Carthago. Delenda asked, Hello and welcome to Everything's Political. I'm your host
Taya Shoemaker. You can find us online at Everything's Political dot substack dot com.
The email address for the show is podcast at epconsistency dot net. I'll
say that again, it's new podcast at epconsistency dot net. Shout out to
Magicman Joe Strucker, the Mark Twain of podcast producers, born on this day
as Samuel Clemens was his real name in eighteen thirty five. Of course,
prolific and brilliant writer. The exact origins of his pen name are unknown,
but it's worth noting that mark Twain is a nautical term for water found to
be around twelve feet deep, And of course Clemens operated riverboats when he was
young, and that was also the topic of much of his writing. Brilliant
man and funny. One of my favorite quotes is that he never lets schooling
get in the way of his education, and that's going to be the topic
we'll discuss with our guest today. He is the CEO of Classical Conversations,
which is the world's largest classical homeschool community. He also sits on the board
of homeschool Now USA, the Carolinas Rugby Union, and Clemson University's rugby Foundation.
He is Robert Borton's Robert, thank you so much for being here today.
Welcome, thank you for having me excited to talk about education and everything
that's going on in the universe around us. Absolutely, first, let's get
the important thing out of the way. Given your alma mater, I gotta
know, are you a diet in the wool ACC fan or just your university.
I don't think anyone at Clemson's fan of the ACC. They've kind of
done us sturdy a few times over the years. So I'm looking forward to
the predicted move to either the Big Ten or the SEC. So we'll see
how much longer we hold on to the Atlantic Coast Conference. That's awesome.
I appreciate that. Yeah, well, the SEC will welcome you with open
arms. We are a lovely and competitive conference. Okay, yes, we
love it, Robert. The last several years have exposed a lot of cracks
in the foundation of the Republic, and when people look for the impetus or
proliferation of those cracks, well, education comes to the top of that list.
And I'll take a note here under your leadership at classical conversations it has
grown three hundred percent. First of all, congratulations, and second of all,
I hope it rises exponentially over the next decade. From your vantage point,
what does the brokenness I should say, how in what the brokenness speaks
to parents that I've driven them to options like homeschooling that maybe a few years
ago they thought was extreme or beyond their purview of consideration. Yeahf COVID.
Obviously a lot of parents knew that the school system were bad, but they
maybe thought, well, it's not in my system, or I know some
of the teachers and they're good people, which you know, in generally the
teachers are good people. They're just in a system that is designed to treat
children as if they're you know, spokes and just part of the cog in
the machine, and that they're just moving them along a conveyor belt. And
so as parents realized, you know, through COVID, whether they were sitting
on zoom classes or just how the schools started treating parents and children, that
something was broken and it was in their system. And so you know,
through COVID, of course, a lot of people were at home doing public
school, which some people consider homeschooling. But really what we consider homeschooling is
as a parent directed education where the parents are making the decisions for their children.
And so pre COVID there was roughly about two million students homeschooling. During
CO you know, there's roughly about five four to five million most people considered
to be homeschooling, and of course many more that were at home. And
many parents through that just saw that their children weren't being educated or that teachers
were just at worse, even worse, was pushing ideas on their kids that
were the antithesis of their own families morality or plans, and so they decided
to take it into their own hands. And even as schools have started opening
up or are now fully open, you know, many people continue to homeschool
or send their kids to alternative education away from the government funded public schools,
and so, you know, parents have the ability to educate their children.
They realized that these experts have been failing them. And of course we see
the rise of just mental issues with the young people that are in our government
school systems because of the just the lies in the propaganda that they're currently and
constantly being fed. Indeed, there are so many repercussions of what has gone
on, not just physically or mentally, but also just this this epic condition,
if that's a proper term of our young people hating our country. And
I love that parents are taking ownership of their child's education. We encourage that.
