When we think about Covid and government regulation we probably think of mask mandates, vaccine mandates, helicopter money sent to everybody, bailouts, moratorium on evictions, forced closing of some stores and plenty of other terrible government intervention, but I think there was one good thing that has come from the pandemic.  First of all it isn’t necessarily anything done by politicians during the covid pandemic it is more what was put in place in many different states long prior to the pandemic.  In the last 20 years or so more and more states have been passing other laws that allow people to have much more freedom of choice in their children’s education.  Some states passed vouchers, tax credits and some states just allowed homeschooling and freed up the education system a bit.

Before Covid you still had teachers unions and still do today and then even in AZ just a few years ago we had a whole Red for Ed movement (Red for Commie is what I called it) and if you did not support it you were told you hated education and didn’t care what happened to poor kids and all the other talking points.  Even in a strong school choice state this nonsense was still going on. There were still those that said if your child was homeschooled how would they socialize and not be a weirdo or your kids go to a private Christian school that isn’t regulated by the government how would they ever get a good education.  Our son goes to a private Christian school and this was decided well before covid even though his first year was during the first year of Covid.  Another thing that makes you question people’s sanity is that they say people like myself do not value education, yet we are the ones paying our taxes for public school and then also paying for private school out of our own pockets.  Or for homeschoolers the parents are putting in time finding curriculum and helping their children succeed.  Seems that some people need to think before they speak and that those who put their money and time towards their kids education may value education more than those who haven’t thought a moment about where their Kid would go to school only that they will go to the school that is in their neighborhood because that’s where kids go.

How did Covid change how people looked at the issue of school choice?

This isn’t to say everybody was brought to the light on the issue, there are still those that will vehemently defend the public school system, the unions and much of the nonsense that is being taught. For those that have had their eyes opened here are 3 things I see that really changed and opened many people’s eyes.

The three things I see are that have really opened people’s eyes are these:

1. The parents actually could see what the children were learning and some of it raised red flags.
2. The public schools did distance learning/homeschool worse than many even thought.
3. The we care about your kids schtick was all nonsense as it was all thrown out the window when Covid happened.

We will go through all three of these points.

The parents actually could see what the children were learning and some of it raised red flags.

When Covid struck many parents along with their children were sent home to work from home.  Even if the parents weren’t extremely focused on their child’s education they now had to be home with them possibly in the same room helping with technical things like zoom or just being able to hear the instruction the children were getting from their teachers.  What was once a haven for the teachers where they could say what they wanted with little push back and little oversight by parents now had more oversight just due to this new distance learning.

I heard many a story or headline about parents realizing their children were being taught things like Critical Race Theory or some types of sex and gender discussions that really had no place in school especially for the very young children. This even stemmed some parents running for office to stop this nonsense being taught and many more were going to the school board meetings.  I don’t know anyone personally that took their children out of these schools for these issues, but it sure opened many parents eyes to be able to fight back against this type of propaganda being taught.

The public schools did distance learning/homeschool worse than anybody.

As I had written above for those saying homeschooling was so bad and public school is so great (looking at you teachers unions) they were the first ones to call for shutting schools down and some were calling to never go back until there were no cases of Covid.  You can find article after article talking about how much of a failure this remote learning was.  What did they expect?  They weren’t ready for this, they didn’t know how to teach in this type of scenario and not all parents were involved in it.  Sure you can probably put a little of the blame on parents though media and teachers were the ones talking up how it was going to work so well.

When you have a parent who is homeschooling they must be very involved even if some of the lessons are on the computer and just watching a video.  You don’t see failures like this from most homeschooled kids and I believe it is for this very reason.  Many times in this new distance learning some parents still had to go to a day job so the child was just set at home to do the work by themselves and hope they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.

I believe this has set back many children in their learning and also in their socializing.  Most times those who homeschool also go to homeschool groups so their kids have friends and do other activities to make sure they are socializing.  What was happening with many of the children is that not only were they failing in the education part of school, but they were getting no socialization as they made to stay away from others and not have any friends except for online. Really the public schools failed in all areas that they say homeschoolers fail at.

The we care about your kids schtick was all nonsense as it was all thrown out the window when Covid happened.

This was always the thing we were told, we need more money because we care about your kids sooo much.  What we saw was things that were put into place that truly hindered children and made many teachers look extremely selfish.  Education didn’t seem to be as important as they were previously touting against us school choice people.

I will first show you a scenario where I really saw teachers that cared and wanted their students to get a quality education and put their own health second.  My son’s kindergarten was set to start Mid August 2020.  The school had meetings about what to do about Covid.  No they didn’t decide to close, they didn’t decide to require masks, they made a few changes, but everything they did was positive changes.  They decided to actually start the school in person earlier and started August 2^nd and then just ended the semester after Thanksgiving.  Another thing they did was started school outside and a lot of the classes were outside until it got too cold, then it went back inside.  Never did the children have to wear masks or social distance. How did this work? Well I can tell you the kids did well my son loved it and was not forced to do remote learning.  As far as the Covid portion of it kids and teachers got covid just like everybody else that was also getting it whether masking or distancing.  We didn’t actually get Covid until September of 2021 and took little precaution anyway as what I had said from the beginning is essentially everybody is going to get Covid.

Now what did most other schools do well they went to the disastrous remote learning. Teachers were saying they couldn’t go back to school for very long periods of time and only if there were no cases.  They first were saying it’s for the children so they don’t get Covid and die and when quickly we found that kids have very few symptoms and very unlikely to get extremely sick it went to well we don’t want to get Covid.  The whole original reason was nothing more than a façade and something to keep up the we care about your kids and it is for the kids.

When schools finally came back to the campus there were all kinds of nonsense rules put in force that hindered learning from plexiglass dividers, to masks to vaccine mandates.  We obviously know none of this worked, but was pushed by many school boards.  Then the numbers of Covid would increase and back to remote learning the kids went.  I know one family who said the remote learning and this wave of go back to school then remote learning was too much so they finally just decided to homeschool their kids.

Then one of the last things, kids were treated terribly in many cases by administrators and teachers if they didn’t wear their chin diaper. Just in some of the cases I know the children were put out on the football field in the cold all day if their parents didn’t not come and get them.  In another scenario all the kids who were unvaccinated were rounded up and put in the gym and then questioned about it that should have only been discussed with the parents.  The other family I know that decided to homeschool was for this reason as their son experienced it.

School Choice Trend Coming!

I believe with education and many other things covid was held so poorly that it has finally pushed people out of the Commie public education system and into other avenues of education.  Sometimes it takes such a poor experience to push people over the edge and while it was not good at all and sadly set some kids back in the long run this will be a good thing with less kids brainwashed by government propaganda in the government schools.  I can already see the good things happening as my son’s Christian school has almost doubled during Covid.  Hopefully this is a trend and more states make school choice easier and easier and at some point I hope that the government is all, but done for.

Here are a few great resources to teach your kids about liberty and Freedom.

Tuttle Twins has great books for kids of all ages to learn about Ideas of freedom

Ron Paul Curriculum is a liberty based homeschooling curriculum that may be a good option for your kids homeschooling or maybe even just a supplement especially if you want something for History for kids a little older as Tom Woods is the teacher and he is top notch.

These are Affiliate links.