Ep 343 ｜ Equipping Yourself to Homeschool ｜ Guest： Leigh Bortins
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Summary
Leigh Bortens is the founder of Classical Conversations, the largest homeschooling network in the world. She has been in the homeschool world for over 30 years and is so experienced in the realm of Christian homeschool. She's got a lot to tell us about the importance of homeschool, how we homeschool and what we need to do about it.
Transcript
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Hope everyone is having a wonderful day and has had a great week so far.
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Today I am so excited to talk to the founder of Classical Conversations, Leigh Bortens.
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Classical Conversations is classical Christian curriculum for homeschooling.
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She has been in this world for about 30 years, and she is so experienced in the realm of Christian
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She's got a lot to tell us about the importance of homeschooling, how we homeschool.
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She's got a lot of equipment and encouragement for parents who are considering this, a lot
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of very honest and fair critiques about our education system in America and the responsibility
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that we have as Christians, and in particular as Christian parents, to raise our child in
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So I'm so excited for you to listen to this discussion.
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Is it Allie Beth always, or do you go by Allie?
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Uh, my husband and his family call me Allie Beth, but my friends and co-workers typically
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So it's either one, but I am, I'm so thankful that you have joined me and I want to first,
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uh, let you tell the audience who you are and what you do.
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So I'm the founder of Classical Conversations, and we did that in 1997, and it's the largest
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Um, if you were to unite all the students that we have enrolled in Classical Conversations
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in the United States, we'd be about the 20th largest unified school district.
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And so it's not the numbers that matter to me, it's that there's so many faithful families
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that are saying, I want to homeschool, and I want to make sure that there's like rigorous
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academics attached to it, as well as a really friendly community, and that there's somebody,
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And tell us exactly what Classical Conversations is for those who don't know.
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Yes, so when my eldest son was in middle school, you know, I do like every other homeschooling
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parent, and I wanted to figure out what are we going to do about high school, right?
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And a lot of their friends, we have four sons, a lot of their friends were leaving homeschooling
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And so I said to some of my friends, if you won't send your kids to high school, I'll happily
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meet with you and them once a week and make sure that the things that are, you know, maybe
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difficult for you or you're concerned about and don't really need to be, we can work on
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together because I need help and accountability in certain areas, too.
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So we started meeting with 11 families in 1997.
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And by 2000, we had 300 families on the waiting list.
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So my husband quit work, and he's been the CFO of Classical Conversations ever since.
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And we now have over 100 employees in almost 3,000 locations worldwide.
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And so there's a lot of families that meet once a week together with tutors and directors
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that we train in the Christian Classical model.
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And they all work together to homeschool together.
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So I'll tell you what it means for Classical Conversations.
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And for us, what it means is that we're practicing the art of learning and the art of teaching more
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But by meeting once a week, we're able to help each other think through, you know, this
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is how my child learns and whether he likes the material, dislikes the material, how can
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And so from the classical perspective, we're trying to say these are difficult documents
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And so as a team, we all need help in, you know, reading at a higher level than most people
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And then we also work really hard on parents, just, you know, parenting's hard.
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And so we have a friend, you know, you have a friend every week that works with you on the
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idea of not just the classics, but also just homeschooling in general.
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You know, every day the Lord's mercies are new and we've never had that day before.
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And it's really helpful to continue homeschooling if you have a friend who's going, yeah, I'm
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Let's work together on this because this is worth doing really well.
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And so we're just a community that really encourages each other.
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And so Classical Conversations, does it offer a particular kind of curriculum?
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Or is it just helping parents learn how to be homeschool teachers?
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And so what we do is in the younger grades, we work on what we call the grammar, which
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You know, people used to go to grammar schools in the United States and everybody knew what
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When they switched to elementary schools, we started to lose what the classical model of
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education was, which has been taught for thousands of years.
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It's kind of the things that calculators and computers have stolen from us.
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And so we're making sure that our children can memorize a lot of information.
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You know, the scriptures tell us to hide God's word in our hearts.
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And so in order to do that, it helps to practice memorizing a lot of different things.
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And so sometimes that can be really boring for a parent, but it's really important for
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Now, you know, as an adult, though, it's not like it's just for little kids.
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If you or I were going to decide to go take a welding class together, we would need to
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Then through middle school, we have a very specific curriculum and materials that concentrate
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And, you know, that's so great because what a middle schoolers want to do, they kind of
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want to push back and they're asking a lot of questions and they want to argue with you.