Often here there are parents who think, oh, gee, I could
never do that because I'm not good at math, or I'm not good at
history or whatever. We like to encourage people to say, but now you
have an opportunity to relearn it. What would you say to parents who are
on the fence or just considering homeschooling, Yeah, I would first say you
can do it. And if you are, you know of those parents like
how am I going to teach math? Well, don't send them to the
same system that really indoctrinated you into telling you that you couldn't teach your own
kids. That's just you know, doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results. There's also a ton of homeschooling material out there now
for parents that are designed for you, the homeschooler, just knowing that you're
not an expert in everything, and I would just say, as well,
you know, roughly thirty percent of our students in our government schools are at
grade level, so clearly the experts don't know what they're doing either. And
really it's a love of learning at classical conversations that we want to pass on
and teaching children that they can really learn anything. And so as a parent,
when I don't know anything, admitting that or saying here, let's go
figure it out together is a great way one to teach your children a valuable
skill that will last them a lifetime, to approach education with humility. And
three, it can be fun when you and your children are doing things together.
I know a ton of our families we learn Latin at classical conversation,
and by the time our students are in high school, they've you know,
surpassed their parents, but their parents still have a teacher's guide that they can
use to you know, check work. You know, the children can be
self directed, so you're more helping them manage their workload and really flourish into
adulthood while they're still under your own home versus having those experiences in college or
maybe you know, just as a nineteen year old doing something else. So
it's really a great opportunity for you as a parent to you know, just
bring the family together and just love, love one another and grow together as
a family and learning. And I'm glad you brought up Latin. Some of
our listeners have heard me say this before. Latin is what brought me to
classical conversations. So years ago, longer than I care to admit. My
uncle went to a classical Latin school and he tutored me through a math that
was a higher level than he actually took, but he was able to figure
it out realize we're doing math. And my aunt at the time asked him,
did you take this in school? And he said, no, but
you know, here's what they're doing and blah blah blah. And she said,
well, how is it you can tutor her if you never took it,
And she looked at He looked at her like she had three heads,
and he said, Leah, I took four years of Latin. Latin makes
you think now she and I were trying to connect the dots like Latin math
whatever, you know. But he was he was all over it, and
he you know, his whole life when he would have discussions and he was
just one of those guys that could talk about anything and would inform himself,
educate himself. Knew a lot about a lot, and he attributed it all,
including his fantastic vocabulary, to Latin. So fast forward twenty some years
and we decided to homeschool, and I look up Latin curriculum homeschool and up
op classical conversations. So that's what I love that story. Yeah, our
students, of course do if you start, you know, K four or
whatever, you'll do thirteen years of Latin with us. And I always tell
people, you know, it's a saying in business that we overestimate what we
can get done in the short term, and we underestimate what can be done
in the long term. And it's the same thing with education. It seems
like you've got to got to know all these things and you've got a lot
to do, but really you just have to stay, you know, a
couple of seconds or a day ahead of your own student. And so,
you know, had classical conversations. We often hear from our families that they're
redeeming their education at the same time, and you know, we even started
a master's program for the moms primarily in our program, so that you know,
if they have a four year degree. They can actually go and while
they're going through the curriculum with their own students do similar work and get a
master's in the classical arts. And so I say that we have about forty
five thousand families in our program, So we have forty five thousand of the
smartest moms in the world homeschooling with us on this journey. And it's it's
a real privilege. One percent. That is amazing. I'm so glad you
guys are doing that. I think there is something about watching and helping your
child with that light bulb moment is what some people call it. When it
clicks, there's just no other feeling. It's like I get that. I
feel like we've taken that away from our our traditional teachers right in the traditional
environments, because now we've turned them into administrators and they have to check all
of these other boxes except really pouring into the children. And that's you know,
that's one of the crimes of the century. But for folks who are
interested in the classical model, there are different flavors of homeschooling. I love
the classical model because it to me, it just made so much sense,
regardless of what age you are. It applies to how we learn. Can
you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, So I would argue
that if you've learned anything, you've done it through the classical model, even
if it wasn't explicitly stated or you even know what that means. And the
classical model is broken down into what we call the trivium for younger ages,
and it's three stages. The first stage is the grammar stage. And of
course a lot of us think about English grammar, but grammar's really just the
basic compounds of anything. So there's a grammar of math, there's a grammar
of science. There's a grammar of baking. There's a grammar of basketball,
there's anything that you do. You start as a grammarian when you first approach
it. You know, you need to if you're going to bake a cake,
you know what's a teaspoon, what's a tablespoon, what's a cup?
