Everything's Political Season 5 Episode 5 - Sam Sorbo

Judiciary Act. But I digress. So John Tyler was our tenth president, and if you're unaware, he stepped up after William Henry Harrison perished after one month of being in office. He was the guy that didn't wear the coat, and he came down with pneumonia and quite literally caught his death. So John Tyler stepped up. He had been a Democrat but switched to the Whig Party to run as Harrison's vice president. And you know, John Tyler gets a lot of criticism, Joe, he gets not a lot from me.

But when people talk about John Tyler, they talk about him not doing anything noteworthy. And I have to shake my head because part of the conundrum in which we find ourselves is in large part due to the fact that elected employees get into office and think they have to do something.

really hate him. In fact, I think he was elected to the Confederacy the Confederate States, but died in eighteen sixty two before he was seated in that government. So interesting character, John Tyler. Give him a second look, will you? You know that we've got every president that wants to be the education president, that wants to be the defense president, that wants to be da da da da da. No, there might be things powers, not powers, but issues that

presidents have assumed. But I like to remind people that anyone who puts their hand on the Bible and swears to Almighty God to uphold and defend the Constitution. They have one job, and that is to keep us free from all the things that are going on now, Free from debt, free from scandal, free from big business, free from invasion. Government has allowed the very things it was instituted to keep free, or to keep us free from them. So again, give John Tyler a second look. I like

that he didn't do much. I want my government to do very little, and that's why I want it to be very little.

this wasn't education as I thought education should be. He wasn't being challenged, and I just really didn't like a lot of the things that I saw happening, including his

behavior that he was adopting from being in school. He was a very popular kid, and he started to sort of lord that over his younger siblings because they were stupid because they were younger, and you know, agism is taught in the classroom, and so I said to my husband, I think I could fail at homeschooling him and he would still be better off, which is really quite a statement, like he could end up dumb, but at least he'll

be a good person. But I actually believed that, and so I started homeschooling him and then his younger brother, So he was third grade, Shane was first grade. And it went pretty well for about a year, a year and a half and a year and a half in I just felt like I was just a failure. His younger brother was a little math with He finished first grade math on Halloween, so it took him what two months to do first grade, and then he was in

second grade, and then he moved to third grade. And by the time he was halfway through second grade, he was in fourth grade math. But he couldn't read very well. So I forced him to do the reading book over again, and you know, we did every lesson and even on vacation, and he still wasn't that good. And so I just

felt like a failure. So I put them into a little private Christian school, very small, where they really believed in rigorous academics, which is what I believed in, and they stay that it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Oh my gosh. Driving home from school that day when I dropped them off, And the funny thing is when I when I brought them in, the headmistress said, we're going to test him to make sure that we put him in with the right group of students. And so

she took Shane away and she tested him. She came back and she said, yeah, you're right, he's he's second grade. I said yeah. She said, well he is testing at a fourth grade math level, so you know, good for you, mom. And I had said to her, I told her he was remedial and reading he just really wasn't it just wasn't clicking. I don't know. She said, he is reading at a fifth grade level. And I looked at her and I said, so I'm the one with the problem. She was like, yeah, kind of.

school sends home with you. You're the teacher those two days and then they're the teachers the other three days of the week or whatever. And I would try to download their homework and it wouldn't download. You know, there

were always technical glitches. So it was the whole online learning thing was still new, and so it's not like I blame them that there were tech glitches, but why would call the teacher in the evening and I'd say, listen, I tried to download the homework and it just won't download, like I can't make it, you know, work, And her answer was always, well, then don't worry about it. Now wait a minute, hold on, because you assigned it. It has to be important. If it's not important, don't give

me the assignment, do you know what I'm saying? Like, it was just so frustrating, and so after six weeks, I was like, do you guys like school? And they were both like, no, Mommy, I was like, okay, we're gonna quit. And I brought him back home and that Monday, I put math down in front of Shane and he started crying and he said, I can't, Mommy, it's too hard. I can't do it, which was words that he had never spoken about math ever, and it broke my heart.

