Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 343 ｜ Equipping Yourself to Homeschool ｜ Guest： Leigh Bortins

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable.

00:00:11.440 Hope everyone is having a wonderful day and has had a great week so far.

00:00:16.080 Today I am so excited to talk to the founder of Classical Conversations, Leigh Bortens.

00:00:22.960 Classical Conversations is classical Christian curriculum for homeschooling.

00:00:28.920 She has been in this world for about 30 years, and she is so experienced in the realm of Christian

00:00:36.300 homeschooling.

00:00:37.020 She's got a lot to tell us about the importance of homeschooling, how we homeschool.

00:00:41.940 She's got a lot of equipment and encouragement for parents who are considering this, a lot

00:00:48.280 of very honest and fair critiques about our education system in America and the responsibility

00:00:54.540 that we have as Christians, and in particular as Christian parents, to raise our child in

00:01:00.300 the way they should go.

00:01:02.040 So I'm so excited for you to listen to this discussion.

00:01:04.660 Without further ado, here is Leigh Bortens.

00:01:11.480 Leigh, thank you so much for joining me.

00:01:14.820 Oh, I'm so glad to be here.

00:01:16.320 Thanks for asking me.

00:01:17.420 And you know what?

00:01:18.300 Is it Allie Beth always, or do you go by Allie?

00:01:20.700 Um, Allie or Allie Beth is perfectly fine. 0.72

00:01:24.180 My parents call me Allie Beth.

00:01:26.580 Uh, my husband and his family call me Allie Beth, but my friends and co-workers typically

00:01:32.800 call me, call me Allie.

00:01:34.380 So it's either one, but I am, I'm so thankful that you have joined me and I want to first,

00:01:42.440 uh, let you tell the audience who you are and what you do.

00:01:46.200 So I'm the founder of Classical Conversations, and we did that in 1997, and it's the largest

00:01:54.400 homeschooling network in the world.

00:01:56.820 We are global.

00:01:58.600 Um, if you were to unite all the students that we have enrolled in Classical Conversations

00:02:02.920 in the United States, we'd be about the 20th largest unified school district.

00:02:07.760 That's how big we are.

00:02:09.060 And so it's not the numbers that matter to me, it's that there's so many faithful families

00:02:14.480 that are saying, I want to homeschool, and I want to make sure that there's like rigorous

00:02:19.580 academics attached to it, as well as a really friendly community, and that there's somebody,

00:02:25.400 you know, a friend to homeschool with.

00:02:27.040 And so that's what I do.

00:02:28.920 And I did that in 1997.

00:02:30.280 It's been growing ever since.

00:02:32.380 And tell us exactly what Classical Conversations is for those who don't know.

00:02:36.200 Yes, so when my eldest son was in middle school, you know, I do like every other homeschooling

00:02:43.340 parent, and I wanted to figure out what are we going to do about high school, right?

00:02:46.400 That always feels a little more intimidating.

00:02:48.480 And a lot of their friends, we have four sons, a lot of their friends were leaving homeschooling

00:02:53.260 for high school.

00:02:54.500 And I have airspace engineering degree.

00:02:56.940 I love learning.

00:02:58.140 I just love everything about homeschooling.

00:03:00.500 And so I said to some of my friends, if you won't send your kids to high school, I'll happily

00:03:05.580 meet with you and them once a week and make sure that the things that are, you know, maybe

00:03:10.540 difficult for you or you're concerned about and don't really need to be, we can work on

00:03:14.800 together because I need help and accountability in certain areas, too.

00:03:19.060 So we started meeting with 11 families in 1997.

00:03:24.040 And by 2000, we had 300 families on the waiting list.

00:03:28.480 So my husband quit work, and he's been the CFO of Classical Conversations ever since.

00:03:34.720 And we now have over 100 employees in almost 3,000 locations worldwide.

00:03:40.560 And so there's a lot of families that meet once a week together with tutors and directors

00:03:46.340 that we train in the Christian Classical model.

00:03:49.160 And they all work together to homeschool together.

00:03:52.940 And what is the Christian Classical model?

00:03:56.440 What does that curriculum entail?

00:03:59.380 So I'll tell you what it means for Classical Conversations.

00:04:02.460 Classical has a lot of different meetings.

00:04:04.960 And for us, what it means is that we're practicing the art of learning and the art of teaching more

00:04:11.720 than emphasizing the content.

00:04:14.680 But the content's really important.

00:04:17.100 So we study the classics.

00:04:19.340 But by meeting once a week, we're able to help each other think through, you know, this

00:04:24.060 is how my child learns and whether he likes the material, dislikes the material, how can

00:04:30.440 I encourage them in it?

00:04:32.160 And so from the classical perspective, we're trying to say these are difficult documents

00:04:36.040 that maybe even the parents haven't read.

