Basic Education Series

Company Overview

Folks, every once in a while we research a brand and find ourselves nodding along before we even finish the homepage. Basic Education Series is one of those. This is a small, family-run educational publisher founded by Edward (Ed) Thompson and Patti Thompson, a husband-and-wife team with a combined half-century of hands-on tutoring and teaching experience. Ed spent twenty-five years tutoring students from age three to seventy-three across nearly every subject under the sun, and also wrote fiction under the pen names Jack Thompson and Fun London. Patti holds a Bachelor's in Mathematics and a Master's in Education and built a private math tutoring business serving students of all ages and abilities for more than two decades.

Together they produce learning materials and books aimed squarely at parents, homeschoolers, and families who want their kids to actually learn how to think. Titles like Knowing Numbers (a back-to-basics introduction to arithmetic) and Making Sense (an early-childhood book about orientation, confidence, and control of one's environment) anchor the catalog, alongside a free newsletter and the Basic Ed podcast. Their stated mission is nothing short of a "Renaissance in Education" — replacing what they openly call an "indoctrination system" with materials that are, in their own words, "free of indoctrination."

This is not a publicly traded behemoth with a marketing department and a chief diversity officer. It is a mom-and-pop educational publisher operating out of conviction, not a boardroom. And friends, that is exactly the kind of outfit that tends to keep its eyes on the mission instead of the latest activist fad.

ESG & Sustainability

We went looking for the usual alphabet soup — Environmental, Social, and Governance pledges, carbon-neutral commitments, sustainability reports, supplier diversity scorecards, the whole song and dance. We found exactly none of it. Zero. Zilch. And honestly, that is precisely what you would expect and want from a two-person family publisher. There is no ESG framework here because there is no corporate bureaucracy here — just two educators making books.

This company does not exist to lecture you about its carbon footprint or to wave green credentials at investors it does not have. It exists to teach children to read, count, and reason. The complete absence of ESG theater is a feature, not a bug. Your dollar goes toward education materials, plain and simple, not toward funding some consultant-driven sustainability initiative.

DEI Programs

Here is where Basic Education Series goes beyond merely being neutral. Most companies we rate as woke-free simply have no DEI department to speak of. Basic Education Series actively names and opposes the ideological programs that have crept into American classrooms. Right there on their homepage they ask out loud what critical race theory and gender theory are "and how can they be stopped."

There is no diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy here, no mandatory training modules, no identity-based hiring quotas. What there is, instead, is a stated commitment to creating educational materials that are free of indoctrination and that invite students "to think for themselves, to discuss and delve into knowledge." For parents who are sick and tired of activist curriculum being slipped into their children's lessons, this is about as refreshing as a glass of cold sweet tea on a hot day.

LGBTQ+ Advocacy

We searched high and low for any Pride Month campaigns, rainbow logo makeovers, drag-themed reading events, or LGBTQ+ activist partnerships. We found none. Basic Education Series carries no Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index score — and for good reason. The HRC CEI is a tool for large corporations that want a gold star from activist groups, and this little family publisher is neither large enough nor interested enough to play that game.

In fact, the company explicitly flags "gender theory" as one of the very things it wants kept out of children's education. So not only is there no Pride pandering here, there is an open and stated resistance to importing that ideology into the classroom. Parents who want their kids learning their numbers and letters without a side helping of activist messaging will find a kindred spirit in this brand.

Political Activity

As a tiny, privately held, family-owned publisher, Basic Education Series has no political action committee, no corporate lobbying arm, and no record of dumping money into left-leaning causes. We found no PAC contributions, no corporate political donations, and no executives using a company platform to push partisan activism on the public.

That said, the Thompsons do not hide their convictions, and those convictions lean toward parental rights, educational freedom, and skepticism of what Ed calls "the attack on families and freedom" and "censorship in academia." This is a brand with a clear point of view — and that point of view is firmly on the side of families, freedom, and traditional learning, not on the side of the activist left. There is nothing here that should give a values-minded shopper a moment's pause.

Consumer Impact

We are thrilled to report that Basic Education Series came back about as clean as a brand can get, earning a rock-bottom woke score of 3 out of 100. There is no ESG grandstanding, no DEI machinery, no Pride pandering, no HRC scorecard, and no political money flowing to causes that work against your family's values. What you get instead is a husband-and-wife team pouring decades of real classroom experience into materials designed to teach your children how to think — not what to think.

For homeschooling parents, for families fed up with indoctrination dressed up as curriculum, and for anyone who simply wants their education dollars spent on actual education, this is an easy one to recommend. Basic Education Series is not just woke-free by accident — it is woke-free on purpose, openly standing against the ideological nonsense that too many bigger players have embraced. Buy with confidence, folks. This is the real deal: an American family business that respects parents, trusts students, and keeps the activism out of the lesson plan.