Grover Norquist: Parents are being forced to home-school kids and not reenter the labor market partly because of “CRT”
Norquist: “Some of those numbers are moms or dads deciding you know what, they're going so crazy in some of these schools and what they are teaching, and they won't even let us look at what they're teaching which means they must be really crazy."
Published
Citation From the October 8, 2021, edition of Fox News' America Reports
SANDRA SMITH (CO-ANCHOR): We know many women had to drop out of the workforce during the pandemic to care for children at home, especially considering there were so many school closures. This is The Washington Post reporting on those mothers not getting back into the workforce. I'll ask you what's going on here and why not, after reading you this: “Nearly 1.6 million moms of children under the age of 17 are still missing from the labor force. They dropped out during the pandemic to care for children and have not been able to return to work as the school and day care situation remains chaotic, especially for unvaccinated children under the age of 12.” Grover, why is it so difficult for women to get back into this workforce?
GROVER NORQUIST (FOUNDER, AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM): Well, there are several things that would be doing that. One, if there was a job that they wanted to go to and they wanted to hire somebody for daycare, the fact that the administration is handing out money and increasing all sorts of welfare benefits so that the sort of younger person who might want to have a starter job doing some daycare, they're not able to do that. Their babysitters are tough to find, so mom has to stay home or somebody has to stay home. Two, the school's in and out. If you are going to have your children with you most of the time, you can't hold on to many sorts of jobs if you can't count on when your child will be at school and some people are still doing it virtually.
The other one is, with all the craziness, the CRT and so on that schools are throwing around, we've seen a significant jump in the number of people who've decided to home-school. And some of those numbers are moms or dads deciding you know what, they're going so crazy in some of these schools and what they are teaching, and they won't even let us look at what they're teaching which means they must be really crazy. I learned a little bit last year going to my child's school with him or her by Zoom, I could do this, I saw what the teachers do, I see the books they read. And I could do this myself.
SMITH: So many parents would disagree with you on that one. It's tough, it's a tough job. And we love our teachers. It's been difficult —
NORQUIST: Not everybody. Not everybody, but enough to cause a difference.
SMITH: Yeah, no, I hear you. There are so many different reasons behind all of this.