00:04:37.940 And so as a team, we all need help in, you know, reading at a higher level than most people

00:04:43.920 do at this stage of life.

00:04:45.220 And then we also work really hard on parents, just, you know, parenting's hard.

00:04:50.560 It's almost like it's a weekly PTA meeting.

00:04:52.900 And so we have a friend, you know, you have a friend every week that works with you on the

00:04:58.380 idea of not just the classics, but also just homeschooling in general.

00:05:03.500 You know, every day the Lord's mercies are new and we've never had that day before.

00:05:09.300 And we're going to make mistakes in that day.

00:05:11.380 And it's really helpful to continue homeschooling if you have a friend who's going, yeah, I'm

00:05:15.820 making the same mistakes.

00:05:16.980 Let's work together on this because this is worth doing really well.

00:05:21.300 And so we're just a community that really encourages each other.

00:05:26.220 And so Classical Conversations, does it offer a particular kind of curriculum?

00:05:32.000 Is that what parents are getting from it?

00:05:33.880 Or is it just helping parents learn how to be homeschool teachers?

00:05:39.900 Yes, so it's a very specific curriculum.

00:05:44.420 And so what we do is in the younger grades, we work on what we call the grammar, which

00:05:49.140 is the first step in the classical education.

00:05:52.120 You know, people used to go to grammar schools in the United States and everybody knew what

00:05:55.780 that meant.

00:05:56.580 When they switched to elementary schools, we started to lose what the classical model of

00:06:00.760 education was, which has been taught for thousands of years.

00:06:04.780 And so the first step is grammar.

00:06:06.680 It's the facts.

00:06:07.760 It's the rote games.

00:06:09.120 It's memory work.

00:06:10.180 It's vocabulary building.

00:06:12.560 It's kind of the things that calculators and computers have stolen from us.

00:06:17.180 And so we're making sure that our children can memorize a lot of information.

00:06:22.060 You know, the scriptures tell us to hide God's word in our hearts.

00:06:25.720 And so in order to do that, it helps to practice memorizing a lot of different things.

00:06:30.840 So, and little kids like that, right?

00:06:33.860 We all know they're sponges.

00:06:35.280 And so sometimes that can be really boring for a parent, but it's really important for

00:06:40.300 a child.

00:06:41.420 And so we start there.

00:06:43.600 Now, you know, as an adult, though, it's not like it's just for little kids.

00:06:46.460 If you or I were going to decide to go take a welding class together, we would need to

00:06:51.240 learn the grammar of a welder.

00:06:53.180 What do you call the equipment?

00:06:54.420 What do you call the materials?

00:06:55.540 So that's where we start.

00:06:57.820 Then through middle school, we have a very specific curriculum and materials that concentrate

00:07:02.320 on asking questions, logic, dialectic skills.

00:07:07.160 And, you know, that's so great because what a middle schoolers want to do, they kind of

00:07:10.600 want to push back and they're asking a lot of questions and they want to argue with you.

00:07:14.620 So we work on teaching them how to do that well and respectfully.

00:07:19.160 Right, right.

00:07:20.240 So and then the last stage for us is it's called the rhetoric stage, where now you have

00:07:26.920 all this information you've memorized.

00:07:28.760 You're asking really good questions.

00:07:30.460 It has meaning to you.

00:07:32.360 What are you going to do with it?

00:07:34.360 Right.

00:07:34.540 And so we like to compare that to the gospel.

00:07:38.300 You know, first you hide God's word in his heart, in your heart, and then you need to,

00:07:41.980 you know, really ask the Lord to show you his purposes for you and ask a lot of questions.

00:07:47.900 And then finally, once you really have secured that this is my relationship with the Lord,

00:07:52.760 not my parents, but my own, how are you going to go share the gospel?

00:07:57.420 And so whether it's through scripture or math or Latin, we're always practicing these

00:08:02.800 three skills.

00:08:04.540 Right, right.

00:08:05.340 And this is such a contrast to what a lot of people feel like they're getting, not just

00:08:09.680 in public school, but also in some private schools as well.

00:08:13.580 A lot of parents feel like, okay, their kids might be caught up on, you know, the curriculum

00:08:19.140 or the facts that are needed to be able to do pretty well in a standardized test.

00:08:24.780 But once they go to college, they haven't actually been equipped.

00:08:27.860 They're trained to think for themselves, or they haven't been trained in logic.

00:08:31.020 And so say they get a professor that espouses a completely contradictory worldview to what their

00:08:36.500 parents taught them.

00:08:37.380 They don't, in some cases, actually have the tools to be able to critically think through

00:08:42.620 that and to think about the opposition to that.

00:08:45.640 And maybe they haven't even learned through their education to hide God's word in their

00:08:48.920 heart.