I was devastated. I was like, wow, they damaged him. And of course I didn't know how. I just had this boy who was melting down, afraid to do math. And so I pulled the math book away and I just very quietly, you know, closed it back up, put it to the side. I said, okay, let's do some grammar. Let's do some you know. A week later, I pulled the math book out again. I went back a couple chapters and I started from there and I said, hey, let's try this. No problem. He went right into it,

no problem. And so I realized. It took me a couple of years to realize in actually somebody coming up to me at a speaking event and saying to me, isn't it beautiful that God allowed you to make the mistake putting your children in that little school for six weeks to prove to you that you are enough. And that's my message for parents is God gave you your children. You are enough, and if you're not enough, he will equip you. If you don't have patience, he will equip you.

If you lack the skills, he will equip you. If you lack the knowledge, he will equip you somehow. But we have lost faith. We've lost faith in God. We've lost faith in ourselves because we went to school and we were trained to not have faith in ourselves. And we've lost faith in children that they are intrinsic learners. And so we not only have we lost faith in children, my goodness, our culture hates children. We hate children. We institutionalize them all day, we send homework home to make

them continue working even in the evenings. We deprive them of their childhoods. We abort them and celebrate it. We put them into gender studies and call it health care. And I'm just here to try to wake people up and say, you know, your children are precious gifts and you should do everything you can to protect them. And when you do that, the rewards are astonishing.

after their name and the Department of Education. People have all these degrees. And I like to say, after the last five years, Sam, I'm reminded that thermometers have a lot of degrees. And now I know why nurses stick them where they do for their most accurate readings. It's amazing to me the and I agree with you, the lack of faith in ourselves in of other things, and if we just put more money or more expensive schools. I had a friend that told me once we were

going too hard in our home school. You know, enjoy. It was great advice, it was timely advice. And she said, Taya, your kids learn just by being with you. Yes, you know, you're a history buff, you love math, you know, and our situation and is ironically very similar to yours and she said, things that you do with your children will matter.

actually it's infectious and dangerous. Children want to be like their adults. So I wrote a piece the other day that I can't remember where it was published, but it pointed out that children should have their parents' values and if they don't grow up with the parents' values, if they don't grow up and retain the values of the parents,

that's wrong. Like that is decidedly wrong. And of course we've seen that over the past several decades where the parents are like, yeah, my child's a liberal go figure. It's so weird. You know, it's not weird. It's that you didn't raise your child. It's that you sent your child to other authorities to have them pour out what

they wanted in the child. You gave the child a different adult as the curricula, because the idea is education of a child is simply bringing a child from childhood into adulthood so that the child can be a productive, loving, giving adult, right, And so there are many different paths to get there, just like there are many different paths

to find a job. So you know, you have to understand that just because school is the norm and people send their kids to school, a lot of people said, a lot of people are deep, and that doesn't mean you're going to jump off the cliff if everyone else jumps off the cliff, I would hope. So, you know, start thinking for yourself and stop thinking that you're incapable. That's what my book is about. It's about empowering the parents. It's it's you know, people say, well, what curriculum do

you recommend. I recommend the parent as the curriculum. Yes, there are curricula, by the way, and I have recommendations in the book also because there are curricula that I pursued that I just found to be an extreme blessing for the family and the kids, and I just think they're great they don't pay me. But I've reached a point. You know, I've got three grown kids now, and I was highly academic with the first two, and my third one is an artist. And I finally figured out that

it's not about academics. It's about the whole picture, and so academics are one part of the picture. But I heard Marissa Strait, the CEO of Prager, you say, and I've been quoting her at nausea. You can't teach academics without character. You must pour into the character of the child. And actually you must do it first, because a child doesn't understand what integrity and honor and all of those virtue, all those good things are will not be interested in academics.

But if you imbue the child with character, then you can say these are good things, and the child will go, well, I want to pursue good. Therefore I will pursue these things that you're telling me are good because it's in my interest.

and he was he's our math guy too. And finally I said, you know that, I'm sure your academics are fine. That is not my number one concern with our son. My number one concern is his soul.

can learn anything. And then when you give them the free time that they should have, right, they should have maybe three hours of academics, but the rest of the day should be basically free time to pursue things that are good and virtuous. Not video games for eight hours a day or whatever. Then you'll have a child that is deeply motivated to pursue the things that interest them. And that's what you want for your child. You know, raise up a child in the way he should go.

