Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “DEBATE: Two Christian Moms On Public vs Homeschool.” - Heidi St. John & Katy Faust

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Two Christian conservative moms in Washington State debate whether public school vs homeschool is more beneficial in training children to defend their beliefs. Heidi St. John homeschooled her seven children and is on a mission to warn parents against the predatory curriculums of public schools. Katy Faust’s four children survived the Seattle public school system and according to Katy, are stronger in their convictions because of it. Alex moderates this insightful discussion where one clear conclusion is drawn - parents must take charge and do what is best for their children. Heidi St. John@heidistjohnOrder Heidi's book: The Mouse and the SeaWebsite"Off the Bench" Podcast Katy Faust@katyfaustofficialPreorder Katy's new book: Pro-Child Politics:Them Before Us .Don't miss your chance to join us at the Turning Point Academy Educators’ Summit 2024 from July 24th-26th in West Palm Beach, Florida and become equipped to meet today's challenges while shaping tomorrow's leaders. Sign up now! Register HERE.. Thank you to our sponsors! Support American farms and shop Good Ranchers and get up to $150 off when you subscribe with code CLARK https://www.goodranchers.com. Get 100% Organic tampons & now PADS! Try GARNUU today at https://garnuu.com and use code ALEX for 15% off. Reclaim your BIRTHRIGHT To Optimal Health, Fertility, and Wholeness with Birthright Prenatal Supplements at https://www.birthright.co. Use code ALEX for 15% off. Elevate your skincare routine with Nimi Skincare! Go to https://www.nimiskincare.com and use promo code ALEXCLARK to get 10% off your order. Switch to Aleavia organic prebiotic body wash and ditch artificial fragrances. Use code: ALEX15 for 15% OFF. https://www.aleavia.com.  Support the show Looking for like-minded friends? Join the Cuteservative Facebook group! Interested in making a tax deductible donation to support The Spillover? ☕️✨ Visit https://donate.tpusa.com/donate to contribute to guest travel, set needs and more! Instagram | @RealAlexClarkInstagram | @popliticsYouTube | @RealAlexClarkX | @yoalexrapz Shop Real Alex Clark Merch! Listen at 6 PM PST/ 9 PM EST every Thursday by subscribing to ‘The Spillover’ on Apple Podcasts and Spotify ☕️✨

The friction coming from not just the culture, but the schools sharpened them rather than ground them down. Now, this is where I think Katie and I disagree a little bit, because to believe the lie that the school is on your side and you can drop your child off at school and they're just going to teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic, those days are over. Two of the most popular episodes that I've ever done have been with each of the ladies that I have sitting with me right now. Katie Faust, who has come on and talked about her experience as a conservative Christian mom setting your kids to public. school and also debating the ethics of big fertility. I also did an amazing episode, one of my most popular ever with Heidi St. John, who talked about her journey as a homeschooling mother and why she believes all Christian mothers should homeschool. So I thought, hey, I know both of these women. They've both been on the show. And they both live in the same liberal state of Washington.

Would they be willing to come together, do an episode, the three of us discussing, defending, their different unique ways of educating their children. Why public school has been the best thing for Katie Faust, why homeschooling has been the best thing for Heidi St. John. So today on this episode, very special, I've never done this. I'll be moderating a very friendly discussion because we're all friends here about why these different forms of education have been the best for them.

So I hope you enjoy. Heidi, I want to start with you. How many kids do you have and how long have you been homeschooling? Seven children, and my oldest daughter is 32. And so we pulled her out of the public school system when she was in second grade. So the end of her second grade year. So we're coming up on 25 years of home education. And what do you do in regards to leading homeschool in the state of Washington?

It's probably important for me to say I'm an accidental homeschooler. I never wanted to homeschool. I never saw myself as a leader or an advocate for homeschooling. So I sort of fell into what we're doing. And we have started and run the nation's first and largest homeschool resource center inside of Vancouver, Washington. So just across the border from Portland. And we've got 1,200 students there now about 230 classes that we offer there in very much a tutorial style. And what my role is to, I see myself as kind of on a rescue mission, trying to help parents remove any obstacle that they might face for feeling like they can't home educate their children or they have to keep them in a system of education that really is more supportive of them.

So I look at it this way, you know, 25 years ago when I was introduced to homeschooling, we ended up, When we ended up doing it, I was really running to something. I saw something to be better for our family. It would give me more time with our children. Today's homeschool parents are largely running from something. They're running from a system of education that's bankrupt morally and educationally and spiritually. And so my job is to give them something to run to. And so that's really what the homeschool Resource Center is doing.

Before that, we planted over 200 homeschool cooperatives around the United States and Canada and even one at the Ramstein Air Base. So we've been doing this for a long time. Katie, how many kids do you have and how old are they? First of all, let me say, I'm a huge fan of Heidi St. John. Likewise, girl, yes. And I just like personally, there's not a lot of women that are a few steps ahead of me that I go, that's what I want to look like, that's where I'm going.

And so it's just a joy to be with both of you guys today. Our kids are 2018, 16, and 14. So our oldest is off at a very solid Christian school. The second is about to graduate and go to another very solid Christian university. And then the two boys are going to be home with me for the next couple years. Me and my husband finishing out both public high school. So all of my kids have done public high school in Seattle. They've mostly done public middle school.

And a lot of them did public elementary school as well. And if you come at them with a lie, they will cut you. I mean, like they just, they know what they believe. They're very grounded in their convictions. And we've been able to do that even though they are going to not just public school, but Seattle public school, which is, you know, you know, notoriously and savagely woke. Why was public school in particular right for your family?

Well, there's several reasons, I would say, economically for sure. You know, we are living in one of the most expensive cities on a pastor's salary. And even homeschool options at the time were pricey. We tried to do private school for a little while, and we were able to do that for a few years, and then it just petered out.

Got tired of rice and beans. I relate. I mean, like, honestly, like, like when we were first starting out in marriage, we were on WIC. I mean, like, we had some very, very lean years early on. But I would just say that the main reason is we were not afraid. We're not afraid of what the world is. I mean, yes, obviously, if you send your children in unprepared, it will ravage them. But we also know that we have the truth. And we were confident that we could fortify our children in ways where the friction coming from not just

the culture, but the schools sharpened them rather than ground them down. And so we did that in age-appropriate ways with our kids through elementary school, middle school, and high school. I think that most of my friends have not exclusively done all homeschool, all private school, all public school. What I'm seeing in sort of the scrapper world of Seattle where you're trying to piece together in education for your child is people do all kinds of things. Even my homeschool friends are sending their kids to public high school for band or for languages or for sports. And so, like, really what you're doing as a parent is you're evaluating each child with your economic realities, what the school system is offering you because there are some districts

where it's not as bad, right? And there might be situations where you're like, actually, that's a good option for me and my family. And it might be the right time for this year, but not the next year. So our main messages, my husband and I and my co-author, Stacey, who has helped me with raising conservative kids in a woke city. Our main message is, you are arming your kids for war. Whether you homeschool, private school, or send them to public school, you are the primary trainer, the primary discipler, and you need to set your kids up

for success. You need to equip them to know more than anybody else, any of their peers. Our opinion is, when they walk into a conversation about abortion or transgenderism or US history, they need to know more than everybody else. Maybe they won't know enough to argue and refute what their teacher is saying, but they need to know enough to at least spot a lie. So that's sort of our main principle is regardless of where you send your kids, regardless of how you educate them, you need to train them for war.