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So we work on teaching them how to do that well and respectfully.
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So and then the last stage for us is it's called the rhetoric stage, where now you have
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You know, first you hide God's word in his heart, in your heart, and then you need to,
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you know, really ask the Lord to show you his purposes for you and ask a lot of questions.
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And then finally, once you really have secured that this is my relationship with the Lord,
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not my parents, but my own, how are you going to go share the gospel?
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And so whether it's through scripture or math or Latin, we're always practicing these
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And this is such a contrast to what a lot of people feel like they're getting, not just
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in public school, but also in some private schools as well.
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A lot of parents feel like, okay, their kids might be caught up on, you know, the curriculum
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or the facts that are needed to be able to do pretty well in a standardized test.
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But once they go to college, they haven't actually been equipped.
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They're trained to think for themselves, or they haven't been trained in logic.
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And so say they get a professor that espouses a completely contradictory worldview to what their
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They don't, in some cases, actually have the tools to be able to critically think through
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that and to think about the opposition to that.
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And maybe they haven't even learned through their education to hide God's word in their
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They have a general sense of what their faith is, but they were never actually taught to
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incorporate it in all of these different subjects.
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But it sounds like the goal of classical conversations is to make sure that they have built that worldview
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on a solid foundation and are able to apply it to every different area of their life, including
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Something that, you know, you said was like, it's called classical conversations for a reason,
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because we're not just conversing about the scriptures.
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We're also conversing about the great conversations of all of history.
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And so that's the part that can feel intimidating to some parents.
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And yet what they don't realize is how natural it is to learn this way.
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So do you mind if I take a minute to kind of describe how a child learns and why the classical
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What parents tend to do very, very naturally is teach classically.
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When your child is born, in order to develop their facility with words, you just say things
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Well, what if you said things over and over to them and not just like household routines,
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but also in the literature you love or the languages that you love or in, you know, whatever
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So what tends to happen is people homeschool class or people educate their children classically
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Your child starts to be able to really work in the world that you've given them.
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You tend to stop saying things so many times to them because they can function in your household.
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And then you tend to send them off to some kind of school or some kind of program.
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So what we homeschoolers do is say, no, we're going to keep doing what was super easy and
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But now when my child, when we go outside, we're not going to just say bird.
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Or if we're talking about cooking at home, you know, we're going to talk about the various
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chemical aspects of things as the children get older, that we just keep having conversations
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And so whether they're watching a newscast or reading a story in high school or middle
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school, or if you're just reading a picture book to them when they're little, you're constantly
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talking to them about words and their meanings.
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And the reason why we do this as Christians is because we know the word made flesh.
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And if he calls himself that, words must be pretty important.
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And you know that a string of words makes up ideas.
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And so we're just constantly preparing them to be able to just communicate well.
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And isn't that interesting that every Sunday we go and have communion together?
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So there's a lot of Christian aspects to this idea of just naturally raising your children
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And why is it that this differs, seems to differ so much from what kids are getting when they
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It doesn't seem like it's conversation-based or kind of just a natural progression of thinking
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But it's this very general and standardized way of learning that might not work for kids
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Why is there such a stark contrast between the classical conversational way of teaching
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kids and what most kids get when they go to, you know, just your average school?
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Well, it's really hard to have a conversation with 20 or 30 people in a room, right?
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So just institutionally, it doesn't set you up for this.
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Then another thing is school is either, or not just school, anything regarding with children
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is either easy for the kids or easier for the adults.
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So what the school systems have done is put together really good systems for the adults
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Well, if it's efficient for the teacher, it's not going to be efficient for the child.
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So that's something that, you know, is just in the way, right?
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It's all about the NEA and the unions and the leadership.
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Now, an individual teacher, of course, might care very, very much about the children in
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the classroom, but a lot of things constrain that teacher.
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Then another thing is we have lost our cultural heritage, right?
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That's what this election has been showing us all.
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We don't even remember what the Constitution says, let alone that there even, you know,
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that there is one, you know, the tearing down the monuments and all that kind of stuff.
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So what happens is institutional education slowly but surely has taken the responsibility of
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But that's also made it so we've lost our heritage.
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And so one of the most interesting things for kids to talk about is their heritage.
