“At a time when home education was still a fringe phenomenon, the Bealls had grown up in the most powerful and ideologically committed faction of the modern home-schooling movement. That movement, led by deeply conservative Christians, saw home schooling as a way of life — a conscious rejection of contemporary ideas about biology, history, gender equality and the role of religion in American government.” Peter Jamison with a very interesting (and pretty disturbing) story in WaPo (Gift Article): The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers. It’s odd that we refer to these folks as deeply conservative, as if they fall neatly into some semi-reasonable portion of the political spectrum. This is something, but it sure isn’t conservative. It’s more like extremism, and it’s also growing. “Across the country, interest in home schooling has never been greater. The Bealls could see the surge in Virginia, where nearly 57,000 children were being home-schooled in the fall of 2022 — a 28 percent jump from three years earlier. The rise of home education, initially unleashed by parents’ frustrations with pandemic-related campus closures and remote learning, has endured as one of the lasting social transformations wrought by covid-19.
But if the coronavirus was a catalyst for the explosion in home schooling, the stage was set through decades of painstaking work by true believers like those who had raised Aaron and Christina.” From SCOTUS to school boards, religion is at the forefront of this American political moment (and maybe all the other political moments, too.)