00:08:49.800 They have a general sense of what their faith is, but they were never actually taught to

00:08:54.500 incorporate it in all of these different subjects.

00:08:58.340 But it sounds like the goal of classical conversations is to make sure that they have built that worldview

00:09:05.680 on a solid foundation and are able to apply it to every different area of their life, including

00:09:11.560 every different area of academia.

00:09:13.440 Is that correct?

00:09:15.320 Yeah, that's a really great description.

00:09:18.240 Something that, you know, you said was like, it's called classical conversations for a reason,

00:09:23.540 because we're not just conversing about the scriptures.

00:09:25.740 We're also conversing about the great conversations of all of history.

00:09:30.560 And so that's the part that can feel intimidating to some parents.

00:09:33.760 And yet what they don't realize is how natural it is to learn this way.

00:09:37.740 So do you mind if I take a minute to kind of describe how a child learns and why the classical

00:09:42.520 model is so important?

00:09:44.320 What parents tend to do very, very naturally is teach classically.

00:09:49.080 When your child is born, in order to develop their facility with words, you just say things

00:09:54.620 over and over to them.

00:09:56.260 Well, what if you said things over and over to them and not just like household routines,

00:10:00.660 but also in the literature you love or the languages that you love or in, you know, whatever

00:10:08.000 kind of hobbies you have, right?

00:10:09.920 So what tends to happen is people homeschool class or people educate their children classically

00:10:14.580 till about four years old.

00:10:16.900 And then something happens.

00:10:18.440 Your child starts to be able to really work in the world that you've given them.

00:10:22.380 They can make a peanut butter sandwich.

00:10:23.940 They can unlock and unlock doors.

00:10:26.700 You tend to stop saying things so many times to them because they can function in your household.

00:10:32.760 And then you tend to send them off to some kind of school or some kind of program.

00:10:37.100 So what we homeschoolers do is say, no, we're going to keep doing what was super easy and

00:10:41.560 natural all along.

00:10:42.760 But now when my child, when we go outside, we're not going to just say bird.

00:10:46.400 We're going to say cardinal or goose, right?

00:10:50.640 Or if we're talking about cooking at home, you know, we're going to talk about the various

00:10:54.940 chemical aspects of things as the children get older, that we just keep having conversations

00:11:00.800 with our children.

00:11:02.040 And so whether they're watching a newscast or reading a story in high school or middle

00:11:06.460 school, or if you're just reading a picture book to them when they're little, you're constantly

00:11:11.100 talking to them about words and their meanings.

00:11:13.880 And the reason why we do this as Christians is because we know the word made flesh.

00:11:19.800 And if he calls himself that, words must be pretty important.

00:11:24.400 And you know that a string of words makes up ideas.

00:11:28.640 And so we're just constantly preparing them to be able to just communicate well.

00:11:33.700 And isn't that interesting that every Sunday we go and have communion together?

00:11:37.820 So there's a lot of Christian aspects to this idea of just naturally raising your children

00:11:43.720 within the family.

00:11:45.780 Right, right.

00:11:46.940 And why is it that this differs, seems to differ so much from what kids are getting when they

00:11:54.180 go to school?

00:11:55.380 It doesn't seem like it's conversation-based or kind of just a natural progression of thinking

00:12:00.960 through the things that we already know.

00:12:02.640 But it's this very general and standardized way of learning that might not work for kids

00:12:10.280 who, you know, learn in a variety of ways.

00:12:12.900 Why is there such a stark contrast between the classical conversational way of teaching

00:12:18.220 kids and what most kids get when they go to, you know, just your average school?

00:12:24.740 Well, it's really hard to have a conversation with 20 or 30 people in a room, right?

00:12:28.780 And that's the first thing.

00:12:30.100 So just institutionally, it doesn't set you up for this.

00:12:33.660 Then another thing is school is either, or not just school, anything regarding with children

00:12:40.120 is either easy for the kids or easier for the adults.

00:12:44.100 So what the school systems have done is put together really good systems for the adults

00:12:48.780 to operate in, to work at.

00:12:50.940 Well, if it's efficient for the teacher, it's not going to be efficient for the child.

00:12:55.360 So that's something that, you know, is just in the way, right?

00:12:59.000 It's all about the NEA and the unions and the leadership.

00:13:01.860 Now, an individual teacher, of course, might care very, very much about the children in

00:13:06.800 the classroom, but a lot of things constrain that teacher.

00:13:11.100 Then another thing is we have lost our cultural heritage, right?

00:13:14.100 That's what this election has been showing us all.

00:13:16.420 We don't even remember what the Constitution says, let alone that there even, you know,

00:13:20.440 that there is one, you know, the tearing down the monuments and all that kind of stuff.

00:13:25.440 So what happens is institutional education slowly but surely has taken the responsibility of

00:13:31.860 parents away from their children.