Because the woke is seeking to evangelize and disciple them. And I've talked to parents in red states and I've talked to homeschool parents and I've talked to parents that send their kids to private school who have said, I thought I was sheltering my kids. But the woke found them anyway. and sometimes snuck in when I was not expecting it. So that's the main message that we have is like, regardless of where you send your kids to school, you need to fortify them and you need to arm them for battle because, you know, the left isn't playing around anymore, right?

They're after your kids. What is the strongest argument you hear against Christian conservative parents sending their kids to public school? Well, I think that there's sort of an accusation of you're sending them like as missionaries, right? You want them to be missionaries to the culture. I'm like, my husband and I didn't think that.

We just thought, you know, this is, we looked at all of the different options available in terms of private school and affordability of that. I did send, I did homeschool my kids for a year during the pandemic, two of them. And at the end of that year, they said, hey, mom, let's never do that again. Please don't, please don't talk that again. What was it for them? They just miss their friends or what? Well, part of it is they do like to be in a classroom setting. They didn't like necessarily the independent learning.

Part of it is they had a terrible teacher. I was not the right person to be doing that at the time, right? They needed somebody that was willing to be more involved, and I was not as dialed in probably as I should have been, but they really like the traditional classroom setting. And part of it is, like, we do let our kids choose where to go to school, especially in high school. One of our sort of parenting philosophies is we do give them,

as long as the decisions they're making are legal, moral, and they're brutally honest with us about what's going on, We give them a lot of free reign over their own life, their time, their money, their choices, and they've all chosen to go to public school. And we tell them, that's fine, but just know that you're going to get an education on top of your education. Like, you will go and you'll hear what the school has to say you're going to come home, and then we're going to check what the school has to say, and we're going to sift through it, and we're going to see where we need to correct and where we need to send you back with better information.

So I think that the accusation probably is you shouldn't send your kids to public school as missionaries. And we didn't think of it that way. We just thought, okay, based on each kid, the opportunity is available and what they want, we'll send our kids to public school if it's the right choice for that kid that year. Heidi, what is the strongest argument you hear against homeschooling? Absolutely. Every day of the week is sheltering. People will say, don't shelter your children because they won't know how to respond when the world

hits him in the face. Eventually they're going to graduate from your homeschool. They're going to go out into the world and get a job and they won't know how to put their shoes on ride or they won't know how to have an argument in the public square. And so again, I would agree with Katie. I mean, I think we are called as parents to equip our children for the world ahead of them. And it's true that the world is a battlefield. We're trying to equip our children for war. And education really is the front lines of the spiritual war in this country. It is the front lines of the hostile takeover of our nation economically. It is the front lines of the hostile takeover of our nation when it comes to arguments about socialism versus capitalism. Most of the kids that are coming out now of our public schools prefer socialism.

They've been taught that capitalism is this terrible evil. And so when people say to me, well, you're homeschooling your children, you're sheltering them. My answer is, you're absolutely right. I'm sheltering them. We care more about sheltering tomato plants in this country than we do about sheltering our children. And so my responsibility as a mother, the way I see it, is to shelter my kids and while I'm sheltering them, I'm equipping them for the battles that they'll face when they get out of our, when they leave our home. And six of our seven have graduated now. So six of our kids, three of them are married, six of them are in the workforce, they're entrepreneurs, they're doing just fine out in the real world. The old argument was socialization, right? So we've

all heard this is an, this is the ancient homeschool, you know, don't homeschooler kids, they're going to be weird. And I've met some weird homeschoolers, but I've also met some weird public schoolers and some we're private schoolers. And so I feel like, you know, Glenn Beck asked me this question a long time ago and I just said, Glenn, your kids are going to be as weird as you are. And that's true, whatever area we choose to educate our children in. But the socialization argument especially is absolutely a myth. And I love it when people ask me that. You know, aren't you afraid of socialization and that your kids are not going to be socialized? I'm like, absolutely. And that's why I took my daughter out of public school. I've seen the village. I don't

wanted socializing my children. And it seems to me that it set her up, and I watched this when she was very young, of course, it set her up to believe that socialization happens, you know, in kindergarten, it's a little bit like Lord of the Flies, right? Socialization happens with five-year-olds with a bunch of other five-year-olds. In home education, they are around all ages of kids all the time. And so they're interacting with adults. The high schoolers are often interacting with younger students. We really liked that dynamic as a family that has a 20-year age gap between our oldest, who's 32 and our youngest who's 13. Oh, my gosh. And so, right, right? That makes me 187 years old in school. Like, if anyone's doing the math, I am 187 in homeschooling. But that's, that's for sure the biggest

argument. Let me just say, can confirm that Heidi's kids are great. And whatever kind of socialization they got was the exact right amount. Oh, that's good. Whether you're a teacher in a school, current teacher in your home or are interested in learning more about homeschooling for the future, you should make plans to attend Turning Point Academy's Educators Summit next week, July 24th through 26th in West Palm Beach, Florida. At the Educator Summit, you will find out the hallmarks of a well-educated mind, understand how to cultivate them in students, learn how to embody and instill timeless virtues, and discover practical tools that will inspire students of all ages and all subjects to engage in transformative learning. The Educator Summit is next week, July 24th through 26th in West Palm Beach, Florida.

If you can get there, your hotel and conference fees will be covered. Register at turningpoint academy.com slash training. That's turning point academy.com slash training or find the link in the show notes. Let's talk portion control. It can be really hard to accurately manage this if your meat portions are grocery store Frankenmeat. Rachel, who listens to the show recently posted in the cute Servative's Facebook group that the reason she keeps going back to Good Ranchers is that their steak and chicken portion sizes are perfect. Her words, she said she appreciates that the chicken breasts are actually four ounces like God intended, not 14 ounce chicken breast from the average grocery store. I agree. So sketchy when they do that. Good news, it's prime week at Good Ranchers on their

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Use code Clark to save $150 on all-American raised meat. and wild-caught seafood. That's good ranchers.com with code Clark. Find the link in the show notes. Good Ranchers, American Meat delivered. Katie's been to the homeschool resource center. We just had her down there to do an awesome. I'm such a big fan of what's going on down there.

Awesome, awesome, yeah. And it's great. And it's bringing in, because I don't believe in an isolationist approach to education, that was never why we decided to homeschool our children. We did it initially because we wanted to spend more time with our daughter. And I realized, because I accidentally was home. Home schooling, our second daughter, who's now 30 and expecting her first baby in August, we really wanted to put her in school.

Well, she missed the cutoff by just a couple of weeks. And they said, no, sorry, we won't take her. Well, I have this inquisitive little girl who's ready to read. And so I made the fatal mistake of going to a homeschool supply store. And some guy naturally, his name was Eli, of course, homeschooling, said, I'm not interested in homeschooling. So you don't need to proselytize me into homeschooling. My oldest daughter's in public school.

