Speaker 1: Well, joining us today is Robert Borton's he's the author
Speaker 1: of Woke and Weaponized, How Karl Marx Won the Battle
Speaker 1: for American Education. He's also the CEO of Classical Conversations,
Speaker 1: and if you are involved in homeschooling, you've probably heard
Speaker 1: of this. As a matter of fact, many of our
Speaker 1: friends did Classical Conversations and they loved it. So we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to him about that as well. So
Speaker 1: we'll give you some tactics for how you can do it,
Speaker 1: and I'll also tell you what the other guys, what
Speaker 1: their designs are for your children, which will hopefully inform
Speaker 1: you to go in a different direction whether you take
Speaker 1: Classical Conversations or not. But it is a great alternative
Speaker 1: to government schools. Thank you for joining us, Robert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me on the show today. Excited
Speaker 2: to be here. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I was excited to see that your co author was
Speaker 1: Alex Newman. I've talked him many times about education, and
Speaker 1: of course he's written books about this as well. I
Speaker 1: love every time I talk about education, I use the
Speaker 1: analogy that Alex Newman did. He said, the schools are
Speaker 1: like a burning building. So the first thing you want
Speaker 1: to do is get your kids out of there. Second
Speaker 1: thing you want to do is put out the fire,
Speaker 1: because it's going to burn down our entire neighborhood. And
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the best analogies I've had
Speaker 1: for what the issue is and the approach that we
Speaker 1: should take to it. So we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: this way that people can get their kids out of
Speaker 1: this burning building and teach them themselves with classical conversations,
Speaker 1: but we're also going to talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: this is burning down our society. And that's really what
Speaker 1: I think your book is about. Woken Weaponized, how Carl
Speaker 1: Marx won the battle for American education. Tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what Marx wanted from education and what
Speaker 1: he is getting out of our government schools.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, the whole intent of the Marx is to
Speaker 3: remove children from their families so that children can grow
Speaker 3: up to view the state as their father. That then
Speaker 3: they would have a loyalty to the state, and the
Speaker 3: state can get them to do basically whatever the state
Speaker 3: wants them to do. And his ultimate goal was to
Speaker 3: end religion and end private property. And he understood that
Speaker 3: that family and child bond was the greatest threat to
Speaker 3: his worldview, and that he had to figure out a
Speaker 3: way to get adults to willingly give that up and
Speaker 3: for children never to form it in the first place.
Speaker 3: And so ultimately why our education system is woken weaponized
Speaker 3: is because the followers of Marx understood that we wouldn't
Speaker 3: be able to change the United States from the outside,
Speaker 3: that we weren't going to be able to be taken
Speaker 3: over by some you know, world war, that the Cold
Speaker 3: War with Russia was going to inevitably fail, and so
Speaker 3: they targeted intentionally our school systems, using the Frankfurt School
Speaker 3: and the Columbia Teachers College to get their Marxist ideologies
Speaker 3: into our textbooks, into the formation of teachers at four
Speaker 3: year universities, so whether they personally identified as Marxists or not,
Speaker 3: that they would inevitably teaching Marxist worldview to the next generation.
Speaker 3: And so each generation forgot a little bit about what
Speaker 3: the previous generation new, and today we have more than
Speaker 3: fifty percent of Gen Z thinks democrats socialism is a
Speaker 3: good idea, despite the fact that it's killed well over
Speaker 3: one hundred million people, you know, since the early almost
Speaker 3: you know, one hundred and ten years now, and so
Speaker 3: it is a destructive ideology. It's really putting the arsonists
Speaker 3: in charge of the burning building. And that's what we've
Speaker 3: done here in the United States.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, Yeah, they wouldn't know anything if they
Speaker 1: didn't know the wrong stuff. So yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we are right now. And you know what you
Speaker 1: talked about that and the opposition to the family and
Speaker 1: how that was in their path. And if you go
Speaker 1: back to the eighteen hundreds of these utopian societies that
Speaker 1: constantly failed, organized along communist principles, even though they didn't
Speaker 1: have Karl Marx. This is even before Karl Marx. They
Speaker 1: constantly failed. And they said, only know, the problem is
Speaker 1: is that we've got to get to the kids earlier.
Speaker 1: This has always been the case, isn't it. And it's
Speaker 1: so frustrating that we can't get Americans and Christians to
Speaker 1: understand how vital that is to get to children in
Speaker 1: the early years and to really shape them and to
Speaker 1: tell to guide them, and to give them the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Horace Man, which is credited with bringing the public
Speaker 3: school system from Prussia here into the United States, said this,
Speaker 3: we who are engaged in the sacred cause of education
Speaker 3: are entitled to look upon all parents as having given
Speaker 3: hostages to our cause. In other words, that the kids
Speaker 3: have become their hostages, which you know, if you're teaching reading, writing,
Speaker 3: and arithmetic, you know what parent doesn't want that. So
Speaker 3: so what was their cause? And their cause, as Horace
Speaker 3: Man said, was to destroy religion, to destroy private property.
Speaker 3: And so that's what we do in the book Will
Speaker 3: Can Weaponize. Is this isn't like my opinion, we actually
Speaker 3: go back or Alex's opinion is we've done the research.
Speaker 3: What did Horace Man actually say? You know what did
Speaker 3: John Dewey say? He said change must come gradually? To
Speaker 3: force it unduly, would to compromise its final success by
Speaker 3: favoring a violent reaction. Well, why would parents act violently
Speaker 3: if John Dewey just wants to educate their kids? Right?