00:13:34.100 Don't do that.

00:13:34.820 We'll do this at school for you.

00:13:36.460 But that's also made it so we've lost our heritage.

00:13:40.620 And so one of the most interesting things for kids to talk about is their heritage.

00:13:44.320 Don't they want to hear stories about what their granddad did in World War II or how their

00:13:48.860 grandmother had to churn butter? 1.00

00:13:50.720 What their daddy does at work each day?

00:13:52.960 That connects to children.

00:13:56.380 Right.

00:13:56.520 Well, there's nothing to connect to in the classroom except the peers, right?

00:14:02.800 Because it used to be I'm old enough that we had home school, I mean, home room when I

00:14:07.920 was in school.

00:14:09.200 Me too.

00:14:09.560 And I had to teach her all day long, right?

00:14:13.240 Now, if I'm a second or third grader, I might have three or four adults who are helping with

00:14:18.800 my education every single day.

00:14:21.320 And then the next year I go to another grade and they disappear and it's a few more other

00:14:27.260 adults.

00:14:28.160 But who comes with me, Allie Beth?

00:14:30.380 The other kids.

00:14:31.720 Yeah.

00:14:32.180 They're who I can trust.

00:14:33.980 They become my community.

00:14:35.580 So it's no surprise that I act like I'm a child longer and longer because education is about

00:14:42.060 rearing children to know how to live in the adult world.

00:14:44.940 Well, the adults disappear every year, but the kids coming back.

00:14:50.400 And so institutionally, it's just not a good plan that we've put together.

00:14:55.080 The one room schoolhouse back in, you know, 100, 200 years ago was a lot more efficient

00:14:59.660 than what we do now.

00:15:02.140 And what about for parents who say, OK, that might sound good, but I think that, you know,

00:15:07.720 there are some socialization benefits to my kid going to school rather than just spending

00:15:12.000 time with parents all day.

00:15:13.180 I've heard this said, and obviously I disagree with him, but I want to hear the opposition

00:15:17.360 from from you, too, that, you know, kids who are homeschooled, well, they become weird because

00:15:21.840 they don't spend enough time with other kids.

00:15:24.160 And at least at school, you know, they're not only spending time with other kids, but

00:15:28.440 they're learning about different people's views and their views are sharpened by confronting,

00:15:33.800 you know, different worldviews of other kids.

00:15:35.960 What do you say to people like who say things like that?

00:15:38.940 Well, I'm pretty sure I knew some weird kids that went through public school.

00:15:44.180 So there's just children that are different.

00:15:47.680 And it's really sad that anybody would call them weird.

00:15:50.160 Yeah, because they're uniquely made right in God's image.

00:15:53.380 Yeah.

00:15:53.720 And in some of those children who really struggle with social skills, probably need more parenting,

00:15:59.240 not less parenting in order to overcome that.

00:16:02.960 So that's the one thing I say for people who think that there's something odd about, you

00:16:07.880 know, any child as we should be helping them.

00:16:11.300 When it comes to the social activities people refer to, if you've been in the homeschool

00:16:15.900 movement more in a few months, you'll find out there's so many activities that, you know,

00:16:20.300 we just laugh at it.

00:16:21.700 Really, homeschool is a bad name for what we do.

00:16:24.420 It's more like it's family school or global school.

00:16:27.300 We're hardly ever in the house.

00:16:28.840 Yeah.

00:16:29.300 Right.

00:16:29.520 We're always with other people.

00:16:30.940 And that's one of the reasons I started Classical Conversations is I wanted my children to

00:16:35.040 have a group of peers once a week, not something that overtook their lives, with the parents

00:16:40.960 in the room so that we were all learning together.

00:16:44.020 And yet they could study the things that maybe they weren't going to naturally study on their

00:16:48.740 own.

00:16:49.500 Now, you don't have to be in Classical Conversations to do that.

00:16:51.920 There's homeschool co-ops all across the United States.

00:16:54.760 You can do online learning.

00:16:56.120 You can just, you know, go to the mechanic down the street and learn how to work on cars.

00:17:02.420 There's educators everywhere you go.

00:17:05.560 School and education are not synonymous.

00:17:08.900 And so socialization, I think, for homeschoolers is a lot better because they don't sit in a

00:17:13.560 building for 12 years in rows.

00:17:16.200 They're constantly out in the community serving.

00:17:19.220 Right.

00:17:19.860 Right.

00:17:20.220 What about parents who think, okay, fine, you might be right about that, but I'm just

00:17:26.500 completely unequipped.

00:17:28.400 Either they feel like they're financially unequipped.

00:17:30.660 They, you know, they think that, you know, maybe one of the parents quitting a job, they're

00:17:35.240 not going to be able to afford to do that.