I'm planning on putting Sierra there. I just want to give her something to do while she waits to go to school. and he gave me a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. And I'm telling you what, Alex, I was hooked. Because after three weeks, I realized that I was able to accomplish with my daughter in about an hour and a half every day. What it was taking the public school eight hours a day. And if you tack on the bus ride to school and the bus ride from school and all the things.

And I thought, I'm going to do this with Savannah. And so after that, we pulled her out to bring her home. But the education system from the time that I had my oldest, daughter in it to now. It does, it's, it's unrecognizable to me what they're doing to children now. I mean, we weren't dealing with transgenderism. We weren't dealing with open homosexuality in the schools. I pulled her out because I wanted to spend more time with her and I felt like it would be more life-giving for our family and that's exactly what happened. It was the best decision that we have ever made for our children, aside from introducing them to Jesus, this was the best decision

we ever made for our kids. Katie with critical race theory, falling reading scores, gender, in schools is the sole reason that public school might be beneficial purely economical? Well, that's definitely a factor. I would say you really do have to look at your individual school, your individual children, what does they want. Like our boys are both going to be at a sort of a charter hybrid school, right, that has different emphasis and so both of them have sort of distinct interests that align with those two charter schools. And then my older daughters both were interested in what the public school had to offer in

in terms of like the International Baccalaureate programs. They both really wanted to be in a large school setting. They both wanted the big high school feel. And so we just said, okay, that's fine, but recognized that there is going to be sort of toxic elements that we're going to need to evaluate, equip you for, and then fight through. So we did spend quite a bit of time,

especially ahead of them going into their middle school or their high school, depending on like when they made that specific entry, saying, we are going to front load you with all of the facts, about the areas where you are going to be challenged and where you are going to be lied to. So we spend a lot of time talking about transgenderism and abortion, socialism for sure. Come on. Distorted U.S. history. A lot of CRT. And so now when my kids see it, they're like, no. So for example, my 16 year old just texted me yesterday because we're here. And he said,

mom, you wouldn't believe, you know, we're doing this end of the school year. We're doing awards. So they presented awards. He's like state or federal level, some kind of award, you know, where they awarded something to the kids who had a higher than 3.5 GPA, top 10% of their SAT scores, and he goes, and wait for it, were black, Asian, Pacific, or Native American. And I was like, wait, so there was no award for the kids that were white or Asian. And he goes, nope. And so my kids see that. And actually, all of the kids see it. And they're like, that's garbage. So what is going on in, I would say the woke world in general, but certainly at the public schools, is so obviously distorted and damaging that it actually serves as a foil for the conservative and the Christian

worldview. It actually is so much easier to see the good, true, and beautiful that we're instilling in our kids because the other side is so outlandish and obscene. And I will tell you what, the red pilling is significant. You know, there is definitely a cohort. especially among young men that are like, no, we're not putting up with this anymore, right? So we will use you for the STEM classes, or we'll use you for the international baccalaureate advantage, but we're not going along with this

because it's so obvious what's going on. And you actually do get, I would say, an incredible education by being exposed to the bad ideas and learning how to fight against them. And so our kids are, I would say, well-equipped and unafraid. You know, and we don't worry about them you know we've told our two daughters that are now college and college bound you can go anywhere you want for school like if you want to go to school you can

go anywhere you want we're not worried about you going to a big public state college we're not worried about you going to like a liberal art school that is not explicitly Christian because they've already encountered all of the bad ideas of the world we've had a chance to shepherd them through it in our home and really evaluate they have been tried and tested when it comes to figuring out, should I stand for the black national anthem or should I sit alone? And they've decided to sit alone.

And so they were able to do that while they were with us cheering them on, fortifying them and encouraging them. And so I'm not saying at all that everybody should do what we're doing. I am saying that if you do send your kids to public school, there's hope. Yeah. And they don't have to be victims, right? They don't have to be influenced by culture. They can actually be influencers of culture.

And we see that in our kids, that they will have these conversations with their friends who are, in many ways, sometimes captured by woke ideology. And they've converted a few, but a lot of times they simply make fantastic inroads and then end up shepherding their peers through challenging situations because they are standing strong and they have their convictions. Now, this is where I think Katie and I disagree a little bit because we were talking about this on the phone the other day, and I feel like Katie Faust and her family are one in a million.

Yeah, I was wondering, do you feel like they're the exception? I think they are the exception. I mean, I know that you have a lot of friends who are as fiery as you are, but I mean, not everybody has Katie Fouse for a mother. This woman is a brick, right? And you are straight fire, and you know what's going on in the schools, and so you've trained and equipped your kids, but statistics are bearing out that the vast majority of Christian kids that are going to these schools are being eaten alive by the system because their parents are not doing the job of disciplining them when they're at home.

And so it goes kind of to the point where if you're going to put your kid in a system of education, I think this is true in homeschooling too. I know people have homeschooled their kids and lost them to the world because they didn't equip them for the battles that are ahead. So while Katie's kids are being exposed to ideas in real time in the school as I see them coming at them, my kids are exposed because I'm exposing them on purpose. I'm teaching them the ideas of socialism versus capitalism. I'm teaching them why transgenderism is a lie and why it's so important to stand up to the bold lies in the culture. My kids know that the only answer to a bold lie is bold truth. And they know that because their parents are instilling that into them.

The same thing is true for Katie's family. And I think the difference is, and this is why I keep telling parents, get your children out of these schools. If you are not willing to put in the hard work of undoing the lies that your kids are going to hear every single day when they go on to these campuses. Yes, she's doing it. And her kids are flourishing. And this is why her kids are flourishing. But for a long, long time, we have treated the schools, I mean, for generations, they're babysitters, right? We drop our kids off there.

A mom goes to work. This is part of the lie of feminism, right? We have to have these two incomes. Another thing that Katie and I have in common is that we're both married to pastors. I raise seven children and homeschooled them on a pastor's seller. We did WIC for years, actually, on and off of trying to get some sort of financial help. Because it is, it is. I mean, the way the economy is structured and the way that we have come to believe we have to have all this money,

everybody needs two cars in the nice house and the suburb. No, you don't. No, you don't. You don't need any of those things. But for a generation of parents, and actually I would say it's multiple generations of parents, to believe the lie that the school is on your side and you can drop your child off at school and they're just going to teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic, those days are over. Our children are failing academically. Washington State has an abysmal academic record. And if you look at the statistics, George Barnett just put out another study talking about what's happening to Christian kids that are coming out of these woke schools, most of them. are not surviving. Most of them can't give you an apologetic for why abortion is a bad idea. Most of them don't understand how they can argue against transgenderism because they've been called a bigot. They've been told to be quiet. Sit down. Be quiet. Raise your hand. You know, if you want to,

if you want to come to school, now we're going to talk to you about vaccines and why you need to get a vaccine. Parents have to be engaged. And my observation is with a few exceptions, and Katie is obviously one of them. And I know some other people, I mean, but I'm telling you, in my world, they're the exception and not the rule. If parents are going to put their kids in the system that is absolutely bent on injuring them, and I believe it is. I think the public schools are bent on injuring children. For what purpose?