Speaker 3: And it wasn't right. It wasn't because they're teaching them
Speaker 3: how to read and write. And so in Parents Today,
Speaker 3: you know, we get so many people get frustrated with
Speaker 3: the school system or we spend so much money on it,
Speaker 3: they want to reform it. Like the book points out
Speaker 3: that the school systems working exactly as the utopian designers
Speaker 3: want it to work, and so there's no reforming the
Speaker 3: system because working perfectly, it's actually working better than expected.
Speaker 2: The fact that only.
Speaker 3: Less than half of American adults now read above a
Speaker 3: sixth grade level, that is the fruit of the system.
Speaker 3: But that's that's a high water mark, because only about
Speaker 3: thirty six percent of kids now can.
Speaker 2: Read at grade level.
Speaker 3: And it's not like these grade levels are you know,
Speaker 3: high achieving grade levels. They keep dumbing the grade levels
Speaker 3: down just to get the kids out of them, and
Speaker 3: we can't even get but a third of them passing it.
Speaker 3: Same thing with math, and it's even worse for things
Speaker 3: like history. I think it's down in the low twenty
Speaker 3: percentile are at grade level. And so the whole entire
Speaker 3: point was to force people to not be able to
Speaker 3: be sovereign over themselves, to be able to govern themselves,
Speaker 3: so that they would adopt this collectivist worldview, whether it
Speaker 3: was you know, a form of a Nazism which is
Speaker 3: a form of collectivism, or democrats socialism or straight out communism,
Speaker 3: or you know, any of these sort of collectivist ideology
Speaker 3: where the state gets to be governed by the powerful
Speaker 3: and they get to decide you know who wins and
Speaker 3: who loses, and we are all, you know, equally under
Speaker 3: their own yoke.
Speaker 2: And so that's ultimately the goal of the system.
Speaker 3: And since a person who can read, like Frederick Frederick
Speaker 3: Douglas said, you know, a former slave and a great American,
Speaker 3: you know, once you're once you learn how to read,
Speaker 3: you're forever free, is basically what he said.
Speaker 1: And education used to me and it meant that it
Speaker 1: liberated you with the tools of learning, right exactly.
Speaker 3: And so that's what we've been trying to do at
Speaker 3: classical conversations for a really long time. And yeah, it's
Speaker 3: even in nineteen eighty two, right before the Wall fell,
Speaker 3: President Rowan Gaither, he was the Ford Foundation's president, told
Speaker 3: Norman Dodd, who was part of the White House, that
Speaker 3: their goal was to successfully merge the United States.
Speaker 2: With the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: And so when you have someone like Mindami getting elected,
Speaker 3: you know of New York City, and you know when
Speaker 3: he's got giving in his inauguration speech he says, we
Speaker 3: need to throw off the chains of rugged individual individualism
Speaker 3: and embrace the warmth of collectivism. That was that was
Speaker 3: theal of fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Unfortunately he's already ran
Speaker 3: out of people's money. But that was that's been the
Speaker 3: goal from the beginning, and was to take away our
Speaker 3: freedom by dumbing us down. And that's why we say
Speaker 3: Carl Marks won the battle for American education, because people
Speaker 3: keep sending themselves kids to these schools even though under
Speaker 3: every single metric they're failing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, it's important for people to understand the founders here
Speaker 1: in America that brought this horrendous system to us, Horseman
Speaker 1: Thomas Dewey, people like that. You know, people look at
Speaker 1: the Dewey decimal system, how they used to organize library.
Speaker 1: Does anybody even use that anymore? They even use libraries anymore?
Speaker 1: But you know, he he comes in with a practical
Speaker 1: tool that's there, and he insinuates himself off into the
Speaker 1: educational system. And yet the reality is, if we go
Speaker 1: back to people like RL Dabney after the Civil War,
Speaker 1: he said, education is not fundamentally about math and other
Speaker 1: things like that. That is kind of a vocational training,
Speaker 1: he said, it really is about values. And so from
Speaker 1: the other side of it, you know, if we look
Speaker 1: at people who have an agenda that they want to
Speaker 1: teach values that are going to allow them to control
Speaker 1: to dumb down and to control people like Charlotte Isabee
Speaker 1: was talking about the deliberate dumbing down of America. You know,
Speaker 1: when your goal is to dumb people down to control them,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. If your goal is to set up
Speaker 1: people who have a moral foundation and a moral backbone
Speaker 1: that is strong, that's a completely different thing. And so
Speaker 1: Url Dabney felt that it was completely had to have
Speaker 1: a complete separation of school and state, and yet we're
Speaker 1: not even where close to that. You had a lot
Speaker 1: of people who were hopeful, but Trump was going to
Speaker 1: do something about that when he said he was going
Speaker 1: to get rid of the Department of Education. You've spoken
Speaker 1: of that as well. How do you see that happening here?
Speaker 1: How are they doing in terms of shutting down the
Speaker 1: Department of Education? Seems like it's still here. I wonder
Speaker 1: if this is kind of if this is another professional
Speaker 1: wrestling narrative from Lenda McMahon. Maybe that's why he put
Speaker 1: her in charge of education.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I think it's something that people need
Speaker 3: to understand, is that the federal government has no constitutional
Speaker 3: authority over education periods. Stop now, ending the Department of
Speaker 3: Education is a step in the right direction, but It
Speaker 3: can also be a slide of hand because what they're
Speaker 3: doing is they're just moving all of the education laws
Speaker 3: to different departments, whether it's the Department of Finance that's
Speaker 3: going to oversee student loans. Well, student loans were all
Speaker 3: privately run basically before twenty ten and Barack Obama took
Speaker 3: them over, and there was, you know, a few hundred
Speaker 3: billion dollars in student loan debt that has quadrupled under
Speaker 3: the federal government taking over it. So one of the
Speaker 3: things you've got to do is you've got to get
Speaker 3: the federal government out of subsidizing and guaranteeing student loans. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but Congress has to do that and so and of
Speaker 3: course I.
Speaker 1: Think this has driven up tuition. You know, every time,
Speaker 1: I know so many economists will say, every time you
Speaker 1: subsidize something, it gets more expensive. And certainly we have
Speaker 1: seen tuition go through the ceiling. I say, many times
Speaker 1: I went to a state university and my tuition was
Speaker 1: less than the cost of my books. And now it's
Speaker 1: just gone through the ceiling with all the federal loans
Speaker 1: that are there now. They had HUW Health Educational Welfare
Speaker 1: for a long time, then they started breaking these things
Speaker 1: out as they started getting bigger. When did they start
Speaker 1: the Department of Education? Where did that break out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was in the seventies under Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 3: So he promised this to the teachers' unions that he
Speaker 3: was going to create this entity. And since then, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's basically been a you know, a a Democrat or
Speaker 3: a socialist money laundering scheme in order to brainwash the
Speaker 3: next generations. And so we've spent trillions of dollars in
Speaker 3: this department and not a single education metric has improved.
Speaker 3: So just by cutting the expenses to zero, actually not
Speaker 3: just shutting the one department down, but actually ending these
Speaker 3: laws that only drive up price and do nothing to
Speaker 3: improve educational outcomes, we would all be going into national.
Speaker 2: Debts slower or maybe paying.
Speaker 3: Less taxes as well as having better outcomes. And so
Speaker 3: do I think the Trump administration wants to maybe get
Speaker 3: the Department federal government out of education more.
Speaker 2: I think they do.
Speaker 3: But it's ultimately up to Congress to end these unconstitutional
Speaker 3: laws or the Supreme Court to step in and end it.
Speaker 3: But I don't see the Supreme Court doing that anytime soon.
Speaker 3: So we really need to put pressure on Congress, but
Speaker 3: it's been a disappointing slide of hand in some ways.
Speaker 3: I think even more dangerous when you put some of
Speaker 3: these educational laws under the Department of Labor, because now
Speaker 3: you're going to be even thinking about more of this
Speaker 3: career and college readiness ideology, which is again just part
Speaker 3: of this socialist worldview that we've adopted over the last
Speaker 3: sixty or seventy years. Like you said, education is really
Speaker 3: about forming a moral background for yourself and being able
Speaker 3: to become a more complete human being. And some of
Speaker 3: these other things are more job related, and the federal
Speaker 3: government has never successfully predicted what the job market was
Speaker 3: going to look like a year from now, much less
Speaker 3: ten or twelve years from now, and so the fact
Speaker 3: that they may be more incentivized along those lines with
Speaker 3: these changes disturbs me and just goes back to that
Speaker 3: point of you just got to get your kids out.
Speaker 2: Honestly, if you do the exact opposite of what the.
Speaker 3: Government entities tell you to do, they'll probably turn out
Speaker 3: much better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of interesting, you know, when you look
Speaker 1: at this the Department of Education, Ronald Reagan was going
Speaker 1: to end it right as one of his promises. That's
Speaker 1: what Charlotte isby and Phillips Slapely we're writing about in
Speaker 1: their book, you know, deliberately dumbing down America. And they
Speaker 1: were very disappointed that didn't happen. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it got much much bigger. You know, it could have
Speaker 1: strangled that thing in the crib, but they let it.
Speaker 1: They nurtured it into maturity under the Reagan administration. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that I think is dangerous.
Speaker 1: We look at this and we think, well, you know,
Speaker 1: Reagan wants to make government smaller, and he's going to
Speaker 1: get rid of the Department of Education, and yet he
Speaker 1: doesn't right see the same thing with the Republicans around
Speaker 1: Trump at the same time. But you know, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about putting some of this stuff, transferring it over
Speaker 1: to the Labor Department, and how that kind of feeds
Speaker 1: this whole idea that it's the responsible for the government
Speaker 1: to train people to work for corporations. You look at
Speaker 1: that and even in its most benign manifestation, the agenda
Speaker 1: is kind of wicked. Yes, I mean, we're not here
Speaker 1: to train our kids to be widgets in some factory,
Speaker 1: you know, drones on the assembly line, and yet that's
Speaker 1: the way they see your children. And it's looking more
Speaker 1: like there's there's really not any hope for people who
Speaker 1: are going to be working for big corporations. They're looking
Speaker 1: at how they can replace everybody with AI and robotics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's scary. I mean, as Pink Floyd once said,
Speaker 3: just another brick in the wall. And that's really what
Speaker 3: our education system has become. And under the Department of Labor, like,
Speaker 3: even if you have good people running it now, like
Speaker 3: under the Trump administration, who are trying to do their
Speaker 3: best job, like, it still doesn't align with what our
Speaker 3: federal government is created to do. And just as a
Speaker 3: Christian what government has been band aidd By got to do.
Speaker 3: There is no job creation, you know, no labor laws,
Speaker 3: like all of these things aren't under the jurisdiction of
Speaker 3: a civil government. It's primarily justice is what God designed
Speaker 3: the civil government for. And so anytime it steps out
Speaker 3: of those bounds, we know it's going to be expensive,
Speaker 3: it's going to produce very poor results. And so you know,
Speaker 3: we've got a system now in the United States where
Speaker 3: you know, our education system like there are in the
Speaker 3: City of Chicago, there's forty schools that have zero students
Speaker 3: that are reading or writing at grade level zero, and
Speaker 3: one of those schools spends over forty thousand dollars per
Speaker 3: year per kid. There's a school in New York City
Speaker 3: that spends about eighty thousand dollars a year per kid
Speaker 3: with zero kids that can read or do math at
Speaker 3: grade level. So it's not money that's the problem. It's
Speaker 3: the civil government's institution at all that has the issue.
Speaker 3: And that's what we show in the book Woken Weaponize
Speaker 3: is the public school system was woken weaponized when it
Speaker 3: was created in the eighteen fifties and imported here in
Speaker 3: the United States. I mean, it's the school system that
Speaker 3: primed Germany or pressure at the time to start World
Speaker 3: War One, and so that's been imported to the United States,
Speaker 3: and we keep thinking that somehow we can disobey God's
Speaker 3: design for the family and God's designed for civil government
Speaker 3: and have good outcomes. And so the most dangerous part
Speaker 3: about what Trump is doing is one it could lull
Speaker 3: conservatives to sleep that the Department of Education has ended,
Speaker 3: when in fact it's never The laws themselves have never
Speaker 3: been stronger because it's the law themselves that are the problem,
Speaker 3: not who's administerrating it or what department. So, yeah, there
Speaker 3: might be some minuscule tax savings where we have less
Speaker 3: employees in the federal government for that.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: Approach, isn't it you know, Yeah, but it's not getting
Speaker 3: rid of something. You can't make something more efficient that
Speaker 3: shouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're doing completely wrong thing, but let's make
Speaker 1: it more efficient. It's like, well, no, let's actually not.
Speaker 1: You know, I much rather have somebody in there like
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton who says it takes a village to raise
Speaker 1: a child. She has thrown down the gauntlet. Actually she's
Speaker 1: thrown it in your face. And I just heard Messa
Speaker 1: Harris Perry say about a decade ago, we've got to
Speaker 1: get over this notion that children belong to their parents.
Speaker 1: They don't. They belong to the state. Right, And so
Speaker 1: these people will come out and say it out loud,
Speaker 1: and I find.
Speaker 3: That the Republican Party is embraced that same mighty always
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 1: They just put you to sleep, you know. They they
Speaker 1: assuage your concerns that that's what's really happening, while they
Speaker 1: fund it and continue it and they'll do little things
Speaker 1: to make it less abrasive right now, And so it
Speaker 1: really is a conditioning and that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why they've got to keep going back and forth from
Speaker 1: one party to the other. They have to condition you.
Speaker 1: Democrats push the agenda further down the road, and the
Speaker 1: Republicans say, oh no, maybe not quite that fast or
Speaker 1: that far, and let's modify this a little bit to
Speaker 1: make it a little bit less painful. But we're still
Speaker 1: going to the same place. We're still doing the same
Speaker 1: thing essentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And all that goes back to again, like the
Speaker 3: design of the system has been so ingrained in our
Speaker 3: culture now, I mean since the eighteen nineteen sixties was
Speaker 3: a guy named BF Skinner who basically viewed children and
Speaker 3: animals to be trained.
Speaker 1: And I've got a master's degree in education. Let me
Speaker 1: interject this here. And she brought that book to her apartment.
Speaker 1: I was over there looking at her stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: like beyond freedom and dignity. And I said, it's about
Speaker 1: time somebody complained about the way the kids are.
Speaker 2: Being treated in school.
Speaker 1: She has no, no, no, that's a blueprint about what
Speaker 1: to do that you oppose. He wants to not have
Speaker 1: any freedom or dignity for human beings. It's like what
Speaker 1: And that was part of the educational core they were
Speaker 1: teaching him. They were teaching the kids B. F.
Speaker 4: Skinner.
Speaker 1: They wanted them to use those skinnerisk approaches on kids.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so it's part of the I just have
Speaker 3: a friend who got her masters and they had a
Speaker 3: whole class praising BF.
Speaker 2: Skinner.
Speaker 3: This guy's burning in hell unless he had a sort
Speaker 3: of deathbed confession. But what he's done is, you know,
Speaker 3: basically destroyed the United States education system or compelled that
Speaker 3: Marxist ideology into every single classroom.
Speaker 2: So like my wife was a public school.
Speaker 3: Teacher for ten years, you know, doesn't have a marxistponent
Speaker 3: in her body. But after she got out, she realized,
Speaker 3: like all of these things that were in the system.
Speaker 3: You know, she's straight a student trying to do what's
Speaker 3: going to be best for her kids, and everything they're
Speaker 3: teaching her is just conditioning, you know, to condition the
Speaker 3: kids to become a little socialists. Yeah, and to condition
Speaker 3: them to you know, just obey and believe whatever the
Speaker 3: authorities have for them, which is why we saw during
Speaker 3: the you know, COVID experienced how many people who are
Speaker 3: thoughtful people just went along and believed whatever the TV
Speaker 3: screen was telling them. Well, that's all part of the
Speaker 3: conditioning that is built into the public school system. So
Speaker 3: you can have a great teacher that loves Jesus in
Speaker 3: front of the classroom, she's still teaching from a Marxist
Speaker 3: textbook in Marxist classroom, played through redistribution of wealth, which
Speaker 3: is a Marxist ideology, and so everything about it is Marxist.
Speaker 3: And of course you want to, you know, soothe those
Speaker 3: who are in the system itself. But the reality is
Speaker 3: we need more pastors, more American leaders telling people to
Speaker 3: get out of the system.
Speaker 2: Altogether, I agree.
Speaker 1: And of course, flip the script and you've got a
Speaker 1: teacher who's not a committed Christian and reading off of
Speaker 1: a script. Let's say that you've got the government that
Speaker 1: comes in and says, no, no, no, we don't want
Speaker 1: you reading that stuff. We don't want you to doing
Speaker 1: the DEI stuff. How many times have we seen teachers
Speaker 1: cut social media videos that said, well, you know, they
Speaker 1: said in Texas that we're not going to do this
Speaker 1: and this this, But I'm the one who's in control
Speaker 1: in the classroom and I'm going to teach that. Just
Speaker 1: try to stop me. And that's the reality. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've talked to people for over thirty years. We decided
Speaker 1: we're going to homeschool our kids, and we had them
Speaker 1: and the I would have people tell me, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand, it's really bad at the national level, it's
Speaker 1: really bad at the state level. And I can even
Speaker 1: see it happening in our county, but it's not and
Speaker 1: maybe even in the same school, but it's not happening
Speaker 1: in this classroom. I know that teacher, she's great, and
Speaker 1: I'm not worried at all about my child being there.
Speaker 1: But then during COVID, they're able to see what was
Speaker 1: actually happening in the school and they could see what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, and that made a big difference with
Speaker 1: a lot of parents. Now a lot of them just
Speaker 1: didn't care, right, they just go along with it. But
Speaker 1: I think that's why we're seeing the surge of people
Speaker 1: moving out of the schools and deciding that they're going
Speaker 1: to educate their kids. So let's talk about that. Let's
Speaker 1: get people a positive vision of where this goes. Tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about how classical conversations works and
Speaker 1: what the goal is and how you accomplish that those
Speaker 1: types of things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Classical Conversations was started in my parents' basement nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, so I was one of the first eleven students.
Speaker 2: I was homeschooled through high school, and it.
Speaker 3: Was really to empower parents to give their kids a
Speaker 3: classical Christian education through high school through homeschooling, and also
Speaker 3: with the idea of helping students go after look and
Speaker 3: seek truth, beauty and goodness and you know, to help
Speaker 3: people ultimately to know God and to make Him known.
Speaker 3: And so a big difference then with the education system
Speaker 3: is trying to do and so we meet once a
Speaker 3: week with a tran parent tutor, typically in eight to
Speaker 3: twelve students per classroom, no more than twelve, and they
Speaker 3: go through all six subjects and then you're homeschooling them
Speaker 3: at home the rest of the rest of the week.
Speaker 3: But they're coming together and like doing science dissections and
Speaker 3: debates and mock trials and science fairs and doing poetry
Speaker 3: jams and things that are more difficult to do alone,
Speaker 3: but you're doing it in these groups, and we're doing
Speaker 3: it through a biblical worldview.
Speaker 2: So everything points back to Jesus.
Speaker 3: We think two plus two equals four tells us something
Speaker 3: about the nature of Jesus, you know, through a classical
Speaker 3: model where we're reading the original writings, reading things like
Speaker 3: the Constitution and Magna Carta and the Federalist papers and
Speaker 3: comparing them.
Speaker 1: And that's so important, the original writings. I love that
Speaker 1: you brought that up because it's completely different than somebody's
Speaker 1: textbook summary of something, isn't it when you go back
Speaker 1: and you read the original.
Speaker 2: Oh one hundred percent?
Speaker 3: And you got to realize all these textbook companies have
Speaker 3: their own value system as well, and they're not American values,
Speaker 3: they're collectivist values. And so yeah, they want you to
Speaker 3: read it through some woke professor's worldview. So that's the
Speaker 3: worldview that you get it. I mean, we stop teaching
Speaker 3: curse of writing, which Chris Writing has a lot of.
Speaker 3: We don't at classical conversations. We encourage families still do
Speaker 3: cursive frighting, but they stop teaching it because they know
Speaker 3: they know if the kids don't learn curse of frighting,
Speaker 3: they can't read the Constitution, so that they have to
Speaker 3: believe whatever some woke professor tells about them. Plus there's
Speaker 3: so many benefits of it that just you know, develop
Speaker 3: brain development and hand eye coordination.
Speaker 2: From cursive writing.
Speaker 3: So so those things have been super you know, important
Speaker 3: to us. And so we have a full K through
Speaker 3: twelve program, even college credits available for our students. We
Speaker 3: have about two thousand groups in the United States, about
Speaker 3: eight hundred international now over one hundred and thirty five
Speaker 3: thousand students in our programs. And we're helping families every
Speaker 3: single year just like yours homeschool successfully and yeah, we
Speaker 3: do that and we don't have you know, we don't
Speaker 3: have any woke wokeness in our curriculum. It's all you know,
Speaker 3: going back and reinforcing you know, the good and the bad, right,
Speaker 3: nobody's perfect, but looking at history through like how do
Speaker 3: how does God view history? And how does that help
Speaker 3: us to become human beings that will be flourishing, that
Speaker 3: can help our communities, help our churches, help our businesses
Speaker 3: be entrepreneurs, you know, go to college, go into ministry.
Speaker 2: All those things.
Speaker 3: And so it's been awesome and we're looking forward to
Speaker 3: you know, hitting our thirtieth anniversary next year.
Speaker 2: But it's totally a different paradigm like we don't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about now. It sounds like
Speaker 1: you've got a lot more depth into certain subjects in
Speaker 1: that type. Like we did a homeschool cooperative with our
Speaker 1: youngest child or daughter when we were in Texas and
Speaker 1: it didn't have the kind of depth that you're talking
Speaker 1: about in some of these things. Is that what your
Speaker 1: organization classical conversations helps to provide to many of the
Speaker 1: kids in a more challenging way. What is the difference
Speaker 1: between let's say, just a homeschool cooperative where you've got
Speaker 1: parents who volunteer to teach a particular topic to the
Speaker 1: group so they can go a little bit more in
Speaker 1: depth with that topic than they would if they were
Speaker 1: having to cover everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we have a full K through twelve curriculum.
Speaker 3: Most of it has been written by us at this point,
Speaker 3: but it's written by homeschool grad parents who've empty nested
Speaker 3: homeschool in the homeschool their own kids, written for homeschool parents,
Speaker 3: and it's written to be done inside a community once
Speaker 3: a week, and so it's it's all the subjects, but
Speaker 3: it's also that that help. And so you know, this
Speaker 3: has been battle tested now with millions of students, you know,
Speaker 3: over the twenty nine years, and we're always learning from
Speaker 3: those students and learning from those families and then reincorporating
Speaker 3: it into future virgins and trainings, into our into our system.
Speaker 3: And so it's not you know, it's a proven roadmap.
Speaker 3: Like if you ever played the game Oregon Trail growing up, right,
Speaker 3: you had to select the guide to help you go
Speaker 3: to Oregon. Well, we're that guide, and we've been to
Speaker 3: Oregon a million times, versuly like your typical co op.
Speaker 3: You know, great people, you know, but they've never been
Speaker 3: to Oregon before. They're just trying to figure it out
Speaker 3: as they go, and it's better than doing it on
Speaker 3: your own, for sure. But they don't necessarily have a
Speaker 3: vision for twelfth twelfth grade or what a high school
Speaker 3: graduate should look like. But we've seen, you know, tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of students graduate now, and so we know,
Speaker 3: like what are they capable of doing? You know, what
Speaker 3: works and what doesn't work, and so just imagine, like
Speaker 3: you know, millions of years of coaching or millions of
Speaker 3: years of experience, we sift through all that, pick the
Speaker 3: best stuff and then give that to you as a parent,
Speaker 3: so you're not trying to figure things out you know
Speaker 3: as you go. Of course you're figuring out you know,
Speaker 3: your own kids and your own rhythms and things like that.
Speaker 3: But you know, we've got best practices that make it
Speaker 3: super easy for you to homeschool your kids, so you
Speaker 3: don't have to, you know, one less thing for you
Speaker 3: to worry about.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, because when you're doing in cooperative, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so we need somebody to teach X, and it's like,
Speaker 1: is that me?
Speaker 2: I got to go.
Speaker 1: Bone up on this stuff now. And so with everything
Speaker 1: else that's happening in your life, you got go try
Speaker 1: to find that and enough depth to teach not on
Speaker 1: your kids, but other kids as well. That's I think
Speaker 1: a very valuable thing to have that. Having done it
Speaker 1: the other direction, I can certainly see the value in
Speaker 1: classical conversations, uh, and having that structure that is there.
Speaker 1: Now you're not looking to get any grants from the
Speaker 1: federal government, are you?
Speaker 2: No, thank you.
Speaker 3: We federal government, you know, is need to stay out
Speaker 3: of education, and so we don't want to get involved
Speaker 3: with them in any way.
Speaker 1: And because why they would come in and they would
Speaker 1: start altering your curriculum right away, wouldn't they If they're
Speaker 1: going to give you the money, they're going to dictate
Speaker 1: what you teach.
Speaker 3: An iron law of economics, that's the iron law of economics,
Speaker 3: and so you can't.
Speaker 2: The medium is the message.
Speaker 3: And so if the medium is that the government's going
Speaker 3: to pay for something, that's a collectivist message, especially when
Speaker 3: it's something the government has no business being involved in.
Speaker 3: And so it's of course students who go through twelve
Speaker 3: years of collectivist conditioning end up being bent in that direction.
Speaker 3: But that's what it takes, right It takes twenty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars a year for twelve years to get half of
Speaker 3: American generation to think collectivism is a good idea. So
Speaker 3: it just shows you how expensive this worldview is to
Speaker 3: how contrary to human nature it is, that it takes
Speaker 3: that level of effort to get the common man to
Speaker 3: embrace it. And so we have got to stop reinforcing
Speaker 3: that system as Christians and just get our kids out.
Speaker 3: And the more we get our own kids out and
Speaker 3: show people that you're going to live a much more
Speaker 3: flourishing life, your kids are going to be happier, your
Speaker 3: family's going to be happier that living on this consumerism
Speaker 3: hamster wheel of hedonism that is basically the American culture today,
Speaker 3: which leads to depression and among many other symptoms of
Speaker 3: this is just the rejection of God. And so we
Speaker 3: need to live our lives as the Bible commands us
Speaker 3: to live, and it says, teach your children daily my
Speaker 3: commandments so that they can live a good life. And
Speaker 3: you know, we need to get back to that in
Speaker 3: our country. And we had that for almost one hundred
Speaker 3: years in our country. It wasn't until eighteen fifty were
Speaker 3: the first public schools initiated. And it wasn't until nineteen
Speaker 3: hundred was there a public school in every state. And
Speaker 3: so it's possible to have educated populist without the government
Speaker 3: being involved at all, and we have almost one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty five years of history to prove it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, much better educated. As a matter of fact, I
Speaker 1: wonder how many of the kids in these schools, since
Speaker 1: they can't even read at grade level, how many of
Speaker 1: them could read Thomas Pain's Common Sense, And of course
Speaker 1: pretty much everybody was reading that back in the day.
Speaker 1: It's very very high literacy, right, And there are no
Speaker 1: schools involved except perhaps as you know, like a graduate
Speaker 1: school or something, somebody's going to go into a profession
Speaker 1: law or medicine or something like that. But it does
Speaker 1: go against the basic design of God, and we should
Speaker 1: always expect that there's going to be problems when we
Speaker 1: do that. You know, God has set up the family
Speaker 1: and he has done that in a loving way, and
Speaker 1: he's done that in a way that really works. And
Speaker 1: when we decide that we don't want to do it
Speaker 1: that way, we'd rather have the government do it that way.
Speaker 1: It's very much like what the Israelites did when they
Speaker 1: rejected Samuel and they said we want a king right
Speaker 1: and God said, well, they haven't rejected you, Samuel, They've
Speaker 1: rejected me. And so that's the issue is that parents
Speaker 1: have reeted what they have that is really a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful experience to be able to teach your kids.
Speaker 1: And you know, we had seen this and we met
Speaker 1: some wise people who are talking about it as we
Speaker 1: got into the beginning of this, and they talked about
Speaker 1: how well, you know, I've seen that when you have
Speaker 1: kids that are in school, they get bonded to their teachers,
Speaker 1: they get bonded to their fellow students in school. But
Speaker 1: when we teach in homeschool, I think they're bonded to
Speaker 1: their parents. They're bonded to their siblings as much as
Speaker 1: anything else. And of course they do get involved with
Speaker 1: people on the outside. And I could look at that.
Speaker 1: I could see that in my own life going through
Speaker 1: a school, that I did get bonded to teachers and
Speaker 1: to classmates and stuff like that. I didn't have any
Speaker 1: siblings that were my age, but I could see how
Speaker 1: that could be the case. And certainly that is and
Speaker 1: it's much better to go with God's plan.
Speaker 2: Always it always is.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the part where we need pastors
Speaker 3: to step up here in this country. I mean, you've
Speaker 3: got I mean, the statistics are horrendous, and so you know,
Speaker 3: we've got you know, Barnes says, somewhere about seventy three
Speaker 3: percent or maybe seventy eight percent of students who are
Speaker 3: in church regularly but go to public school are no
Speaker 3: longer practicing Christians just two years after graduating high school.
Speaker 2: And so you know, if.
Speaker 3: Jesus told the story of the good shepherd who went
Speaker 3: after one lost sheep, well what happens is when you're
Speaker 3: losing seventy three sheep. You know his pastors should be
Speaker 3: fearful of what they're going to say in the beam
Speaker 3: a Sikh if they have those statistics inside of their
Speaker 3: you know, inside of their you know, sheep, that they're
Speaker 3: that they're leading. And the same thing with parents, like,
Speaker 3: what are you going to say in the beam a Sikh?
Speaker 3: When God says, hey, I gave you these kids, this
Speaker 3: is one of the most precious gifts. I gave you,
Speaker 3: says that in the Bible, to raise them in the way.
Speaker 2: They should go. And for twelve years you turned them
Speaker 2: over to.
Speaker 3: A godless atheist education system, contrary to what I commanded
Speaker 3: you to do. And so many parents have probably never
Speaker 3: heard it framed that way. And that's because our many
Speaker 3: pastors in America are more afraid of the teachers' unions
Speaker 3: than they are of God. And I'm happy for any
Speaker 3: pastor to challenge me on that and preach the evils
Speaker 3: of the public school system this upcoming Sunday.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so many times it's about filling the pews
Speaker 1: rather than filling the hearts with truth, isn't it. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, it really is something it's not just responsibility
Speaker 1: of the parents. But it's something that pastors and leaders
Speaker 1: need to look at this and say, you know, what
Speaker 1: is happening to us and why is that happening. They
Speaker 1: don't seem to want to meet people where they are
Speaker 1: and to speak to the issues that are front and center,
Speaker 1: that are directly affecting them, give people some guidance, some wisdom,
Speaker 1: some discernment about what they're seeing in their everyday life. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, you know the woman at the
Speaker 1: well when Jesus says, well, let's talk about your life here.
Speaker 1: You know, you're living with this guy you're not married with,
Speaker 1: and you've had half a dozen other husbands or whatever,
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, you're a prophet. Let's talk about theology,
Speaker 1: and she changes the topic. And so it's really easy
Speaker 1: to talk about theology. It can be very uncomfortable if
Speaker 1: we talk about our own personal lives, can it, and
Speaker 1: how that all applies in our own lives. It's much
Speaker 1: easier and much more comfortable to talk about theology or
Speaker 1: to talk about prophecy or something like anything other than
Speaker 1: the stuff that is really killing us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the good thing is I think more pastors
Speaker 3: are waking up to this and getting bolder from the pulpit.
Speaker 2: But that's what we absolutely need.
Speaker 3: And then business people like these are your future customers,
Speaker 3: these are your future employees, Like this system is not
Speaker 3: helping you out. It is we are funding a system
Speaker 3: that is going to turn them against you so that
Speaker 3: you have higher taxes, more tape, more headaches, maybe even
Speaker 3: bankrupt you because you're, you know, not doing the right
Speaker 3: three letter acronym that's in vogue. And so businesses, you
Speaker 3: need to start scholarships for your kids, you know, employees,
Speaker 3: or don't to local private schools, or help local homeschool
Speaker 3: co ops or groups.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Give if your employee has a new baby, give them
Speaker 3: a book about education or teaching your child how to read.
Speaker 3: Because the nice thing is is there's not a complicated answer.
Speaker 3: It's just parents need to be discipling their kids. They
Speaker 3: need to be teaching them to read. The state will
Speaker 3: not teach you to read. They've proven that time and
Speaker 3: time again. You know, forty years ago, a parent would
Speaker 3: have been embarrassed to send their kid to public school
Speaker 3: without them being able to read.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Nowadays, parents will complain to the public school if your
Speaker 3: kid doesn't know how to read, but they're not going
Speaker 3: to do it. You've got to do it yourself, and
Speaker 3: so it requires sacrifice, and that if you can't homeschool today,
Speaker 3: then start reading with your kid every single night and
Speaker 3: making sure that they're able to think well and that
Speaker 3: you're deprogramming them because they are getting programmed every single
Speaker 3: day in that public school system.
Speaker 1: I just want to say too. You know, we look
Speaker 1: at parenting as a difficult job, no doubt about it,
Speaker 1: and there are difficult things like changing diapers and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, but it is the joy of having your
Speaker 1: child around. And that's what people who've homeschooled miss, you know,
Speaker 1: is the joy of being able to interact with them
Speaker 1: that way, and it really can be a joy. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, when you look at this, this
Speaker 1: is a job responsibility that's been given to you, but
Speaker 1: it is a joyful responsibility if you look at that.
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity to spend time with your children and
Speaker 1: to have a relationship with them when they get into
Speaker 1: their teens because you've been with them when they were younger,
Speaker 1: and it's about maintaining that relationship. I think that's the
Speaker 1: key thing. You know. Yeah, there's work involved, in it,
Speaker 1: but it's one of the most rewarding jobs that you're
Speaker 1: ever going to have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean everything in life that's worth doing is
Speaker 3: worth doing well and absolutely, like what have you ever
Speaker 3: accomplished in life? Like, the harder it was to accomplish,
Speaker 3: the more satisfaction it was, right, And you see that
Speaker 3: over and over again. I mean even like lottery winners, Right,
Speaker 3: lottery winners, they didn't accomplish anything. They have all this money,
Speaker 3: and what do they do. They go bankrupt, they get depressed,
Speaker 3: they commit suicide, like at a significantly higher rate.
Speaker 2: So they've achieved.
Speaker 3: Everything in life with no work, and they're miserable. Right,
Speaker 3: And so we got to also remember like that God
Speaker 3: created work before sin. He gave Adam and Eve jobs
Speaker 3: to do before Sin entered the world. So Sin entering
Speaker 3: the world only made work difficult. Work is actually part
Speaker 3: of our imago day, part of our reflection of our creator.
Speaker 3: And so part of the reason that the collective is
Speaker 3: hate work so much is because they know that that's
Speaker 3: a reflection of God in us and that if they
Speaker 3: are to destroy religion, they need to do everything they
Speaker 3: can to destroy that that ref and so that's why
Speaker 3: they're happy to dumb down the standards, you know, happy
Speaker 3: to have people that don't work in are on welfare
Speaker 3: you know, twenty four seven through sixty five for the
Speaker 3: rest of their lives because they know that all that
Speaker 3: is degrading to their humanity and makes them easier to
Speaker 3: control in the future based on whatever preferences they have.
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, I think I agree we're living it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I've interviewed David Bonson several times and he's written
Speaker 1: books about you know, your profession, that type of thing
Speaker 1: and son of Greg Bonson if people remember the Apologist,
Speaker 1: and that's the point he made, is that the same
Speaker 1: thing you've made the second person I've heard to make
Speaker 1: that point, and it's a very strong and important point.
Speaker 2: Work is not a curse.
Speaker 1: Work is part of who we are being, as you
Speaker 1: point out, in the image of God, and it's the
Speaker 1: It's what is the curse is the work being made difficult,
Speaker 1: which was a result of our rebellion as mankind. But
Speaker 1: work itself is a very fulfilling thing, and it's something
Speaker 1: that is in and of itself is good. And so
Speaker 1: we should not shy away, especially from the work that
Speaker 1: God has gifted us to do.
Speaker 2: If God has.
Speaker 1: Given you a child, then God will give you the
Speaker 1: ability to train that child and what they need to know.
Speaker 1: And there's no question about that. That's what he wants,
Speaker 1: and there is a tremendous reward and lining yourself up
Speaker 1: with what God wants. It always works that way, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: So it always does.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So your website is it Classical Conversations dot com
Speaker 1: or something like that?
Speaker 2: What is your way?
Speaker 3: Yeah, classical Conversations dot com. If you go to there
Speaker 3: and put in your zip code, I will connect you
Speaker 3: with a local homeschooling parent happy to answer any of
Speaker 3: your questions about Classical Conversations or just homeschooling in general.
Speaker 3: So we've got representatives across all fifty states in many
Speaker 3: countries around the world as well. And then you can
Speaker 3: find the book at Robert Bortons dot com or at
Speaker 3: Amazon dot com. You can find Woke and Weaponized How
Speaker 3: car Marks won the Battle for American Education and how
Speaker 3: we can win it back.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's great. Well, it's wonderful. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that your parents started the organization, but that's great that
Speaker 1: you're continuing the work. It's very important and I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people, as I said before, who did
Speaker 1: classical conversations, and they absolutely loved it, and so I
Speaker 1: would recommend it based on their experience. We never experienced it,
Speaker 1: but going if I had it to do over again,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I would go that way. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us again. Our guest is Robert Borden's
Speaker 1: and the book is woke and weaponized, how Carl Marks
Speaker 1: won the battle for American education and how we can
Speaker 1: win it back. That's the key thing. It's not just
Speaker 1: identifying a problem, but it's coming up with a solution
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for joining us, Robert, Thank you,
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: The common man. They created common Core and dumb down
Speaker 1: our children. They created common past track and control us.
Speaker 1: Their Commons project to make sure the commoners own nothing
Speaker 1: and the communist future. They see the common man as simple,
Speaker 1: unsophisticated ordinary. But each of us has worth and dignity
Speaker 1: created in the image of God. That is what we
Speaker 1: have in common. That is what they want to take away.
Speaker 1: Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation. They desire
Speaker 1: to know everything about us, while they hide everything from us.
Speaker 1: It's time to turn that around and expose what they
Speaker 1: want to hide. Please share the information and links you'll
Speaker 1: find at the Davidnightshow dot com. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing. If you can't support us financially,
Speaker 1: please keep us in your prayers. The Davidnightshow dot com