You need to have all of these ideas in your head before you start mixing
things together. Otherwise you might just go get your you know, eight ounce
coffee mug and start using that as your cup. You know. So it's
vitally important that you understand the grammar, and so we practice that with our
young kids kindergarten through sixth grade, where they're just memorizing multiplication tables, scientific
facts, historical facts, and children love to learn. Their brains are developing
at that time to learn through memorization. And yeah, they don't have a
lot of life experiences to pull from, so they don't really know what they're
memorizing or why they're memorizing it. But when they get older, when they
go to what we call the dialectic stage or logic stage, and that's kind
of in middle school, they start pulling these ideas and say, oh,
this is how these things work together. And then the rhetorical stage, which
is how we try to develop our high school students, is when you can
then you know, go and bake a cake and enter it into the competition,
or teach someone else how to bake a cake and you know, or
go play in a basketball game and hit the game winning shot. So each
of us just go through these different phases, you know, like Michael Jordan
would dribble for two hours a day sometimes and he was the greatest basketball player
ever, but he knew he had to have a really strong grammar of dribbling,
and so he practiced dribbling all the time, which is why he was
so great at what he did. And so anytime, you know, if
you're gonna go learn to change your oil in your car for the first time,
the first thing you're gonna need to learn is the grammar of you know,
what's a dipstick, what's the what's the oil can look like, what's
the rag? You know, all these different what's what type of oil do
I need to put in it? So there's everything that you learn you use
through the grammar stage, and which is why really sports and music are the
two areas where we've never lost the classical model and why I think personally that
you know, students who participate in music and in sports kind of accidential accidentally
catch you know, this methodology of learning, and why they kind of excel
in government institutions is because they have had some exposure. So we've all had
if you've played music or sports, and most of us had it for a
little while, had some exposure to the classical model. And that's why homeschoolers
like it so much because you don't need to, you know, be an
expert in every single subject matter. You just need to understand, you know,
what's the age of my child and what are the core things that we
need to learn to move forward. And so I hear you saying it's a
marathon. Basically, it's a marathon of mastery. And I'm so glad that
you brought up sports because my main bugaboo with the one and done. Now
I have several bugaboos with it. I don't like it. I never liked
it, but one of the main problems I had with it was that it
precludes mastery. You cannot master the game of NCAA basket ball in six months,
right. You can't master a or gel as a group. You can't
run the motion offense, uh, you know, effectively, or or run
your screens. I mean you need that time, you need the practice.
You need the mastery in order then to be rhetorical. Right, connect the
dots and then be rhetorical. So I'm glad you brought that up because it's
a It's an analogy that I that I use often about Really we've done away
with mastery because I feel like we're in a we're in a short attention span
society and it's Uh, I understand the parents who say, well, I'm
not an expert at this, uh and and it'll take me too long to
learn it. But really you can learn with your child. And you mentioned
this before. One of the I call it the selfish part of homeschooling is
that you either learn something you didn't know or you relearn it with your adult
eyes. And that's kind of a light bulb moment right for us for adults.
Oh ye, yeah, yeah, even being homeschooled myself, I see
that when I'm homeschooling my three young kids. Is Chris, my wife does
the heavy lifting. But even as I'm you know, participating in that that
it's like, wow, it's like I don't remember learning that, or oh
yeah, this is really cool. You know, did you know about this
as well? So it's a great way I think, to engage and you
don't need to yeah, the experts. My wife was a public school teacher
for ten years. She taught middle school, and really, like being a
homeschool mom now, she had to let go of like a lot of what
they taught her because they didn't actually teach her how to pass knowledge down to
the next generation. What they said and you alluded to this earlier, or
they taught her is you know how to manage a classroom and how to make
sure that people were behaving properly and things of this nature. And my future
sister in law, who's engaged to my younger brother, she taught third graders
and her good job was to sit them in from front of a computer.
This was in a good school district, sit them in front of a computer
and monitor them as they learned from a screen. So it's not the world
out there that you think it is. Yeah. Absolutely, I'm glad you
brought up experts. Over the last few years in the healthcare industry, I
have said often that experts with a lot of degrees after their name remind me
that thermometers have a lot of degrees, And now I know why nurses stick
them where they do for their most accurate readings. Okay, so I heard
that one if we let teachers teach, they are the expert, because I
do believe we have a lot of great teachers out there who are just handcuffed
and that's unfortunate. But I do want to go back to something you mentioned.