I think for sexualizing them, I think for the purpose of, you know, we've got teachers now who are not there to teach. They're activists disguised as teachers. And so you have to be on guard against that, right? And so we're looking at the sexualization, the overt sexualization of children, starting in Washington State now in kindergarten. And I was one of the people eight years ago who was testifying before the Washington State Legislature when they started talking about comprehensive sex education. Well, when I first saw it, I thought, well, sex education, that's good.

I don't mind, teach the kids the birds and the bees. That is not what they're doing. What they're teaching children is that their parents are the enemy, their parents are stupid. Here's a good example. I went to a curriculum review committee, and we started looking at the comprehensive sex education that was coming to my city in Battleground, Washington. And they're teaching kids, they are teaching young girls that anal sex is birth control. not teaching about the incredible damage that is done to a girl both psychologically and physically and spiritually and emotionally. They're not talking about sexually transmitted diseases.

They weren't talking about any. This was written in the curriculum. And when they did get to birth control, they started talking about condom use, for example. And they listed all the benefits of condom use that we all know, right? Supposedly, you know, usually prevents sexually transmitted diseases, can prevent pregnancy. And the one con that they listed for children, young people engaging in sex, who would, wanted to use a condom. Here was the one contuit. Your parents can find them. That was in the curriculum. And I, I mean, those guys were so annoyed with me by the time the evening was over,

because I was like, excuse me, I like us all to look at page 178. You know, this is what's happening in our schools. It's purposely coming in between the parent and child relationship. Your parents are stupid. So don't use a condom because they might find it. And if they do, maybe they'll know that you're having sex. Well, we can't have that. I don't disagree with what you're saying in terms of the agenda of the public schools. They are absolutely out there. There's no neutral education. Absolutely true.

They are absolutely evangelizing and discipling into a worldview that is very often. Yeah, it's secular humanism. Yes, that's exactly what it is. And yes, there is the demonization of parents that can take place, setting them up as the enemy. I don't disagree with any of that. I will just say that we have,

because we have been very, very specific about age-appropriate training and saturating them in truth and beauty, And you are exactly right that there has been way too many generations of parents that have said, I can just take them to church on Sunday and then drop them off at school and everything is going to be fine. No. I don't know what's going on in the rest of the world, but I will tell you that in Seattle, there is no parent that is under the illusion that they can just take their kid to public school and they're going to be fine. Right?

They've all said, if my kids are in public school, I am going on offense when it comes to making sure that I am instilling good, true, and beautiful in them, giving them a heads up to the kind of lies that they're going to face, being very, very aware of the sex ed curriculum or the special assemblies that are taking place, talking with my kid about it in advance, maybe pulling them out if needed, sending a note to the teacher. You know, like, I think that parents are pretty dialed in, at least in my world, because you have to be, the parents are very dialed into what's going on and acting strategically if their kids are in public school.

I mean, that's exactly how it has to be. Because you're right, they're getting a fire hose, right, from the public school. say the woke culture in general, a public school is part of that. And you cannot send them with a trickle, right? If they're going to get fire hose, you equip them first of all, right, with even more better, good, truer information. One of the main principles that my husband and I have lived by and that my co-author, Stacey, for raising conservative kids in a woke city, one of the most important aspects of this is you have to get to your kids first. Yes.

Right? It is critical that you have to introduce these challenging concepts to kids first. And actually, this is a tactic that Christians have been employing, honestly, since the dawn of the age. Like, I was listening to a communist dissenter a couple weeks ago at a conference, and she raised her kids in Czechoslovakia under communism, and they would tell their kids, look, when you go to the schools, this is what the school is going to tell you about God. This is what the school is going to tell you about communism in the history. It is a lie. Okay, so they're about to lie to you.

And I'm like, Christians have been doing this forever. We have always said, here's the good, true, and beautiful. Here's how the world is going to lie to you. We're going to tell it to you first so that when you see it, the kid can, A, recognize it, and B, it actually increases trust between parent and child. The kid goes, my mom said this was on the way. My dad told me this was coming. I guess I can go back to him for good information.

So I will say, totally agree with you. about the agenda of the public schools, the need to fully engage in terms of training at every level, elementary, middle school, and high school. So not a lot of disagreement there. Well, Heidi, when Katie talks about how your kids need to be able to strengthen how to defend their beliefs, I mean, how do homeschool kids know how to defend their Christian beliefs

if they're being homeschooled until they're 18 and then you're out of the house and then you're suddenly in the real world? I mean, it goes back to what we were saying before. Just like you can't drop your kids off at a public school and expect that they're not going to be infiltrated by the world, homeschool parents need to understand that just because you keep your kids at home doesn't mean they're always going to be at home, right?

And so we teach our children. I mean, all you've got to do is go to Walmart, right? All you got to do is turn on the television. The world is everywhere. The influences are everywhere. And they're even in families that are homeschooling their children. So we'll watch movies together. We'll talk about, hey, what's the worldview of this?

Why was this thing that we just saw in a Marvel movie, a joke? You know, why do we disagree with that? And we'll kind of go around with our children and they'll have an opportunity to sort of dissect that movie or dissect that book. So we're reading things like the Communist Manifesto at home. We're reading these books with our children. And we're doing it on purpose. But to me, what I have seen so often is, yes, there are parents that are like Katie that are engaged. I mean, you really have to be living under a rock right now, not to understand what the agenda is of the public

because people like me are out there seven days a week. You know, I'm William Wallishing around the country going, bang, bang, bang, get your kids out of public school. And so I think people are awake now to it. They're seeing it. But the reality is, I still think it's true that we're losing our children to this system, this ideology that in many cases is even more powerful than the parents who are sending their kids to it.

So if the parents don't know the argument, if the parents don't understand how to argue about transgenderism or how to, you know, parents are coming out. They don't know the Bill of Rights. We saw this in COVID up close and personal, you know, an entire generation of grown adults when they said, hey, there's a little plastic dot in Walmart stand on it. Okay, right? We're not going to let you come to work unless you get a shot. Okay, we've been taught to obey. We haven't been taught to be critical thinkers.

And so if parents aren't taught to be critical thinkers, how in the world are they going to help their children be critical thinkers when their kids are getting this firehose of woke ideology at them every single day of the week? And therein lies my concern. I talked to a woman probably, it's been six months ago now, who pulled her kid out of a public school near my home in Battleground, Washington. And she came up to me after the kids have been in classes. Because there's over 200 classes that you can choose from. Everything we do at the homeschool resource center is al-a-carat. I call it choose your own adventure homeschooling.

So if a mom comes to me and says, I want to take my kids out of the Ridgefield School District because there's a litter box in the bathroom that actually happened. There's a litter box in the bathroom. They're allowing furries to come to school now. This is insane. It's insane. I don't want my kid swimming through a cesspool every day to get a mediocre education.