00:17:37.120 They're not going to be able to afford to homeschool.

00:17:39.000 Or they feel like, you know, God has just not equipped me to be a teacher.

00:17:45.080 I want to homeschool, but these things are holding me back.

00:17:47.680 What do you say to those parents?

00:17:49.040 Well, on the financial side, everybody has to learn how to govern their own finances.

00:17:54.800 And, you know, a couple of years ago, I had an older gentleman at my house and there was

00:17:59.120 all these kids running around, all these homeschooled big families.

00:18:02.460 And he looked at me and he said, I wish we'd had more children.

00:18:06.420 And so I said, well, why didn't you?

00:18:08.720 Like, explain that to me.

00:18:10.280 And he said, I thought I had to provide for them.

00:18:13.360 I didn't know the Lord would do it for me.

00:18:15.240 So first, getting our sight on Jesus might calm down some of that, you know, anxiety.

00:18:23.140 Secondly, COVID has showed a lot of parents across the United States that you can figure

00:18:28.660 out ways to be with your children that you probably never thought of before.

00:18:32.520 So what I have found is that whether it's through COVID or, you know, you can look back in history

00:18:38.240 at refugees and camps or movements where, you know, moms were trying to figure out, should

00:18:43.820 I work or stay home?

00:18:45.620 Parents always figure out in good and bad circumstances what to do with their children.

00:18:50.980 So sometimes the easiest solution, sending them off somewhere else, isn't necessarily

00:18:56.800 the best solution.

00:18:58.600 And I've had a number of parents tell me that even in the public school with having to pay,

00:19:03.900 whether it's cheerleader fees or travel fees for sports or whatever it is, they're probably

00:19:08.660 paying more for school than they thought they were going to.

00:19:11.860 So, you know, just some of those kind of considerations.

00:19:14.360 Um, but I really recognize that it can be really hard for people to homeschool if they

00:19:19.560 have, um, you know, uh, income insecurities, but I thought that was what the church was

00:19:24.440 for.

00:19:25.400 Why are we helping folks in that situation?

00:19:28.880 Yeah.

00:19:29.120 So I would say that's my fault.

00:19:31.140 If you're my neighbor and feel like you can't afford to homeschool, I should go over and find

00:19:36.140 out what can I do to help.

00:19:37.740 Yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:19:39.100 And I think that the church, it seems like I don't want to speak for all churches, certainly

00:19:43.280 because I'm sure that there are a number of churches that are doing this correctly, but

00:19:47.040 it seems like this isn't really a conversation that we're having, uh, in our churches about

00:19:53.820 the education of our kids.

00:19:55.560 Sure.

00:19:55.760 We have student ministry.

00:19:57.340 We have children's ministry where they're learning something on Sunday, but it seems like

00:20:02.180 we're not really talking about what our kids are learning Monday through Friday or Monday

00:20:06.760 through Saturday and what it looks like to make sure that our kids are integrating the

00:20:13.220 gospel and scripture into every part of their lives in every part of academics.

00:20:18.340 And that's just, I don't even necessarily have a question.

00:20:21.180 It's just a commentary that I'm thinking through as, as, as you were speaking, that it doesn't

00:20:24.980 seem like the church has stepped up and, and has said, look, we're going to support parents

00:20:29.120 who want to educate their child in a Christ-centered way on their own.

00:20:34.300 It's just kind of like, you know what, just figure out what to do.

00:20:37.900 It's not that big of a deal.

00:20:38.760 We'll take care of the rest at church, but that doesn't seem like it's totally sufficient

00:20:43.220 to compartmentalize our faith from Monday through Saturday, especially when it comes

00:20:48.960 to kids' education.

00:20:50.880 Yeah.

00:20:51.440 So how's that working out now?

00:20:53.080 Right.

00:20:53.340 Right.

00:20:53.800 Public education is about 120 years old.

00:20:57.040 It's a new idea.

00:20:58.320 It's not been around a really long time.

00:21:00.680 And it's a socialist idea.

00:21:02.600 It was started about by progressives trying to figure out what to do with immigrants.

00:21:06.100 Some reaction to the Catholic churches that were going on.

00:21:09.700 The Protestants wanted to have a way to make sure our country, that the immigrants coming 1.00

00:21:13.340 over had the Protestant work ethic.

00:21:15.840 But if you go back and read the actual founders of that era of the public education, they were

00:21:21.280 socialists.

00:21:22.260 And you know what?

00:21:23.200 They finally have succeeded to a point where everybody can see that that's what they were

00:21:28.500 up to.

00:21:29.320 Yeah.

00:21:29.420 So there's a lot of Christian leaders.

00:21:33.280 Denise D'Souza, I said, 70 million of us are going to pull our kids out of school, that

00:21:37.560 we're seeing what's happening.

