Things, especially education, that affect and influence us in our childhood shape the kind of adult we turn out to be. And so, as in nature, children are a product of their environment as in the expression “as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.”
This can also be applied to babies as they mature in the mother’s womb, they will be impacted by what she consumes (food, drugs, alcohol, mood enhancing additives) or even the absence of appropriate supplements as prescribed by her obstetrician. The latter provides a nutritional environment for the developing fetus much as when we utilize necessary soil fertilizer to assure healthy growth of plants or bulbs.
There’s another expression—garbage in, garbage out—as it might be applied to any attempt to establish a meaningful outcome with unverified information. It also depends on the arena in which you relate to these historic expressions. There is concern as to how schools serve children with special needs. About one in three home-school parents said this concern prompted them to home school, and nearly three in 10 home-school parents say their child has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, about twice the rate of parents who do not homeschool.
It’s not just that there are more home-schoolers particularly in diversified culture participants. Home-schoolers, generally speaking, are more conservative than the general public to somewhat lesser degree historically. Republican voters outnumbered Democratic voters in initiating homeschooling at the onset of the pandemic three to one. Prior to COVID, respective party constituents practiced homeschooling on a relatively equal basis. Nearly half of all parents said they are motivated to home school by overly liberal school policies. This circles back to the fact that parents must be allowed to parent without governmental interference relative to mental/physical health or curriculums that must provide the right nutrients/supplements that will develop independent thinkers rather than the indoctrination of students to be herded like sheep into a culture that lacks substance and alienates those who will be our future leaders.
There is a movement to eradicate the educational functions out of states’ legislative/administrative departmental structure. This would not only re-direct authority and responsibility back to parents, but save substantial expenditures that do not produce a return on investment. If current BOEs do not realize the movement to homeschooling they are cutting their noses off to spite their faces because rather than teachers getting what they are demanding in raises, they will not be needed in public schools due to lack of student attendance, they will lose their entire careers.
In closing, there are current studies that challenge the assumption that schools with low-income students are short-changed in funding but just misspent or otherwise utilization of precious tax dollars on materials that do not support the basics of reading/writing/arithmetic academic courses.