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Don't they want to hear stories about what their granddad did in World War II or how their
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Well, there's nothing to connect to in the classroom except the peers, right?
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Because it used to be I'm old enough that we had home school, I mean, home room when I
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Now, if I'm a second or third grader, I might have three or four adults who are helping with
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And then the next year I go to another grade and they disappear and it's a few more other
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So it's no surprise that I act like I'm a child longer and longer because education is about
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rearing children to know how to live in the adult world.
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Well, the adults disappear every year, but the kids coming back.
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And so institutionally, it's just not a good plan that we've put together.
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The one room schoolhouse back in, you know, 100, 200 years ago was a lot more efficient
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And what about for parents who say, OK, that might sound good, but I think that, you know,
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there are some socialization benefits to my kid going to school rather than just spending
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I've heard this said, and obviously I disagree with him, but I want to hear the opposition
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from from you, too, that, you know, kids who are homeschooled, well, they become weird because
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And at least at school, you know, they're not only spending time with other kids, but
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they're learning about different people's views and their views are sharpened by confronting,
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What do you say to people like who say things like that?
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Well, I'm pretty sure I knew some weird kids that went through public school.
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And it's really sad that anybody would call them weird.
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Yeah, because they're uniquely made right in God's image.
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And in some of those children who really struggle with social skills, probably need more parenting,
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So that's the one thing I say for people who think that there's something odd about, you
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When it comes to the social activities people refer to, if you've been in the homeschool
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movement more in a few months, you'll find out there's so many activities that, you know,
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Really, homeschool is a bad name for what we do.
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It's more like it's family school or global school.
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And that's one of the reasons I started Classical Conversations is I wanted my children to
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have a group of peers once a week, not something that overtook their lives, with the parents
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in the room so that we were all learning together.
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And yet they could study the things that maybe they weren't going to naturally study on their
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Now, you don't have to be in Classical Conversations to do that.
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There's homeschool co-ops all across the United States.
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You can just, you know, go to the mechanic down the street and learn how to work on cars.
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And so socialization, I think, for homeschoolers is a lot better because they don't sit in a
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They're constantly out in the community serving.
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What about parents who think, okay, fine, you might be right about that, but I'm just
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Either they feel like they're financially unequipped.
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They, you know, they think that, you know, maybe one of the parents quitting a job, they're
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They're not going to be able to afford to homeschool.
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Or they feel like, you know, God has just not equipped me to be a teacher.
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I want to homeschool, but these things are holding me back.
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Well, on the financial side, everybody has to learn how to govern their own finances.
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And, you know, a couple of years ago, I had an older gentleman at my house and there was
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all these kids running around, all these homeschooled big families.
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And he looked at me and he said, I wish we'd had more children.
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And he said, I thought I had to provide for them.
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So first, getting our sight on Jesus might calm down some of that, you know, anxiety.
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Secondly, COVID has showed a lot of parents across the United States that you can figure
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out ways to be with your children that you probably never thought of before.
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So what I have found is that whether it's through COVID or, you know, you can look back in history
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at refugees and camps or movements where, you know, moms were trying to figure out, should
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Parents always figure out in good and bad circumstances what to do with their children.
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So sometimes the easiest solution, sending them off somewhere else, isn't necessarily
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And I've had a number of parents tell me that even in the public school with having to pay,
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whether it's cheerleader fees or travel fees for sports or whatever it is, they're probably
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paying more for school than they thought they were going to.
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So, you know, just some of those kind of considerations.
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Um, but I really recognize that it can be really hard for people to homeschool if they
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have, um, you know, uh, income insecurities, but I thought that was what the church was
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If you're my neighbor and feel like you can't afford to homeschool, I should go over and find
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And I think that the church, it seems like I don't want to speak for all churches, certainly
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because I'm sure that there are a number of churches that are doing this correctly, but
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it seems like this isn't really a conversation that we're having, uh, in our churches about
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We have children's ministry where they're learning something on Sunday, but it seems like
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we're not really talking about what our kids are learning Monday through Friday or Monday
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through Saturday and what it looks like to make sure that our kids are integrating the
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gospel and scripture into every part of their lives in every part of academics.
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And that's just, I don't even necessarily have a question.
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It's just a commentary that I'm thinking through as, as, as you were speaking, that it doesn't
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seem like the church has stepped up and, and has said, look, we're going to support parents
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who want to educate their child in a Christ-centered way on their own.