00:21:39.920 I saw a meme go by that said the definition of a conservative is somebody who sends their

00:21:45.040 kid to be raised by the enemy and then wonders why the culture is being lost.

00:21:49.860 This is serious business.

00:21:51.160 This is battle that we're in.

00:21:53.040 And I'm just so grateful that so many parents are taking up the call.

00:21:59.080 And COVID has actually helped us.

00:22:00.840 People are asking questions that never would have thought of this before.

00:22:04.440 Right.

00:22:04.740 And I'm really glad that it's not just classical conversations, but there's 2 million families

00:22:08.880 across the United States that can help you with the answers to how do I go about doing

00:22:13.180 this?

00:22:13.900 Yeah.

00:22:14.120 So if you feel like you are really struggling but want to do this, find a friend for yourself.

00:22:19.780 Don't worry about your child's socialization.

00:22:22.600 Get yourself a really good friend who will help you homeschool.

00:22:26.860 And like you said, socialization is part of classical conversations.

00:22:31.740 It's part of homeschooling because you're out in the community.

00:22:35.480 They're not just necessarily sitting at their...

00:22:37.940 And plus, by the way, speaking of COVID, there's not a whole lot of socialization going on at

00:22:43.520 school right now anyway, because kids are told that they have to sit at their desk for

00:22:47.600 lunch, that there's no recess, that there's no gin, that they have to stay six feet apart.

00:22:53.460 They can't hug their friends.

00:22:55.340 There's plexiglass sometimes in between the students.

00:22:57.840 And I'm not saying that these are precautions that those schools shouldn't be taking.

00:23:01.800 But if we're talking about socialization of our kids, I think a lot of parents are realizing,

00:23:06.360 well, that's not happening at their public school right now anyway.

00:23:10.060 And I think you're absolutely right that some people are waking up to the fact that the educators,

00:23:14.460 the education institutions, I should say, because there's a lot of awesome public school

00:23:19.340 teachers out there, so many wonderful public school teachers.

00:23:22.140 But the institutions, the associations and the unions that have been pushing so hard to

00:23:28.580 keep these schools closed, despite the fact that the science shows that it's actually perfectly

00:23:33.300 safe for kids to go to school in relation to COVID.

00:23:36.940 But I think that's showing a lot of people that, OK, maybe these institutions don't care

00:23:41.980 as much about my kids and their education and their well-being as I thought.

00:23:46.080 My kid has fallen behind in math.

00:23:47.740 He's fallen behind in reading English.

00:23:49.820 Maybe I am better equipped, some parents are saying, to take the reins and the education

00:23:55.440 for my children.

00:23:57.160 So while I really hurt for parents, single moms who don't have another option but to send 1.00

00:24:02.640 their kids to public schools, I'm also encouraged by the flip side of it, that there are parents

00:24:06.960 who are realizing, OK, that education system is not best for my kids.

00:24:11.460 I know what's best for my kid.

00:24:13.280 And maybe I am really equipped to do something like this.

00:24:18.000 Well, the sad part for all of it for me is that public education, you said they don't have

00:24:23.220 the money to send their kids somewhere else.

00:24:26.020 The reason why you don't have the money to send your children to another school is because

00:24:29.180 we have public education, public education makes private education expensive because

00:24:35.200 all the resources are pushed to one place.

00:24:38.160 And so within a free market, if we actually would stop with some of our silly bureaucratic

00:24:42.560 regulations and what education is supposed to look like and how it's supposed to be implemented,

00:24:47.760 school would come down to the cost of education and school would come down to a place where

00:24:53.300 everybody could afford it.

00:24:54.780 You know how I know?

00:24:55.920 Because it used to be that way.

00:24:57.540 Everyone could afford to have their children get a decent education.

00:25:02.580 Right, right.

00:25:03.480 And we know that those public schools, those public institutions, as all bureaucracy does,

00:25:09.700 they dislike competition, which is why a Joe Biden administration and the teachers unions

00:25:14.980 that he is beholden to fight so hard against charter schools and so hard against school choice

00:25:21.020 because school choice, it ups the quality of all the institutions because if the money

00:25:26.380 follows the child, so a parent can say, you know what, I'm going to take this taxpayer money

00:25:31.580 and I'm going to send my child elsewhere, while a public school says, okay, well, we got

00:25:36.740 to get it together because we don't want all these families to leave.

00:25:39.120 But right now, a public school gets money no matter what, even if they're failing, even if

00:25:44.600 their teachers are incompetent and it doesn't matter how many students move away and because

00:25:50.380 the school is bad, they have no incentive to spend their dollars better or to teach the

00:25:56.220 kids better.

00:25:57.100 But if we allow that competition, like you said, then that can improve everyone's education.

00:26:02.720 Yeah, and I'm not talking about those kind of choices.

