John Oliver Is Worried about Nazi Homeschoolers

But is he more likely to find undesirables somewhere else?

“We are so deeply invested into making sure that that child becomes a wonderful Nazi, and by homeschooling we’re going to get that done.”

John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight audience gasped in horror.

In a recent us-vs-them installment, homeschool families played the role of “them.” And, wouldn’t you know it, some producer found a podcast clip from one of America’s worst homeschool moms, one who is apparently a bona fide Nazi. 

The pundit-comedian goes on to inform his audience that the woman and her husband launched their own online community after she had “a rough time finding Nazi-approved school material for [her] homeschool children.”

“And you know what? Good!” Oliver thunders.

“That probably shouldn't be an easy google!”

Guess what! The crowd agrees! 

But as the host and audience rejoice in their anti-Nazi goodness, they reveal some troubling naiveté.  

Bad Apples

I’m a homeschool parent, and I fully acknowledge that our movement includes some very bad apples. But they don’t represent the larger group, and cherry-picking worst-case scenarios doesn’t help us make sensible judgements. 

Every group has its bad apples. And If Oliver wants us to judge groups by their bad apples, then we could support no groups at all. On the other hand, let’s take note when groups are systemically prone to supporting bad apples.

And since we live in a broken world where zero bigotry is an unrealistic goal, we need frames of reference to help us prioritize threats. Oliver suggests homeschool Nazis are a threat, but compared to what? 

Oliver seems to uphold the public school system as preferable to homeschooling. In perhaps the most clapter-inducing moment of the episode, he stops imitating Jon Stewart long enough to do his best Randi Weingarten: “Teachers are superheroes who should make a million dollars!”

Yes, some teachers are superheroes, but others are not. And superhero teachers often find themselves demoralized by a system that too often rewards villains. 

Oliver’s show aired the day after the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Since that dark day, visible displays of antisemitism have erupted across our nation. Among them are instances that originated at public schools:

• A New York City high school teacher uploaded a Facebook cover photo that depicts the infamous Hamas paraglider, and reportedly described the attacks as "a successful military campaign." 

• The paraglider resurfaced in a “day of resistance” flier that promoted a protest at Cal State Long Beach.

• Hundreds of Bay Area high school students walked out of class to protest Israeli strikes in Gaza. Some chanted the ominous line: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” 

School officials said the protests were not sanctioned by the district, but is it a stretch to assume that teachers and administrators helped shape the students’ worldview?

Antisemitism may run deeper than administrators would care to admit. 

A founding member of Democratic Socialists of America recently left the organization due to the group’s response to the Hamas attacks. Writing in The Nation, Maurice Isserman notes that the national DSA blamed Israel for the slaughter, and urged members to attend an “All Out for Palestine” rally in midtown Manhattan:

At that event, on October 8, not 24 hours after the attack, one speaker would giddily note the slaughter by Hamas of hundreds of young Israelis attending a concert in approving terms: “[T]he resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters.” That got a big laugh.

Isserman says the responses from state and local chapters were even worse. He chronicles enough “river to the sea” and “settlers aren’t citizens” references to make you wonder if these DSA members would condemn any act of savagery against Israeli citizens. 

The DSA is eager to recruit socialists into the public school system, and the group has enjoyed considerable success at the ballot box. DSA members have been elected to school boards in places like Denver, Oakland, and LA.

Since Oliver worries about kids being indoctrinated by hateful ideologies, he might want to spend more time investigating the institution that schools more than 90 percent of our nation’s youth. 

Threats of Ignorance and Abuse

Oliver isn’t completely sour on homeschooling. Yes his parade of “thems” includes plenty of archetypes (such as “Redneck Dad”) selected to make his HBO audience hoot and laugh. But Oliver also highlights a black teenager who benefitted from switching from public school to homeschool. 

The host sums up his thoughts like this:

[T]he ceiling of how good homeschooling can be is admittedly very high, but the floor of how bad it can get is basically non-existent. Because to the extent that you may not realize in many parts of the country, homeschooling is essentially unregulated, which can result in enormous damage.

Again, I ask, “Compared to what?”

And let’s move from Nazism to another threat Oliver highlights—ignorance.

“The truth is,” says Oliver,  “in many states, the rules of oversight can be so lax, parents don't ultimately have to teach their kids anything at all!”

