e2%ad%90%ef%b8%8f/

Behind the Scenes: Part 2

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/09/01/behind-the-scenes-part-2/

Review: How To Be a Lion by Ed Vere

https://accidentaleducationblog.wordpress.com/2026/08/29/review-how-to-be-a-lion-by-ed-vere/

Behind The Scenes: Part 1

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/08/28/behind-the-scenes-part-1/

Seek Peak of Book Number 2

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/08/25/seek-peak-of-book-number-2/

What are your favorite resources for learning the basics of TCP/IP #networking? Target audience is a 15yo who wants to run game #servers for his friends. Should I just inflict network+ on him? Is there a good video series? Favorite book? Web-based tutorial series?

#homeschool

Here is a YouTube channel we think is an excellent resource for parents and teachers. It covers conscious and conscientious strategies for teaching and working with kids in any environment.
#OpenSourceEducation #Homeschool
https://www.youtube.com/user/lovingguidance/

🍎 The Wonder Workshop 🍎

https://heathercongrove.com/2026/07/31/%f0%9f%8d%8e-the-wonder-workshop-%f0%9f%8d%8e/

Drawing with the kids 👩🏽‍🎨

Today, I enjoyed a calming activity with the kids—sketching and coloring flowers. 🌸 The flower activity was part of a science lesson for the kids to draw, color, and label a flower with pollen.

I turned on a jazz playlist to help us focus on our artwork, and as we were creating our sketches, it started to rain.

Perfect timing! 🌧☺️

We discussed shapes we could see in the image of the flower.

One shape that stood out to Zaya (5) and Zephaniah (8) was the middle of the flower reminded them of a hexagon.

So, together we sketched a hexagon shape onto our sketch pads.

Surprisingly, drawing a hexagon is not as easy as I thought it would be! It took me several tries to finally get the six sides connected to form the shape. 😆

Next, we discussed the vibrant yellow color of the pollen and its purpose. We also made connections to the flowers and vegetables growing in our garden.

There was something unexpectedly joyful sitting at the kitchen table with Zaya and Zephaniah, drawing and coloring together.

Keep in mind I am not an artist 😅.

However, the children told me they thought my purple flower looked amazing, and really, that’s all the recognition I needed. 🥰

💜 XO

Somewhat clear skies

It feels good to be back outside now that the air quality is improving.

An unexpected visitor 🐣

A summer storm left our patio garden with one unexpected little visitor. 🐥

A front porch garden harvest 🫑

Enjoying a small garden harvest right from our front porch! 🫑🥬

Ummi Let’s Play

COMING SOON

(For other amazon worldwide, search product code: )

Author: Umm Assad
Publisher: Umm Assad Publications
Year of Publication: 2026
Binding: Paperback
Page Count: 34
Trim Size (inches): 8.5×8.5
ISBN-10: 978-1-915233-29-5

Click images below to view:

Description:

Nafisa has so much love to give — and she wants to spend every moment with her Ummi, even when Ummi is busy… cooking, cleaning, and working.

But as Nafisa grows, she learns that finding joy sometimes means playing alone — even when Ummi can’t join in.
A gentle, loving story about patience, independence, and the special bond between a mother and her child.


Recommended for ages 3-8 years.

Claudius is sus

Zhen (13) and I have been reading a kid-friendly retelling of Hamlet. I found this great find at our local public library!

I thought reading Hamlet For Kids (by Lois Burdett) together would be a fun way to introduce Zhen to Shakespeare without overwhelming her with heavy Elizabethan English.

Today, we read the part of the drama when Hamlet sees his father’s ghost and the ghost tells him Claudius killed Hamlet’s father.

“What does prophetic soul mean?” Zhen asked after reading the passage.

I broke it down for her by asking her to think of what a prophet means and what they do.

I explained, “So, this is basically Hamlet’s poetic way of saying, ‘I knew it! I knew it was my Uncle Claudius!’ Hamlet was suspicious of his uncle, and now the ghost has confirmed those suspicions.”

“Ohhhh, so Claudius is sus!” Zhen exclaimed. 🤣

We both started laughing, and I said, “Well…yeah! I guess King Claudius is sus!”

