Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1238 ｜ Homeschooling： LGBTQ Activists’ Latest Conquest ｜ Robert Bortins

00:00:00.540 Is wokeness weaving itself into homeschool curriculum?

00:00:05.360 Also, what's the truth about school choice?

00:00:07.700 It's not only progressives who are against it.

00:00:11.480 And why are private Christian schools allowing their kindergartners to use iPads in the classroom

00:00:19.540 and at home?

00:00:20.960 We are analyzing all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:25.300 We are joined by Robert Bortens, who is the CEO of Classical Conversations.

00:00:30.680 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:33.420 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:00:34.760 Use code Allie at checkout for a discount.

00:00:36.780 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:48.340 Robert, thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

00:00:51.160 For those who may not know, can you tell us who you are and what you do?

00:00:53.800 Well, thanks for having me, Allie.

00:00:55.460 And yeah, I was homeschooled through high school, got an industrial engineering degree

00:00:59.200 from Clemson University, worked at a couple of Fortune 50 companies before coming home

00:01:04.460 to work with my mom, Lee, who I know she's been on the show before and help her run our

00:01:09.200 homeschooling company called Classical Conversations.

00:01:12.320 So yeah.

00:01:13.360 Tell us about Classical Conversations.

00:01:15.480 Yes.

00:01:15.740 Because there's a lot of, I've realized there's a lot of homeschool curriculums out there.

00:01:19.480 So what is different about Classical Conversations?

00:01:22.340 Yeah.

00:01:22.980 So Classical Conversations was fundamentally different from the start, where it was created

00:01:27.680 by homeschool moms for homeschool moms using the classical method.

00:01:32.500 It started in 1997 in our family's basement, and it really revolves around community.

00:01:38.280 So once a week, students are getting together with a trained parent tutor and going over the

00:01:44.240 curriculum together in a group.

00:01:45.880 And it's based on a Christian worldview, and unapologetically so. 1.00

00:01:49.180 And we really believe that God created the world, so everything is reflective of His nature.

00:01:55.400 And so we don't necessarily have a separate Bible class.

00:01:58.400 We think, you know, churches and families are taking care of that.

00:02:01.300 But we believe two plus two equals four reflects God's nature, that history reflects His timeline

00:02:06.840 for humanity and His goodness to us, and science, biology, language, all of those things are incorporated

00:02:15.000 in knowing God and to make Him known.

00:02:17.480 And that's our mission.

00:02:19.080 Yes.

00:02:19.800 Okay.

00:02:21.120 Wokeness and homeschool.

00:02:22.740 Yeah.

00:02:23.160 You've been talking about this.

00:02:24.700 So homeschool used to be seen as this bubble.

00:02:27.920 Like the secular media would probably have said it's just fundamentalists who do homeschooling.

00:02:33.040 And then, of course, it expanded a lot after 2020.

00:02:35.600 But still, most people think of homeschoolers as hardcore Christians, maybe some Catholics

00:02:41.840 and Mormons.

00:02:43.220 But you're saying that progressivism is now infiltrating homeschool curriculum.

00:02:47.500 So what does this look like?

00:02:49.500 Yeah.

00:02:49.800 Well, first of all, you know, I think God's design for all of humanity is for you to educate

00:02:54.800 your own children.

00:02:55.740 So I'm very glad that secular non-Christians are homeschooling. 1.00

00:02:59.020 Um, but as that's taken, you know, taken, uh, place, a lot of the homeschool, uh, kind

00:03:06.180 of pioneers who maybe create this curriculum don't have people to pass it on to.

00:03:10.960 So they're selling it to like PE companies or, or larger organizations.

00:03:15.120 And they're secularizing the curriculum that, you know, you might be at a rely on like 10

00:03:20.880 years ago.

00:03:21.420 Suddenly gets sold to a secular organization like Pearson and they're changing the curriculum

00:03:25.720 up.

00:03:26.480 Uh, you've got, uh, yeah, the, the earlier on when people who weren't Christians homeschooled,

00:03:32.040 they could only really find other Christians.

00:03:34.120 Uh, now there's, uh, you know, more and more resources being put, put into there and, um,

00:03:39.880 not necessarily a bad thing, but when you got Christian curriculum, that's, uh, has been

00:03:44.900 watered down in some instances to expand the market.

00:03:48.100 Um, you know, homeschooling parents can't just, um, kind of naively think if they're going

00:03:53.740 to a co-op or going to a homeschool event that they're going to have their worldview being,

00:03:58.720 being shaped there.

00:03:59.740 And I think, um, you know, from a, uh, like for us, like we used to use a curriculum called

00:04:05.920 Saxon math and it was very good.

00:04:09.400 It wasn't necessarily biblical, but it was classic, classical and, um, was written by a

00:04:14.560 Christian. He, he gets older, he wants to retire. He sells it to Pearson, which is a

00:04:20.360 billion dollar publicly traded company. Well, they don't want to have those same ideas. They

00:04:26.220 want to have their curriculum lined with common core, no child left behind or whatever the

00:04:31.680 latest government edicts are. And so they basically make a homeschool curriculum of the

00:04:36.660 old version and then just use the branding for the new one. Uh, meanwhile, they're jacking

00:04:41.540 up the prices for homeschooling curriculum because they don't want to maintain it and really want

00:04:46.460 to just drive that out. And so you just got to be very careful, um, that as, as homeschooling

00:04:52.840 expands, that these, uh, ideologies, um, are going to start creeping in. And I think that's

00:04:59.100 going to have a possibility for just negative outcomes for the homeschooling space in general,

00:05:04.580 if we aren't like wide eyed on what's going on. Yeah. I think a lot of, um, a lot of parents just

00:05:13.400 assume that all homeschool curriculum is created equal. And I know some popular curriculum out there

00:05:21.880 that is not explicitly Christian that a lot of Christians kind of believe is Christian or they

00:05:28.260 just like it because it's easier. And obviously you like classical conversations as you should,

00:05:35.020 but like, what should parents be looking for if they want to be discerning and choosing the right

00:05:41.240 methods for their kids? Yeah. I mean, I think, um, you know, one of the big things in the homeschool

00:05:47.980 space is, uh, is our net as convention. So each state has a homeschool convention that you can go to

00:05:53.820 and kind of read the material, talk to the vendors, uh, you know, try to understand what their worldview

00:05:59.560 is and what the speaker's worldview view is as well. Um, just, uh, I mean, honestly, like just see

00:06:08.360 if that homeschool curriculum had been sold to a PE firm or someone else recently, because it might be

00:06:13.420 that one year it was very biblical and then they're slowly over the next couple of years going to make

00:06:18.700 it very secular. Um, you know, really like you got to have that conversation that you didn't have to

00:06:25.600 have before as well as a Christian that when you talk to someone, like I was talking to a friend and

00:06:30.980 they went to a homeschool field trip and they're expecting it to be like, uh, you know, kind of a

00:06:36.940 young earth creation worldview, biblical worldview, uh, event. And it was being put on by secular

00:06:43.780 evolutionists. And so, you know, they paid for it and went to this event and really got, uh,

00:06:51.240 an education in why they needed to do more research before just blindly thinking everything

00:06:55.800 in the homeschool space is a Christian. So, um, yeah, I think the, that's going to be really big

00:07:03.260 because believe me, the secular, uh, humanists definitely want to sell you, uh, homeschooling

00:07:09.440 curriculum. And so it's really important to understand, uh, worldviews and how they view

00:07:15.220 everything because even secularists can sprinkle in Bible verses, right? Even Satan sprinkles in Bible

00:07:21.340 verses, uh, to try to confuse Christians. And he does it so very successfully. So you really got to 0.98

00:07:29.100 understand that education itself is not neutral. So it's almost going back to that same public school

00:07:35.060 conversation that we've been having is, uh, not some of these say, you know, Christ is Lord and

00:07:41.340 he's coming again. And some of them do not. And so not only do you want to make sure that you have a