And so she pulls her kid out of this system. She brings her to the homeschool resource center. She says, all right, we've never done this before. And frankly, I don't want to do it. We hear that all the time, right? I don't want to do it. And I really don't want to teach my kid algebra. I don't know how to do that.

Great. I have an algebra tutor for you. You know, I want my kid to understand the Constitution. Great. We're teaching Rick Green's Patriot Academy. me and actually mom and dad, you can come to, right? Everything we do there is geared toward fortifying the family. It is the family that is under attack in the culture right now. And we have watched this for generations. And so, I mean, I sweat Katie Faust because she is such a staunch

defender of truth. And her kids are amazing because her parents, their parents have poured into them. And they have front-loaded them. And then when they come home from school, they're doing the dissecting of the day. What did you hear today? And most of the parents that come to the homeschool Resource Center haven't done that and they're already recognizing in fourth grade I'm losing my kid. I can't make the argument against what they're hearing in the public schools. And so if that's the case, and I think it largely is for this generation of parents, I mean, I'm watching, you know, my generation, I graduated from high school in 1988 and we were talking then, we were still talking, Mr. Garbageoff, tear down that wall. There's nobody in my graduating class that didn't understand the difference

between capitalism and communism. But the parents that are coming out of the public schools today, don't know the difference. They can't make the argument. And what the, the coffin that these parents are laid in, the schools are now nailing it shut on their children. And that is frustrating to me. So this woman comes to me and she says, Heidi, I've had my child out now for six weeks. And she just started sobbing and she said, I finally see her again. I haven't seen my child in years and I finally see her again. And her child was coming home. Solon, her child was coming home with all this yuck on her that she was getting at the school. And the mom didn't even know how to wash it off or even questions to ask. And so I think that the approach that we take has got to be a multi-pronged approach.

We've got to be teaching parents. You are the primary educator of your child, not the state. We do not co-parent with the government. Parents who have been raised in this system think that they do co-parent with the government, right, which is why we saw the lie of COVID take root so quickly in the culture and parents willing to inject themselves with the experimental vaccine. right we're not taught critical thinking and until we we get at both of those things until parents again begin to realize i totally agree with you because being in ministry for a long time we saw parents would say well i'm not going to be engaged in the spiritual formation of my children because that's the pastor's job i'm not going to teach my children you know anything that has to do with academics because that's the job of the school and in so doing the parents check out well it's not the job of your pastor to train your child up it's the job of your pastor to suit you up for war and then you train your children, right? And so it's a shift in thinking, again, that puts the parent back into the driver's seat of their child's education. But as I survey for sure what's happening in the Portland, Vancouver metropolitan area, my alarm is twofold. It's not just for the

children. It's for the parents who are not educated and don't know how to fight against the woke ideology. And so maybe we just need to take it on tour, Katie. We can start talking about And like what you're saying is exactly right. Like we in our book, I think it's like chapter two where I'm like, do you want to do this? You have to become an expert. You don't have the option to not know what's going on with transgenderism. You can't sit at home and watch Netflix every night and just pretend like everything's going to be fine. That's right.

That's what I'm saying is like you're telling the people that are going to homeschool their kids. You need to figure out how to do algebra. You're going to teach your kid to do algebra. Right. And we're saying is like, that's right. Like you have to become the expert because, well, first of all, because your children will become what they behold. Yeah. And that's true for all of us.

Whatever you're looking at, you're going to become like that. Do you want your kids to be able to sort through bad ideas to stand firm against a world that is coming after them? They better be able to watch you do it. If they have questions about the free market and the morality of the free market, they better be able to come to you about it. Now, maybe you're not an expert. Maybe you're not like a PhD on it. But you better understand like the basic principles. Well, you can get the Tuttle Twins for goodness sake.

I mean, I learned about the Federal Reserve from the Tuttle Twelf. twins. Okay, so here's a question for both of you, and so whoever wants to jump in, and I want both of you to answer it, is public education salvageable? Well, Katie's going to say yes. I'm going to say no. I don't know if it's salvageable. I feel like the ship is sailed. I feel like the ship is sailed. I mean, I'm watching what's coming out from the National Educators Association. These guys are setting the agenda for what our kids are being taught. This is a woke and evil teachers union that is literally, I think, hijacked many of our systems of education in the country. So I,

I feel like the Titanic is sinking. I'd rather stop polishing the brass on it and try to figure out how do we put kids in lifeboats. I'm not concerned about saving the public schools. I'm saying that you can use them. Like if they're offering something that is helpful to you, whether it's a class here or a charter school or a specific program, then use it. So I'm not saying that we need to save it at all costs. I'm saying you need to make the best decision for your family per kid every year. And sometimes that might be public school.

Do you think that it is possible for conservatives to change education in this country? I think Moms for Liberty is doing it. I mean, like, they've got a crusade to put people on public school boards. And I think that that's really critical and amazing. And I do think that the woke have gone so overboard. It is so outlandish the kind of things going on that even ordinary parents who are not conservatives or even right-leaning are like, no. So there's only so far- Maybe reached an apex.

I really do think so. I think with the transgenderism, the nonsense of the transgenderism, I think is probably reached. The furries have red-pilled people. Come on. Yeah. Come on. Do you know how shocked I was when I saw the new report saying that they found arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals and tampons?

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they're going to be exposed to people who disagree with them, even within a homeschool co-op. So why is public school for you, like an absolute no that cannot be where they go to learn to defend their beliefs? Well, because I just don't want my kids swimming through a cesspool every day. I don't think they need to do that. They can be exposed to the ideas. Like I said,

All you got to do is go to Walmart. Turn on the television. Look at any pop culture magazine. Listen to Spotify. There's a million different ways for my kids to see what's going on in the world. What I'm doing in homeschooling them is I've got my finger on the dial. So they're not getting blasted every day with it. Sometimes it's a slow drip.

And sometimes it's like, oh, hey, let's watch President Joe Biden get up here and try to make a speech. Kids sit down and let's watch it. Right. And so we'll dissect those things together or something may come out in the legislature when I was fighting against comprehensive sex education. I took my kids to the capital with me so they could hear what I had to say. I've showed my children. This is the curriculum that they want to teach. I mean, I'm going to show up to them obviously at an age appropriate time, but I will tell you, I am raising my 13-year-old daughter right now in a vastly different world than I raised my 32-year-old daughter in.

I'm having conversations with my daughter, Saylor. You've met Saylor. She's so sweet. I'm having conversations with her. She's a cutie-pie. But I'm having conversations. She's a cutie-pie. But I'm having I'm having to have conversations that I don't necessarily want to have, but I need to have them. She was, I think, five years old when Bruce Jenner was on the cover of whatever magazine, Vanity Fair Magazine in a corset, you know, call me Caitlin. And we're walking through the checkouts in Portland. We're walking through the checkout stand, and I'm trying to put, you know, food on the conveyor belt, and she's like glued to Vanity Fair magazine.