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It's just kind of like, you know what, just figure out what to do.
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We'll take care of the rest at church, but that doesn't seem like it's totally sufficient
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to compartmentalize our faith from Monday through Saturday, especially when it comes
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It was started about by progressives trying to figure out what to do with immigrants.
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Some reaction to the Catholic churches that were going on.
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The Protestants wanted to have a way to make sure our country, that the immigrants coming
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But if you go back and read the actual founders of that era of the public education, they were
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They finally have succeeded to a point where everybody can see that that's what they were
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Denise D'Souza, I said, 70 million of us are going to pull our kids out of school, that
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I saw a meme go by that said the definition of a conservative is somebody who sends their
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kid to be raised by the enemy and then wonders why the culture is being lost.
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And I'm just so grateful that so many parents are taking up the call.
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People are asking questions that never would have thought of this before.
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And I'm really glad that it's not just classical conversations, but there's 2 million families
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across the United States that can help you with the answers to how do I go about doing
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So if you feel like you are really struggling but want to do this, find a friend for yourself.
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Get yourself a really good friend who will help you homeschool.
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And like you said, socialization is part of classical conversations.
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It's part of homeschooling because you're out in the community.
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They're not just necessarily sitting at their...
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And plus, by the way, speaking of COVID, there's not a whole lot of socialization going on at
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school right now anyway, because kids are told that they have to sit at their desk for
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lunch, that there's no recess, that there's no gin, that they have to stay six feet apart.
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There's plexiglass sometimes in between the students.
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And I'm not saying that these are precautions that those schools shouldn't be taking.
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But if we're talking about socialization of our kids, I think a lot of parents are realizing,
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well, that's not happening at their public school right now anyway.
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And I think you're absolutely right that some people are waking up to the fact that the educators,
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the education institutions, I should say, because there's a lot of awesome public school
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teachers out there, so many wonderful public school teachers.
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But the institutions, the associations and the unions that have been pushing so hard to
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keep these schools closed, despite the fact that the science shows that it's actually perfectly
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safe for kids to go to school in relation to COVID.
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But I think that's showing a lot of people that, OK, maybe these institutions don't care
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as much about my kids and their education and their well-being as I thought.
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Maybe I am better equipped, some parents are saying, to take the reins and the education
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So while I really hurt for parents, single moms who don't have another option but to send
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their kids to public schools, I'm also encouraged by the flip side of it, that there are parents
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who are realizing, OK, that education system is not best for my kids.
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And maybe I am really equipped to do something like this.
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Well, the sad part for all of it for me is that public education, you said they don't have
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The reason why you don't have the money to send your children to another school is because
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we have public education, public education makes private education expensive because
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And so within a free market, if we actually would stop with some of our silly bureaucratic
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regulations and what education is supposed to look like and how it's supposed to be implemented,
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school would come down to the cost of education and school would come down to a place where
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Everyone could afford to have their children get a decent education.
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And we know that those public schools, those public institutions, as all bureaucracy does,
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they dislike competition, which is why a Joe Biden administration and the teachers unions
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that he is beholden to fight so hard against charter schools and so hard against school choice
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because school choice, it ups the quality of all the institutions because if the money
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follows the child, so a parent can say, you know what, I'm going to take this taxpayer money
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and I'm going to send my child elsewhere, while a public school says, okay, well, we got
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to get it together because we don't want all these families to leave.
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But right now, a public school gets money no matter what, even if they're failing, even if
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their teachers are incompetent and it doesn't matter how many students move away and because
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the school is bad, they have no incentive to spend their dollars better or to teach the
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But if we allow that competition, like you said, then that can improve everyone's education.
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Yeah, and I'm not talking about those kind of choices.
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There's still government funded choices, Allie Beth.
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Freedom is free market where you have to come up with the money for your own child's education.
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So we need to reduce the cost of private education by reducing bureaucracy.
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We need to do more about private scholarships for children so that if I want to just give my
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neighbors some money for their children to go to private school, there's better systems
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in place for that because I might be older and I might not know who needs some money at
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There's certain kinds of educational models I would have sent my children to, but they're
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And so we really need to examine what education means instead of just, you know, even private
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schools, they still replicate the public school model.
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There's so many other ways to educate that people and people don't know what they are because
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we've only had one model for over a hundred years.
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Private school follows public school systems and most homeschoolers follow public school
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It's really hard to not be the frog in that kettle and break out into a paradigm where we're
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And it's truly Christian education with the resources the Lord provides, not the state.
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Um, you talk a lot about free market education and the importance of the free markets.
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Why you're passionate about that and how Classical Conversations teaches that to the kids who are
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So the main thing with Classical Conversations, what we teach about the free market is we just
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have the children in high school in particular reading a lot of original source documents by
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You know, they'll read people like Adam Smith and economists like, um, Hazlitt, um, I'm losing
00:27:56.220
There's so many of them as well as they go back and read Aristotle and folks from pre, uh,
00:28:01.900
modern times and can see other solutions to things.
00:28:04.900
So with the Classical Conversations, we're just trying to broaden their point of view for
00:28:10.140
me personally, you know, and trying to understand how I can help other parents to break away from
00:28:15.680
the public school model, they need to realize that the two most expensive things are the
00:28:19.840
administration of the schools and the actual buildings.
00:28:24.220
Well, what if you had no buildings and no administrators and you actually educated in
00:28:28.640
smaller groups like they used to back, you know, over a hundred years ago, um, the smaller
00:28:35.320
groups of people that were working with the children, you know, very local community-based
00:28:39.380
would be able to help them with all their specific problems because they'd know each other
00:28:43.620
so well, and they'd be with each other for many, many years instead of just for an hour
00:28:48.260
a day and then changing, of course, over the course of each of the years, more and more
00:28:56.640
What used to happen is you'd pay a 17-year-old who was living at home with their parents to
00:29:04.200
So all they needed to have was enough money, you know, for, um, because the workman's worth
00:29:08.900
their wages, but they needed enough money to order to live within their means and their
00:29:16.180
I would love it if my little kids had been able to go to a 15, 16, 17-year-old for a few
00:29:22.080
hours a day and a few weeks or a few months out of the year and been able to just play
00:29:26.460
games that are educational and academic and work on their grammar.
00:29:33.500
And then as kids get into high school age, why can't they work and pay for their education?
00:29:42.720
So, so I just look back to the older times and look at what my grandparents had to do.
00:29:48.420
I mean, there's just, you know, the whole snowflake thing.
00:29:50.480
And I think about my father-in-law who worked to get in, worked on his engineering degree while
00:29:56.300
he had three children and worked full-time to pay for them.
00:30:00.100
But now we don't want to do, that's too much at once.
00:30:04.640
So we just don't have a vision for how people can work harder and differently.
00:30:10.400
And of course, it's against law for me to hire a 15-year-old to run a school.
00:30:24.360
Well, I'm not sure that if you saw the article that came out by a Harvard professor named
00:30:36.540
It had been talked about and has been talked about for a long time.
00:30:40.480
And we're seeing this actually around the world, a push against homeschool because of
00:30:44.980
the idea that parents shouldn't have that kind of, quote, authoritarian control over
00:30:53.500
And, you know, kids really need to understand public values and things like that.
00:30:58.900
Have you felt in your own experience with homeschool the political opposition to parents educating
00:31:10.040
Well, that's been the case since we started in the early 80s, right?
00:31:15.380
There's been different things that we've had to battle that we're battling now.
00:31:22.480
First, the first misconception I think that they have is that they shouldn't have their
00:31:30.360
Well, I'm pretty sure that our children should have our worldview.
00:31:35.220
And they've been given to us to educate and to explain, hopefully pass on our Christian
00:31:45.560
So why should somebody else define who's they're going to be?
00:31:48.800
Why would the parent not be the one that you would come to first?
00:31:54.840
We all live in neighborhoods and we go to church and we go to the grocery store.
00:31:59.540
But there's people who can see what's going on, right?
00:32:02.920
That's really, really rare that there's extreme cases where 13 kids are locked in the
00:32:08.940
That doesn't happen among homeschooling families very often, but it happens at a higher percentage
00:32:17.380
And then you look at the abuse of their mind if they're not taught.
00:32:24.140
You know, when you go into school, if you come out of there unable to read, write and
00:32:28.060
do basic arithmetic, why are you not suing the school?
00:32:33.280
So there's always an authority and we have to decide who's going to be the authority.
00:32:39.740
And so sometimes as a culture, you have great institutions that do that.
00:32:44.000
But like, look what's happening now with COVID and science.
00:32:46.560
Like science is this God instead of an institution and it's become scientism.
00:32:51.620
And it's just totally used out of proportion to how science normally would have been looked
00:32:59.800
It's really kind of bizarre how quickly it's happened.
00:33:03.980
And so it's like, you know, taking in the whole picture and homeschooling parents in
00:33:11.440
There's days where you're like, you know, could just go to public school.
00:33:16.600
But but we can't relinquish our responsibilities.
00:33:20.340
And it's so really wonderful because when I've had a bad day, you know, at Allie Beth, I
00:33:25.540
go to sleep and I rise again and I see his mercies are new and I can start over.
00:33:32.880
But every evening I have to repent of how I've raised my children and the places I've
00:33:38.820
And so people just often ask these questions and have these pushbacks because they don't
00:33:44.700
They don't know how powerful he is in helping us in the roles that he's given us.
00:33:49.660
And so if it's the UN and who and folks like that, I don't even know why they would have
00:33:55.560
anything to do with a family in general, but they're not going to have the worldview of
00:34:00.280
a mother and father who are sacrificing a whole lot in order to make sure their children
00:34:07.120
And people have been doing that for thousands and thousands of years with no government help.
00:34:13.500
We've almost been conditioned to believe progressivism, which is, you know, I think
00:34:19.520
a lot of people, whether they consider themselves actually progressive or not, have been influenced
00:34:26.700
And one of its ideas is that you parent are not fully equipped to raise your child.
00:34:33.260
The Lord has not given you all of the tools that you need.
00:34:36.680
You know, Hillary Clinton's famous mantra, it actually, it takes a village.
00:34:40.900
And of course, as believers, we do believe that it, you know, we need community help.
00:34:47.320
But this idea of your child not fully belonging to you, but kind of belonging to the state or
00:34:54.220
And you actually need the help of the government to be able to raise your child.
00:34:58.820
I think some parents, without realizing it, have internalized that doctrine and have decided,
00:35:05.620
well, you're, I'm not fully equipped to raise my child.
00:35:08.320
And something I've said on this show, even though, you know, I have babies and I'm not there yet,
00:35:13.120
what I do know is that parents love their kids more than the state does.
00:35:17.180
The state doesn't know your child's name, even if they have a teacher who really likes
00:35:23.500
At the end of the day, you are the one who loves your child the most.
00:35:28.060
You were there when they take, they took their first breath.
00:35:36.400
And God has, by nature of you being their parent, given you the equipment that you need.
00:35:41.960
And also that's why classical conversations exist, to come alongside those parents and
00:35:48.560
We're going to help you organize those tools in a way that is actually effective for your
00:35:55.340
You know, Christians across the globe will say our responsibility is to teach our children
00:36:02.620
But the way he set it up is that you teach him his word while you're walking through his
00:36:07.860
world and use the things of creation as both symbols and metaphors and reality of what it
00:36:17.420
And so we have so dissected the world from education and both of those from our Christian
00:36:25.000
faith that modern parents don't know how to integrate those things.
00:36:29.520
And so what we're trying to do in classical conversations is, yes, we have a very academic
00:36:37.520
But in the younger years, we try really hard to help parents just learn how to live with
00:36:43.880
We've lost that, especially if you yourself were, you know, didn't have intentional parents
00:36:48.560
or were maybe orphaned or maybe your parents, you know, were at work so much that you didn't
00:36:52.460
really get to see how they adult, how to be an adult.
00:36:56.960
We have so much damage that we have to recover from.
00:37:00.240
And people worry a lot about, like, you know, our math credits or physics.
00:37:03.660
And we have all that, but we don't think that's the most important thing.
00:37:07.840
We think the most important thing is to be able to pass on your love of the Lord with your
00:37:13.360
And if you can't show them how the world reflects that, they become cynics and think you're
00:37:18.640
just reading another book because they don't see how everything unites in a Christian
00:37:25.620
They think that things are neutral and they absolutely are not.
00:37:30.000
And that actually is something that I was thinking as you were speaking.
00:37:33.600
People like Elizabeth Bartholet and the academics and the politicians who push against homeschool
00:37:38.260
and say, oh, it's scary for parents to indoctrinate their kids.
00:37:41.960
It's because they think not only that the state is better equipped, but that secularism is actually
00:37:48.840
Whereas Christianity is, you know, extreme right wing, whatever.
00:37:57.200
It's, I think it was C.S. Lewis that says the entirety of the universe is either it's claimed
00:38:04.720
Secularism is just as dogmatic a worldview, just as rigid and ritualistic a worldview as any other.
00:38:14.360
And so I think for people who are worried about, oh, parents indoctrinating their kids with a certain
00:38:20.120
ideology, like you've said so well, kids are going to be indoctrinated no matter what.
00:38:26.280
Or should they be indoctrinated by the parents who love them and who know them best?
00:38:30.880
Or should they be indoctrinated by an impersonal force that doesn't have their best interest at heart?
00:38:37.520
That's really the choice that we have between the two.
00:38:40.440
It's not a choice between indoctrination and not indoctrination.
00:38:46.760
It's up to parents to decide whose authority should your child be under, correct?
00:38:53.320
Let me give a really concrete example, because a lot of people will agree with us,
00:38:56.980
but they don't really have a like a day to day understanding of what we're referring to.
00:39:01.840
So for me, the fact that my four sons at middle school age approximately grew taller than me
00:39:10.080
is a very important Christian principle, because if your mother can't look up to if a mother can't
00:39:21.040
So even God's plan for how our bodies grow tell us how we're supposed to treat one another.
00:39:29.100
So we as classical Christians are constantly reading each other's materials and books from
00:39:35.800
the past and the present, trying to say, help me grasp how a Christian would look at this,
00:39:41.820
because I've only been trained in how a non-Christian would look at it.
00:39:45.880
And so once you start recognizing that, you know what, your children's, if your children's
00:39:50.460
bodies are growing fast, they probably aren't going to learn much that year.
00:39:54.640
But if it's a period of time where, you know, they're kind of, they're in their own bodies,
00:40:01.560
And so learning to just see your children for who they really are is the most, probably the
00:40:09.280
best thing I've got out of homeschooling is because I've had to live with them every day,
00:40:14.740
And so I'm constantly looking forth ways to say, oh, this is this way, because, you know,
00:40:22.020
whatever the difficulty is, because I need sanctified as much as my children's minds and
00:40:26.880
bodies need disciplined and discipled and mentored in the ways of Christianity.
00:40:33.520
And so I just love that the Lord has never, ever abandoned any of us and that he's there
00:40:38.600
constantly to say, hey, did you notice what your kid just did?
00:40:49.400
And it's so clear that you do this and encourage other parents to do so for the glory of God.
00:40:56.300
And through the Lord's sustaining strength so much when we think about obstacles that we're
00:41:02.600
facing or something difficult like homeschooling our kids, we think about it without the sustaining
00:41:08.380
And it's so clear that that is what you and what you encourage parents to rely on in the
00:41:16.860
If you could tell everyone where they can find you, where they can find your resources and
00:41:23.480
learn more about you and any final encouragement that you have for parents.
00:41:27.780
So you can reach us at classicalconversations.com and we have a plethora of materials for parents,
00:41:36.760
articles, web webinars, videos, all kinds of things that can help you.
00:41:41.380
But more importantly, if you do the zip code lookup, we will connect you with a person in
00:41:49.640
We have thousands of leaders that my staff for 20 years has been working with in order
00:41:55.020
to help inculcate a really Christian classical worldview into our educational models.
00:42:01.440
We have lots of resources in order to help you.
00:42:03.460
And then my other encouragement would be to do probably the same thing they tell you on
00:42:10.420
an airplane if there's an accident or something.
00:42:15.580
You'll be a much better homeschooler if you focus on yourself and what you're going to
00:42:19.640
do in order to lead your children, whether it's through a Latin lesson or a baking lesson
00:42:26.940
And that if you would just spend a few minutes ahead of your child getting ready, or maybe sometimes
00:42:32.120
a few seconds, you'll find yourself doing a lot better as a homeschooling parent than
00:42:42.160
You don't always know what's in that little kid's head.
00:42:49.900
And I'm just so grateful for everything that you do.
00:42:53.640
And I know that a lot of parents are going to be challenged by this, convicted by this,
00:42:58.360
and reminded that they're not alone in this endeavor, especially if homeschooling is new
00:43:07.420
So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.