00:07:47.560 strong, good curriculum designed for homeschoolers, but one that is going to, um, make your job easier

00:07:55.380 as a parent, uh, with discipling your kids and not one that's going to, you know, just be a couple

00:08:00.280 degrees off. Yeah. Um, this was reported in national review just last month, um, that wokeness is 1.00

00:08:07.780 infiltrating homeschooling. Homeschooling in the U S has doubled since 2020, partly as parents seek to

00:08:13.120 escape public schools, inclusion of things like critical race theory, gender theory, but the

00:08:17.820 Virginia homeschoolers on convention in Richmond, Virginia featured sessions like all history is

00:08:23.060 queer history led by a transgender rights activist showing a shift towards progressive topics. Other

00:08:28.420 sessions at the unconvention included talks on forms of decoloniality and resolving unexamined

00:08:34.940 experience experiences with bias and oppression. Now I don't understand why someone who believes this

00:08:41.260 wouldn't just send their kids to public school. I mean, you can get that kind of thing for free,

00:08:45.660 right? Unless they think it's not radical enough. Yeah, no, you can definitely get all of that in

00:08:50.560 public school. Um, you know, possibly with, uh, you know, Trump being elected a second time and

00:08:55.880 people, you know, some of his things trying to get that out of public school right now, no more boys

00:09:01.500 and girls bathrooms, like things that are just common sense to 90% of America. Uh, you know, these people 1.00

00:09:07.420 are trying to rat keep their kids and radicalize them, uh, outside of the system. And so, uh, yeah, wokeness

00:09:15.120 is, is every, is everywhere. Um, and you know, that's going to be one of the things I'm afraid that they're

00:09:21.880 going to use to try to, um, put more regulations on homeschooling because they're going to say,

00:09:27.260 you know, as much as the left wants to say fundamental Christians are, uh, you know,

00:09:32.600 abusing their kids, right. Then the right can say the same thing about, you know, about this. We see

00:09:38.280 a lot in Europe too, with like the Muslims wanting to homeschool in Great Britain. And, um, obviously 0.99

00:09:43.540 there's all sorts of terrible things going on in the UK, uh, because when you have religions that 1.00

00:09:49.860 don't respect the, uh, women and children, like Christianity, you've get, you get terrible 0.99

00:09:55.700 outcomes. And so Christianity, you're saying like Christianity does. Yeah. Christianity does

00:10:01.280 respect women and children. But when you have ideologies like Islam don't, then yeah, a lot 0.97

00:10:06.300 of problems. And that's why a lot of European countries, they have compulsory education, public

00:10:11.680 education starting at age three. I mean, and this actually predates the Muslim migration that we've

00:10:17.360 seen in, you know, the like Nordic countries, but a lot, I mean, they're very explicit. Like

00:10:22.880 these crazy Christians out there, we don't want them bucking the system. And they think our system 1.00

00:10:28.880 works based on the idea of the common good and collectivism. And if someone is not teaching

00:10:33.880 that, then that's a problem. So they get them when they're three years old. And then in France,

00:10:37.740 they're trying to ban homeschooling altogether. Maybe they actually did because of the Muslims 1.00

00:10:43.500 and they are trying to de-radicalize them. But remember the, so the, the Prussian model,

00:10:49.060 which was imported to the U S predated Germany, predated Hitler. The only, my understanding is

00:10:55.020 the only, uh, law on the books that Hitler signs still in Germany is outlawing homeschooling.

00:11:01.280 And so, uh, you know, the, when, when Christians especially showed that homeschooling worked 0.95

00:11:08.500 academically, uh, just, uh, made, made it so that there was just good humans, uh, you know,

00:11:15.200 the psychologically doing well, it's not surprising that secular, uh, humanists want that same thing

00:11:21.320 for their kids. Cause they do love their kids, right? That's one of the innate things that, uh,

00:11:25.000 God gave us as a, you know, common grace. And so, uh, you know, it's, I'm glad they're homeschooling,

00:11:32.480 um, but you know, they're going to continue that same kind of indoctrination that we're seeing,

00:11:37.860 seeing there. And so it's, it's a completely different worldview. Um, you know, that, uh,

00:11:44.160 that, that the United States is bad. We're not perfect. Right. But that it's not surprising if

00:11:49.860 we're a Christian country that they're trying to bring these ideas into the homeschooling movement.

00:11:54.980 Um, and so if we're not, uh, diligent on this, uh, vigilant on it, um, diligent and vigilant on it,

00:12:04.840 that, uh, it can creep in and that parents have to be eyes wide open because, um, it, it can be a

00:12:13.320 scary, scary proposition. Um, especially as we see, yeah, just other worldviews trying to corrupt

00:12:23.800 what, you know, Christians have founded.

00:12:31.820 Okay. Y'all share the arrows is just a few weeks away. If you have not gotten your tickets yet,

00:12:36.440 come on, it's time. What are you waiting for? Bring your small group, bring your Bible study,

00:12:40.360 bring your sister, bring your in-laws, bring your friends. It's going to be an amazing

00:12:44.380 conference. This is a Christian women's conference on October 11th in Dallas, Texas. Y'all last year,

00:12:49.580 we had 4,000 women singing together, learning together, being encouraged together, being

00:12:54.000 challenged together. It was incredible this year. I am praying for something that is just as powerful.

00:12:59.900 It is already going to be even bigger than last year, which is just amazing. Thanking God for that,

00:13:06.060 but we want as many women to be there as possible. So come on, go to share the arrows.com. You can see 1.00

00:13:12.920 our speaker lineup, which is just the best anywhere. Lisa Childers, Ginger Duggar Volo. We've got a

00:13:18.540 motherhood panel with Abby Halberstadt and Hillary Morgan Ferrer. We've got a biblical health panel with

00:13:23.240 Shauna Holman, Taylor Dukes. We've got one of your faves, Katie Faust. And of course, Francesca

00:13:27.640 Battistelli is back with us leading worship. And I will close out the day with my speech, y'all. It's

00:13:32.440 going to be so good. This year's share the arrows is brought to you by Carly Jean Los Angeles.

00:13:36.400 Go to share the arrows.com. Get your tickets today. Before we get into that, the rest of that episode,

00:13:42.180 I want to tell you about We Heart Nutrition. This is the company that I rely on for all of my

00:13:47.560 vitamins. Love it so much. I use their postnatal vitamin, their magnesium, super important. It

00:13:54.220 creates a restfulness and peace. It's good for your bones, omega-3s. I use their iron supplement,

00:14:01.480 which has been super effective for me. I'm traditionally anemic and this actually works.

00:14:06.420 My body absorbs it really well. And that's the thing about all We Heart Nutrition products.

00:14:11.180 They use the best, highest quality ingredients so that your body can actually use what is in these

00:14:18.340 supplements and process them and then benefit the parts of the body that these ingredients

00:14:24.100 actually benefit. Everything comes in its most bioavailable form. Jacob and Kristen are the real

00:14:29.680 deal. This is a family-owned company. They completely, unapologetically love the Lord. They donate so

00:14:36.380 much of their sales to pregnancy centers across the country. So they put their money where their heart

00:14:41.680 is. You will not regret buying all of your supplements from We Heart Nutrition. Go to

00:14:46.380 weheartnutrition.com. Use promo code Allie. You'll get 20% off your order. That's weheartnutrition.com,

00:14:52.260 code Allie. 1.00

00:14:52.940 There are a lot of people out there who maybe they're new to the podcast or maybe I just haven't

00:15:02.260 persuaded them yet who don't really believe that there's that big of a difference between public

00:15:08.320 education, secular education, and Christian education, not just homeschooling. This is probably

00:15:14.520 one of the subjects that I get the most pushback on. They'll say, well, it doesn't matter until high

00:15:20.180 school, or it only matters in Bible class and I'm doing Bible discipleship at home. Math, science,

00:15:28.560 history, all of those things are just objective reality, has nothing to do with theology. Believe

00:15:35.020 it or not, Christians tell me that pretty regularly. So how should we be actually thinking about that?