And after a few minutes, she's tugging on my jacket, Mama, Mama. And I was like, I don't want to have this conversation in Portland. I really don't want to do it in Portland. Let's do it closer to home when we maybe won't get shot, you know. And she's, you know, she's tugging on my jacket. It's like a core memory for me. And I look down and here's my innocent little, you know, blonde hair, blue-eyed little five-year-old staring a picture of a man dressed like a woman.

And she's like, Mom, why is that man dressed like a princess? Mm-hmm. And I wanted to ignore her because I just thought, again, I don't want to have this conversation right now. But I felt the Holy Spirit said, no, you address the lie before it takes. What did you say? I just knelt right down next to her and I said, sweetheart, did God make you a boy or a girl? And she said, well, he made me a girl. Kids know this intrinsically.

They have to be lied to to undo what they know is a biological reality, right? This is the viciousness of this lie. And I said, God made you a girl. That's right. And one of these days you're going to grow up and you're going to be a woman and maybe you're going to have babies of your own. I said, some people are confused and they don't know if they're a boy or a girl. And you can see she was like, oh.

Yeah, like, what is there to be confused about? How does one become confused about this? And so she looks at his picture again and she leans back and she goes, well, mama, someone should tell him, right? I mean, this is her little five-year-old mind. The wickedness that we would push this ideology on children and confuse them on purpose. I go back to my example of Katanji Brown Jackson, right, famously before the Supreme Court just, or in her Supreme Court confirmation hearing when Marsha Blackburn said, what is a woman? And she said, well, I don't know. That's my pay grade. I'm not a biologist. Well, I'm not a meteorologist, but I can tell you when it's raining, right? It's not that Katanji Brown Jackson

doesn't know what a woman is. She's a coward. That's her problem. She's a coward. And I feel like we're purposely injuring these children. So here's a question for you, Heidi. What would have to change in order for you to consider sending your child to public school? I don't think I would ever consider it at this point. If I were to become physically or mentally incapacitated, my older children would homeschool my daughter. That's what would happen. Right?

It would take me dying, my husband dying, all my older children dying. My grandkids are being homeschooled right now. So my four grandkids are being homeschooled. If something were to happen to me, my oldest children would take Sailor and finish her home education. Okay. I just can't imagine. I don't know. You are the funniest person.

I don't know. I haven't been there yet. Call me in five years. Katie, do you think that there is an expiration date on your argument? Do you think that wokeness is going to take us to a level that is so degenerate that there is no way that even a staunch Christian, fierce parent like you could help their kids through it? I don't know what's going on in the different public schools that people have in their local areas. Like I said, like I think that there's some sort of magnet programs that are things that you can take advantage of. I do think we're at peak woke. I just think like what I don't think it can get worse. Oh, it might get worse.

Since I write and speak about this, I get lots of underground connections of people that are like, look, I'm not a conservative or I'm not a Republican. But what's going on right here, I'm not going to stand for it. You know, so like there was one mom whose son took a test and he got marked wrong by saying that there's only two sexes or something like that, right? And she's like, are you kidding me? And that mom worked kind of underground to, in essence, get the teacher fired. They've been so out of touch with reality that enough parents are like, I'm not going to go along with that anymore. So they might continue to spin more out of control, but I don't think that parents are moving with them.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure what's going to happen in the future. But I will say that parents have woken up. I think COVID was a big part of it. I think simply the absurdity of the ever-moving progressive goalposts is a part of. of it. I think the vaccine was a big part of it. Certainly what is going on in terms of the LGBT overt preference, you know, for people that identify as LGBTQ to the detriment of the like Normie's cis het, whatever you want to call them. I hate that terminology. Oh, it's ridiculous.

I just won't even use it. Oh, it's ridiculous, right? I just hate that. But I think that- Don't call me cis anything. I'm just a woman. Yeah, agree. Yeah. And I think that, I mean, like my kids and my friends, kids are like, that's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous and it's so disconnected from reality that I think that parents aren't having it anymore. Which is why they're working so hard on the little ones. I think you can look at Katanji Brown Jackson and say she's not confused, she's a coward. But you look at the five-year-old, the six-year-old, the seven-year-old who is genuinely confused and genuinely is like, but of course I could become a boy if I wanted to, right? And they genuinely think that because they've been indoctrinated to believe that

it's true. And that's where I am just like, you know, I'm on deaf content. I'm like, listen, I declare a state of emergency over our public school system in this country. It is injuring our children, body, soul, mind, and spirit. And unless you are Katie Faust or a woman of equal quality and character and education and fire, you are straight fire. I love this woman. You got to get your kids out of these schools. Because I don't know that there's, I don't know that there's a going back point because it's not just the teachers union, which is incredibly woke and broken and evil and sick and awful and weird. It is also our legislatures who have passed into law now that you're required to teach LGBT history. And so now we've got the alphabet mafia written into law. And we have to

teach it to our children. Well, that's going to take a long, long time to undo. You don't simply undo that. I think gone are the days when our schools are going to focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic. I think we're going to be focused on social issues probably for the next 40 years. And I don't think the country has 40 years. I'm glad that you brought that up because my question for you was going to be, despite all the wokeness, what do you say to people who say, okay, fine, I agree with you. The woke stuff is out of control. I don't like that about the public school system. But my kids in the public school system are still at an academic advantage over homeschooled kids. Oh, man. I would say the statistics will tell you that you're lying. The statistics say that homeschooled

kids are blowing their public, their public school counterparts out of the water. Now, this isn't true in every case, right? There are kids who are struggling that are homeschooled. There are kids who are struggling in public school. But a parent that focuses on the education of their children and exposes them to all kinds of ideas and we'll just do the basics. I'm not, we're not talking about, you know, like if someone comes to me and says, I don't want to teach algebra. I never taught my kids algebra. I found a tutor to do it, right? Hom schooling doesn't say that you have to do every single academic pursuit yourself. Home schooling says you know who is teaching your child, you determine when and where and if you need that child, that child needs to be tutored in any

given subject. And so academically, the studies are in on this and have been for quite some time. Academics are not even people, even at Harvard, they're not complaining about the academics of homeschooled kids. They're arguing that these kids are being taught a Judeo-Christian worldview, and that's what they don't want. So the argument against homeschooling, from an academic perspective, I think is archaic and outdated. The data shows it. And so that would be what I would say. And honestly, look at what's happening to our public schools academically. Because we've gotten so into woke ideology, a lot of these schools are failing. In the battleground public school, five minutes from where I live right now, there are four grown boys with passes

to the girls' locker room. That's what they're focused on. That's what they're focused on. I'd like to see the test scores of those four grown boys who think that they're girls. I bet you anything they're failing academically. In Oregon right now, Kate Brown, the governor, who's not the governor now, but the governor a couple of years ago in Oregon, incredibly leftist progressive lesbian governor of Oregon, said that Oregon public schools, to graduate from an Oregon public school, you no longer need to be proficient in reading, writing, or math. Well, then why are we going to school? Right. I thought that was the point. For the parent who's like, I am not drawn to homeschool, not only does it not sound fun to me or interest me, I don't feel like I'm equipped,

I don't want to do it. Am I correct to say your response would be like, great, you don't have to. There is an option. Go to public school. And then would your stance be, don't care, push through it, do it anyway? My stance would be you need to become an expert. Regardless of where you send your kid to school, whether it's homeschool, private school, or public school, you actually need to become an expert on all these different topics.