Tell us your experience. I was not homeschooled. Tell us your experience
homeschool Yeah, so my mom was one of the kind of founders and pioneers
in the early eighties, and she decided she wanted to give us a different
education that she received. She used an aerospace engineer from Michigan. Both of
my parents are so the world considers them highly educated, and she did not
consider herself highly educated. And so, yes, So, I mean it
started out, you know, there wasn't resources like there are today, so
you know, going to the library, going to you know, school book
sales, just trying to find and piece together materials and talking to some of
the other few people you know, homeschooling in the United States back then,
maybe there's ten thousand of us. I'm not exactly sure the number, but
not very many. And you know, we joined homeschool co ops and you
know, we you know, kind of switched curriculums every year, trying to
figure out what worked and what didn't work. We formed sports league, so
we actually started a middle school basketball team and created a high school basketball team
for homeschoolers, and you know, ended up being track and volleyball and boys
and girls and all sorts of stuff. So just really involved. And then
as I was going into high school, you know, a lot of our
friends were like, how am I going to homeschool on these harder subjects?
You know, can our kids get into college even like, because that was
a question. Back then, there were colleges that discriminated against homeschoolers, that
would not admit them even if they both had a perfect SAT score ACT score,
because that was just their policy was no homeschoolers. So it was,
you know, kind of a scary time. And at that point, my
parents you know, talked to a couple of headmasters to see if you know,
what they had at their school, and they had what they were looking
for for my education, and all the headed masters basically said, no,
that's not that classical model. Stuffs not something that we offer here. And
so my dad told my mom, well, you better just see if you
can get a group of homeschoolers together at our house and so that you know,
we can do these things like have debates, you know, read history
papers, you know, not just have a you know, a mom and
their kid together, but have a group of us studying the same thing.
So in nineteen ninety seven, we had eleven students in our basement and that's
how classical conversations got started. I graduated high school a couple of years later,
a year early, and like I said, went to Clemson University,
as you alluded to earlier, and you know, got an industrial engineering degree
there and spent about eight years as an engineer before coming home to work on
the and with the family business. That's awesome, Thank you for sharing that.
For listeners who haven't connected the dots. Lee Borton's is Robert's mom.
We've had her on the program before. She's amazing, favorite guest, one
of our favorite guests, and absolutely a pioneer in the homeschooling movement. We
all stand on their shoulders, and I'm so glad you mentioned Robert the group
of students in your basement. There are so many misconceptions about homeschooling. You
know. The first thing out of everyone's mouth when they learn you're a homeschooler
is what what about social exactly? And nowadays I just say, well,
guess what, that's exactly why we homeschooled. Yeah, yeah, and I
think of that question as much now, although we still get it every once
in a while. Yes, yeah, I do think that's changing a little
bit. And the other couple of things. Number One, colleges are now
going after homeschoolers. So, I mean there is a huge change, and
I love that. Have have you experienced the same recruitment level from the CC
from the Challenge level. Yeah, So our challenge program or high school program
has been growing faster. It has been the fastest part of our organization that's
been growing. We'll have we had about twenty five hundred graduates last year.
We'll have over three thousand this upcoming year. And they are getting recruited by
colleges. You know. We're of course, a lot of people aren't going
to college nowadays, so I'm not saying that it's the only way. I'm
just saying we've got about a dozen college partners now that if you go to
CC in our high school program, they'll either give you scholarships or almost give
you automatic admissions. So they're recruiting hot and heavy. Even the public schools.
The public colleges are you know, you know, going to have recruiters
for homeschoolers because they see us as a way of diversifying their student body because
they want to have you know, a certain amount of public schoolers, some
from charter, some from private, and some from homeschoolers. So the colleges
and even employers now are actively looking for homeschool students. So it's really has
changed a lot. And yeah, the socialization question, you know, we
part of that reason why was a lot of people don't understand that homeschooling wasn't
legal in every single state until nineteen ninety three, and so the first ten
years that I was alive, homeschooling wasn't necessarily legal in the states that we
lived in. And it wasn't that we weren't being social because we didn't want
to be. It was because we could get arrested or thrown in jail or
fined. You know, nowadays, homeschoolers, from the people that I talked
to, are some of the most articulate, well socialized, And what we
say is we want civilized individuals, not socialized individuals, civilized adults around and
so, you know, society has recognized that parents do a wonderful job when
they are the primary educator of their students, no matter their socio economical educational
background. And back to the colleges, you know, it makes sense from
a pr standpoint that colleges would want students who can learn right your self learning
at some point, who know how to learn, students who will stay right,
and students who will do well. That makes the college look good.