00:15:41.640 Yeah. So, I mean, most people probably have heard of John Dewey and Horace Mann, and I know—

00:15:47.180 A lot of people haven't, though. So if you can tell us. Yeah, talk about the Frankfurt School,

00:15:51.200 but actually there's someone before that, Robert Owen, and he wanted to kind of abolish the

00:15:57.240 three trinity—the trinity of evil, he called it, which was private property, religion, and marriage.

00:16:05.120 Robert Owen. Robert Owen. And when was this? Was this—

00:16:07.660 1812, 12-ish.

00:16:10.300 A lot of weird things happened in the 19th century with people's ideas of religion and philosophy. Of

00:16:17.080 course, Karl Marx was after that, I believe, but around that time.

00:16:21.140 Yeah, so he actually influenced—he tried to do it here in the United States, bring public education,

00:16:26.460 because he saw that if he could mold the minds of young people, he would be able to change their

00:16:31.900 ideas on that. And it didn't take flight here. It took flight in Prussia, which is—a lot of people

00:16:38.540 don't know what Prussia is. They heard it's a Prussian school or Frankfurt school. That's

00:16:41.980 Germany pre-World War I. And they had just lost a battle, and they didn't want to lose any more

00:16:48.000 wars. And so they basically conscripted all the young people into public schools to make them good

00:16:54.000 warriors, obey the king instead of their own parents. So his ideas got legs there. Then really,

00:17:01.320 Karl Marx expanded on that with free public education for everyone, the 10th plank of the

00:17:06.160 Communist Manifesto. And then Horace Mann and then John Dewey brought it here. After World War I and

00:17:13.500 II, a lot of the German thinkers actually came to the Columbia Teachers College. That Teachers College

00:17:19.140 basically influences the teachers' colleges in every single university, even a lot of Christian

00:17:24.220 universities. And so it all goes back to the root of the three ideas of abolishing private property,

00:17:31.560 right? You're going to own nothing and you're going to love it, right? Marriage, which we see that as

00:17:36.660 being on the decline in the United States, right? And religion. You know, Barna says what about three

00:17:42.400 or five percent of Americans now have a biblical worldview. And so the public school has been

00:17:47.820 very successful at the founders' ideas. It's never been about educating young people. It's all about

00:17:54.500 a different discipleship program and importing it into the United States. And so American families in

00:18:00.640 1850s to 1900s, when this was actually being implemented, the public school system actually

00:18:05.680 fought against it. And, you know, because of World War I and World War II and the, you know,

00:18:11.720 just the fathers being taken out of the home and the mothers having to go work in the factories,

00:18:16.480 that was when it really took hold here in the United States. And then in the 50s, of course,

00:18:22.100 they took prayer out of public school. And it's just been downhill ever since.

00:18:27.020 And the rise of the teachers unions, too, starting in what, the 1960s and 70s. I mean,

00:18:32.140 that kind of fundamentally changed not only the authority structure in the family, which is what

00:18:38.460 you just alluded to. Now families are delegating discipleship to the state thinking, well, I know

00:18:44.280 these teachers. They go to my Sunday school class, so I'll just let them do it. But then the authority

00:18:49.600 went out of the hands of even the local schools and on the state level into the hands of these teachers

00:18:54.880 unions, which have always been extremely secular and progressive, right?

00:19:00.500 Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, the teachers union started out of the Columbia Teachers College.

00:19:05.300 Right.

00:19:05.760 And that mindset, which is the mindset of destroying the family, destroying religion, 0.97

00:19:10.760 and destroying private property.

00:19:12.420 Yes.

00:19:12.580 And you can see the fruit of it in the United States today.

00:19:14.920 We're $36 trillion in debt. You know, more babies are almost being born out of wedlock than

00:19:20.280 in wedlock. You know, divorce rates are extremely high. And church attendance may have bottomed out.

00:19:26.500 You know, we're starting to see some good things of men returning to churches and things like that.

00:19:31.800 But I mean, to say that we took basically in the last 100 to 125 years of our society,

00:19:38.300 the introduction of public education has been wildly successful.

00:19:42.600 Yeah. Interestingly, you were the second guest in the past couple of weeks who has talked about

00:19:47.020 the connection between the Frankfurt School, Karl Marx, and all of the communists of the 19th and

00:19:53.100 early 20th century to the Columbia Teaching College, that many of those communists and

00:20:00.920 collectivists fled Germany at the time. They came over to America, found refuge in the Ivy

00:20:07.040 leagues here in the United States, which, of course, took a while to take root, some of their

00:20:12.480 ideas. But you're saying because those communistic, blatantly communistic ideas, they took root in a

00:20:20.440 place like Columbia Teaching College. The vehicle for the mass importation of communistic ideas has

00:20:25.620 been the public education system via training the teachers, right?

00:20:29.080 Yeah. No, absolutely. And the point from the beginning is to get rid of Christianity in the United States. 0.96

00:20:34.680 What is that? Like, do we know why Robert Owen, why he hated Christianity? Why did he like or

00:20:41.140 dislike that unholy, evil trinity so much?

00:20:44.500 Yeah. I mean, from my understanding, because there's a lot of just learning the research now,

00:20:49.640 is just he had a Lutheran father, but he converted because of different things that are going on in

00:20:56.080 the society where he was coming from. And so he just saw religion as evil. And of course,

00:21:02.680 you know, the devil and the spirits are always looking for someone who's, you know, willing to be

00:21:07.940 an accomplice to their ends. And so, you know, whether it had been Robert Owen or someone else,

00:21:15.540 you know, the fact that America was founded on Christian principles, we've always been a target of,

00:21:20.540 you know, the devil and trying to corrupt what God has established. And so, I mean, that's really

00:21:27.000 where it comes from. And the communists, you know, they actually believe that their ideas,

00:21:30.840 if it's just implemented correctly, this one time would, you know, deliver utopia.

00:21:37.280 Yeah. And what Robert Owen said was that, you know, that the family and that the religion was

00:21:43.580 stopping this utopia from being created. And the same thing that Karl Marx saw in the communists.

00:21:49.300 And so it's all about, you know, the seven deadly sins, right? You know, envy, greed, all of these

00:21:56.480 things, wanting to have stuff that you didn't earn that we saw, you know, from the beginning with the

00:22:03.260 devil himself. And so it's a, it's a anti-God. Communism is anti-God. And since we're a Christian

00:22:10.300 nation and his devil's got his side on us.

00:22:19.100 Next sponsor is Good Ranchers. If you are not getting your beef, your seafood, your chicken,

00:22:27.440 your seed oil-free chicken nuggets from Good Ranchers, what are you doing? I can't believe

00:22:31.860 that you are still going to the grocery store and you are picking out these items that are less

00:22:37.760 quality and probably not made in America and probably severely affected by inflation. Don't

00:22:44.220 you want to just not have to worry about that? You get a box of high quality, all American meat on dry

00:22:49.740 ice to your front door every month with Good Ranchers. It's a great way to make sure that you're 0.76

00:22:54.160 getting healthy food, that you're getting enough protein, and you just don't have to think about it

00:22:58.800 anymore when you subscribe. Plus, when you subscribe, they'll do a free add-on of whatever

00:23:03.160 bag of meat that you want for the entire lifetime of your subscription. You save so much money.