Everything that the woke world is going to throw out your kids, you need to become an expert. On transgenderism, on socialism, on U.S. history, on CRT. Because a lot of parents are intimidated. by homeschool, they think it's going to be hard and a lot of work. And what you're saying is it should be just as much work to send your kids to public school. I think that you are the primary educator, regardless of where your kids go to school. And this is the kind of thing that the world is going to be throwing at your kids. And they need to know they can come to you for the best information.

So first of all, you just, it's, we're not in the kind of world where you can say that it's optional to not really know much about CRT. You have to know about CRT. You need to know about BLM. You need to know about ESG. You need to know all of the acronyms. You need to know them because the world is coming at your kids for it. And they need to get that information from you.

Regardless of where they go to school, if you're doing public, private, or homeschool, they need to know you're the expert. They can come to mom and dad. This is important not just for getting good information to you, but also for having a close relationship for them knowing that I can rely on mom. Dad always has good information. I get good information. I can always go to dad with questions. Your kids need to see you as the authority. And not only will they get a good information, good education, but it creates a sweetness in your relationship, right?

It actually increases like trust and reliability between parent and child. So no matter if you've got a little kid like a preschooler and you're looking down the track of like, what am I going to do for school? The answer is become an expert. You need to know more about especially all of the social issues, all of the worldview issues that are coming at your kid now and later. and then decide what serves your family best in terms of school based on what kind of public schools in your area, what kind of financial resources you have, what you feel led to do in terms of parenting,

that's where I would say. You need to be the expert. You're the primary educator, regardless of how you choose to educate your kid. Heidi, do you think that there's any good excuse for a conservative Christian parent not to homeschool? Not very many. Okay.

Not very many. I'd be hard pressed at this point. Jesus and talking to the Pharisees in Luke 6, I believe in Luke chapter 6 verse 40, he said, when a student is fully trained, he'll be like his teacher. And I absolutely agree. Katie and I actually have one mind on this. I agree with her. No matter what you do, parents are their primary educators of their children. We don't have time in the culture anymore for lazy parents. And so I was listening to Katie talking earlier this morning with her straight fire speech about how IVF is evil. And she was saying we need to be willing to do hard things for children. And I think this is one of those cases where we need to be willing to do hard things for children.

Is homeschooling hard? Yes. Is putting your children in a woke system of education that is on its head spiritually, academically, and morally and emotionally hard? Yes. And so we're just picking our heart at this point. And I chose to do the hard thing of keeping my kids home. And in so doing that the relationship that we have with our children also is wonderful and strong. And I think a lot of that comes from our kids know that we were willing to do the hard thing for them. Is it easy? No, but nothing that's worth doing in this life is easy. I'm getting ready to celebrate my 35th wedding anniversary. Anybody who's been married more than five minutes knows it's not easy to be married. It's the union of two forgivers. It's every day saying I'm going to make a, I'm committed to you. I'm going to forgive. You're going to bear with me. I'm going to bear with you.

We compromise when it's necessary inside of marriage because we want the best for our children. And so we know that the marriage being strong is best for our children. So we work at it. We sacrifice for it. And to me, this is an issue of doing hard things. And when people say to me, well, I can't do it for A, B, or C, I think there are very few reasons now why parents can't homeschool. The homeschool world is enormous. So don't make a lot of money? No.

Single parent. Yes, absolutely. All of those people can homeschool? All of those people can homeschool. I did it on a pastor's salary. And you know what? It was hard. And there were many, many years. I worked at the hospital. So Jay would come home from work. And I'd be like, there's a lasagna in the oven. I'll see it two in the morning. And I would go to work. And we did that for years and years so that I could stay home and be with them. our children. And to me, the sacrifice was worth it. I'm watching now a generation, because my kids are getting married and having kids of their own, and I'm watching them employ the same ideology with their children. They want to do hard things for their kids because our kids are worth it. And that's what I keep asking this generation of parents. Are your children

worth it or not? I think they are. And I think we make a case where if your children are worth it, then we make the sacrifices that are necessary to get them to adulthood with as little regret as possible. I want my kids to be ready for the woke world. I want them to be ready to make the arguments against transgenderism and for capitalism and why I think America is the greatest nation to ever exist on the planet. And I can make a good case for it. And guess what? So can my kids.

My kids see a Black Lives Matter banner and the first thing out of the mouth of my 13-year-old is, those guys are Marxist. Well, most of her 13-year-old friends don't know what a Marxist is, but Sailor St. John does. Why? Because I told her. That's a Marxist organization. They don't care about the black unborn. They don't care about black conservatives. They don't care about black police officers. And so therefore, black lives don't matter to the Black Lives Matter movement because it's a lie. And so we teach our children to identify the lie. And for Heidi St. John and for and for my husband and myself, the best way for us to do that was just to say, we will determine when we want our children exposed

to these lies. But we do need to train them. I absolutely agree with Katie. We're on one mind on that and I believe parents have got to get back into the driver's seat of their child's education. Gone are the days when you could just drop, even at a Christian school, gone are the days when you can just drop your child off at a Christian school and expect those guys have my values and they care about the things that I care about. So whether you homeschool your children, which I still believe is the gold standard, or you put them in a Christian school or you put them in a public school, you have to stay engaged. You cannot disengage from your child's education. Whether you're already pregnant or trying to get pregnant, the first thing everyone's going to

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death of a former president on the campaign trail would be something that we could at least agree is horrific and unacceptable, but no, no, these brands truly hate you. They want him dead, they want us dead, especially the beauty industry. So I was so proud to see moments after this happened, Mimi's skincare, the creator, is some of the best affordable, luxury, clean skin care on the market. Loudly and proudly post about their love for America on such a devastating day for our country. It's an election year, okay? Who are you giving your money to? It is very important to me to choose conservative-owned alternatives when I can,

and I love that Mimi's clean skincare line allows me to get the anti-aging benefits that I need at a price I can afford. And without compromising my beliefs or non-toxic, crunching. standards. So I'm loving their brand new full spectrum clean system. All the clean potent products that you want in an easy bundle. Go to neemyskinkare.com. Use code Alex Clark for 10% off. Modern skincare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off their new clean skincare line today. Are you still happy today with the choice that each of you made? Would you do anything differently in regards to education? I don't know. I don't know what else to say. Like, Every week or so, my husband and I look at each other and go,

how did we get these kids that we're so close to, that we feel so near to? I think I tweeted just a couple days ago. My daughter, my 18-year-old sent me a text and said, hey, mom, how about once a week you bring up some trending news issue and we research it together and we learned about it? And she's been in public school. She's her mother's daughter. Yeah. Well, and that's a become what you behold kind of thing.

And I'm not the only one. Like we are surrounded by friends who have taken their education of their kids very, very seriously, even though they are doing some or all of public school, sampling what they need class-wise or charter school-wise or program-wise or just, you know, using public school completely whose kids are doing well. But it's because they have not taken a backseat. It's because they've taken ownership. It's because they've become experts. It's because they got to their kids first. So I don't think we would have done anything differently again.

