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

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Starting point is 00:01:21 We are analyzing all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable. We are joined by Robert Bortons, who is the CEO of Classical Conversational. conversations. This episode is brought to you by our friends at GoodRanchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Alley at checkout for a discount. That's good ranchers.com code Alley. Robert, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. For those who may not know, can you tell us who you are and what you do? Well, thanks for having me, Ali. And yeah, I was homeschooled through high school, got an industrial engineering degree from Clemson University. Worked at a couple Fortune 50 companies before coming home to work with my mom Lee, who I know she's been on the show before and help her. run our homeschooling company called Classical Conversations.

Starting point is 00:02:12 So yeah. Tell us about classical conversations. Yes. There's a lot of, I've realized, there's a lot of homeschool curriculums out there. So what is different about classical conversations? Yeah. So classical conversations was fundamentally different from the start where it was created by homeschool moms for homeschool moms using the classical method.

Starting point is 00:02:32 It started in 1997 in our family's basement. And it really revolves around community. So once a week, students are getting together with a trained parent tutor and going over the curriculum together in a group. And it's based on a Christian worldview and unapologetically so. And we really believe that God created the world. So everything is reflective of his nature. And so we don't necessarily have a separate Bible class. We think churches and families are taking care of that.

Starting point is 00:03:01 But we believe two plus two equals four reflects God's nature, that history reflects his timeline for humanity. and his goodness to us and science, biology, language, all of those things are incorporated in knowing God and to make him known. And that's our mission. Yes. Okay. Wokeness in homeschool. You've been talking about this. So homeschool used to be seen as this bubble. Like the secular media would probably have said it's just fundamentalists who do homeschooling. And then, of course, it expanded a lot after 2020. But still, most people think of homeschoolers as hardcore Christians, maybe some Catholics and Mormons. But you're saying that progressivism is now infiltrating homeschool curriculum. So what does this

Starting point is 00:03:48 look like? Yeah, well, first of all, and I think God's design for all of humanity is for you to educate your own children. So I'm very glad that secular non-Christians are homeschooling. But as that's taken place, a lot of the homeschooling, kind of, pioneers who maybe created this curriculum don't have people to pass it onto so they're selling it to like PE companies or larger organizations and they're secularizing the curriculum that you know you might be to rely on like 10 years ago suddenly get sold to a secular organization like Pearson and they're changing the curriculum up you've got yeah the earlier on when people who weren't Christians homeschooled they could only really find other Christians now there's uh you know

Starting point is 00:04:36 more and more resources being put into there. And not necessarily a bad thing, but when you got Christian curriculum that has been watered down in some instances to expand the market, you know, homeschooling parents can't just kind of naively think if they're going to a co-op or going to a homeschool event that they're going to have their worldview being being shaped there. And I think, you know, from a, like for us, like we used to use a curriculum called Saccharacterial. and math. And it was very good. It wasn't necessarily biblical, but it was classical and was written by a Christian. He gets older. He wants to retire. He sells it to Pearson, which is a billion dollar publicly traded company. Well, they don't want to have those same ideas. They want to have their curriculum lined with Common Core, no child left behind, or whatever the latest government edicts are. And so they basically make a homeschool curriculum of the old version and then just use the branding for the new

Starting point is 00:05:39 one. Meanwhile, they're jacking up the prices for homeschooling curriculum because they don't want to maintain it and really want to just drive that out. And so you just got to be very careful that as homeschooling expands, that these ideologies are going to start creeping in. And I think that's going to have a possibility for just negative outcomes for the homeschooling space in general. if we aren't like wide-eyed on what's going on. Yeah, I think a lot of, a lot of parents just assume that all homeschool curriculum is created equal. And I know some popular curriculum out there that is not explicitly Christian,

Starting point is 00:06:24 that a lot of Christians kind of believe is Christian, or they just like it because it's easier. And obviously, you like classical conversations, as you should, should. But like, what should parents be looking for if they want to be discerning in choosing the right methods for their kids? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the big things in the homeschool space is, uh, is our as conventions. So each state has a homeschool convention that you can go to and kind of read the material, talk to the vendors, uh, you know, try to understand what their worldview is and what the speaker's worldview is as well. Um, and, and, um, and,

Starting point is 00:07:04 Just, I mean, honestly, like, just see if that homeschool curriculum had been sold to a P.E. firm or someone else recently because it might be that one year it was very biblical and then they're slowly over the next couple of years going to make it very secular. You know, really, like, you got to have that conversation that you didn't have to have before as well as a Christian that when you talk to someone, like I was talking to a friend and they went to a homeschool field trip and they're expecting. it to be like, you know, kind of a young earth creation, worldview, biblical worldview event. And it was being put on by secular evolutionists. And so, you know, they paid for it and went to this event and really got an education in why they needed to do more research before just blindly thinking everything in the homeschool space is Christian.

Starting point is 00:07:58 So, yeah. Yeah, I think that's going to be really big because believe, me, the secular humanists definitely want to sell you homeschooling curriculum. And so it's really important to understand worldviews and how they view everything because even secularists can sprinkle in Bible verses, right? Even Satan sprinkles in Bible verses to try to confuse Christians. And he does so very successfully. So you've really got to understand that education itself is not neutral. So it's almost going back to that same public school conversation that we've been having is not some of these say, you know, Christ is Lord and he's coming again. And some of them do not.