00:23:08.380 Plus, use my code Allie, you get an extra $40 off. That's goodranchers.com slash Allie code Allie. 0.99

00:23:19.060 Bree, my producer just messaged me that Owen believed, as you said, that religion and family

00:23:24.480 trapped people in ignorance and selfishness, which that selfishness aspect is interesting. Of course,

00:23:31.720 Marx believed that religion is the opiate of the masses. So same idea there. You're not seeing how

00:23:37.520 oppressed you really are, how angry and envious you really need to be because you've got Christianity or 0.99

00:23:44.320 you've got religion lulling you into a false state of security. But the fact that Owen believed that

00:23:52.500 Christianity and family keeps us selfish means, what I think he means by that is that Christianity 1.00

00:24:01.640 has, instead of seeking the so-called common good or the forced equality that communism guarantees,

00:24:12.440 you're looking out for your community, your children, your property. And he wanted to take that from

00:24:19.800 people. He wanted to be able to say, you don't have any inherent rights to private property or your

00:24:26.640 children or your own ideas. It has to be, everything has to be for the good of the collective. And you

00:24:32.180 can see how Christianity with thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not covet, honor your father and mother

00:24:37.700 is in direct opposition to communist ideology.

00:24:41.040 Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, Christians got to be very careful because this ideology is creeping 0.99

00:24:50.160 into the church, mainstream church, starting to creep into homeschooling as homeschooling becomes

00:24:57.640 more mainstream because, yeah, if the government can provide everything, if the government can force

00:25:02.940 someone else to do the work for me, then why should I do it myself? And of course, you know,

00:25:09.240 we believe in Imago Dei, that we were made in the image of God versus evolutionists believe that

00:25:14.920 we're just a little bit greater than apes. And so it's a totally different mindset on how we approach

00:25:21.220 education, how we approach one another. And, you know, you know, obviously capitalism has lifted more

00:25:27.860 people out of poverty than ever before. You know, my grandparents and my wife's grandparents both

00:25:33.540 escaped, you know, communist and socialist countries during World War II. So we know like how oppressive

00:25:39.240 it can be in our family genes. Yeah. And yes, when you when you go away from God's design for the

00:25:47.740 family, you just get bad outcomes. And that's why hundreds of millions of people have been killed

00:25:52.720 from communism and why, you know, communism still survives today because, you know, the Satan was

00:26:00.280 envious of God from the beginning. And so we see the fruit of that throughout everyone who rejects

00:26:08.800 Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Yeah. The roots of communism are rotten and the fruits of

00:26:14.340 communism are rotten. But I would argue that's the same for our public education system. Now, I'm not

00:26:18.900 saying that everyone who graduated from public high school is rotten or that they themselves didn't

00:26:23.440 have a good education or that they're not strong Christians. You know, I know strong believers

00:26:27.740 today who went to public school, kindergarten through 12th grade. I know people who are apostates who

00:26:33.700 went to Christian school with me, kindergarten through 12th grade. So to me, I've always said,

00:26:37.980 like, it's not about guaranteeing the outcomes for your child. It's about obedience and proper

00:26:43.780 stewardship. And if we are tasked as parents to steward and shape our child's heart and mind in

00:26:50.640 obedience to Christ, then how are we most effectively going to do that? By ourselves and other Christians

00:26:58.240 discipling them for 40 plus hours a week? Or people who don't believe in God or maybe outright hate God

00:27:04.880 discipling our kids for 40 hours a week? At best, they're getting an unbiblical education at a secular 1.00

00:27:09.980 school. At worst, it is blatantly hostile and anti-biblical. And I've kind of seen people realize

00:27:16.280 this since COVID, since BLN stuff in 2020, to their credit, I've gotten a lot of people who

00:27:22.580 totally probably like lambasted me after your mom was on my show and just was like, I can't believe

00:27:28.100 this is privilege, whatever. After 2020, I got a lot of messages being like, oh, I thought it could

00:27:33.920 never happen at my school. I live in, you know, Southern Alabama. I live in Texas. And it happened.

00:27:39.780 And okay, I realize, I realize now what you're saying. Well, they have the teachers, no matter

00:27:45.780 how good hearted they are, they have to teach whatever the school district's telling them to

00:27:49.840 teach. And if they don't, they're going to get fired. And so, you know, that's why a lot of public

00:27:55.520 school teachers homeschool their own kids or send them to private school at a significantly higher rate

00:27:59.900 than the rest of society, because they see what's going on. I mean, my wife, before we got married,

00:28:05.220 taught at a Title I school for 10 years. And so you can love the child as much as you want,

00:28:11.360 but she saw almost 200 children a day. Like, there's just not, it's hard enough for us to

00:28:15.540 love the three children we have on a daily basis and give them everything they need in that

00:28:20.200 intentionality. And so public school is definitely a discipleship program, and it's a discipleship

00:28:26.260 in anti-religion, anti-family, and anti-private property. And more young people today believe socialism

00:28:33.400 is a good thing than not. Yeah. So it's working. It's working. Public school is wildly successful.

00:28:40.420 That's what people need to understand. Yeah. It's just its goals and the goals of your family

00:28:45.420 are probably diametrically opposed. Yeah. Can we talk about SEL? Do you have thoughts about

00:28:50.660 social-emotional learning? Because this is not just something we see in public school. We see it

00:28:54.940 in private Christian schools too. Yeah. Well, social-emotional learning, just that terminology

00:28:59.880 might be new to us, but it's not new. Again, in the 1800s, early 1900s, it was being used in foreign

00:29:07.100 countries as part of this idea of getting children to be more obedient to the state than to their

00:29:13.200 families. And it's taken, you know, the head of the beast has changed over the years, but yes,

00:29:19.400 run from social-emotional learning, that'd be the main thing, main takeaway from that is it's a

00:29:25.860 different discipleship program other than what God gave us in the Bible. Yeah. And I know people will

00:29:31.740 say, oh no, like my daughter did SEL or I was a teacher who went through SEL. And it's not to say

00:29:37.640 that every single aspect will be a lie, but that's also kind of how Satan works. He tells us half-truths

00:29:43.560 and he uses truth to, you know, he repackages lies and different kinds of shiny truths. Well,

00:29:50.900 Satan knows the Bible way better than I do. Yeah. And from the very beginning in the garden,

00:29:56.140 did God really say? Yeah. And so, you know, prosperity, success, these aren't necessarily

00:30:03.080 unbiblical things, but he is going to use whatever he can in that time to not direct you 100% away,

00:30:11.660 because you don't need to get 100% away, but if he can just get you two or three degrees off the

00:30:15.680 wrong path, you know, the Bible says raise the children in the way they should go and they will 1.00

00:30:19.980 not depart from it. You know, a lot of raising children is about parents' obedience to God,

00:30:25.660 not necessarily getting it right all the time. And so I always tell people parenthood had a really

00:30:33.000 poor beginning, right? Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel and Cain killed Abel, right? So it's always been

00:30:38.940 a struggle for parents. Like, I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying that the Bible is really clear

00:30:44.780 on who's responsible for your child's education. And any system, private or public, that says they're

00:30:52.120 going to be responsible for your kid's education and undermines the authority that God gave you

00:30:57.520 is going to be off by a couple degrees. And we'll get the society we have today and the fruit that we

00:31:04.060 see around us when we continue to just disobey what God has laid out for us in the Bible.