That proverb in Hebrew. The translation is much more like raise up a child to discover who he's meant to be. Inside basically, raise a child to be who God meant them to be, and then they will not depart from it because they will have found their calling in life. And so, you know, I want people to understand that we've been sold a bill of goods in our own schooling. We've been told that school is education. It's not. We've been told that education equals money, doesn't. We've been told

that money is the greatest value. It's not. And anybody who's lived a life will tell you that the most important thing to them are their relationships. Relationship is the number one and if you're not a good person, you will not have those relationships. And unfortunately, we've done a tremendous disservice in our culture. I love Erica Komisar is going around. I just interviewed her for my podcast. You

should have her on if you get an opportunity. She's talking about the zero to three of a child's life are the most important for learning how to bond and forming healthy relationships, and that when parents just subject their children to childcare at six weeks, I think it's child abuse, is what that is. It's not care. It's abuse that those children then grow up to have severe attachment deficient

like disabilities and disorders. And uh so we have a we have a bunch of walking zombies now because they never learned how to form solid relationships, which is again, which is another sort of chink in the armor of marriage and the destruction of marriage, the destruction of the family. And then those women when they have children, they don't even want to attach to the children. They hire a nanny or they send them to child care, and the

child's just an accessory. And it's this self perpetuating thing.

are not two attributes they would ascribe to homeschooling. So tell us a little bit. It's a labor of love, you describe it, So tell us a little bit about that.

The problem is we don't want to administer consequences. So that's where the hardship comes is. And the challenge is you. You have to be able to stick to your guns. You have to be able to lay down the law and make it stick. But you don't have to shout about it. It's you know, you can actually laugh about it. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry that you're not going to be able to go out tonight. You're supposed to do this thing and now you can't go with your friends,

or now you can't go to the movie or whatever. Right, But all you have to do is be be strong about it. Your no has to mean no. All my kids at one point wanted to quit piano. The answer was no, is that simple. No, I'm so sorry that's not going to happen. But mom, I'd rather play guitar. Guitar is a great instrument, yeah, and it's a really good accompaniment for piano, so you can study both of them at the same time. No, that's not what I wanted to do. So, you know, you just have to.

You have to, and you have to pick your battles. You have to pick which hills you need to die

on and which hills are just not worth fighting about. Yes, And when my daughter was in tenth grade, math had become very contentious between us, and so for her, math is more confusing, and the rules don't really at that point weren't really sticking, and so she was getting things wrong, and I was getting very frustrated because I I mean, at one point I thought she was just you know, toying with me, you know, I mean, it just got

it was too contentious. And so for tenth grade, I said to her, you know what, We're gonna let trigonometry go. There's just it's not worth it. There's no reason for me to provoke your anxiety, for you to provoke my aggravation. Life is too short, and frankly, I don't understand how important trigonometry really is for a budding artist. Now, did I at some point go, how is she ever going to make a living. Yeah, yeah, it takes a leap of faith. But God created an artist in her, and

she's she'll get it figured out eventually. And and by the way, the following year we went back to math. But will she ever get through calculus? Probably not. And you know what, that's okay. Much as I love calculus and I wish that all my kids love calculus like I do. They don't, but more they play piano a lot better than I ever did. So you know, there are these trade offs and you just have to figure out. You know, we aren't taught. There's so much that school

fails to teach that we need. For instance, discernment we don't learn discernment in school. Prioritizing we don't learn. In fact, schools teach us make pros and cons lists. Have you ever made a pros and cons list? You sit there with the two lists and you're going back and forth between the two, and you're like, but this doesn't get me any closer to a decision at all. When all you have to do is make a list of priorities. What's your number one priority. If that's a deciding factor,

there's your decision. If it's not go to number two. If that decides it, there's your decision. If not, you know, rinse and repeat. So there are these life skills that our schools fail to teach, and we don't even like recognize that they're missing. We don't say, oh, my gosh, I really should have learned that in school. You don't know what you're missing until it's until it's too late.

And the conclusion to which I came at the end of this, can't my people be artists? Can't God's people be artists? Can't? Of course they can't. Your family is living proof. And some of the dysfunction, I would say a lot of the dysfunction that we see in certain realms and society is because God's people left.

