The Daily Signal - #350: A Homeschooling Mom Shares Why, and How

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

Where do you begin if you're thinking about homeschooling? Can you do it if you're not a teacher? And how can you make sure your kids get enough socialization? We're joined by a special guest, Colleen Trinko--yes, Kate's mom! Colleen, who is a teacher, homeschooled her five children for many years, and now works with other homeschool families to advise. Plus: A feminist is kicked off Twitter, seemingly for saying “Men aren’t women." We also cover these stories:--President Trump is now threatening additional tariffs on cars in response to General Motors’ announcement of layoffs and plant closings.--Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says there’s no “direct reporting” linking the Saudi crown prince to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.--In an interview, Ivanka Trump made the case for why her use of a personal email was not at all the same as what Hillary Clinton had done.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, November 29th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Well, as more and more parents find themselves dissatisfied with schooling options for their kids, more parents are homeschooling. And that's something Kate knows a lot about. We'll sit down today with her mother, Mrs. Trinko, to hear why she decided to homeschool all five of her children.

Plus, Twitter bans a feminist user for stating the plainest of facts about gender. We'll unpack what happened. But first, we'll cover a few. few of the top headlines. Well, House Democrats chose Nancy Pelosi yet again. According to Politico, it was by a vote of 203 to 32, and that's, of course, for the position of House Speaker. However, she will have to get 218 votes on the full House floor in order to become House

Speaker. So the continuing opposition from some Democrats does remain a potential problem for her. Well, just two days after banning a conservative writer, Twitter has reinstated. the account of Jesse Kelly. Kelly's account was taken down on Sunday for no apparent reason. Twitter simply said that he repeatedly violated their rules. That's when conservatives cried foul. Incoming Missouri Senator Josh Hawley called for congressional investigations into Twitter over censorship, and Ben Dominic of the Federalist accused Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey of having lied to Congress about Twitter's enforcement of user rules. Well, on Tuesday, Twitter reinstated Kelly's account,

saying that actually it was a temporary suspension, but they still gave no explanation. President Trump is now threatening additional tariffs on cars in response to General Motors' announcement of layoffs and plant closings. He tweeted Wednesday, The reason that the small truck business in the U.S. is such a go-to favorite is that for many years, tariffs of 25% have been put on small trucks coming into our country. It is called the chicken tax. If we did that with cars coming in, many more cars. cars would be built here, and GM would not be closing their plants in Ohio, Michigan, and Maryland.

Get smart Congress. Also, the countries that send us cars have taken advantage of the U.S. for decades. The president has great power on this issue. Because of the GM event, it is being studied now. Well, President Trump is once again pressing Congress for wall funding, and he says he's willing to let a government shutdown happen in order to get it. The government faces a shutdown on December 7th. if a funding deal isn't reached.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats will stick by $1.6 billion for the wall, which has already been planned in the budget. But Trump is pushing for $5 billion, along with other funding for additional security measures. In an interview with Politico, he said he's in no mood to cut a deal with Democrats, and he said he won't deal on DACA until the Supreme Court has ruled on that program. In an interview with the Washington Post Tuesday, President Donald Trump called Federal Reserve Chairman J. Powell, who he nominated, someone he wasn't, quote, even a little bit happy with.

He also said, I'm not blaming anybody, but I'm just telling you, I think that the Fed is way off base with what they're doing, end quote. Trump cited the Fed's higher interest rates during the interview. Well, the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has soured many U.S. officials on the Saudi regime, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Wednesday, that there's no direct reporting linking the Saudi crown prince to the murder. That comes roughly two weeks after the CIA reportedly concluded that the crown prince did, in fact, order the killing.

Speaking to reporters, Pompeo said, quote, I do believe I've read every piece of intelligence, unless it's come in the last few hours. There's no direct reporting connecting the crown prince to the order to kill Koshoki. Republicans will now have 53 senators after Cindy Hyde Smith won the Mississippi runoff. Tuesday night, she had 54% of the vote. In her victory speech, she said, per Politico, this win tonight, this victory, it's about our conservative values. It's about the things that mean the most to all of us, Mississippians, our faith, our family.

Hyde Smith will be Mississippi's first female senator. Well, Senate Republicans have blocked Senator Jeff Flake in his effort to force a vote on a bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Flake has vowed to oppose all of President Trump's judicial nominee, until the Senate votes on a bill that would make it harder for President Trump to fire Mueller. Flake asked for unanimous consent to vote on the bill, but Senator Mike Lee blocked him, saying it would constitute a breach and the separation of powers

and make certain executive branch officials unaccountable to the president. That, he said, would be unconstitutional. In an interview with Good Morning America that aired Wednesday, Ivanka Trump made the case for why her use of a personal email was not at all the same as what Hillary Clinton had done. Listen to the exchange. Early in the administration, you used your private email for White House business. Your father had taken Hillary Clinton to task for this.