00:31:14.360 Okay, quick pause to tell you about CrowdHealth. I don't have to tell you how complicated, how

00:31:18.920 burdensome, what a hassle health insurance can be. And maybe it's just right for your family to opt

00:31:24.020 out of that and to take ownership of something as important as your health care coverage. CrowdHealth

00:31:30.660 right now has a new Black Swan membership. You can ditch the red tape of traditional health insurance

00:31:36.560 and take real control over you and your family's care. CrowdHealth is not insurance. It's a totally

00:31:42.900 different way to handle medical expenses that puts you in charge. For under $100 a month, you get access

00:31:49.220 to expert bill negotiators, low-cost prescriptions and lab tools, and a network of high-quality doctors

00:31:54.980 who have already been vetted. If something major happens, you pay the first $15,000 and then CrowdHealth

00:32:02.020 steps in to help with the rest. It's health care the way it used to be, simple, direct, community

00:32:07.640 supported. Get started today for as low as just $80 a month for your first three months by using code

00:32:13.060 Allie at joincrowdhealth.com. CrowdHealth is not insurance. Opt out, take your power back. Joincrowdhealth.com,

00:32:19.300 code Allie. I'm also, I'm just not sure that five, six, seven-year-olds need to have, you know,

00:32:29.840 group therapy sessions every day. And actually, Abigail Schreier, if you've read the book Bad

00:32:34.560 Therapy, she talks about this, how the over-focus on emotions, especially on young, developing children,

00:32:41.240 doesn't actually make them more considerate and kinder. It makes them more selfish. And the

00:32:46.280 over-cultivation of empathy towards particular, you know, stated victim actually makes them more

00:32:52.540 cruel to the out-group. And so, like, we can look at the whole of modern psychology and modern therapy,

00:32:58.700 and a lot of Christians will say, yeah, that's bad. We've got transgenderism. We've got kids

00:33:02.100 butchering their bodies. We've got kids taken out of their parents' custody because they didn't like,

00:33:06.980 you know, that their parent wouldn't affirm them or whatever. But then in the context of school,

00:33:10.820 you have a lot of people being like, well, it's fine. And I'm not saying all school therapists or

00:33:16.080 school counselors are bad. But again, it's whose authority and whose responsibility is your child's

00:33:23.160 heart? Is it this person who probably doesn't care if they live or die? Or is it you?

00:33:27.980 Well, first of all, like children, God did not design children to sit in seats for eight hours a day,

00:33:36.540 you know, 180 days a year or whatever it is. So it's not surprising that you have children acting out

00:33:42.580 and having these issues because we're forcing children to behave like adults when they're not

00:33:48.240 designed to do that. And really, adults aren't designed to do that either. I mean, I've seen

00:33:51.840 studies where sitting is the new smoking. We wonder why we have an obesity problem, but we

00:33:56.780 send our kids to education systems that sit them at a desk six hours a day. And so it's absolutely not

00:34:03.540 the government's job to pay for psychiatrists. You know, obviously, you know, people need help and

00:34:10.780 to talk those things out and to do that in a Christian setting isn't a bad thing to do, but

00:34:16.580 that's not what they're doing in the school system. And when you are with 30 children a day that are

00:34:21.800 your same age from the same zip code, you get the clicks, you get the bullying, because that's how

00:34:28.200 our sinful natures would naturally progress. And when you have one adult to 30 kids, I mean,

00:34:33.700 that's insane. Like management books say one adult for six or seven reports at a business. And these

00:34:39.880 are people who are trained and are being paid to be there. And you have one person managing seven

00:34:44.380 versus like my wife had, you know, six classes a day of 30. So 180 kids per day in the public school 1.00

00:34:50.480 system. And so the kids acting out and, you know, obviously there's behavioral issues. I'm not talking

00:34:55.880 about that, but I mean, it should be natural if you're not supposed to be in like a building that

00:35:00.520 looks like a prison that long for you to act out. And so of course, kids aren't learning to read and

00:35:06.240 do these things. And I mean, Owen and the socialists want to get kids away from their

00:35:12.600 parents as early as possible so they can mold them into their vision form, not into the vision that God

00:35:18.920 has for them. And so it really is just a system to undermine parental authority, which is derived

00:35:25.700 from God and how he designed man. And so it's ultimately to undermine God's authority at the

00:35:31.820 same time. Yeah. It's just another consequence of broken families too, because when you've got

00:35:37.060 single mom who has to work full time, she's like, well, of course I got to bring them at 7am to the 0.89

00:35:42.540 before school care and I can't pick them up until 530. Like they go to the afterschool care. I mean,

00:35:47.340 that's a lot of hours that your child is being discipled by other children, by the way, who don't have

00:35:54.100 any, they should not be discipling anyone at that age, but also in many cases, adults who just,

00:36:01.260 they don't have the capacity or they don't have the worldview. And it's really, it puts parents or

00:36:06.900 teachers rather in a very unfair situation when there are parents who see the discipline as the role

00:36:16.240 of the school, who don't do that at home, who don't say no at home, but they rely on the teachers

00:36:21.800 in the schools to do all of the shaping of that child's character. I mean, I don't think that's

00:36:28.260 what most teachers sign up for. And how do you do that to 180 kids a day? Well, absolutely. Again,

00:36:34.600 the system is undermining the system, right? These parents were raised in that system. And so the

00:36:40.000 system has cultivated that idea in parents. I saw a post on Facebook that was going viral from an

00:36:46.320 African-American teacher talking about how all of these students who are coming in as six years old,

00:36:51.160 can't even recognize the alphabet, like the letter A through Z. And so obviously their parents

00:36:56.760 didn't even think about doing that at home for them. And so, you know, obviously you got to break

00:37:02.440 the cycle. And obviously God called the church to step into that realm, not the government. And when

00:37:08.960 the government steps into realms that it's not, you know, dictated by God to step into, we get

00:37:13.100 really expensive, really poor outcomes. And we see that in the public school system.

00:37:17.480 And strings attached. Oh, we'll give you free lunch. But as long as you allow this boy into 0.99

00:37:22.140 the girl's bathroom, which is real, that really was programmed.

00:37:25.620 And so it undermines parents. And then, you know, on the same token, what's sadder to me is the

00:37:32.660 parents that can afford to have them out, right? Like if you know better, do better, right? And so

00:37:39.440 it's the parents that send them in. Look, I love sports. I'm a three-time national champion in rugby.

00:37:45.220 I love athletics. But when they send their kids to high school, I want them to get the Friday

00:37:53.020 night lights experience. I'm like, okay. I mean, I get that, but you're going to undermine your

00:38:00.060 education. You're going to do all of these things just so that they can play football on Friday night.

00:38:05.220 Again, big football fan, big fan of sports. But we've got the bread and circuses, you know,

00:38:10.560 free lunch and sports. Just let us, you know, educate your kid for you. We'll take care of it.

00:38:16.520 And so that's the mentality that we've had as a society and a mentality that is anti-biblical.

00:38:23.080 And until we break it, but the church needs to break it first. And I always tell people,

00:38:27.360 God says, if my people will repent, I will heal their nation, right? And so if our nation's not

00:38:35.160 being healed, it's because his people are not repenting. And it's because a lot of us, as you've 0.99

00:38:41.120 exposed and different people have exposed, these Marxist ideologies are getting inside of the church

00:38:46.740 and we've continued to incorporate them in our daily lives. And yeah, it's going to be hard work to,

00:38:54.120 you know, fix the system or get out of the system, but it's what God's called us to do, in my opinion.

00:39:00.240 Yeah. You know, you mentioned how people are just not meant to sit around all day, especially

00:39:05.060 children. They have so much energy. And I interviewed, I don't believe he's a Christian,

00:39:11.200 but he's a child psychologist. And he came on the show to talk about just how boys are being

00:39:17.260 purposely feminized by being punished for being boys. And still in, so it's normal now for people 0.94

00:39:25.860 who can like afford to keep their children home to hold boys and girls kind of back. So allow them 0.78

00:39:32.400 to be six turning seven going into kindergarten. A lot of boy parents do this. It's good for 0.56

00:39:37.460 athletics. And a lot of parents do it just because they want their kid home longer. But in lower income

00:39:43.540 areas, that's not happening. They have to put their kid in all day kindergarten as soon as possible

00:39:48.820 because both parents work or the mom works or whatever. And so these low income boys are going

00:39:55.520 to kindergarten at four or five years old, are being made to sit all day and then are punished

00:40:01.380 and are seen as problem children for being basically toddler boys who just can't get their energy out

00:40:08.200 and how that can set them up for all kinds of problems later on. They think they're stupid. 1.00

00:40:13.560 They think they're bad. They end up kind of growing into that reputation that they've been 1.00

00:40:19.360 made to feel that they have. And I mean, we've already seen it's a scary world when our boys are

00:40:24.460 not raised to become men. They'll act out in some way. So this whole education system, it's not just

00:40:31.900 about, okay, they're not preaching the Bible, which is obviously true. I mean, this has a huge effect 1.00

00:40:37.900 on future generations. No, absolutely. And for those most vulnerable, obviously the church needs

00:40:45.180 to be able to have an idea of stepping in more effectively there. And of course, as our society

00:40:51.940 has gone away from a more capitalistic to more crony capitalism, we see the income equality increasing

00:40:58.900 as we got off the gold standard and just did all of these things that has made it more difficult,

00:41:05.480 made it so that, you know, both parents do have to work even in middle-class houses, you know,

00:41:09.980 homes these days. And so, you know, there's things that could be managed differently in the public

00:41:16.180 school system to make it not as bad. But to your point, so you have these four and five-year-old

00:41:21.860 boys and say they have a really good kindergarten teacher and they are do-liker and they have some 0.89

00:41:28.080 stability, right? They're getting fed food which they may or may not be getting at home. And they have an

00:41:32.920 adult who's paying attention to them on a daily basis and they fall in love with her or him.