So absolutely, that makes total sense that they would open up to the demographic.
There are still a few stinkers out there, I think who will discriminate,
but I think even some of the Ivy League schools are recruiting homeschoolers.
Now, you know what, send my kid to any of those Ivy League
schools exactly. I mean just look at the news and all the things that
they're protesting for who they're protesting against. There's you know, all these donors
from these Ivy League schools are pulling money out and saying you're not gonna get
another penny from me. So there's this worldview that's been unfortunately pushed through all
the colleges. But the Ivy Leagues have certainly led the way that is,
you know, against really human flourishing and why America was and it still is,
although it might be just barely holding on the greatest country around night around
right now. Yes, agreed, I kind of liken that to parents who
would come to me and say I spend every night trying to undo what was
done in school all day, and when homeschoolers come to me and say I
just want to send them to X, Y Z or wherever, I'm like,
okay, but consider you might be undoing what you've done. I mean,
at some point, our children are adults and they're going to make their
own decision, and I think that just varies with the child. But there
is there is that precarious point. Yeah. So, I mean a lot
of you know, Christians, if they send their kids to government schools or
even the private schools, because critical race theory and all these critical theories are
alive and well, and most private education institutions as well, you know,
you're going to have to deprogram your kid every single night, or spend time
guiding them towards or explaining why this is the truth and why what they're learning
in school is inaccurate, which then going to beg the question why should they
pay attention in school if they realize the school is giving them inaccurate information?
Or you know, are they going to have the courage to stand up and
say, no, teacher, you're wrong, this is not right. This
is you know, based on you know, principles that violate our constitution and
our free will most likely not right. They're just going to want to get
along with their students and their friends. So yeah, parents, if you
care about your children, you know, maybe you can't get them out of
the system right now, but you can start, you know, reading them
the classics. You can start having these conversations because you'll wake up to find
your children believe something totally opposite of what you believe. And you know,
the systems are not passing on the values that have made our country what it
is today. And you know we're seeing the consequences of that. You know,
those cracks around us, those cracks in society, you know, the
division, the hate, that's all because our systems have been designed around hating
our forefathers and what principles that we're that we stand on as a country.
So you know, we are a Christian country. We do have those Judeo
values. But uh, sixty percent of I think gen Z doesn't believe lying
is wrong, and so hey, maybe your kid does, but guess what
their two best friends don't. So who do you think is gonna win out
that battle. Yes, it's a complete rejection of the Western tradition and the
values that built the Western tradition. I mean, I think that term Western
tradition is you know, that's a cuss word to most people in academia at
this point. So I also wanted to see if you had any further experience.
I mean, your mom kind of paved the way with this. But
one of the other things that I like to talk to parents about is when
they say, well, what about sports, well what about music? Well
what about They're not going to get all this stuff that you know, our
tax dollars pay for in the public schools. And I kind of say,
well, you're going to have to weigh the risk, right, are you
sending them to be indoctrinated just so they can have a violin class or or
learn a specific language, or you know, you can do it yourself.
But one of the awesome parts about homeschooling and it from from every walk,
right, whether someone graduated college or not, or they were entrepreneurial or whatever
the case may be, some of the most brilliant and innovative people moms and
dads. And I've always said, if it doesn't exist in the homeschool community,
someone will think of it and do it better than anybody's ever done it
before. And classical conversations is a perfect example of that. Yeah, thank
you so very much. Yeah, parents rise to the occasion for their kids
because they love them, and so really the only sport that's difficult to do
is football. There are homeschool football teams though, because that's just the most
expensive sport. But besides that, I mean basketball players now homeschool like tennis,
golf swimmers, like any of these gymnasts, any of these high performing
athletes in general are homeschooling these days because they need a time out of school
to work on their craft. And even some of the baseball players. I
think one of the top ten players drafted this past year was a homeschool kid.
