Homeschooling isn’t a tiny subculture anymore—it’s exploding. And with scale comes capture. That was the blunt warning from Robert Bortins, CEO of Classical Conversations, in a conversation with Allie Beth Stuckey on BlazeTV’s Relatable. As more secular families enter homeschooling (a trend Bortins welcomes in principle), the infrastructure around them—publishers, vendors, and events—is shifting too. The result, he says: long-trusted brands getting “secularized,” price hikes that push families back toward public options, and activist content repackaged as enrichment.

Bortins’ core point is simple: when the pioneers who built explicitly Christian curricula retire, many sell to large companies that don’t share their worldview. He pointed to the once-beloved Saxon Math as a cautionary tale. Its original author was an outspoken Christian; years later, after acquisition by corporate publishing, the line’s newer iterations were realigned to match government standards (think Common Core) and the “homeschool” stamp became more branding than substance. Families who buy today on name alone can end up with very different content—and steeper prices—than what older homeschoolers used a decade ago.

“This is what happens when Big Ed buys your bookshelf,” Bortins suggested: the edges are sanded off, the messaging is rewired to match state orthodoxy, and the cost structure creeps up. The mission changes—quietly.

The creep isn’t confined to textbooks. Bortins relayed how friends signed up for a homeschool field trip expecting a young-earth creation tour—only to discover a program run by secular evolutionists. The lesson for parents: don’t assume “homeschool” equals “aligned.” Vet everything, including offsite experiences.

Meanwhile, culture-war content is overtly entering the marketplace. As Stuckey noted, National Review recently flagged a Virginia homeschooling “unConvention” advertising sessions like “all history is queer history,” alongside workshops on “decoloniality” and “resolving unexamined experiences with bias and oppression.” Whatever one thinks about those topics, this is plainly not the classical, parent-led alternative most families seek when they exit public schools. It’s public-school ideology imported through a different door.

None of this means non-Christian or nontraditional homeschoolers are unwelcome—Bortins explicitly celebrated that more parents are reclaiming responsibility for their kids’ education. The concern is capture: as the audience broadens, big institutions—and activist entrepreneurs—rush in to define the terms. If parents don’t pay attention, they’ll wake up to find the very narratives they fled now embedded in the materials, museums, and co-ops they trusted.

So what should families do?

• Interrogate the imprint, not just the brand. Publishers keep legacy names on new lines. Look for who owns the curriculum now and when it was last overhauled.
• Demand samples and scope-and-sequence. Read unit introductions and teacher notes (where worldview shows up). Watch for euphemisms—“identity,” “decolonize,” “systems”—as signals of frame, not just facts.
• Ask vendors to define terms. If a conference pitches “inclusive history,” press for specifics. Does that mean additional primary sources—or ideology as lens?
• Audit events and field trips. Confirm who’s leading, what standards guide the program, and whether parent participation is welcome. If you can’t observe, don’t buy.
• Build aligned communities. Co-ops and microschools with clear statements of belief and curriculum lists create accountability—and share the vetting load.
• Stock the “old but gold.” When you find pre-acquisition editions that match your values, archive them. Great books don’t go stale.

The homeschool movement grew because parents wanted agency, mastery, virtue, and truth—not trend-chasing activism. Growth doesn’t have to mean drift—but vigilance is the price of keeping homeschooling what it’s meant to be: education ordered to the good, the true, and the beautiful, under parents’ authority.

The fight for your child’s mind didn’t end when you left the school district. It moved into your living room. Stay wide-awake, test everything, and don’t outsource your worldview to a glossy catalog.