00:41:39.000 And then the next year that adult's gone and new adults in their place may have a good experience or

00:41:45.620 may not. And they, all the system is conditioning them to do is every single year, a different adult's

00:41:51.960 going to be in your life. And so they have, you know, a father or mother who might be working hard,

00:41:56.860 two or three jobs, but not necessarily there on a daily basis, maybe have divorce.

00:42:01.120 And then you've got them in a school system where the adult's changing out, you know,

00:42:05.560 every six months that cares for them. And so it's, it reinforces the idea of learning their behaviors

00:42:12.360 from their peer groups. They're not learning it from a wise adult, someone that you would want

00:42:17.460 to mentor them and they just continue this cycle. And so, you know, one of the things that we can do,

00:42:23.880 I think as a society and as Christians, if we can get our kids out of the public school system,

00:42:28.400 into private schools or into homeschooling, then that's going to, you know, create more

00:42:33.720 resources or whatever for, for in those systems. But ultimately we've got to create a parallel system

00:42:40.440 that is able to do that. I mean, the Catholic church did a great job of this for 50 years,

00:42:46.680 you know, from the twenties to the nineties where they would have, you know, scale where if you were,

00:42:52.860 you know, a member of the church, you paid less to go to their, their schools, or if you were poor,

00:42:56.960 you paid less. And so, you know, there's so many different ways to be able to afford different

00:43:02.520 educational outcomes than public school, but we haven't explored those as a society.

00:43:09.040 We haven't championed those from the pulpit. And so we've got to totally think about all of this

00:43:15.860 differently. Otherwise we're going to keep on getting the same poor results. And, you know,

00:43:21.940 we all want to see children get educated. And I think that's, that's one of the things that

00:43:25.820 I think people don't understand is like, you know, the Walton foundation, the Ford foundation,

00:43:31.900 the Bill Gates foundation, like all of these kind of left wing think tanks, they're pouring billions

00:43:38.280 of dollars over the last decade to try to transform public school into their vision. And now we've got AI

00:43:46.160 coming, uh, you've got, you know, you know, teacher turnover so high that, that now AI is going to be

00:43:53.000 the one discipling our children while, uh, teachers are just there monitoring kids usage of computers.

00:44:00.760 And we all know how screen bad screen time is. So, um, the direction that we're going as society

00:44:07.580 in the public school system is not improving. You've probably heard about the standoff between

00:44:18.340 the Trump camp and the federal reserve. Trump is pushing hard to bring interest rates down,

00:44:22.940 get the economy moving, but Jerome Powell's holding firm because inflation is still hanging around.

00:44:28.240 That means that rates could drop at any moment and the prepared people out there will move

00:44:33.520 fast. That's why you need to go ahead, set up a consultation and talk with my friends at

00:44:39.100 fellowship home loans. Mike and Brian and their team will help you run numbers, look at the full

00:44:44.040 picture and ask this really important question. What is it going to take to get you into the home

00:44:50.120 that you and your family need right now? Because even if the rates aren't ideal today, if the right

00:44:56.420 home is in front of you, you shouldn't miss it. They can help you make that happen in a way that is

00:45:00.820 really smart and in a way that honors God because they align with our values. Start with a free

00:45:06.700 consultation at fellowshiphomeloans.com slash Allie. You'll get a $500 credit at closing. Terms apply.

00:45:13.740 See site for details. Fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers,

00:45:19.000 DBA, fellowship home loans, equal housing lender, NMLS number 819382.

00:45:24.000 Let's talk about technology because this is not a public school problem. Sure. No. We

00:45:33.080 have seen this a lot in private Christian schools starting in pre-K and kindergarten. Everyone gets

00:45:41.700 their own iPad. Everyone gets their own Chromebook. And it is only certain kinds of schools that say,

00:45:49.040 nope, we're not doing technology for at least until eighth grade. And then even after that,

00:45:53.980 it's not the iPad thing. But in most college prep, private Christian schools, kids are getting iPads.

00:46:01.840 And I have been told, oh, it's for so this, if you need to read ahead or if like this kid isn't

00:46:07.640 advanced or something, it allows them to personalize. And I'm like, well, what's wrong with

00:46:12.720 books? We had books that you could go and you had different levels that you could pick from.

00:46:17.420 Apparently, that doesn't work anymore. And when I'm like, okay, can you show me the research

00:46:23.500 that proves to me that this is good for my child's brain, that this is better for their brain than a

00:46:29.300 pen and paper and reading books? It's, you know, you don't get any of that. But we're talking private

00:46:35.040 Christian elite schools that are giving kids iPads. Well, you just got to look, you know, Steve Jobs

00:46:40.180 famously said he wouldn't let his own kids touch an iPad until they're 18. Yeah. Right. Elon Musk has

00:46:46.260 started a technology free school for his kids in California. And so the people who are making the

00:46:56.060 technology are not letting their own flesh and blood touch it. Same with Mark Zuckerberg.

00:47:03.300 So, yeah. So every time I see like a teacher on Facebook, oh, I'm fundraising to get iPads in my

00:47:08.640 school. I'm like, you are literally spending time and energy to make your kids dumber. Right. 0.99

00:47:14.200 And so it is, I mean, handwriting, like handwriting creates, you know, pathways in the brain. It helps

00:47:22.380 you retain information. Reading from a physical book helps you retain information better. So it's all

00:47:29.940 because, you know, it's costly because they're not using the classical methodology. They change

00:47:36.940 curriculum every, you know, every year. And so replacing all those books versus like a classical

00:47:42.300 conversations, probably 90% of the books that I were there when I was going through are still the

00:47:47.220 same books today. So you can use it for multiple generations in your family or multiple kids in

00:47:53.060 your family. And so they've, because of all this, you know, you know, the government wanting to do all

00:47:59.840 of these things and because they're trying to experiment not with getting kids smarter, but making

00:48:05.020 them more obedient to the civil authorities, like, you know, it's a very expensive proposition. And so,

00:48:11.980 you know, iPads are a great way to dumb people down, make them more susceptible to whatever the

00:48:18.900 authorities are telling them. Addict them to entertainment so they never critically think.

00:48:24.160 Yep. Yeah. Bread and circuses. More bread and circuses. Okay. Let's talk about school choice.

00:48:29.920 Okay. Because I know that this is kind of a controversial topic and I've really only covered

00:48:35.020 it from the side of being pro school choice. And for people who don't know, I'll just set up that

00:48:39.260 side. And then you obviously have, I think you have a different perspective on it than a lot of

00:48:43.920 conservatives do. And basically the argument from the school choice side is that someone's educational

00:48:51.000 destiny should not be bound to their zip code. If a child is getting bullied, if something is not

00:48:58.420 working in that child's education, they should have the freedom to go to another school, get a

00:49:04.000 Christian education. And there's a belief in education savings accounts and vouchers that would

00:49:09.440 allow kids who maybe can't afford home or can't afford either homeschool or private Christian school

00:49:15.540 would allow them to attend. That these opportunities give these kids a better potential outcome in life.

