“Government control” is the central theme of this book, authored by two men who are experienced in Christian education, homeschooling, and the history of Marxist influence in the government schools, from John Dewey to the proliferation of woke ideology. Robert Bortins is the CEO of Classical Conversations, and Alex Newman is senior editor of the New American and president of Liberty Sentinel Media.

Parents who homeschool or send their children to parochial schools may not be aware of the dangers of government strings that become entrenched due to the threat of losing key funding streams. The author of the book’s foreword, Dr. Benjamin Merkle, President of Saint Andrews College, explains why his school rejects any government funding.

Merkle explains that when a school takes government money the government becomes the most important customer, not the parents or students, and that satisfying the government agenda becomes the priority. The justification for accepting government funds is often to make higher education more affordable, but the opposite occurs. With big government funding, the incentive to operate efficiently is reduced, and a school often raises tuition.

Bortins and Newman trace the history of how U.S. schools came to be under government control. As most readers are aware, education was originally funded and directed by the family and the church, with a Christian worldview. Over time, this system was replaced with a tax-supported system and a humanist worldview.

Utopian socialists like Robert Owens, Horace Mann, Karl Marx, and John Dewey all influenced the process, and then there was the Frankfurt School, founded by anti-Christian Marxists who fled Germany in 1933 to take prominent positions in American universities. The collectivist beliefs of these men, and others who followed, gradually infiltrated and transformed schools into centers of progressive thought.

In step with government control were the big foundations, run by prominent names such as Rockefeller and Ford, and later, Bill Gates, which influenced public schools in a similarly negative way. Despite all the money and power behind them, public schools declined in quality and began to compare badly with parochial schools.

Libertarian economist Milton Friedman proposed a solution - “school choice” — wherein the government would provide a voucher to families to defray the cost of private schools. Predictably, public schools and teachers’ unions fought tooth and nail against vouchers, but the solution did — and does — have broad appeal. Many states have launched various types of school choice programs, including vouchers.

But Bortins and Newman throw the yellow flag here, warning that he who pays the piper calls the tune. Their book provides readers with a robust discussion of the pros and cons of school choice and, in the end, they recommend firmly rejecting any government money for Christian schools.

The authors also tackle homeschooling. They write that “the long Marxist march through the institutions ... hit a snag during the early 1980s when the modern homeschooling movement was born....” The number of homeschooled children has risen from near zero in 1980 to more than 3.5 million today, and it continues to grow.

Woke and Weaponized warns, however, that after first trying to intimidate homeschoolers, the government today “is attempting to bribe the next generation of homeschooling parents to give up their liberty in the former of taxpayer handouts.”

There is much to learn in this book, including that new efforts are afoot by government and the big foundations to influence, i.e. control, homeschooling and Christian schools. But Bortins and Newman are having none of it.

Woke and Weaponized is packed with practical and useful strategies parents and pro-parent activists can use to maintain educational freedom, excellence, and Christian integrity in the upbringing of their children.

To read the entire book, go to Amazon.com to order!

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