So it is possible. And I just think that's a great question that
you said, Like what are you sacrificing? Like are you going into this
wide eyes? Wide open. We had some friends that were good friends with
my younger brother. They were in classical conversations and they decided that they wanted
play high school football because his dad played high school football. And quite candidly,
that's the decision they made. They you know, he said, I
haven't learned anything in four years of high school, and yeah, and then
he went on to college. He went and got to play D three football
for halfway through his first semester, he quit the team because he decided that
he had had enough of football, and by that summer he had quit school
and had enrolled in the military. So, I mean, a good family,
they love the Lord, but they've wasted five years of life pursuing athletics
that you know, athletic and themselves is great. You know. I'm a
I've played sports all my life. I run a rugby team where two time
national champions. My wife was a collegiate athlete as well. So we love
sports, but you have to put them in their proper place. And if
you're picking athletics over academics, you know you're gonna be hard pressed to really
live a flourishing life that God intended you to live. I think it should
be a symbiotic relationship, right, I mean, can you get the fullness
of the value of sports without the academics, in the in the moral teachings
that go with it, right, I mean, because it's it's all connected,
like the classical right, it's all connected. Nothing goes to waste.
And I love this. The marathon approach to education but it's not very popular.
Robert. We want our kids to be Einstein in the third grade,
and it's just we expect of them things for which they're not ready. Like
I said earlier, you know, we you know, think that we can
get a lot done, a lot faster in the short term, and then
the long term we can get a lot more than we actually think we can
get done. So you know, it's a process. And you know,
attention spans of goldfish is like eight seconds, and I think for adults it's
now like six. So we have fallen behind the attention span of goldfish.
And it's not a system that's gonna continue to give us positive results. And
so we have to get off the hamster wheel. We have to re engage
with our children, with the next generation, otherwise we're going to continue to
be in you know, significant trouble as a society going forward. And you
know, for sports, my daughter, she's a gymnast, you know,
one of the top ten in the state. She's eight years old, practices
three hours a day, three days a week. So you know, we're
fully into sports, not trying to downplay the positive benefits of being healthy and
competitive and learning those disciplines. But what I'm saying is when you put C.
S. Lewis put it this way. When you put first things first,
second things are elevated, and sports are definitely a second thing. But
if you make them the number one thing in your family, you're gonna be
in trouble. And you know, a lot of times we use sports as
a way of, hey, we're going to help people get out of a
bad situation. Well, it's something like only one percent of high school students
get a college scholarship in sports, so it's not a very likely path Versus
if you spend that much time and effort, you know, learning math or
Latin or Spanish or anything else, would definitely give you a better outcome in
your life. If you are part of that one percent that make it to
college athletics, and then you're the one percent of that one percent that goes
on to professional sports. You know, if you make it to the NBA,
it's something like eighty percent of them are bankrupt within two years of getting
out. If you make it into NFL football, besides all of the you
know, head trauma and mental issues that the players can develop, something like
seventy percent of them are bankrupt three years out of you know, getting out
of professional so even making it to the top of the top, you know,
it's not really life changing money for you know, sixty to seventy percent
of professional athletes. So it's just not a it's not a path that sound
for society to put people on, and it's not realistic it and that this
is my other bugaboo with the one and done, because it's mainly just a
social engineering program. That is not the point of collegiate sports. Its social
engineering, right, I mean, there are so many other benefits. And
to your point about the rising tide, right, the first things and the
second length things rise. I think that is also what used to be the
biggest benefit when schools that when most schools were using the classical model. And
I forget when it was that we kind of got away from that one room
school house. Do you remember when that was Well I wasn't alive then,
but I mean most people would say I wasn't either. By the way forties
and fifties, yeah, you know, the classical model. Just for our
listeners, I believe that does raise everyone's level. The uncle that I mentioned
earlier, he graduated from that classical Latin school, probably with what is the
equivalent of a genuine liberal arts degree in a college. I mean, that's
how well educated he was. And we had a whole, well, one
to two generations of people that whether they were plumbers or electricians or regardless of
what field they chose, they could speak and speak well about books. They
could speak well or articulate the issue with their craft which they mastered. Goodness
gracious that the level of competency in our society right now is such an all
time low that I mean I write names and numbers down of people who are
competent because they're that rare these days. And I just get so excited and
grateful that there is someone that has mastered their craft to be able to explain
it, to be rhetorical with me about it right, and to tell me
how to fix my computer or whatever. So love I love that analogy.
Based on your experience. Have you talked to parents there there is It's not
a void, it's just a they can't flip the switch parents from the narrative
that someone else should be educating their children. And I know it has a
lot to do with the experts and that you know, third grade math and
you know, all of the things we discussed. What would you say to
those parents, because they just they're frozen and they don't think that they should.