00:49:26.280 And so you see why, you know, a lot of conservatives would like this, that it opposes the teachers

00:49:32.620 unions who believe that taking these kids out of the public schools leaves everyone else high and dry,

00:49:37.200 takes money away from them, et cetera. And conservatives believe, well, this education is going to be better

00:49:42.960 for our future and better for these kids. So if the government's going to do anything, if our tax dollars

00:49:48.540 are going to do anything, it should be to support this kind of thing. But you are also coming from a

00:49:54.140 conservative perspective and you don't love school choice, right?

00:49:58.480 Well, yeah, it depends on how you define school choice. So obviously I was homeschooled myself. So

00:50:02.880 I believe in choice and I believe in education. And so what we're talking about school choice is

00:50:09.300 fundamentally who's paying for that choice. And so how we view it or how I view it is public school is

00:50:17.820 an option that's paid for by taxes. And when they talk about school choice or universal school choice,

00:50:25.020 the idea is that we are all entitled to tax money, right? Communism. And that we should be able to

00:50:33.660 take that money wherever we could go. And so I'm not opposed to like backpack bills, which is like

00:50:38.900 switching different public schools or different things like that. What we're opposed to is putting

00:50:44.420 every single family into that welfare system of their money being redistribute, tax money being

00:50:52.840 redistributed to them. And so like the universal school choice hasn't actually really helped too

00:51:00.260 many poor people. It's actually helped people who are already paying their educational bills.

00:51:04.940 About 70% of first-time participants were already in private school or public school.

00:51:09.700 So how can they participate if they're already in private school?

00:51:12.980 So how the laws have currently been written are basically anyone's eligible for it. So it's not

00:51:20.180 something that's targeted to, you know, the poor or underclassed. It's available to anyone. And so

00:51:27.220 so basically, and different states are doing it differently, but just with a broad brush that

00:51:33.600 typically around $7,000 per kid, and then you can go spend that on private school or homeschooling.

00:51:41.540 And, you know, the idea is to get kids out of the system is what they say, but you're actually not,

00:51:47.980 you're not actually getting kids out of the system. The system is actually expanding to cover private

00:51:53.240 schools and homeschoolers. And so what the system is, is that idea that the government's responsible

00:51:58.900 for paying for your child's education, which is to me opposed to what the Bible says, where it says

00:52:06.000 the parents are responsible. And so it is undermining fathers who should be out there taking and providing

00:52:12.920 for their families and instead saying that the government should be providing for your kids. And so

00:52:18.860 it's just more of the same. And so for me, when I see what the Bible says about education and whose

00:52:28.100 responsibility for it, we need to have systems that undergird it and support that and not undermine

00:52:35.240 God's design for the family. And so their intentions are good, right? I want to get kids out of public

00:52:41.300 school. I've been, you know, helping families do that for, you know, almost 30 years of my life.

00:52:46.060 Um, but, uh, the, the, what fundamentally happens is you expand, uh, unelected bureaucrats control,

00:52:53.300 uh, into the private schools. And so you're going to see more and more woke private schools, uh,

00:52:59.120 because, you know, like, just like you're seeing it, you're seeing woke, um, homeschooling. Now

00:53:05.540 you're going to see woke private schools paid for by the tax people, taxpayers. Yeah. I was going to ask

00:53:11.260 if that was a concern that if government money is going to the private schools, that the private

00:53:16.940 schools will now be beholden to government strings. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and it's not even necessarily

00:53:23.940 the strings, right? As a conservative taxpayer, I want there to be strings on my money, right? We,

00:53:28.840 we see what the dangers are in USAID and we've seen what, uh, the government financing college has

00:53:35.000 done, right? All you have to do is look, like, look at Harvard, look at all the Ivy leagues,

00:53:38.920 right? All founded on biblical principles. Um, now they're all bastions of atheism. Like

00:53:44.420 almost every single Christian college bent the knee to transgender bathrooms. Like the ones who 1.00

00:53:50.660 didn't, you can probably count on your hand because they got sued by the Biden administration. And so

00:53:55.640 one, it creates a political football. So your child's education is now based on whatever, uh, political

00:54:02.660 parties in, in power. And that's the whole point from the Republican side is they want to win the

00:54:07.920 education debate. So they want you to be forced to vote for Republicans because they're going to fund

00:54:12.740 your private school. Private schools are raising prices. Uh, we talked about earlier about the

00:54:18.700 Waltons and the Ford foundation and Bill Gates, they'll all start buying up your private schools.

00:54:23.980 So if you want your data to be mined in private schools, uh, school choice will provide government

00:54:30.140 money to George Soros. So he can buy up schools and educate your children on your behalf. And, uh,

00:54:37.200 that's just what's going to happen. Um, we already see it. That's what happened in the charter school

00:54:42.920 movement. Um, and so it's not, uh, their intentions are good, but when, again, when you do not align

00:54:51.860 with what the Bible says, you're going to go off in a bad direction. And so, so far in school choice

00:54:57.860 states, you know, basically very few people actually got out of public school. Uh, taxes are going to have

00:55:05.500 to go up because spending on education has gone up. And, uh, now like in the state of Arkansas,

00:55:11.260 uh, you know, you have to get approved if you're a private school to decide what tuition you're

00:55:16.760 going to get charged. We do business in the state of Florida and we do dual enrollment out of Florida

00:55:21.740 and the Florida public school, the Florida colleges aren't actually allowed to charge money for dual

00:55:27.740 enrollment students anymore because the state's subsidizing it. So we've got price controls in a

00:55:33.440 ruby red state because of school choice. That's communism. That is not conservatism. That is not

00:55:39.840 lined up with, uh, biblical principles of, uh, free markets. And so ultimately, uh, right. People are

00:55:48.920 envious that the public schools had their, uh, money, their taxes, right. I pay taxes in 32 states.

00:55:56.120 Like if anyone should be mad about paying taxes, it should be someone like me. Um, but you know,

00:56:01.580 God said for Christians to go the second mile to, uh, ignore the world's wisdom and follow his. And so 1.00

00:56:08.660 it is a very different worldview that, uh, dads and moms are responsible for their kids' education,

00:56:15.120 not just choosing the curriculum, not just raising them, but also funding it. And so ultimately the

00:56:21.220 school choice, uh, universal school choice proponents, their hearts in the right direction,

00:56:27.400 but they're just going back to that undermining principle of that the government should be in

00:56:32.780 charge of our children and their, and financing their education. And whoever pays the piper,

00:56:37.480 uh, picks the tune. There's no such thing as a free lunch. I mean, I can go on and on

00:56:42.300 about all of these sayings that conservatives, uh, would go with, you know, I love the shirts.

00:56:47.140 I don't co-parent with the government. Well, if the government is paying your kid's education bill,

00:56:51.740 you're co-parenting with them. Last sponsor for the day is Patriot Mobile. This is America's

00:57:01.560 Christian conservative wireless provider. They understand that freedom is worth fighting for.

00:57:07.240 So is the sanctity of life protecting and caring for our veterans and first responders. For more

00:57:12.780 than 12 years, Patriot Mobile has been on the front lines fighting for our God-given rights and freedoms

00:57:17.100 while also providing exceptional nationwide cell phone service with access to all three major

00:57:22.920 networks. Don't just take my word for it. Ask the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have made

00:57:27.560 the switch and they are so happy they did. Switching is really easy. Activate in minutes from your own

00:57:33.960 home. Keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade. Go to PatriotMobile.com slash Allie. Use code

00:57:39.780 Allie for a free month of service. That's PatriotMobile.com slash Allie code Allie.