So how did you wind up in a similar situation? Well, there really is no equivalency. All of my emails that relate to any form of government work, which was mainly scheduling and logistics and managing the fact that I have a home life and a work life, are all part of the public record. They're all stored on the White House. system. So everything has been preserved, everything's been archived. There just is no equivalency between the two things. But people see it as the same. People who want to see it as the same,

see it as the same. But the fact is that we all have private emails and personal emails to coordinate with our family. We all receive content to those emails. And there's no prohibition from using private email as long as it's archived. And as long as there's nothing in it that's classified. But your father hammered Hillary Clinton on this, said that it was criminal. She should be locked up. Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it. The FBI knows it. The people know it. In my case, all of my emails are on the White House server. There's no intent to circumvent. And there were mass deletions after a subpoena was issued. My emails have not been deleted, nor was there anything of substance, nothing confidential that was within them.

So there's no connection between the two things. So the idea of lock her up doesn't apply to you? No. Next up, we're going to talk to my mom and former teacher about homeschooling. Liberals have pretty much cornered the market on 101-style podcasts that break down tough policy issues in the news. Until now, did you know that every week Heritage explains intermingle, personal stories, news clips, and facts from heritage experts to help explain some of today's hardest issues from a conservative perspective. Look for Heritage Explains on iTunes, Stitcher,

Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, joining us today is a somewhat unusual guest. We are with my mom, Colleen Trinco, and she is here not to talk all about my childhood, hint-tint-h-h-hom, but she homeschooled me and my four siblings for many, many years. and she's also a teacher. She works at a charter school in California that works with homeschoolers right now. So, Mom, thanks for being on. Well, thanks, Kate. So, Mom, I know why you homeschooled.

And I think it began in, oh, my gosh, this was a while ago, 97, I want to say. And then for many years thereafter. But for our listeners, can you explain why you and dad decided to homeschool us and how it went in the beginning? Sure. Okay, so the beginning of it was. that our oldest child, in other words, Kate, who was doing quite well academically at her school. And I talked to the teacher and the principal about what we could do to challenge her. And unfortunately, their only suggestion was have her skip a grade, which I found completely unsatisfactory,

partially because she was very young for the grade. and I realized that it was time to take it into our own hands and homeschoolers. So that was in the spring and the following year we began homeschooling, which would have put her in the fifth grade. And from there... Yes, I was in the fifth grade. Correct memory. Okay.

And from there, we took the next two out. One, the second year we homeschooled. We had two. and then the third year we homeschooled, we had three. We did take a break then because my mother-in-law, who was quite ill, moved in with us, and we felt like we had our hands full, so our youngest children who were twins, stayed in school a couple more years, and then eventually we pulled them out, and we were homeschooling all five of them.

And what was the process for making that decision? What did you have to, you know, register with the state government or the city or something, and, you know, meet certain criteria? So generally there are two routes that most people follow and then two less common routes. It does depend on the state as to what you have to do. So we were in California. California is pretty good for homeschooling, but in some states it's quite rigid and there are not as many options.

In California, what people will generally do is either, choose a charter school or an accredited home school, private home school. Charter schools are part of the public school system, and if you enroll with a charter school, you pay nothing, and you generally meet with an advisory teacher, and they offer a different range of services. So you kind of pick the one that offers what you want. The charter school I work at offers a lot. of classes. And for a lot of parents, that's the best choice because then they can have their kids take classes, especially writing and math that are often hard for parents to teach. In other charter schools, they'll offer money towards your curriculum. And the money can be used for things

like classes and some charter schools offer, allow you to use it for gymnastics classes, things like that. A school like ours provides all the curriculum to you online as well as textbooks, teachers' editions for every student so that the families really can work on it. You also have your typical charter school credential, well, you have to be credentialed, credentialed teachers who set up the curriculum and they work with the parents to figure out what's the best thing. Now, other options for how to homeschool are working with a private homeschool place. You generally correspond by mail and phone. You do pay a fee because they're private.

Fees very dramatically. A lot of those are religious schools, which is the reason why a lot of people homeschool. Now, the other ways you can do it is there are, through the government, there's certain forms you fill out, and you're basically doing it independently, but you fill out the forms. There is an awareness of what you're doing, and depending on the state, you may have to submit test scores, et cetera. And then probably the least common one is the one we used, and that was that because I'm a credential teacher, we basically, could just do our own thing, didn't have to register. I set up curriculum and modified it as I wished and nobody was watching over me. That's something you can do in California.