and so we need to go back. That's and that's partly what this book does is it goes back to impeach how you were taught, what you were taught a little bit, but more importantly, how how the management of the schooling for you, which informs what you think homeschool should be, and it impeaches that, and it teaches you what home education really should be and that it should be easy and fun. And you know, we need to give ourselves a break. We like the story that I

told you where I thought my son was remedial. What was my metric? I don't know, I just had in my mind, Well, he can't read well and he's in second grade. Shouldn't he be reading at a I don't know collegiate level by now, I don't. I have no idea why I had that idea in my head. Well that's not true. I know exactly why I had that idea in my head. The school put in these parameters,

these assumptions that these things are natural and necessary. It is natural and necessary for a five year old to leave his parents and go to a complete stranger every day, even though the parents have taught him out of tie his shoes, how to use a knife and fork, how to brush his teeth, how to wash his hands, how to get dressed in the morning. The parents have taught the child everything. All of a sudden, at age five, the parents are useless. Now we have to bring in

the expert. And the expert, by the way, is some twenty two year olds who just graduated from some Marxist training college who majored in behavior management somehow. That's the person needs to be teaching your child.

we've got it solved. It's an experiment. It's a failed experiment. It's time that we realize that it's a failed experiment. And if you don't mind, I want to take a few minutes to talk about school choice. Oh. Absolutely, they're disbanding the Department of Education. They're taking it down. That actually doesn't mean that much. So there won't be an entity called the Department of Education. Four thousand people in theory won't have jobs anymore, but the money will still

be going through the federal government. And so it's not really what we think it is. But at the same time, there's an initiative to promote school choice. And we have twelve or fourteen states now that have implemented some form of school choice. The rest of the states already have school choice, and the states that implemented school choice already had school choice because you do have the option to take your child to any school of your choice already.

But the new version of school choice that they are promoting and that they have installed in even in my state in Florida, is a form of voucher or ESA, education savings account or some kind of program where the parents have access to the money to fund the education of their child. Unfortunately, that money comes from the government, and whenever the money comes from the government, it is tinged. Yeah,

it is tinged. Now the promise in for instance, in Arizona and in Florida, actually I know these two states pretty intimately, it was no strings attached. You cannot have government money flowing with no strings attached. That's USAID, right, and look where that got it right. You must have strings attached, because otherwise it's taxation without representation. We fought

a whole war about that. So the idea that they could actually pull the wool over people's eyes and people would vote for yay, no strings attached like idiots is beyond me. But of course in year two strings were attached, and so in the state of Florida, the string was, oh, but we need to see the test results of your child.

I know one parent who was like, heck, no, I will not give you my child's data, because of course they're data mining and what homeschoolers have to understand, and I hope there are more and more homeschoolers, is when you take the government funds, you become no longer an independent homesore. You are now schooling with government funds. So

you are a government schooler. You're a public schooler. But the other thing that I want people to understand, and particularly parochial schools, Christian schools, religious schools of any kind, frankly, is when they take the money, they are no longer a private school. They become a government school. So school choice is not what you think is actually the opposite.

classical conversations. It's a Christian homes school will co op that organization will never will never ask for government accreditation. They don't want it. They do not want to be on the so they will not take the funds, so they will be out of business. So what this does is it pollutes all the private entities that will take the money and puts all the other private entities out of business. It is a full government takeover of schools. It is the exact opposite of what we are trying

to do with disbanding the Department of Education. It is actually going to make children's schools like our colleges today. And that's a scary thought, yes, because look at what the colleges have become, right right it useless.

aren't our property taxes going to my homeschool? So there are and lots of different versions that legislative state legislators are trying to pass, but it's all the same. And I just remind people government whether it's well intended or not. And I don't give government the judgment of charity ever they get.

and that makes me sad. But we have to be clear on this. And one of the things I just wrote another piece about this one of the moms that I know who took the money she needed to spend. You have to spend the whole amount before the end of the year.

your knees. Right when the church gets together, your community gets together to help you out. You're not going to take that money and go get a manicure, I would hope, right. But if the government cuts you a check, that's free money. That is found money. That is Disneyland tickets. And by the way, you can get tickets to Disneyland and Disney World.