Starting point is 00:08:45 And so not only do you want to make sure that you have a strong, good curriculum design for homeschoolers, but one that is going to make your job easier as a parent with discipling your kids and not one that's going to, you know, just be a couple degrees off. Yeah. This was reported in National Review just last month that Wokeness is infiltrating homeschooling. Homestchooling in the U.S. has doubled since 2020, partly as parents seek to escape public schools, inclusion of things like critical race theory, gender theory. But the Virginia homeschoolers on convention at Richmond, Virginia, featured sessions like all history is queer history, led by a transgender rights activist, showing a shift towards progressive topics. other sessions at the unconvention included talks on forms of decoloniality and resolving unexamined experiences with bias of depression. Now, I don't understand why someone who believes this wouldn't just send

Starting point is 00:09:41 their kids to public school. I mean, you can get that kind of thing for free, right? Unless they think it's not radical enough. Yeah, no, you can definitely get all of that in public school. you know, possibly with, you know, Trump being elected a second time and people, you know, some of his things trying to get that out of public school, right now, no more boys and girls' bathrooms, like things that are just common sense to 90% of America, you know, these people are trying to keep their kids and radicalize them outside of the system. And so, yeah, wokeness is everywhere. And, you know, that's going to be one of the things I'm afraid that they're going to use to try to put more regulations on homeschooling because they're going to say,

Starting point is 00:10:27 you know, as much as the left wants to say fundamental Christians are, you know, abusing their kids, right? Then the right can say the same thing about, you know, about this. We see a lot in Europe, too, with like the Muslims wanting to homeschool in Great Britain. And obviously, there's all sorts of terrible things going on in the UK, because when you have religions that don't respect the women and children, like Christianity, you get terrible outcomes. And so... And Christianity, you're saying, like Christianity does. Yeah. Christianity does respect women and children, but when you have ideologies like Islam don't, then, yeah, a lot of problems. And that's why a lot of European countries, they have compulsory education, public education,

Starting point is 00:11:12 starting at age three. I mean, and this actually predates the Muslim migration that we've seen and, you know, the like Nordic countries, but a lot, I mean, they're very explicit. Like these crazy Christians out there, we don't want them bucking the system. And they think our system works based on the idea of the common good in collectivism. And if someone is not teaching that, then that's a problem. So they get them when they're three years old. And then in France, they're trying to ban homeschooling altogether.

Starting point is 00:11:40 maybe they actually did because of the Muslims and they are trying to de-radicalize them. I remember the so the the Prussian model, which was imported to the U.S. predated Germany, predated Hitler, my understanding is the only law on the books that Hitler signed still in Germany is outlawing homeschooling. And so, you know, when Christians especially showed that homeschooling worked academically, just made it so that there was just good humans, you know, psychologically doing well. It's not surprising that secular humanists want that same thing for their kids because they do love their kids, right? That's one of the innate things that God gave us as a, you know, common grace. And so, you know, it's, I'm glad they're homeschooling, but, you know, they're going to continue

Starting point is 00:12:35 that same kind of indoctrination that we're seeing, seeing there. And so it's a completely different worldview, you know, that the United States is bad. We're not perfect, right? But that it's not surprising if we're a Christian country that they're trying to bring these ideas into the homeschooling movement. And so if we're not diligent on this, vigilant on it. Vigilant and diligent, Yeah. Dilligent and vigilant on it that it can creep in and that parents have to be eyes wide open because it can be a scary, scary proposition, especially as we see, yeah, just other worldviews trying to corrupt what, you know, Christians have founded.

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Starting point is 00:16:05 believe that there's that big of a difference between public education, secular education, and Christian education, not just homeschooling. This is probably one of the subjects that I get the most pushback on. They'll say, well, it doesn't matter until high school or it only matters in Bible class. And I'm doing, you know, Bible discipleship at home. Math, science, history, all of those things are just objective reality, has nothing to do with theology. Believe it it or not, Christians tell me that pretty regularly. So how should we be actually thinking about that? Yeah. So, I mean, most people probably have heard of John Dewey and Horace Mann. And I know a lot of people haven't, though. So if you could tell us. But actually, there's someone before that, Robert

Starting point is 00:16:53 Owen. And he wanted to kind of abolish the three Trinity, the Trinity of Evil, he called it, which was private property, religion and marriage. Robert Owen. Robert Owen. And when was this? Was this? 18, 12, 12-ish? A lot of weird things happened in the 19th century with people's ideas of religion and philosophy.

Starting point is 00:17:17 Of course, Karl Marx was after that, I believe, but around that time. Yeah, so he actually influenced, he tried to do it here in the United States, bring public education because he saw that if he could mold the minds of young people, he would be able to change their ideas on that. and it didn't take flight here. It took flight in in Prussia, which is a lot of people don't know what Prussia is. They heard the Prussian school or Frankfurt School. That's Germany pre-World War I. And they had just lost a battle and they didn't want to lose any more wars. And so they basically conscripted all the young people into public schools to make them good warriors, obey the king instead of their own parents. So his ideas got legs there. Then really Karl Marx expanded on. that with free public education for everyone, the 10th plank of the Communist Manifesto, and then Horace Mann, and then John Dewey brought it here. After World War I and two, a lot of the German thinkers actually came to the Columbia Teachers College. That

Starting point is 00:18:18 teacher's college basically influences the teachers colleges in every single university, even a lot of Christian universities. And so it all goes back to the root of the three ideas of abolishing private property. You're going to own nothing and you're going to own nothing and going to love it, right? Marriage, which we see that as being on the decline in the United States, right, and religion. You know, Barna says what, about three or five percent of Americans now have a biblical worldview. And so the public school has been very successful at the founder's ideas. It's never been about educating young people. It's all about a different discipleship program and importing it into the United States. And so American families in 1850s to 1900s, when this was

Starting point is 00:19:02 actually being implemented, the public school system, actually fought against it. And, you know, because of World War War I and World War II and the, you know, just the father's being taken out of the home and the mother's having to go work in the factories, that was when it really took hold here in the United States. And then in the 50s, of course, they took prayer out of public school. And it's just been downhill ever since. And so the rise of the teachers unions, too, starting in what, the 1960s and 70s? I mean, that kind of funded. fundamentally changed not only the authority structure in the family, which is what you just alluded to. Now families are delegating discipleship to the state thinking, well, I know these teachers.