00:26:06.700 There's still government funded choices, Allie Beth.

00:26:09.420 That's not freedom.

00:26:10.740 Freedom is free market where you have to come up with the money for your own child's education.

00:26:16.480 So we need to reduce the cost of private education by reducing bureaucracy.

00:26:21.460 We need to do more about private scholarships for children so that if I want to just give my

00:26:26.580 neighbors some money for their children to go to private school, there's better systems

00:26:30.900 in place for that because I might be older and I might not know who needs some money at

00:26:35.220 that time, right?

00:26:36.380 So we can put some things in place there.

00:26:38.940 There's certain kinds of educational models I would have sent my children to, but they're

00:26:42.800 against the law.

00:26:43.800 And so we really need to examine what education means instead of just, you know, even private

00:26:51.820 schools, they still replicate the public school model.

00:26:54.700 There's so many other ways to educate that people and people don't know what they are because

00:26:58.880 we've only had one model for over a hundred years.

00:27:03.360 Private school follows public school systems and most homeschoolers follow public school

00:27:07.800 systems.

00:27:08.680 It's really hard to not be the frog in that kettle and break out into a paradigm where we're

00:27:13.780 free indeed.

00:27:15.020 And it's truly Christian education with the resources the Lord provides, not the state.

00:27:20.620 Right, right.

00:27:21.500 Um, you talk a lot about free market education and the importance of the free markets.

00:27:28.400 Can you talk a little bit more about that?

00:27:31.020 Why you're passionate about that and how Classical Conversations teaches that to the kids who are

00:27:35.900 involved in it?

00:27:37.300 So the main thing with Classical Conversations, what we teach about the free market is we just

00:27:41.660 have the children in high school in particular reading a lot of original source documents by

00:27:46.280 free market thinkers.

00:27:47.340 You know, they'll read people like Adam Smith and economists like, um, Hazlitt, um, I'm losing

00:27:54.260 my mind right now.

00:27:55.100 I can't think of all the names.

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

00:28:52.620 adults involved.

00:28:53.860 So it's just not a really helpful system.

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

00:29:02.020 run the local grammar school.

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

00:29:13.880 parents were still raising and training them.

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.

00:29:30.280 Yeah.

00:29:30.760 That would be so inexpensive.

00:29:33.100 Right.

00:29:33.500 And then as kids get into high school age, why can't they work and pay for their education?

00:29:40.400 Nobody even talks about that.

00:29:42.520 Right.

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.

00:30:02.540 I can't do that.

00:30:03.500 Right.

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.

00:30:15.200 Yeah.

00:30:16.020 Even that was very, very common 100 years ago.

00:30:19.200 Right.

00:30:19.880 There has been a push against public school.

00:30:24.360 Well, I'm not sure that if you saw the article that came out by a Harvard professor named

00:30:30.200 Elizabeth Bartholet quite a few months ago.

00:30:33.480 And it didn't come out of a vacuum.

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

00:30:50.280 their kids.

00:30:50.800 They shouldn't be able to indoctrinate them.

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

00:31:08.960 their children?

00:31:10.040 Well, that's been the case since we started in the early 80s, right?

00:31:14.420 It's come and gone.

00:31:15.380 There's been different things that we've had to battle that we're battling now.

00:31:19.200 But that's always, you know, been around.

00:31:22.480 First, the first misconception I think that they have is that they shouldn't have their

00:31:29.100 parents' worldview.

00:31:30.360 Well, I'm pretty sure that our children should have our worldview.

00:31:34.040 They're our children.

00:31:35.220 And they've been given to us to educate and to explain, hopefully pass on our Christian

00:31:39.580 faith and our values.

00:31:42.320 Children are going to have somebody's values.

00:31:45.280 Right.

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?

00:31:53.200 And then none of us live in a bubble.

00:31:54.840 We all live in neighborhoods and we go to church and we go to the grocery store.

00:31:58.320 Well, we used to.

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

00:32:07.940 basement.

00:32:08.940 That doesn't happen among homeschooling families very often, but it happens at a higher percentage

00:32:14.600 with public school families.

00:32:17.380 And then you look at the abuse of their mind if they're not taught.

00:32:22.280 Well, nobody ever talks about that.

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?

00:32:30.960 Right.

00:32:31.760 Right.

00:32:32.840 Exactly.

00:32:33.280 So there's always an authority and we have to decide who's going to be the authority.

00:32:39.580 Yeah.

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

00:32:57.600 at until like even two years ago.

00:32:59.800 It's really kind of bizarre how quickly it's happened.

00:33:03.600 Yeah.

00:33:03.980 And so it's like, you know, taking in the whole picture and homeschooling parents in

00:33:08.620 general want the best for their children.

00:33:10.980 Sure.

00:33:11.440 There's days where you're like, you know, could just go to public school.