I'm not saying everybody should put their kids in public school all the time. I know incredible homeschool kids and incredible private school kids. And it's because their parents are very, very engaged. But you're saying there's more to the conversation because right now, conservatives for the most part are saying homeschool nothing else. And you're saying it doesn't have to, there's more nuance to the conversation. I'm saying, I am so grateful for my kids who, with whom we are so emotionally close, who are so anchored in what they believe, who have had.

measured practice on how to stand firm in their beliefs, who have been able to be equipped in such a way where they feel like they are the expert among their friend group, where they are able to navigate situations where they have to complete assignments with their convictions intact without unnecessarily triggering classmates. Right. And I think that that's an important line to learn to walk. because like when do we, when do we and how do we talk about something in a way where we are standing firm, but we don't necessarily need to throw bombs, and when is the time to throw bombs? And so I feel like I don't know what I would do differently. We are just so overflowing with gratitude that our kids are connected to us

and have had a very robust education in terms of what they believe and why. And I will tell you the other thing. when we talk about the importance of like chastity or abstaining from drugs or alcohol or anchoring your identity in Christ and then they go to school or they just get on social media and they see the consequences of people that have chosen another path the goodness of the Christian worldview shines so brightly there are no illusions for them about what happens if you dabble in marijuana right Right. There's no illusions when it comes to, hey, if you want to adopt this sexual identity and you think that that's going to lead to thriving, happiness, joy. No. No, they're watching the kids in their own world who have suffered because they've believed a lot of what the woke world has told them. And I will tell you, our kids, thankfully, and some of the kids of our friends have come out with that. I would say being more confident in the word of God. in conservatism as a principal and even more connected, I don't want to say more connected, but very, very connected to parents.

Doesn't happen by accident. I don't think that we're the only ones. We're not the only ones. But I don't think that we would have done anything different. Honey, if you have done anything different? Heidi, what about you? Do you have anything that you would have done differently in regards to how you educated your kids? If anything, I would, if I was to start over,

I would have more confidence going in. You know, I was, I'm a first generation homeschooler. And so I had believed all the lies. Like, I worried that my kids would be socially, you know, backward. And they'd be the weird ones. It would stick out like a sore thumb at, you know, Walmart, whatever. Although, very hard to stick out like a sort of mom. Yeah.

But I, I think if I were to start over again, I would have gone in with more confidence. And I think I would have been less, I focus really, really on the heart of my children. And I realized now, because six of our kids are grown, that God will finish in my kids what he started in them through me. God finishes it. And so I would not spend my time agonizing like I did for so many years over making sure I had every little thing right. And we dotted every tea and we are dotted every eye and we crossed every tea.

I would trust that when I do my part and I yield myself to the Lord and to the work that he's doing in me, through me to my children, that he will finish it. And that is the confidence I lacked as a new homeschool mom. And I think it's a message that new homeschool moms need to hear. It's that you can do this thing. And your kids are worth it. They're worth it.

I mean, I'm out here very much like Katie. You know, here I am in my, well, not like Katie. I'm in my mid-50s now. And I'm traveling almost every weekend. And my message to moms is that your kids are worth it. They're worth it. And I can look back now over our lives and say it really was the best thing we ever did was to take our kids out of the public school. Bring them home.

Our kids have an identity not only in the Lord, but in their role as a member of the St. John family. And now I'm watching my grandchildren, thriving. Our oldest grandson is 11. It's crazy. It's breaking my brain a little bit. But I'm watching the seeds of what God planted in my heart now be born to the next generation. And so to me, I'd probably, I would, I want to go into it with a little bit different attitude, but I would have made the same choice. Well, I was going into this hoping.

I hope this is entertaining. I hope this is edifying. I think we accomplished both of those things so well. And as you can see, friendly discussion, two different conservative Christian moms who do things a little bit differently. Overall, I mean, share a lot of the same views, just slightly differ in how they educate their kids. And so I hope that for those of you who are watching, who have been struggling with like, what do I do? Do I want to send my kids to public school? Do I want to go ahead and homeschool?

I'm not sure. I'd love to hear from parents who share my beliefs, who do each of these different, you know, styles and how it went for them, what they would do different different. You know, what they like about their experiences. I hope that this answered some questions for you. Both of you guys have phenomenal things going on, different books, podcasts. Tell people where to find you and what to look for from you. You can go to Katie Fouse.com and that kind of gives you everything. All the books, social media connections. There's a lot going on with my nonprofit, Them Before Us. So you should absolutely

go to them before us.com and subscribe. We are going to be very, very aggressive in terms of fighting for children's rights and advancing their interests above what adults want. So there's a lot happening on that front. And we would love, love to be connected to people in that regard. Awesome. And all Katie's links will be below as well as Heidi's. Heidi, what do you have going on? You have an amazing podcast that I've been on, so there's that they can look for. Yeah, the podcast is just doing great. It's called Off the Bench with Heidi St. John. I just released my first book with Brave, so that's exciting working with them.

Oh, really? Yes, the Mouse in the Sea just came out. Cute. I love Brave Books. I do, too. My book came out right before Riley's did, and so that's kind of a new project of mine. And my Women's Bible Study, Faith that speaks, is what I really want people to engage with me. I'm taking women through the word.

So if you're 13 years of age and older and you really want to understand the Bible, more I think, boy, if we understand God's word and we understand how loved we are and that he never leaves us, he never forsakes us, there's so much power in knowing the word of God and being equipped for the world that really needs the answers

that are found in the Bible and in the gospel. So they can find that at faith that speaks.com and I love to ask women, if your faith found its voice, what would God have you say? If your faith found its feet, where would God take you? Well, we learn how to hear his voice by the study of his word.

So people can find me, Heidistjohn.com and at faith that speaks.com. Thank you both for being willing to come on the show and have this discussion. What was nice was that you guys are friends in real life anyway. So it wasn't hard to get them to come on and do this, which I thought it was unique. I thought this was different. And I wanted to do it. So thank you so much for agreeing. Thanks for having us.

Great to be with you. I was so glad that Heidi and Katie agreed to do this episode with me because I've never moderated any sort of discussion or debate before. I think it helped that they love each other already, their friends. I think that they both brought their A-game. They made it incredibly powerful. They both had great arguments. And I mean, Katie had really good advice even if you choose to homeschool. And then I think Heidi had great advice even if your kids are in the school system.

Next week, we wrap up this month and this season of the show with a mom on a mission to teach parents how to make real food that's kid-approved. and ancestral versions of family favorite recipes, just like Gretchi, if you listen to and love that episode, which I know a lot of you did, this is going to be another show packed with practical advice that will help you become a master at ancestral cooking for your loved ones or even yourself. That comes out Thursday at 9 p.m.

Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, anywhere you listen to podcasts, and the real Alex Clark YouTube channel, when was the last time you left a five-star review that can really help people discover this show? I'm Alex Clark, and this is The Spillover. Love You Mean It, bye.