Oh absolutely. And here's what's funny, Taya in the state of Arizona, because I was studying Arizona because they were one of the first states that did this no strings attached. In fact, I spoke to a legislative community, the Christian Legislator's community. Anyway, I spoke at one of their meetings, and after I finished speaking, the first guy who answered me was from Arizona, and he said, well, in Arizona, we have these great essays we just implemented there are

no strings attached. It's a great program. And I'm like, you literally didn't hear anything. I just said, okay, fine. Within a year or two, their tuition rates had shot up as much as forty percent in some schools, because when there's more money in the marketplace, the rates go up. That's just how it happens. It happened with our colleges. Okay. Now, if you try to search it online, it is very

hard to find evidence that tuition rates went up. So they are scrubbing the Internet of history to prove that Arizona is actually popular and successful. But also I want people to understand we because this is one of the things that we're not taught in school. Along with discernment, is understand defining our terms, understanding the terms that the people you are listening to, are using and their meanings, their definitions. So they say the program is immensely popular. Okay,

define popular, successful, define successful. Their definition of success is parents love it. But that is not what we would define success as we would define success as test scores for kids are rising, right, literacy is improving. Those are definitions of success or popularity.

the state capitol that homeschoolers are always a target. We've just not gotten to them yet. Yes, and so it's like we know they're coming. So it was a blessing and a curse because I knew I had to pay attention from that moment on.

things about school choice? And I'm assuming there are resources for parents that are new or just starting out.

my children? What is what is their highest aim? And that's the point of the book is to really gets you to consider and help you to understand that you are infinitely capable in raising your child yourself, getting them an education and embark and helping them to embark on a successful life. That's what it's about. It's not about Goldman Sachs, Harvard University or whatever. It's about how to have a successful life. And you know, I mean, look, we've come so far. We used to we used to

be families. Dad worked at home because we were we were carpenters or locksmiths or plumbers or whatever, cabinet makers, right, And the kids always saw Dad because he was right there, and Mom helped, and then the kids helped and then right. So, okay, we're more sophisticated than that now, but we can go

back to some of that and the kids can. When I first started homeschooling, the first thing that my husband noticed was that he had more time to spend with the kids because he traveled a lot, and he traveled a lot on weekends and that was their time off from school. And so he noticed that, my gosh, when he was home and by the way, when he was home, he'd grab the kids and take him to Costco, or he'd you know, during the day, any time of day,

like they were free, and they weren't. They weren't just free. They had things that we were doing. But I could free up their time at any particular time so that they were free for him. And I mean that just forged a great relationship for him with the kids. But the standard family today, dad goes off to work. The kids have no idea what he does for a living. Literally,

they never get to know their father. Basically, they know him as maybe maybe he's the baseball coach or the little league coach or whatever, you know, like maybe there's a little bit of that, but it's the disintegration of the family, and it shouldn't be. Kids need their dads, and they need their moms, and they need us more

than we we tend to imagine in this culture. And so I mentioned Erica Coomasar, but there's also sorry doctor Leonard Sachs who talks about this, and he says he's on a crusade, you know, skip the playdate, do a family date instead. He's saying children need their parents a lot more than we credit them with, especially teenagers, he says. So when your teenager says, I want to invite Sally, my best friend, on our vacation, the answers no, the

vacation is for the family. Those are his. That's his view, right, which of course I fully support because I'm a homeschooler and the family is for the family all day long, every day. And if you want to take some time and go see Sally, that's fine, but you know, keep your family close, protect them, and they will love you for it.

So I was just talking to a friend of mine and she decided for her kids that they could pick the science unit that they were going to do. She said, whatever science you decide that's the science that will do this year, and one of her kids said botany, and she was like, oh my gosh, I kill every plant I've ever had. This would be the worst thing. She was so dreading it. But the kids chose botany. All the kids were on board, so they started with botany.

She's like, Sam, did you know that flowers have male and female parts? And I'm saying to you, everything is more interesting in the details, so just dive in. If your child is interested in it, you you owe it to them to feign an interest, and if you feign the interest, you will get the interest in the details.

And if one of the goals of education is to produce productive human beings out in the world, certainly you know that will that will aid them in doing so.

you go check that out. I'm going to get a copy and share that with people I know who are considering homeschooling, and if you are a parent with grown children who are considering that lifestyle as well, I would highly recommend that book. I'm just very grateful for the time and effort that she put into that. You know, it's consistent. She's a producer, she just produces great content, all right. I also want to echo her point about school choice. We've had both Lee and Robert Borton on

the show and warning about the same thing. Look, there are always strings attached with government money. It makes sense, right, I mean, we would like oversight with more of our money. This is one of the things Doze is exposing that there hasn't been any oversight, So we do want oversight of taxpayer dollars. The question becomes how much of our taxpayer dollars actually go to the intended targets and are

they used to buy or bribe or blackmail somebody. But the school choice line about no strings attached, if we don't know by now that that is a bald face lie, then we've learned nothing, especially after the last five years.