00:33:13.980 I've had it up to here with you.

00:33:15.600 Right.

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.

00:33:32.520 Right.

00:33:32.880 But every evening I have to repent of how I've raised my children and the places I've

00:33:37.160 disobeyed the Lord.

00:33:38.820 And so people just often ask these questions and have these pushbacks because they don't

00:33:43.660 have Jesus.

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

00:34:05.060 are fed, clothed and educated.

00:34:07.120 And people have been doing that for thousands and thousands of years with no government help.

00:34:12.760 Right.

00:34:13.140 Right.

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

00:34:24.620 by some of its ideas.

00:34:26.700 And one of its ideas is that you parent are not fully equipped to raise your child.

00:34:32.340 You actually don't.

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.

00:34:45.080 We need church help and things like that.

00:34:47.320 But this idea of your child not fully belonging to you, but kind of belonging to the state or

00:34:52.540 belonging to themselves.

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

00:35:22.020 your kid and cares for your kid.

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.

00:35:31.060 You know what their special needs are.

00:35:33.500 You know how they learn.

00:35:34.700 You know what their quirks are.

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

00:35:46.680 say, okay, you've got what it takes.

00:35:48.560 We're going to help you organize those tools in a way that is actually effective for your

00:35:52.520 child.

00:35:52.980 Do you agree with that?

00:35:55.040 Yeah.

00:35:55.340 You know, Christians across the globe will say our responsibility is to teach our children

00:36:01.060 God's word.

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

00:36:15.960 means to be a Christian.

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

00:36:35.160 strand in our high school and middle school.

00:36:37.520 But in the younger years, we try really hard to help parents just learn how to live with

00:36:42.300 their children.

00:36:43.400 Right.

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.

00:36:54.800 And we're trying to recover that.

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

00:37:12.560 children.

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 1.00

00:37:24.620 worldview.

00:37:25.620 They think that things are neutral and they absolutely are not.

00:37:29.780 Right.

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

00:37:47.440 a neutral worldview.

00:37:48.840 Whereas Christianity is, you know, extreme right wing, whatever. 0.70

00:37:52.000 Or secularism is neutral.

00:37:54.700 Well, nothing, nothing is neutral.

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

00:38:02.260 by Christ or counterclaimed by Satan.

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?

00:38:36.460 That's the choice.

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.

00:38:43.360 They're going to be indoctrinated.

00:38:44.900 They're going to be under an authority.

00:38:46.760 It's up to parents to decide whose authority should your child be under, correct?

00:38:51.980 Right.

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

00:39:17.180 look up to her son, who else will do so?

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,

00:39:59.640 boy, I bet their mind's growing.

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,

00:40:12.920 whether I liked it or not.

00:40:14.500 Right.

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?

00:40:42.420 Right.

00:40:42.740 Let me tell you why.

00:40:44.460 Right.

00:40:45.580 Yes.

00:40:46.100 Amen.

00:40:46.620 I love the way that you have framed that.

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

00:41:07.380 grace of God.

00:41:08.380 And it's so clear that that is what you and what you encourage parents to rely on in the

00:41:13.820 education of our kids.

00:41:15.080 And I'm so thankful for that.

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

00:41:47.140 your area who already homeschools this way.

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.

00:42:00.180 So you're not alone.

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.

00:42:12.860 Put your own oxygen mask on first.

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

00:42:24.460 or planning a garden, it doesn't matter.

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

00:42:37.620 if you're always focused on your child.

00:42:40.480 Because you know what's in your head.

00:42:42.160 You don't always know what's in that little kid's head.

00:42:44.760 Right, right.

00:42:45.720 Well, thank you so much.

00:42:46.920 This has been so equipping and encouraging.

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

00:43:06.960 for them.

00:43:07.420 So thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.

00:43:11.780 You're so welcome, Hallie Beth.

00:43:12.860 And get started.

00:43:14.520 And then we'll show you a bit.

00:43:22.340 Thank you.

00:43:23.000 See you next week.

00:43:23.200 Bye-bye.

00:43:24.400 Bye-bye.

00:43:24.820 Bye-bye.

00:43:26.620 Bye-bye.

00:43:28.500 Bye-bye.

00:43:33.240 Bye-bye.

00:43:33.600 Bye-bye.

00:43:34.160 Bye-bye.

00:43:36.120 Bye-bye.

00:43:36.780 Bye-bye.

00:43:37.660 Bye-bye.

00:43:38.720 Bye-bye.

00:43:39.200 Bye-bye.

00:43:40.360 Bye-bye.

00:43:40.980 Bye-bye.

00:43:41.920 Bye-bye.

00:43:42.180 Bye-bye.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 28, 2020

Ep 343 ｜ Equipping Yourself to Homeschool ｜ Guest： Leigh Bortins

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