Homeschooling with Confidence: Israel Wayne on Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Home Education

“The goal of the parent should not be to try to force all these billions of bits of information into their child’s brain. It should be teaching your child how to learn rather than…cramming your child’s head full of information bits.”

Israel Wayne

Homeschooling offers a unique opportunity for parents to tailor their child’s education to their individual needs and strengths. However, it is not without its challenges. Thankfully, long-time home education leader, author and speaker, Israel Wayne, an early homeschool graduate himself, lays out the key factors in avoiding the pitfalls of homeschooling.

Israel joined Yvette for a session of our 2023 Homegrown Generation Family Expo and shared a ton of practical advice for avoiding the most common traps that homeschooling families fall into. Let’s delve into some of the valuable takeaways from this important conversation.

Embracing Individuality:

Israel emphasizes the importance of recognizing and cultivating the uniqueness of each child. He emphasizes, “Comparing children to others can be detrimental to their growth…we need to encourage them to be the best version of themselves.” It is crucial for parents to understand that not every child is meant to excel in every subject or area. Each child possesses distinct gifts and talents that should be nurtured and celebrated.

Rather than striving for uniformity, homeschooling provides parents with a platform to customize education based on their children’s learning styles. Isreal suggests, “Understanding how your child learns best is essential…whatever their learning style, adjusting their education to suit their needs is vital.”

Avoiding Academic Pressure:

Homeschooling can sometimes fall prey to the pressure to excel academically in every subject. Israel shares a story of two boys with different strengths: one excelling academically and the other in athletics. He emphasizes the importance of encouraging each child in their respective areas of excellence. Israel states, “Teaching children to praise and encourage their siblings when they succeed is crucial in building an environment of support and collaboration.”

In addition to this, he identifies the need for parents to prioritize relationship-building over strict academic focus. “Academics are not the end goal; they are just a means to an end. When we prioritize relationship building, we create an environment for successful homeschooling.”

Avoiding the Replication Trap:

The conversation delved into the misconception that homeschooling should mimic the traditional classroom model. Israel shared his perspective that replicating public school practices is often not the best approach. Instead, homeschooling provides unparalleled flexibility and the ability to create a dynamic learning environment unique to each family.

Relationship over Academics:

Israel challenged the notion that standardized education and knowledge guarantee success in life. Instead, he advocated for placing the focus on teaching children how to learn rather than simply filling their minds with information. Prioritizing relationship and parental guidance in homeschooling is crucial for long-term success, with academics playing a supporting role.

Adapting to High School Challenges:

The transition to high school can pose unique challenges in homeschooling. Israel raises the question of how to challenge high school students without standardizing them. He suggests that focusing on teaching children how to learn – for life, rather than just cramming information into their heads, is key. This fosters critical thinking skills, preparing them for higher education and beyond.

The College Dilemma and Alternatives:

Israel Wayne expresses a bias against the traditional path of college for homeschooling families. While acknowledging that certain careers may necessitate college education, he highlights the current pitfalls and challenges associated with it. Rising costs, ideological influences, and the devaluation of traditional academic standards all contribute to reexamining the default assumption that every child must attend college.

He recommends reading the book Is College Worth It? by William J. Bennett for a comprehensive exploration of the college option. He suggests resetting parental assumptions and being prepared for alternative paths if college is not the right choice for their child.

Tune in to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast to access the full interview with Israel Wayne, delve further into these topics, and discover additional valuable insights into navigating the homeschooling journey.

📚📖 Ready to start homeschooling? Download your free Homeschool Survival Kit today!

Recommended Resources:

Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask, by Israel Wayne 

Education: Does God Have an Opinion, Israel Wayne 

Demystifying Learning Styles – Tyler Hogan on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Is College Worth It, by William J. Bennett – https://amzn.to/48y0ntl

Getting Started in Homeschooling – Israel Wayne on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast 

🍿🍿🍿 Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for FREE today!

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ Are you in need of a fresh vision for your homeschool? Join us for 4 days of Homeschool Encouragement at the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. Use the coupon code HG25 to save 25% on registration today! 

Connect with Israel Wayne:

Israel Wayne is an author and conference speaker who has a passion for defending the Christian faith and promoting a Biblical worldview. He is the author of the books Questions God AsksQuestions Jesus AsksPitchin’ a Fit: Overcoming Angry and Stressed-Out ParentingRaising Them Up – Parenting for Christians,Education: Does God Have an Opinion?Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask, and Foundations in Faith. He has been a regular columnist for Home School DigestHome School Enrichment and The Old Schoolhouse magazines. He is the founder of Family Renewal, LLC and the site editor for ChristianWorldview.net.

Since 1995, Israel has traveled the nation speaking on family, homeschooling, revival, discipleship, and cultural issues. Aiming for both the head and the heart, Israel’s goal is to challenge audiences to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. In his words, “God’s Word applies to all areas of life. There is not one facet of our existence which does not fall under the direct claim of Lordship by Jesus Christ. This includes how we spend our money, what entertainment we consume, how we educate our children, how we use our time, etc. All of life must be understood from within a Biblical worldview.”

Israel and his wife Brook were joined in marriage in 1999 without dating and share their testimony of God’s faithfulness on an audiobook titled, What God Has Joined Together. Israel and Brook, both homeschool graduates themselves, are home educating their eleven children.

Watch Israel Wayne’s 2023 session, “Avoiding and Recovering from Homeschool Mistakes.”

Watch Israel Wayne’s 2020 session, “Family-Based Discipleship”.

Listen to Israel Wayne on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

Watch Israel Wayne in Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution.