Starting point is 00:19:45 They go to my Sunday school class, so I'll just let them do it. But then the authority went out of the hands of even the local schools and on the state level into the hands of these teachers' unions, which have always been extremely secular and progressive, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, the teachers, the teachers, teachers union started out of the Columbia Teachers College. Right. And that mindset, which is the mindset of destroying the family, destroying religion, and destroying private property. And you can see the fruit of it in the United States today. We're $36 trillion in debt. You know, more babies are almost being born out of wedlock than in wedlock. You know, divorce rates are extremely high. And church attendance may have bottomed out. You know,

Starting point is 00:20:26 we're starting to see some good things of men returning to churches and things like that. But I mean, say that we took basically in the last 100 to 125 years of our society, the introduction of public education has been wildly successful. Yeah. Interestingly, you are the second guest in the past couple of weeks who has talked about the connection between the Frankfurt School, Carl Marx, and all of the communists of the 19th and early 20th century to the Columbia Teaching College, that many of those communists and collectivists fled German, at the time, they came over to America, found refuge in the Ivy Leaks here in the United States, which, of course, took a while to take root some of their ideas. But you're saying because

Starting point is 00:21:15 those communistic, blatantly communistic ideas, they took root in a place like Columbia Teaching College. The vehicle for the mass importation of communistic ideas has been the public education system via training the teachers, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. And the point from the beginning is to get rid of Christianity in the United States. And why is that? Like, do we know why Robert Owen, why he hated Christianity? Why did he like or dislike that unholy evil Trinity so much? Yeah, I mean, from my understanding, because there's a lot of just learning the research now is just he had a Lutheran father, but he converted because of different things that are going on in the society where he was coming from. And so he just saw religion as evil. And of course, um,

Starting point is 00:22:02 You know, the devil and the spirits are always looking for someone who's, you know, willing to be an accomplice to their ends. And so, you know, whether it had been Robert Owen or someone else, you know, the fact that America was founded on Christian principles, we've always been a target of, you know, the devil and trying to corrupt what God has established. And so, I mean, that's really where it comes from. And the communists, you know, they actually believe that their ideas, if it's just implemented, correct. this one time would, you know, deliver utopia. Yeah. And what Robert Owens said was that, you know, that the family and that the religion was stopping this utopia from being created. And the same thing that Karl Marx saw and the communists. And so it's all about, you know, the seven deadly sins, right? You know, envy, greed, all of these things, wanting to have stuff that you didn't earn

Starting point is 00:22:59 that we saw, you know, from the beginning. with the devil himself. And so it's, it's anti-God. Communism is anti-God. And since we're a Christian nation, and his devil's got his side on us. Next sponsor is Good Ranchers. If you are not getting your beef, your seafood, your chicken, your seed oil-free chicken nuggets from Good Ranchers, what are you doing? I can't believe that you are still going to the grocery store. And you are picking out these items. that are less quality and probably not made in America and probably severely affected by inflation. Don't you want to just not have to worry about that?

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Starting point is 00:24:11 That's good ranchers.com slash alley code alley. Bree, my producer just messaged me that Owen believed, as you said, that religion and family trapped people in ignorance and selfishness, which that selfishness aspect is interesting. Of course, Marx believes that religion is the opiate of the masses. So same idea there. Like, you're not seeing how oppressed you really are, how angry. angry and envious you really need to be because you've got Christianity or you've got religion lulling you into a false state of security. But the fact that Owen believed that Christianity

Starting point is 00:24:53 and family kept us, keeps us selfish means, what I think he means by that is that Christianity has, instead of seeking the so-called common good or the forced equality that communism guarantees you're looking out for your community, your children, your property. And he wanted to take that from people. He wanted to be able to say, you don't have any inherent rights to private property or your children or your own ideas. It has to be, everything has to be for the good of the collective. And you can see how Christianity, with thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not covet, honor your father and mother, is in direct opposition to communist ideology.

Starting point is 00:25:41 Yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, Christians got to be very careful because this ideology is creeping into the church, mainstream church, starting to creep into homeschooling as homeschooling becomes more mainstream because, yeah, if the government can provide everything, if the government can force someone else to do the work for me, then why should I do it myself? of course, you know, we believe in Amago Day that we were made in the image of God versus evolutionists believe that we're just a little bit greater than apes. And so it's a totally different mindset on how we approach education, how we approach one another. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:25 obviously capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than ever before. You know, my grandparents and my wife's grandparents both escaped, you know, communist and socialist countries during World War II. So, we know like how oppressive it can be in our family genes. And yes, when you when you go away from God's design for the family, you just get bad outcomes. And that's why hundreds of millions of people have been killed from communism and why, you know, communism still survives today because, you know, Satan was envious of God from the beginning.

Starting point is 00:27:03 And so we see the fruit of that throughout everyone who rejects Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Yeah. The roots of communism are rotten and the fruits of communism are rotten. But I would argue that's the same for our public education system. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who graduated from public high school is rotten or that they themselves didn't have a good education or that they're not strong Christians. You know, I know strong believers today who went to public school, kindergarten through 12th grade. I know people who are apostates who went to Christian school with me, kindergarten through 12th grade. So to me, I've always said, like, it's not about guaranteeing the outcomes for your child.

Starting point is 00:27:42 It's about obedience and proper stewardship. And if we are tasked as parents to steward and shape our child's heart in mind in obedience to Christ, then how are we most effectively going to do that by ourselves and other Christians disciplining them for 40 plus hours a week? or people who don't believe in God, or maybe outright hate God, disciplining our kids for 40 hours a week. At best, they're getting an unbiblical education

Starting point is 00:28:09 at a secular school at worst. It is blatantly hostile and anti-biblical. And I've kind of seen people realize this since COVID, since BLN stuff in 2020, to their credit, I've gotten a lot of people who totally, probably lambast to me after your mom was on my show and just was like, I can't believe this is privilege, whatever. after 2020, I got a lot of messages being like, oh, I thought it could never happen at my school.

Starting point is 00:28:35 I live in, you know, Southern Alabama. I live in Texas. And it happened. And okay, I realize, I realize now what you're saying. Well, they have to the teachers, no matter how goodhearted they are, they have to teach whatever the school district's telling them to teach. And if they don't, they're going to get fired. And so, you know, that's why a lot of public school teachers homeschool their own kids or send them to private school at a significantly higher rate than the rest of society because they see what's going on. I mean, my wife, before we got married, taught at a Title I school for 10 years. And so you can love the child as much as you want, but she saw almost 200 children a day. Like, you know, there's just not, it's hard enough for us to love the three children we have on a

Starting point is 00:29:17 daily basis and give them everything they need in that intentionality. And so, so public school is definitely a discipleship program. And it's a discipleship and answer. anti-religion, anti-family, and anti-private property. And more young people today believe socialism is a good thing than not. Yeah. So it's working. It's working. Public school is wildly successful. That's what people need to understand. Yeah. It's just its goals and the goals of your family are probably diametrically opposed. Yeah. Can we talk about SEL? Do you have thoughts about social, emotional learning? Because this is not just something we see in public school. We see it in private Christian schools too. Yeah, well, social emotional learning, just that terminology is might be new to us,

Starting point is 00:30:01 but it's not new. Again, in the 1800s, early 1900s, it was being used in foreign countries. It was part of this idea of getting children to be more obedient to the state than to their families. And it's taken, you know, the head of the beast has changed over the years. But, yes, run from social emotional learning. That'd be the main thing, main takeaway from that. It's, it's, it's, it's a different discipleship program other than what God gave us in the Bible. Yeah. And I know people will say, oh, no, like my daughter did SEL or I was a teacher who went through SCL.

Starting point is 00:30:36 And it's not to say that every single aspect will be a lie. But that's also kind of how Satan works. He tells us half truth. And he uses truth to, you know, he repackages lies in different kinds of shiny truths. Well, Satan knows the Bible way better than I do. Yeah. And from the very beginning in the garden, did God really say? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:58 And so, you know, prosperity, success, these aren't necessarily unbiblical things. Yeah. But he is going to use whatever he can in that time to not direct you 100% away because you don't need to get 100% away. But if you can just get you two or three degrees off the wrong path, you know, the Bible says raise a children in the way they should go and they will not depart from it. you know a lot of raising children is about parents obedience to god not necessarily um getting it right all the time right so i always tell people parenthood had a really poor beginning right adam and eve had cane and abel and cane killed abel right so it's always been a struggle for parents like yeah i'm not saying it's easy i'm just saying that the bible is really clear on

Starting point is 00:31:45 who's responsible for your child's education in any system private or public that says they're going to be responsible for your kids' education and undermines the authority that God gave you is going to be off by a couple degrees. And we'll get the society we have today and the fruit that we see around us when we continue to just disobey what God has laid out for us in the Bible. Okay, quick pause to tell you about crowd health. I don't have to tell you how complicated, how burdensome what a hassle health insurance can be. And maybe it's just right for your family to opt out of that and to take ownership of something as important as your health care coverage. Crowd Health right now has a new Black Swan membership. You can ditch the red tape of traditional

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Starting point is 00:33:16 Opt-out, take your power back. Join crowdhealth.com, code alley. I'm also, I was just not sure that five, six, seven-year-olds need to have, you know, group therapy sessions every day. And actually Abigail Schreier, if you've read the book, Bad Therapy, she talks about this, how the over-focus on emotions, especially on young developing children doesn't actually make them more considerate and kinder. It makes them more selfish. And the over-cultivation of empathy towards particular, you know, stated victim actually makes them more cruel to the out-group. And so, like, we can look at the whole of modern psychology and modern therapy, and a lot of Christians will say, yeah, that's bad. We've got transgenderism.

Starting point is 00:34:01 We've got kids butchering their bodies. We've got kids taken out of their parents' custody because they didn't like, you know, that their parent wouldn't affirm them or whatever. But then in the context of school, you have a lot of people being like, well, it's fine. And I'm not saying all school therapists or school counselors are bad. But, again, it's whose authority and whose responsibility is your child's heart. Is it this person who probably doesn't care if they live or die, or is it you? Well, first of all, like children, God did not design children to sit in seats for eight hours a day, you know, 180 days a year or whatever it is.

Starting point is 00:34:40 So it's not surprising that you have children acting out and having these issues because we're forcing children to behave like adults when they're not designed to do that. And really adults aren't designed to do that either. I mean, I've seen studies where sitting is the new. smoking, we wonder why we have an obesity problem, but we send our kids to education systems that send them in a desk six hours a day. And so it's absolutely not the government's job to pay for psychiatrists. You know, obviously, you know, people need help and to talk those things out and to do that in a Christian setting isn't a bad thing to do, but that's not what they're doing

Starting point is 00:35:17 in the school system. And when you are with 30 children a day that are your same age, from the same zip code, you get the clicks, you get the bullying, because that's how our sinful natures would naturally progress. And when you have one adult to 30 kids, I mean, that's insane. Like, management books, say one adult for six or seven reports at a business. And these are people who are trained and are being paid to be there. And you have one person managing seven versus like my wife had, you know, six classes a day of 30, so 180 kids per day in the public school system. And so the kids acting out, you know, obviously there's behavioral issues. I'm not talking about that, but I mean, it should be natural if you're not supposed to be in like a building that looks

Starting point is 00:36:00 like a prison that long for you to act out. And so, of course, kids aren't learning to read and do these things. And I mean, Owen and the socialists want to get kids away from their parents as early as possible so they can mold them into their vision form, not into the vision that God has form. And so it really is just a system to undermine parental authority, which is derived from God and how he designed man. And so it's ultimately to undermine God's authority at the same time. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:36:33 It's just another consequence of broken families too, because when you've got single mom, who has to work full time, she's like, well, of course, I got to bring them at 7 a.m. to the before school care, and I can't pick them up until 5.30. Like, they go to the after school care. I mean, that's a lot of hours, that your child is being disciples by other children, by the way, who don't have any, they should not be discipling anyone at that age, but also in many cases, adults who just they don't have the capacity or they don't have the worldview. And it's really, it puts parents or teachers rather, in a very unfair situation when there are parents who see the discipline as the role of the school, who, don't do that at home, who don't say no at home, but they rely on the teachers and the schools to do all of the shaping of that child's character. I mean, I don't think that's what most

Starting point is 00:37:28 teachers sign up for. And how do you do that to 180 kids a day? Well, absolutely. Again, the system is undermining it. These parents were raised in that system. And so the system has cultivated that idea in parents. I saw a post on Facebook that was going viral from an African-American teacher talking about how all of these students who are coming in as six years old can't even recognize the alphabet like the letter A through Z. And so obviously their parents didn't even think about doing that at home for them. And so, you know, obviously you got to break the cycle. Yeah. And obviously God called the church to step into that realm, not the government. And when the government steps into realms that it's not, you know, dictated by God to step into, we get really

Starting point is 00:38:13 expensive, really poor outcomes. And we see that in the public school. system. And strings attached. Yeah, and strings attached. But as long as you allow this boy into the girls' bathroom, which is real. That really was a program. And so it undermines parents. And then, you know, on the same, on the same token, what's sadder to me is the parents that can afford to have them out, right? Like, if you know better, do better, right? And so it's the parents that send them in. Look, I love sports. I have three-time national champion in rugby. I love, I love, of athletics. But when they send their kids to high school, I want them to get the Friday night

Starting point is 00:38:53 lights experience. I'm like, okay, I mean, I get that, but you're going to undermine your education. You're going to do all of these things just so that they can play football on Friday night. Again, big football fan, big fan of sports. But we've got the bread and circuses, you know, free lunch and sports. Just let us, you know, educate your kid for you. We'll take care of it. And so that's the mentality that we've had as a society and a mentality that is anti-biblical and until we break it. But the church needs to break it first. I always tell people, God says if my people will repent, I will heal their nation, right? And so if our nation's not being healed, it's because his people are not repenting.

Starting point is 00:39:37 And it's because a lot of us, as you've exposed and different people have exposed, these Marxist ideologies are getting inside of the church. and we've continued to incorporate them in our daily lives. And, yeah, it's going to be hard work to, you know, fix the system or get out of the system. But it's what God's called us to do, in my opinion. Yeah. You know, you mentioned how people are just not meant to sit around all day, especially children. They have so much energy. And I interviewed, I don't believe he's a Christian, but he's a child psychologist.

Starting point is 00:40:12 And he came on the show to talk about just how boys are, being purposely feminized by being punished for being boys. And still in, so it's, it's normal now for people who can like afford to keep their children home to hold boys and girls kind of back. So allow them to be six turning seven going into kindergarten. A lot of boy parents do this. It's good for athletics. And a lot of parents do it just because they want their kid home longer. But in lower income areas, that's not happening. They have to put their kids. and all-day kindergarten as soon as possible because both parents work or the mom works or whatever. And so these low-income boys are going to kindergarten at four or five years old,

Starting point is 00:40:57 are being made to sit all day and that are punished and are seen as problem children for being basically toddler boys who just can't get their energy out and how that can set them up. For all kinds of problems later on, they think they're stupid. They think they're bad. They end up kind of growing into that reputation that they've been made to feel that they have. And I mean, we've already seen it's a scary world when our boys are not raised to become men. You know, they'll act out in some way. So this whole education system, it's not just about, okay, they're not preaching the Bible, which is obviously true.

Starting point is 00:41:36 I mean, this has a huge effect on future generations. No, absolutely. And, you know, for those most vulnerable, obviously, the church. needs to be able to have an idea of stepping in more effectively there. And, you know, of course, as our society has gone away from a more capitalistic to more crony capitalism, we see the income equality, you know, increasing as we got off the gold standard and just did all of these things that has made it more difficult, made it so that, you know, both parents do have to work even in middle class houses, you know, homes these days. And so, you know, there's things that could be

Starting point is 00:42:14 manage differently in the public school system to make it not as bad. But to your point, so you have these four and five year old boys and say they have a really good kindergarten teacher, and they are do like her, and they have some stability, right? They're getting fed food with they may or may not be getting at home, and they have an adult who's paying attention to them on a daily basis, and they fall in love with her or him. And then the next year, that adult's gone. And new adults in their place, may. may have a good experience or may not. And all the system is conditioning them to do is every single year, a different

Starting point is 00:42:51 adults going to be in your life. And so they have, you know, father or mother who might be working hard, two or three jobs, but not necessarily they're on a daily basis, maybe have divorce. And then you've got them in a school system where the adults changing out, you know, every six months that cares for them. And so it reinforces the idea of learning their behaviors from their peer groups. They're not learning it from a wise adult, someone that you would want to mentor them, and they just continue this cycle.

Starting point is 00:43:21 And so, you know, one of the things that we can do, I think, as a society and as Christians, if we can get our kids out of the public school system, into private schools or into homeschooling, then that's going to, you know, create more resources or whatever for in those systems. But ultimately, we've got to create a parallel system that is able to do that. I mean, the Catholic Church did a great job of this for 50 years, you know, from the 20s to the 90s where they would have, you know, scale, where if you were, you know, a member of the church, you paid less to go to their schools, or if you were poor, you paid less. And so, you know, there's so many different ways to be able to afford different educational outcomes than public school, but we haven't explored those as a society. we haven't championed those from the pulpit. And so we've got to totally think about all of this differently.

Starting point is 00:44:17 Otherwise, we're going to keep on getting the same poor results. And we all want to see children get educated. I think that's one of the things that I think people don't understand is like, you know, the Walton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill Gates Foundation, like all of these kind of left-wing think tanks, they're pouring billions of dollars over the last decade to try to transform public school into their vision. And now we've got AI coming. You've got, you know, teacher turnover so high that now AI is going to be the one

Starting point is 00:44:53 discipling our children while teachers are just there monitoring kids' usage of computers. And we all know how bad screen time is. So the direction that we're going is society in the public. school system is not improving. Yeah. You've probably heard about the standoff between the Trump camp and the Federal Reserve. Trump is pushing hard to bring interest rates down, get the economy moving, but Jerome Powell's holding firm because inflation's still hanging around.

Starting point is 00:45:28 That means that rates could drop at any moment. And the prepared people out there will move fast. That's why you need to go ahead, set up a consultation and talk with my friends at Fellowship Home Loans. Mike and Brian and their team will help you run numbers, look at the full picture, and ask this really important question, what is it going to take to get you into the home that you and your family need right now? Because even if the rates aren't ideal today, if the right home is in front of you, you shouldn't miss it. They can help you make that happen in a way that is really

Starting point is 00:46:01 smart and in a way that honors God because they align with our values. Start with a free consultation at fellowship home loans.com slash alley. You'll get a $500 credit at closing. Terms apply, C-Sight for details, fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA, Fellowship Home Loans, Equal Housing Lender, NMLS number 819382. Let's talk about technology because this is not a public school problem. Sure. No. We have seen this a lot in private Christian schools, starting in pre-kish school. in kindergarten. Everyone gets their own iPad. Everyone gets their own Chrome book. And it is only certain kinds of schools that say, nope, we're not doing technology for at least until eighth grade and then even

Starting point is 00:46:53 after that, it's not the iPad thing. But in most college prep private Christian schools, kids are getting iPads. And I have been told, oh, it's four. So this, if you need to read ahead or if like this kid is in advanced or something, it allows them to. personalized. I'm like, well, what was wrong with books? We had books that you could go and you had different levels that you could pick from. Apparently, that doesn't work anymore. And when I'm like, okay, can you show me the research that proves to me that this is good for my child's brain, that this is better for their brain than a pen and paper and reading books, it's, you know, you don't get any of that. But we're talking private, Christian elite schools are giving kids iPads.

Starting point is 00:47:38 Well, you just got to look. You know, Steve Jobs famously said he wouldn't let his own kids touch an iPad until they were 18. Yeah. Wow. Right. Elon Musk has started a technology free school for his kids in California. And so the people who are making the technology are not letting their own flesh and blood touch it. Mm-hmm. Same with Mark Zuckerberg. So, yeah. So every time I see like a teacher on Facebook, oh, I'm fundraising to get iPod. pads in my school, I'm like, you are literally spending time and energy to make your kids dumber, right? And so it is, I mean, handwriting, like, handwriting creates, you know,

Starting point is 00:48:20 pathways in the brain. It helps you retain information. Reading from a physical book helps you retain information better. So it's all because, you know, it's costly because they're not using the classical methodology. They change curriculum every, you know, every year. And so replacing all those books versus like classical conversations, probably 90% of the books that I were there when I was going through are still the same books today. So you can use it for multiple generations and your family or multiple kids in your family. And so they've, because of all this, you know, you know, the government wanting to do all of these things and because they're trying to experiment not with getting kids smarter but making them more obedient to the civil authorities.

Starting point is 00:49:08 Like, you know, it's a very expensive proposition. And so, you know, iPads are a great way to dumb people down, make them more susceptible to whatever the authorities are telling them. Addict them to entertainment so they never critically think. Yep, yeah. Bread and fit. Bread and circus. More bread and circus.

Starting point is 00:49:28 Okay. Let's talk about school choice. Okay. Because I know that this is kind of a controversial. topic and I've really only covered it from the side of being pro school choice. And for people who don't know, I'll just set up that side. And then you obviously have, I think you have a different perspective on it than a lot of conservatives do. And basically, the argument from the school choice side is that someone's educational destiny should not be

Starting point is 00:49:52 bound to their zip code. If a child is getting bullied, if something is not working in that child's education, they should have the freedom to go to another school, get a Christian education, and there's a belief in education savings accounts, in vouchers that would allow kids who maybe can't afford home or can't afford either homeschool or private Christian school would allow them to attend, that these opportunities give these kids a better potential outcome in life. And so you see why a lot of conservatives would like this that, and it opposes the teachers' unions who believe that taking these kids out of the public schools leaves everyone else high and dry, takes money away from them, et cetera. And conservatives believe, well, this education is going to be better for our future and better for these kids. So if the government's going to do anything, if our tax dollars are going to do anything, it should be to support this kind of thing.

Starting point is 00:50:52 But you are also going from a conservative perspective. and you don't love school choice, right? Well, yeah, it depends on how you define school choice. So obviously I was homeschooled myself. So I believe in choice and I believe in education. And so what we're talking about school choice is fundamentally who's paying for that choice. And so how we view it or how I view it is public school is an option that's paid for by taxes. And when they talk about school choice or universal school choice,

Starting point is 00:51:25 The idea is that we are all entitled to tax money, right, communism, and that we should be able to take that money wherever we could go. And so I'm not opposed to like backpack bills, which is like switching different public schools or different things like that. What we're opposed to is putting every single family into that welfare system of their money being redistributed, tax money being redistributed to them. So, like, the universal school choice hasn't actually really helped too many poor people. It's actually helped people who are already paying their educational bills. About 70% of first-time participants were already in private school or public school. So how can they participate if they're already in private school? So how the laws have currently been written are basically anyone's eligible for it.

Starting point is 00:52:19 So it's not something that's targeted to, you know, the poor or underclassed. It's available to anyone. And so basically, in different states, they're doing it differently, but just with a broad brush, that typically around $7,000 per kid, and then you can go spend that on private school or homeschooling. And, you know, the idea is to get kids out of the system is what they say, but you're actually not, you're not actually getting kids out of the system. The system is actually expanding to cover private schools and homeschoolers. And so what the system is, is that idea that the government's responsible for paying for your child's

Starting point is 00:53:01 education, which is, to me, opposed to what the Bible says, where it says the parents are responsible. And so it is undermining fathers who should be out there taking and providing for their families and instead saying that the government should be providing for your kids. And so it's just more of the same. And so for me, when I see, what the Bible says about education and whose responsibility for it. We need to have systems that undergird it and support that and not undermine God's design for the family. And so their intentions are good, right? I want to get kids out of public school. I've been, you know, helping families do that for, you know, almost 30 years of my life. But what fundamentally happens is you expand

Starting point is 00:53:50 an elected bureaucrats control into the private schools. And so you're going to see more and more woke private schools because, you know, just like you're seeing woke homeschooling, now you're going to see woke private schools paid for by the tax people, taxpayer. Yeah, I was going to ask if that was a concern that if government money is going to the private schools, that the private schools will now be beholden to government strength. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not even necessarily the strings, right? As a conservative taxpayer, I want there to be strings on my money, right? We see what the dangers are in USAID and we've seen what

Starting point is 00:54:32 the government financing college is done, right? All you have to do is look at Harvard, look at all the Ivy Leagues, right? All founded on biblical principles. Now they're all bastions of atheism. Like almost every single Christian college bent the knee to transgender bathrooms, like the ones who didn't, you can probably count on your hand because they got sued by the Biden administration. And so one, it creates a political football. So your child's education is now based on whatever political parties in power. And that's the whole point from the Republican side is they want to win the education debate. So they want you to be forced to vote for Republicans because they're going to fund your private school. Private schools are raising prices. We talked about

Starting point is 00:55:18 earlier about the Walton's and the Ford Foundation and Bill Gates, they'll all start buying up your private schools. So if you want your data to be mined in private schools, school choice will provide government money to George Soros so he can buy up schools and educate your children on your behalf. And that's just what's going to happen. We already see it. That's what happened in the charter school movement. And so it's not their intention. are good, but when, again, when you do not align with what the Bible says, you're going to go off in a bad direction. And so, so far in school choice states, you know, basically very few people actually got out of public school. Taxes are going to have to go up because spending on education has gone up. And now, like in the state of Arkansas, you know, you have to get approved if you're a private school to decide what tuition you're going to get charged. We do business in the state of Florida, and we do dual enrollment out of Florida. And the Florida public school, the Florida colleges aren't actually allowed to charge money for dual enrollment students anymore because the state's subsidizing it.

Starting point is 00:56:30 So we've got price controls in a ruby red state because of school choice. That's communism. That is not conservatism. That is not lined up with the biblical principles of free markets. And so ultimately, right? people are envious that the public schools had their money, their taxes, right? I pay taxes in 32 states. Like if anyone should be mad about paying taxes, it should be someone like me. But, you know, God said for Christians to go the second mile to ignore the world's wisdom and follow his. And so

Starting point is 00:57:08 it is a very different worldview that dads and moms are responsible for their kids' education, not just choosing the curriculum, not just raising them, but also funding it. And so ultimately the school choice, universal school choice proponents, their heart's in the right direction, but they're just going back to that undermining principle of that the government should be in charge of our children and financing their education. And whoever pays the Piper picks the tune, there's no such thing as a free lunch. I mean, I can go on and on about all of these sayings that conservatives, would go with, you know, I love the shirts. I don't co-parent with the government. Well, if the government

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Starting point is 00:58:35 keep your phone or upgrade. Go to patriotmobile.com slash alley. Use code alley for a free month of service. That's patriotmobile.com slash alley code alley. I've heard from a lot of families. It's like, you know, the only reason that might just be. to go to this private school or this Christian school. The only reason that I get to homeschool this year is because I'm getting $2,000 towards that. And I do see, I definitely see what you're saying. And I also see the side that's like, okay, well, if the government is like,

Starting point is 00:59:09 if the government has already allocated this much money like they have in the state of Texas, they've allocated this much money towards education. And now parents are getting something like 85% of like what would be allocated towards their child's education to be able to go towards something else. I mean, I see the argument for that. And I also see what you're saying. I definitely see some complicated layers in there that when strings are, when the government is funding something, then it's their rules.

Starting point is 00:59:39 And they get to say, you know, what the education can look like. And I think that's troubling for parents of kids at Christian schools. It's like, well, what is going to, what's going to happen there? The more and more money they're getting. from the state, is that going to start changing things? Yeah, so, I mean, the United Nations in their education arm, UNESCO, already has this planned out, and they've already ran the playbook in European countries, Sweden being one of them, where it started off where the parents were getting 85% of their private school

Starting point is 01:00:09 money. And then they said, okay, we're going to have a national curriculum because we want to make sure equality and everyone's getting the same education and that, you know, different schools aren't doing different things. And then they said, well, you can't charge more than what we're giving you because then that would benefit the rich. And so it's not a slippery slope. It's a mountain. Many countries have already fallen down. And yeah, I mean, the idea that the government has allocated this money and maybe they could spend it wiser, right? I get that idea. But what you're doing is you're taking a truly free market, a God-honoring marketplace and you're putting in corrupt money that's been through taxation. And so there's,

Starting point is 01:00:55 there's plenty of money, right? We could figure out other ways to reduce taxation or reduce government spending, allow people to keep their own money. That's one of the things I hear from people is like, well, I just want to keep my own money. I'm like, okay, I can relate to that, but there's not been a school choice bill that actually lets you keep your own money. It's all been money that's been redistributed from your neighbors. And of course, you temporarily get that money, but you're going to be a taxpayer the rest of your life and your taxes are inevitably going to go up to pay for all these additional people that are in the welfare system. So you're going to be paying a higher tax rate to the state until you go see Jesus for a temporary reprieve. And so

Starting point is 01:01:35 Christians need to be building Christian institutions. And God gave us three realms of government, the family government, the church government, and the civil government. And the world works best, you know, best outcomes, you know, least expensive, least corruption, right? They're still sitting in the world when each of those entities are doing what they are supposed to be doing. And so prior to 1850 in the United States, the civil government had basically no role, no taxation, no role in education other than to allocate land for that. the new states. And virtually 90% of Americans were literate. Like they basically had the Bible, some primers, their parents, and, you know, maybe a private tutor or a tutor that the church provided in their schoolhouses. When they introduced public education and the public funding

Starting point is 01:02:35 of education in the United States, parents rebelled. Like they had to basically send police to their house to take their kids to these institutions. And so institutionalized people look for institutions to solve their issues. And if we want to honor God and how we educate our children, we can't do that by sending government thugs to our neighbors to tax, tax them on an annual basis or kick them out of their home to pay for our child's education. Okay, that's a perspective that I think a lot of people will be interested in hearing my dad is a big proponent of school choice and I think both of y'all have the same goals and the same heart so I'm sure he would have his own perspective on that but I really appreciate you sharing that because a lot of people have been asking me okay what's the other side of this

Starting point is 01:03:25 obviously not from the progressive perspective which is just like no everyone needs to be in their designated indoctrination stations and we have to make sure that they are getting the worst education possible that's the progressive perspective Yeah. So I think the kind of the fundamental difference is, right, basically pre-COVID, 87% of children were in government-funded educational institutions, and 13% of people were paying their own educational bill. And so we called those public school and private school. And so what the school choice people are saying was a private school has all these, you know, performs better. So if we can get kids out of the public school system into the private school system, we'll see better outcomes.

Starting point is 01:04:13 But I believe the fundamental reason that public schools don't work is because they're funded by the government. And they're not funded by the individual who benefits from it. Again, free market capitalism. And so what I believe, so what they're thinking is, okay, if I can get, say, 10% of those kids out, well, now we have 70% of kids in public school and 23% of kids in private school. But what is actually going to happen is instead of having 87 and 13 percent, you're basically going to have 1% of Americans paying their own education bills and 99% of people reliant on the government and taxation. And so what you win someone with, you win them too. And so the medium is the message.

Starting point is 01:04:57 So if the medium and what you're winning them with is government money, you can see how the idea of wokenness and communism is going to expand, not contract under the school choice mantra because it's saying that the government, the civil government's responsibility is to pay for education and that they need to do so for everyone. And then the obvious is you have to have strings attached. We can't have more USAID. So they have to put rules in place. And if it's Republicans and Christians in charge, then you'll have less rules. And if there's, you know, Democrats or humanists in charge, you're going to have more rules. But ultimately, it's the same mentality that the government has a biblical authority to tax

Starting point is 01:05:43 you to pay for someone else's benefits. Okay, you've got a book coming out in January, right? Yes. Do you know when people can pre-order it? Yeah, in January, I'm co-authoring it with Alex Newman, woke and weaponized how Karl Marx won and how we won American education and how we can win it back. And so, yeah, it would be just after January. We're trying to line it up with School Choice Week, which is the last week in January.

Starting point is 01:06:09 And we're talking about the history of education, you know, expanding on some of the things we talked about today, and giving a different alternatives look to school choice. Because we're both for choice and education and parental responsibility. And there's many different ways to pay for education. And we just need to be able to give people. people a different vision than through taxation and redistribution. Okay, well, thank you so much. So it was so insightful.

Starting point is 01:06:39 I think everyone's going to have learned a lot from that. I really appreciate it. Where can people follow you and find out more about classical conversations? Yeah, classicalconversations.com is the best place to go to learn about homeschooling with a classical Christian community. Just put your zip code in and we'll hook you up with a local homeschooling mom, most likely, that I'll walk you through our process. And you can follow me on X, the Robert B Show, is where I tweet a lot.

Starting point is 01:07:05 And you've been on my podcast, Refining Rhetoric. So you can find that on YouTube and all the podcast channels. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us. Yeah, thank you so much.

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

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