00:57:47.100 I've heard from a lot of families. It's like, you know, the only reason that my child could go to

00:57:53.460 this private school or this Christian school, the only reason that I get to homeschool this year is

00:57:58.260 because I'm getting $2,000 towards that. And I do see, I definitely see what you're saying. And I also

00:58:05.120 see the side that's like, okay, well, if the government is like, is if the government has already

00:58:10.980 allocated this much money, like they have in the state of Texas, they've allocated this much money

00:58:16.020 towards education. And now parents are getting something like 85% of like what would be allocated

00:58:21.840 towards their child's education to be able to go towards something else. I mean, I see the argument

00:58:27.400 for that. And I also see what you're saying. I definitely see some complicated layers in there

00:58:33.640 that when strings are, when the government is funding something, then it's their rules and they get

00:58:39.700 to say, you know, what the education can look like. And I think that's troubling for parents of

00:58:45.760 kids at Christian schools. It's like, well, what is going to, what's going to happen there? The more

00:58:51.360 and more money they're getting from the state, is that going to start changing things?

00:58:54.820 Yeah. So, I mean, the United Nations in their education arm, UNESCO already has this planned out

00:58:59.960 and they've already ran the playbook in European countries, Sweden being one of them, where it started

00:59:05.960 off where the parents were getting 85% of their private school money. And then they said, okay,

00:59:11.840 we're gonna have a national curriculum because we want to make sure equality and everyone's getting

00:59:15.580 the same education and that, you know, different schools aren't doing different things. And then

00:59:20.420 they said, well, you can't charge more than what we're giving you because then that would benefit

00:59:25.500 the rich. And so it's not a slippery slope. It's a, it's a mountain. Many countries have already

00:59:31.340 fallen down. And yeah, I mean, the idea that the government has allocated this money and maybe

00:59:38.620 they could spend it wiser, right? I get that, that idea. But what you're doing is you're taking

00:59:44.320 a truly free market, God honoring marketplace, and you're putting in corrupt money that's been

00:59:53.040 through taxation. And so there's, there's plenty of money, right? We could figure out other ways to

00:59:57.640 reduce taxation or reduce government spending, allow people to keep their own money. That's one

01:00:03.440 of the things I hear from people is like, well, I just want to keep my own money. It's like, okay,

01:00:07.380 I can relate to that, but there's not been a school choice bill that actually lets you keep your own

01:00:11.980 money. It's all been money that's been redistributed from your neighbors. And of course you temporarily get

01:00:18.180 that money, but you're going to be a taxpayer the rest of your life and your taxes are inevitably going

01:00:22.360 to go up to pay for all these additional people that are in the welfare system. So you're going to be

01:00:26.900 paying a higher tax rate to the state till you go see Jesus for a temporary reprieve. And so

01:00:35.300 Christians need to be building Christian institutions. And you can, and God gave us three realms of

01:00:43.980 government, the family government, the church government, and the civil government. And the world

01:00:49.740 works best, you know, best outcomes, you know, least expensive, least corruption, right? They're still

01:00:55.920 in the world when each of those entities are doing what they are supposed to be doing. And so prior to

01:01:02.880 1850 in the United States, the civil government had basically no role, no taxation, no role in

01:01:10.720 education other than to allocate land for that in the new states. And virtually 90% of Americans were

01:01:19.320 literate. Like they basically had the Bible, some primers, their parents, and, you know, maybe a

01:01:26.080 private tutor or a tutor that the church provided in their schoolhouses. When they introduced public

01:01:33.460 education and the public funding of education in the United States, parents rebelled, like they had to

01:01:39.240 basically send police to their house to take their kids to these institutions. And so institutionalized

01:01:46.560 people look for institutions to solve their issues. And if we want to honor God and how we educate our

01:01:54.640 children, we can't do that by sending government thugs to our neighbors to tax, tax them on an annual

01:02:01.920 basis or kick them out of their home to pay for our child's education. 0.79

01:02:07.100 Okay, that's a perspective that I think a lot of people will be interested in hearing. My dad is a big

01:02:12.200 proponent of school choice. And I think both of y'all have the same goals in the same heart. So I'm

01:02:17.840 sure he would have his own perspective on that. But I really appreciate you sharing that because a lot

01:02:22.080 of people have been asking me, okay, what's the other side of this? Obviously not from the progressive

01:02:27.600 perspective, which is just like, no, everyone needs to be in their designated indoctrination stations.

01:02:34.420 And we have to make sure that they are getting the worst education possible. That's the progressive

01:02:39.520 perspective. Yeah. So I think the kind of the fundamental difference is, right, right, basically

01:02:45.720 pre COVID, 87% of children were in government funded educational institutions, and 13% of people were

01:02:55.260 paying their own educational bill. And so we called those public school and private school. And so what

01:03:02.120 the school choice people are saying was, well, private school has all these, you know, performs better.

01:03:07.000 So if we can get kids out of the public school system into the private school system, we'll see

01:03:11.060 better outcomes. But I believe the fundamental reason that public schools don't work is because

01:03:16.520 they're funded by the government. And they're not funded by the individual who benefits from it.

01:03:21.880 Again, free market capitalism. And so what I believe, so what they're thinking is, okay, if I can get,

01:03:28.500 say, 10% of those kids out, well, now we have 70% of kids in public school, and 23% of kids in

01:03:34.360 private school. But what is actually going to happen is instead of having 87% and 13%, you're

01:03:41.520 basically going to have 1% of Americans paying their own education bills, and 99% of people reliant

01:03:47.260 on the government and taxation. And so what you win someone with, you win them to. And so the medium is

01:03:56.220 the message. So if the medium and what you're winning them with is government money, you can see how the

01:04:02.160 idea of wokeness and communism is going to expand, not contract under the school choice mantra, because

01:04:09.580 it's saying that the government, the civil government's responsibility is to pay for education

01:04:14.200 and that they need to do so for everyone. And then the obvious is you have to have strings attached.

01:04:21.120 We can't have more USAID. So they have to put rules in place. And if it's Republicans and Christians in 0.97

01:04:27.480 charge, then you'll have less rules. And if there's, you know, Democrats or humanists in charge, you're going

01:04:33.920 to have more rules. But ultimately, it's the same mentality that the government has a biblical authority to

01:04:42.340 tax you to pay for someone else's benefits.

01:04:45.380 Hmm. Okay, you've got a book coming out in January, right? Do you know when people can pre-order it?

01:04:52.080 Yeah, in January, I'm co-authoring it with Alex Newman, Woken Weaponized, how Karl Marx won and how we

01:04:59.380 won American education and how we can win it back. And so yeah, it'll be just after January. We're trying

01:05:05.200 to line it up with School Choice Week, which is the last week in January. And we're talking about the

01:05:12.600 history of education, you know, expanding on some of the things we talked about today and giving a

01:05:17.860 different alternative look to school choice. Because we're both for choice in education and

01:05:24.980 parental responsibility. And there's many different ways to pay for education. And we just need to be

01:05:30.220 able to give people a different vision than through taxation and redistribution.

01:05:36.460 Okay, well, thank you so much. So it's so insightful. I think everyone's going to have learned a lot

01:05:40.760 from that. I really appreciate it. Where can people follow you and find out more about Classical

01:05:44.520 Conversations?

01:05:45.580 Yeah, classicalconversations.com is the best place to go to learn about homeschooling with a classical

01:05:51.360 Christian community. Just put your zip code in and we'll hook you up with a local homeschooling

01:05:56.080 mom, most likely, that'll walk you through our process. And you can follow me on X, the Robert B Show

01:06:02.940 is where I tweet a lot. And you've been on my podcast, Refining Rhetoric. So you can find that on

01:06:09.100 YouTube and all the podcast channels.

01:06:11.920 Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us.

01:06:15.100 Yeah, thank you so much.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 05, 2025

Ep 1238 ｜ Homeschooling： LGBTQ Activists’ Latest Conquest ｜ Robert Bortins

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript