Everything's Political Season 3 Episode 31 - Robert Bortins - Classical Conversations : Proven Christian homeschool program - podcast episode cover

Everything's Political Season 3 Episode 31 - Robert Bortins - Classical Conversations : Proven Christian homeschool program

Dec 06, 202344 min
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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

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