So you just mentioned that you're a credential teacher. You know, I know you've talked to a lot of parents considering homeschooling over the years and one of the biggest fears is I'm not a teacher. How could I possibly teach my children, especially in the older grades? What's your advice to parents who are considering this? I think that is something you want to think about. First of all, I don't think you need to be credentialed at all, despite the fact that I am. You don't even need a college degree.

What you need is to, first of all, have an awareness of what resources are out there to fill any gaps that you feel are there. For example, as kids get older, a lot of families will use community college courses to sell. in high school. As I said, charter schools and other schools will offer classes and that you can take them. Sometimes parents will hire a tutor to teach their children in subjects which they don't feel that they're the best one to do that. So there's lots of stuff up there out there to help. It is, in my opinion, extremely important that you have a homeschool support group. far better if it's people you can actually meet with in person. Your kids can get to know these other kids. They can do field trips together.

And then the adults, and it tends to be the moms that are doing the homeschooling, can together exchange ideas about what works, what doesn't, what curriculum I've tried here. You can look at my curriculum and think about it. I don't even get into heated debates over what the best curriculum is. I know there were some very strong opinions in our homeschooling group about this. There were definitely some strong opinions. And you know what? An important thing to understand if you homeschool, there are so many right ways to do it.

You don't need to listen to the first person that you speak with about homeschooling and feel compelled to do it that way. There's just lots of different ways. It depends on your children. It depends on your family. if the primary teacher, usually mom or dad, is also working, perhaps part-time, then that's going to influence it too, how much independent work they need, how much, you know, classroom is realistic to get them to classes, et cetera. Well, I found it interesting that you said that Kate, you decided to homeschool her initially because of academic reasons. Knowing Kate, I would have thought it was for, like, religious purposes.

I love that you're like, there's no way she was smart. enough. No, that's equally valid. I mean, I'm also interested in potentially, as someone who's not married, but potentially thinking about what the future would hold. I mean, I'm interested in homeschooling as an option, and

mainly for, you know, religious reasons. But do you, did you find that most people in your area in the Bay Area, and you know, here San Francisco were homeschooling because the schools were, you know, very secular and liberal? Or was it,

Was it more for academic reasons? Or both? I actually began the homeschooling, as I said, because of academics. The reason I continued and then continued to pull my kids out of the schools was because of religious reasons. It was just, I think I needed that trigger to start it because I wasn't at that time as aware of how the public schools were really. inculcating the kids with a set of values, which I didn't ascribe to, and my husband didn't do as well. And we just didn't feel the immersion in those values was what we wanted for our children. And so that was what really made us persevere with it and then pull more kids out

until we had them all out. Right, because I remember that you guys, we did not go to any of the sex ed classes. And I remember feeling very left-up. out because I think I was the only one who didn't go to it. I was, this was when I was in eight or nine. There was some sort of, second grade. A third or fourth, I think there was some class. And mom was like, no way are you going to that? And I was like, but everyone else is going to that.

And sure enough, I was the only child plucked out of the classroom. I don't think I had that until eighth grade. Well, it was California. Right, right. So. But I also remember we have an infamous story. I mean, this is a much more mild form of liberal. indoctrination, but my younger brother when he was in kindergarten had used to talk about wanting to

have a gun by his bed when he was an adult. We didn't have any guns in the house growing up, but he thought if a burglar came, he wanted to be able to protect himself. And he's about five years old. And then one day he came home from school and he told my mom and dad, maybe my grandparents, I don't know, but he was like, I don't need a gun anymore when I grew up. And they said, oh, why did you change your mind? And he said, I am going to keep a cigarette by the bed. because if I light it, the burglar will die right away because there was so much anti-smoking stuff in the schools that he just, in his muddled five-year-old brain, thought that as soon as you encountered smoke from a cigarette, you died. He didn't get that it took years of it in lung cancer. But obviously, that's not a religious thing per se, but it gives you a sense of how the schools were certainly pushing an agenda. But lastly, Mom, I wanted to ask you about the ultimate homeschool question. How do you make sure your kids are socialized and don't grow up to be freaks and loners? Okay.

I will have to say, I think my kids were extremely well socialized. You are biased. First of all, they had each other. And with five kids, they certainly had a lot of interaction with each other. Not always pleasant. Good and bad, right? Of course. Hey, they were siblings.