That sounds an awful lot like the public school system in Oregon.

Officials have decided that, at least for the next five years, students don’t have to prove they can read, write, and compute in order to receive a diploma. Oregon may sound extreme, but the state is merely formalizing the de facto practice of many districts that employ euphemisms like “social promotion” to excuse persistent failure. Nationwide only 31 percent of 8th graders are proficient in reading, and the figures are even worse for math. (And don’t be quick to blame lack of funding.)

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Oliver also highlights the threat of sexual abuse. He points to some homeschooling horror stories, but neglects the larger question: Are homeschooled kids more likely to be abused compared to public school kids? 

Relatively few studies have addressed this question, and Oliver briefly cites a Connecticut study that does not look good for homeschooling. But that’s a non-representative study that says nothing about whether homeschooling poses a unique risk. 

It’s hard to examine this literature review and end up on Oliver’s side.

His program failed to reference other studies that show that homeschooling poses no greater risk than other forms of schooling. Nor did it reference the studies that found that homeschoolers seem to be at lower risk. For instance, a 2022 survey notes that “those who attended public school were 2.57 times more likely (with statistical significance) to have been sexually abused than the homeschooled.” 

Oliver pushes for more regulation of homeschooling, but an analysis of 18 years of data from all U.S. states “found no relationship between the degree of state control or regulation of homeschooling and the frequency of homeschool abuse.” Likewise, researchers found no relationship between regulation and academic achievement. 

Lawmakers may not demand much from homeschools, but that hasn’t stopped homeschool parents from outperforming public schools anyway. It’s almost like their incentive to succeed comes from some mysterious source that exists apart from government!

None of this should be taken as the last word. I might have overlooked something, and (surprise!) I’m biased in favor of homeschooling. Plus I’m not terribly concerned about homeschooling “beating” public schools. My main interest is making sure that homeschooling, and other education innovations, are available for families who want to give them a go. 

With so many possible methodological shortcomings, we shouldn’t treat studies with too much reverence. But Oliver tosses around so many scary anecdotes that viewers may overlook the fact that he never even attempts to make the case that homeschoolers fare worse, on average, than public school students.

Incentives Matter

Bad things can happen in any system, but which system is more likely to incentivize good things? 

My hunch is that it’s not the system that’s “to big to fail,” the one that receives guaranteed taxpayer funding even if it fails (indeed failure often generates more funding).

It’s probably not the system that lobbies politicians to squash its competitors, and provides jobs and pensions for life to its members. It’s probably not the system that protects bad actors so systematically that the practice of moving, rather than firing, teachers has a name: “passing the trash.”

If an anti-Oliver hosted a show, he might have highlighted the case of LA public school teacher Mark Berndt, who, for decades, got away with doing repulsive things to children.

Retired teacher  Larry Sand explains: 

After Berndt was busted in 2012, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s immediate remedy was to bar lessons involving the paraphernalia he employed. But Berndt had a track record of perversity going back to 1983, when he dropped his pants on a class trip to a museum, blaming it on “baggy shorts.” In 1992, several students claimed that he was masturbating in class, and another student claimed that he touched her inappropriately in the classroom. Then in 2010, investigators from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department came into possession of some of Berndt’s photos, which showed children gagged and bound, in horrifying situations.

We should look to improve conditions for homeschoolers, even if they are at lower risk than public school students. In some cases, that might include regulation. But we shouldn't necessarily be comforted by the prospect of greater regulation. 

Regulations touted as “common sense” may indeed be sensible, but they’re not inert. Regulations are seeds that often grow into giant thickets that serve few others beyond the interest groups that benefit from them. To his credit, Oliver notes that there was a time in America when homeschooling was “effectively banned” in certain areas. Few yearn to return to such a time. 

More regulation doesn’t necessarily benefit children, and it often does the opposite. It took decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to free students from the threat posed by Berndt. Sand notes that “when his crimes were exposed, Berndt gamed the system by accepting a $40,000 bribe and retired—but only after racking up another year of credit toward his pension.”

When abusive homeschool parents face the legal system, justice will probably be meted out faster than it was for Berndt. And as revolting as Nazi Homeschool Mom may be, at least taxpayers aren’t forced to support her twisted practices or contribute to her pension. 

Thank goodness that kind of trash won’t be passed from school to school.

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and a soon-to-be-released feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.