Such a Gen Alpha way to explain Shakespeare! Haha 😄😎 But it made me happy Zhen made the connection!

💜 XO

Our Happy Place This Spring

These days, you’ll find us at the greenhouse. ☺️🌿

Sunflower Rescue

I said I wasn’t going to grow sunflowers this year, but the sunflowers had a different plan. 🌻😂

Patterns in the Garden

A math discovery at a local greenhouse…

Patterns in the Garden

A trip to the local greenhouse turned into a math discovery as my five year old excitedly ran over to the flower baskets and exclaimed, “Look, Mommy! Patterns!”

Zaya (5) has been learning about patterns in math, so she was amazed to find beautiful patterns on all of the flower petals.

For our homeschool math, we use Math with Confidence and living math books we check out from the public library.

Zaya’s discovery got the attention of her big brother, and soon they were both checking each flower basket to see how many more patterns they could find.

It brought me so much joy to see the kids make a connection between math and nature. 😊🌻

💜 XO

Anyone on Fedi have experience of either being homeschooled or homeschooling their own kids?

I'm considering going down that route for my kids.

Edit: I'm in the UK.

#parenting #homeschool

Blog: I Graduated!

Welp, I made it. After being homeschooled K-12, I have finally graduated high school.

My parents originally decided to homeschool me while my mom was still pregnant. Both of my parents felt that public school had failed them in some way, an assessment that was a lot coming from my dad. Growing up, he was sent to some of the best schools in the state, which means that by all accounts, he should have received an excellent education. Instead, he got a lot of the typical Leftist gobbledygook that’s been taught in public schools for decades and as a teenager, he began waking up to how stupid it all was. He ended up learning more in his free time than at school.

Thus, Mom agreed to stay at home to teach me and, later, my brother, and it proved to be challenging. In the early years, I obviously needed more help. That meant more time spent making sure I understood the lessons and was doing my assignments, especially reading, writing, and math. Mom was particularly hard on me making sure I understood those subjects and I remember having meltdowns because I wasn’t getting it.

As you can tell, I survived and am reaping the rewards from those long afternoons on the couch being grilled about my writing.

However, towards late-elementary school, my mom let me be more independent, figuring out my own day-to-day schedule and getting my assignments done. This gave me a good work ethic since I had to learn how to organize my day to get what I needed to do done, while leaving time open for other things, like outings.

Additionally, homeschooling provided an environment to foster critical thinking. The curriculum my family used, while being Christian, gave both sides of the argument and came with a myriad of notes and discussion questions about various topics. For example, discussion questions were provided for every book I had and didn’t just stop at reporting the facts of what I had read to make sure I had actually read the book. Many of them also asked about themes in the book, what literary devices were present, etc. The British Literature course I took in my junior year of high school was especially in depth in its discussion questions and notes.

Homeschooling also allowed me to develop at my own pace. While I’m not going to say that all public-school kids are like this, I think for a lot of kids, the pressure to fit in forces them to develop mentally at a rate that’s closer to their peers than what would be normal for them if they didn’t have that pressure. Without that, however, and from mainly being around adults my whole life, I was able to grow up in a way that’s normal for me. I wasn’t held back by a desire to fit in or to be a part of the latest trend. I was able to just be myself.

Further, being homeschooled has given me the freedom to do the things that I love. I got to write five books, which I’m trying to rewrite to fit more with my beliefs. I started this blog. I started a YouTube channel. I don’t think any of that would be possible if I were in public school, operating on their schedule.

Now that I’ve graduated, I can use the skills that I gained from homeschooling in the real world. As for the blog and YouTube channel, I intend to keep writing and posting as I move through life, though it might get to a point where it’s less frequent.

Until next time,

M.J.

Wonderful feedback from the school we were at yesterday with excerpts and workshopping from Macbeth

#macbeth #theatre #theatrelife #drama #acting #actinglife #educational #everyone #education #educationmatters #homeschool #brixhamtheatre #brixhamdevon #brixham #schools #torbay #shakespeare #englishteacher #englishliterature #GCSE #exeter #kingskerswell #ashburton #stokenham #Kingsbridge #kingsbridgedevon #torquay #devon #devontheatre #devonactors