But that helps. I do know families with only. children who have homeschooled and homeschool very successfully. You don't need a large family, but that does help. Now, in terms of outside socialization, we had, through our church, a very large homeschooling group, and there were very regular get-togethers that had different focuses, and the kids would go to the ones for the young kids. There was the get-together. It happened to be on Wednesdays and the kids would begin with masks and sometimes a rosary afterwards following that. There would be the kids are just playing and they sometimes have organized sports with volleyball

or training kids for different kinds of sports and other times it's just whatever. As the kids became older, we would let them as they were teenagers, there was a shopping center close by. We'd let the kids go over there and get a coffee, you know, drinks of some sort. Not alcoholic. Well, we were hoping it wasn't alcoholic. And so they had that kind of thing. They also had evening get-togethers with homeschool kids that were Friday night gatherings that had both a religious focus and a social focus. And those were really nice because as the kids started driving. They weren't even going with parents, and they, of course, love that. There were dances they

had, you know, a couple times a year, and they'd get dressed up and have that kind of experience. Frankly, our kids played with the neighbors all the time. We lived in a court that had a lot of kids, including a homeschool family that also had five kids, and they were playing with the neighbors, and the neighbors were not necessarily sharing our religious faith. And you know what? We felt like it was good for the kids to just get out and play. So there were a lot of things that they did and they'd get together with these kids. They met and in fact, to this day, the kids are all grown and they still, when they're home or even traveling around these homeschool kids, they've become undoubtedly lifelong friends. So, yeah. Okay. Well, Mom, thanks for joining us.

Of course. Do conversations about the Supreme Court? court leave you scratching your head, then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. Megan Murphy, a writer for feminist current, says she found out she was kicked off Twitter for, quote, hateful conduct earlier this month. And an article for Quillette, she says two tweets were cited. She had written, men aren't women, and, how are trans women not men? What is the difference between a man and a trans woman?

end quote. She was asked to delete the tweets, presumably with the idea being that she could go back on Twitter if she did so. However, that's not the only thing she's concerned about on the LGBT movement. Murphy also writes about the issues lesbians are having. And this is kind of a long quote, but I think it gives you a good sense of some of the tensions within that movement. In Vancouver, Canada, where I live, a group of lesbians attended this year's Dyke March wearing t-shirts with the word lesbian, written over a drawing of a uterus and carrying signs featuring their lesbian heroes. Before the march began, they were approached by two members of the Vancouver Dyke March board who told them they could not participate while wearing these t-shirts and carrying

these placards as they were trans exclusionary. They also were told that if any of their signs featured the Venus symbol, which represents woman or XX, symbolizing the fact that females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome, they would have to remove them. The group declined to follow these instructions, but joined the march anyway. As the women walked on, they were surrounded by trans activists who shouted turf bigots, trans women are women. This is an inclusive march, and there is no room for hate. So, Daniel, what do you think? If I were more cynical, I would say, wow, as a conservative, this is quite the cat fight on the left to watch.

You know, grab your popcorn. If you were more cynical, it sounds like you are that cynical. I am always tempted toward that. But, Kate, I try to rise above my baser passions. All right, all right. Follow Michelle Obama. Yeah, they go low. We go, we go high.

So, look, you know, this is a contradiction within, take those four letters, LGBT. The L and the T are contradicting here. And you can see how the left has tried to cobble together this coalition of oppressed sexual minorities, but really it's not a coherent coalition. You know, gays and lesbians have had their areas of either groundswell and legal victories. Transgender now have more of the focus, and it looks like now where transgender is being recognized, lesbians feel marginalized. and you see that with Twitter. And it's perfectly logical. So you think about, like, lesbianism is based upon the fact that woman, and feminism, for that matter,

is based upon the real reality of feminine, like being a woman. Like, that's a real thing and largely in reaction to male oppression of women. And transgender are saying, eh, your body, whatever, you are what you feel, marginalize. it trivializes femininity. And so, you know, that's a really interesting contradiction in itself and interesting to see how that plays out on the left. But to the point of this article, it's also interesting that Twitter is picking one side over the other. It's kind of like it's kind of like feminist lesbianism is now passe and transgenderism is the fashionable thing of the day. Right, which is, you know, if it's men becoming women, it's just another example of the patriarchal oppression.