It's a should, right, it's not necessarily a can. I But
should I be doing this? And I don't know how to answer that without
getting all biblical. Yeah, I mean, it certainly is formed by your
worldview and your personal ethics. I think the you know, I would just
say, you know, we get about ten thousand plus or minus new families
every year, and so you know, there's tons of ten thousands families in
CC right now who are probably having those same you know, misconceptions or thoughts
or doubts you know, just a year ago. And so I would just
say, you know, educate yourself about the class A model of education.
You know, start asking your kids some questions about their homework or what they're
learning about in school, just to start engaging intentionally, even if it's thirty
minutes a night, just teach them something. You know, you don't have
to decide right now midyear to pull your kids out and go all in,
although I'd encourage you that you can do that, and you're legally allowed to
do that, and we'll definitely find a spot for you in one of our
communities. But you know, it can start by just saying, Okay,
your dad loves math. You know you're in fifth grade math. You know
he's going to you know, go over that with you for thirty minutes a
night. Or hey, let's read these you know, founding documents or read
about the Founding Fathers together from a book that isn't been written by someone who
believes in critical race theory. So if there's things you can do right now
to just practice and kind of show yourself that it really isn't as difficult as
you think it is, that is one of the things I encourage people to
do. Also, just read a book with your child. I mean,
the discussions that can follow are endless and insightful and one of the many things
I loved about homeschooling. And I'll say it was the hardest thing we've ever
done, but it was the most rewarding thing we've ever done. And our
family knew one another, I knew my kids. I know my kids in
and out, they know me in and out. Everyone's going to love their
kids and sometimes they feel trapped, but more and more of them are saying,
you know, let's make real lifestyle changes so that we can be with
our kids, because that's important. So, you know, I think it's
if Christians would all homeschool or send their kids to a true Christian private school,
not one in name only, we could make a lot of headway in
a really short time in our country. And you know, I would really
encourage you know, businesses to our education funds for their employees. If you're
a church, you should have a Christian education fund. You should be supporting
local Christian education, whether it's homeschooling co ops to three day a week university
schools, or the local private schools. There's so much that we can be
doing now as a society to get kids into better situations that we don't need
the government coming in and messing it up. We need parents and local authorities
to be in charge and not not state bureaucrats. Great ideas, those are
excellent ideas. And I just one other thing. I think a lot of
people don't understand just how diverse the homeschool community is. I mean, thank
goodness, it is there. You know, we had friends who were on
the left side of the spectrum, and we had wonderful spirited debates, and
our kids were there and at the end of the day, we know,
consider each other's position. Maybe we agreed to disagree. That was fine,
that's okay. And I think if you know, more people were able to
model that or their kids were exposed to it, then we wouldn't live in
this binary if then fallacy of if you think this or someone says this about
you, then you're the enemy or whatever. Yeah, I love those ideas,
Robert. With business, our churches, certainly they need to pick up
pick up the pace a little bit around. Okay, Robert, I can't
thank you enough. I've enjoyed this. I could talk to you all day.
Where can people find more information about you? And classical conversations? Yeah,
so my socials are The Robert B Show and you can find me on
x formally known as Twitter and Instagram. Of course, you can go to
Classical Conversations and we've got all the socials as well Classical Conversations dot Com.
If you put in your zip code, there'll be local communities near you and
we'll be happy to have a local support rep reach out to you as a
homeschooling mom, some dads, but mostly moms that will come and tell you
about homeschooling in your area, and they're happy to do that for you.
We've got eight hundred of them around the United States, and if you're listening
to this internationally, we're in I think fifty seven countries now, so we
might even have one in your country, or we'd be happy to help you
get when started wherever you live. So Classical Conversations dot Com is the best
website to go to. Fantastic Okay, Robert, thank you so much for
your time today. You are welcome anytime to come back give us an update
of what's going on, and we look forward to it. Hope you have
a blessed week. Thank you you too. Okay again, that was the
Robert b Show on the various social media platforms and Classical Conversations dot Com.
Highly recommend you go check that out if you are anyone you know is considering
the homeschool lifestyle. Want to thank you all for listening. Thank you as
always to magic Man Joe Strecker. Until next time, who will stand at
either hand and keep the bridge with me. Have a great day. Zilla