Right. Yeah, I mean, I think the larger thing here, which I thought sort of tied these two nicely together is the LGBT movement is, I guess, engaged in a fight right now about what's acceptable speech. And then Twitter, as you said, is sort of seemingly picked aside. Of course, we talked earlier this week on the podcast about how Twitter said that, you know, misgendering someone could be, it violated Twitter's. policy these days. Which misgendering meaning not calling someone of the gender that they claim they are. Right. So I guess it would be like if I called Caitlin Jenner, he instead of she, that Twitter would be mad at me. And I think that that is, you know, she talks, this author, Megan Murphy also discusses like, how can we have a debate and like discuss the truth. And like it's really chilling how there's

this concerted effort to make it unacceptable to have this argument. And it's happening. so fast. And, you know, frankly, I'm glad that, you know, lesbians who I have a lot of differences of opinion with are at least saying, hey, can we discuss this? You know, can we at least have our voice in this discussion? And yeah, and it's also like, well, what happens next? You know, lesbians, as you mentioned, were ascendant and now they're not. And it's like, well, who's eventually going to be woker than the transgender's? And the transgenders will be forced to be sacrifices as well. I mean, it's also arbitrary. Right. And it also, it's not just a theoretical fight. It really gets practical, too. I mean, when you think about some of the conflicts that

have already taken place over bathrooms, there's that. Men, you know, biological men being allowed into women's bathrooms, I would think that feminists, at least historically, would have had something against that because they are a reaction to like men oppressing women. And so women are trying to carve out their own space not to be bothered, which would include bathrooms. Right. Or, you know, so there's a bathroom. There's sports, you know, women have had their own sports, not for very long. It's a more modern development that kind of coincides with feminism.

That's going to be eroding. You already see transgender biological men who claim to be women winning sporting events, like cycling events and weightlifting and stuff like that. And the women aren't allowed to, you know, raise a fuss about it. Otherwise, they're bigoted. and also with women's colleges, it's very practical because if you're transgender claiming to be a woman, you're now supposed to be allowed into women's college. But a lot of the feminists who are kind of historically dominated those colleges are saying,

no, no, no, we don't want that. Because that erases, that literally erases what we've been about. Right. And I think also even beyond the biological, and I wish I could remember who said this, there was a feminist who sort of pointed out like that and she was very um or at least tried to be trans inclusionary but she just said you know it's not the exact same thing if you became a woman you know assuming i agree with that at 20 then having been born a girl that's just not the same it's a different experience and i think yeah it is sort of an invalidation of and i don't know

our world is so messed up yes that there is that but you have to wonder how this is all going to pan out because like it can't just keep you know this coalition people can't like keep sticking together when these kinds of things kinds of conflicts emerge I mean my guess is you know lesbians who won't get with the trans affirming program are going to be shut out right um it'll be interesting if they have enough strength to wage a real fight or if they begin to rethink some of their positions and alliances um yeah I mean but I think in the meantime I think the thing that's really sad is, you know, this is, we've talked about and, you know, our colleague Ryan Anderson has written a lot about, you know, the suicide rate among people with, who have the surgery, I think it was in Sweden,

it was like a 19 times attempted suicide rate. And like there are real people with real mental illnesses at times, or at least arguably so, but they're health risks here. And I feel like we're not really having the debate that this deserves. We're just having an identity politics fight. Yeah. And I mean, I mean, really, the losers are, you know, everyone. And I think to a large extent, you know, we're hearing, you know, more and more anecdotal evidence that, like, you know, preteens and teens are getting really caught up in this. And, of course, that's, you know, generally for most people, a confusing times, actually. So that sort of makes sense. But also it's like, you know, you're not, you're really doing a disservice to them by promoting an agenda over the truth.

Yeah. And they are the collateral damage because they're the ones who are experimented upon. You know, they, a lot of people who choose transgenderism as adults were not forced into it or guided into it as as young, naive, susceptible kids. At least they chose it for themselves. Right. But to then impose it or at least frame the issue of gender, you know, stack the deck in favor of transgenderism for kids now. Right. It's, if you think about the logical conclusion of it, which I hate to think about because it's kind of horrifying, fine.

But I think logical conclusion of this is every child should be put on puberty blockers until such a point as they can choose for themselves who they are. Well, that is horrifying. And it is horrifying. Yeah. And I mean, I also think there was a study done up in Canada, I want to say, but I can't remember the journal that showed that I believe 80% of children or young teens who thought they might be transgender or the other sex basically grew out of it. when they were mature. You know, when they were adults, they no longer wanted to do it. And, you know, as you mentioned, there's more and more push to let, you know, children who are very young start taking actions and doing stuff.

And, yeah, it's a problem. But we can't argue about this stuff because Twitter would probably say, like, you know, we're probably getting to a point where, like, even expressing concern over a minor transitioning or wanting to transition would be hate speech. If we would all just hit pause and have some humility. and not try to impugn each other's motives and not make this all about personal dignity and having kids be the collateral damage, you know, we might be able to actually have some progress in this conversation.

But you've got to be able to have the conversation. Well, fortunately. Hope you're listening. Yes, that's the Twitter CEO. We will leave it there for today. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or rating on iTunes to give us feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to The Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis, sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.