Connect with Israel Wayne:

ChristianWorldview.net
Israel’s apologetics website

ChristianWorldview.net/blog
Israel’s blog

Facebook.com/FamilyRenewal
Family Renewal Facebook Page

Facebook.com/IsraelWayneAuthor
Israel’s Facebook Page

LinkedIn.com/in/israelwayne
Connect with Israel on LinkedIn

Twitter.com/israelwayne
Follow @israelwayne on Twitter

UltimateRadioShow.com/family-renewal
Israel & Brook Wayne’s Podcast

Discussion Questions:

1. How can parents avoid the pressure to make their homeschooled children excel in every subject?

2. Do you agree with Israel’s idea that not every child is meant to master every subject? Why or why not?

3. How can homeschooling parents avoid the trap of replicating the traditional classroom model?

4. What are some ways that homeschooling can be customized and flexible to meet the individual needs of children?

5. How do you feel about the speaker’s bias against college? Do you agree or disagree, and why?

6. How can parents prepare their homeschooled children for life beyond high school, even if they choose not to pursue college?

7. Do you think standardized education and standardized testing are necessary for success in life? Why or why not?

8. How can parents prioritize relationship and connection with their children over academics while still ensuring their education?

9. What are some practical strategies for individualizing education based on children’s different learning styles?

10. How do you think homeschooling can provide opportunities for children to explore and excel in their unique areas of strength and talent?

Read the full transcript:

Yvette Hampton:

Israel. Welcome to the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. Tell our listeners who you are. Tell us a little bit about you and your family.

Israel Wayne:

Well, it’s great to be back with you. I am a homeschooled graduate and a homeschooling father. My family started homeschooling in 1978, which was about five years before the modern day homeschool movement began. I graduated from Homeschooling in 1991, which was a year before homeschooling became legal in the state in which I lived. So my entire experience being homeschooled was when it was against the law. So whole story there. My mom in 1988 started publishing a national homeschool magazine and it became one of the nation’s longest running Christian homeschool publications. So I grew up sort of in the leadership side of the homeschooling movement. My mom was an author and conference speaker and spoke at conferences back in the so on. And so because I was one of the first homeschool graduates in the United States, I actually started getting invited as a teenager to speak at conferences in the 1990s. I was keynoting homeschool conferences and wrote my first book on homeschooling in 2000. Actually. My wife is also a homeschool graduate. Her family started homeschooling in Arizona in 1983 and we’ve been married 24 years. We have eleven children, all of whom have been homeschooled from birth. So my professional career, I guess I started working for my mother’s homeschool publishing company in 1993 January, so I just finished 30 years.

Yvette Hampton:

Wow.

Israel Wayne:

Full time working in homeschool publishing as well as conference speaking and advocacy for home education. So it’s been quite a fun ride. My whole adult life has been professionally involved in promoting homeschooling, so something I’m very passionate about. And then also working as marketing director for the Homeschool magazine that we published for 20 years. My day job was interfacing with curriculum publishers and homeschool speakers, authors, vendors, that kind of thing. So I’m pretty familiar with all things homeschool from my experience being homeschool, working professionally in it, and then homeschooling our eleven children.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah. So you are a professional homeschooler, really, is what you’re saying, through and through.

Israel Wayne:

Between chronically and terminally homeschooled.

Yvette Hampton:

I think that’s what it is. I love it. Well, you are so much fun to listen to. You and you are full of wisdom, advice and experience, all of those three things. And so when we were trying to figure out what session would be best for you to talk about, I saw this one avoiding and Recovering from Homeschool mistakes. And I was like, well, that’s Israel. Because if anyone could talk on this topic, it is you. I know that you’ve been in the world for such a long time and I think as a homeschool mom, that’s one of my fears. And I know all the other moms as well. One of our greatest fears is can we actually do this? Can we do it well? Are we going to screw up our kids? Are we going to mess up our family? And how do we get through this with the least amount of mistakes? My desire always is that when my kids leave my house, that I will have as few regrets as possible and I will have regrets. I mean, all of us are sinful people, so there’s always going to be things that we’re going to be like, oh, I wish I wouldn’t have done that. I wish I wouldn’t have said that. I wish we would have made a different decision. But if we have people to go before us who can help us navigate these sometimes really muddy waters, then that’s what I want. I need the wisdom from people like you who have gone before us and you’re just a little ahead of us, more ahead of us with your kids. Your kids. You have some who are a little older than my oldest, but because you’ve been doing this for so long. So share with us what the Lord has taught you over your 30 plus years of being in the homeschool world. And maybe I guess we’ll start however you want, but do we want to talk about avoiding some of the mistakes that we sometimes make and then we can talk about recovering from them once we’ve made them?

Israel Wayne:

Well, I think the first one that I’ll start with is one that probably any veteran homeschooler will recognize. But if you’re brand new to homeschooling, it’s not necessarily self evident. And the first mistake is assuming that homeschooling is synonymous with schooling at home.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Israel Wayne:

And I know that sounds like I’m playing semantics games, but literally the mentality that people bring to homeschooling often is they take their experience, which is fair enough, about what education is supposed to look like, which was largely them sitting in a brick and mortar school for twelve years at a desk in a classroom, looking at a chalkboard. And they try to bring that home and replicate that model within the home and that’s counterproductive. That is really not what we want to be going for in homeschooling. Homeschooling is not picking up your child’s desk, carrying it down the street, plonking it on your kitchen floor and saying, okay, now we’re going to just do everything that the public school does at home. And I know families I remembered, especially in the 1980s because homeschooling was so new and nobody had done it, and there was nobody to kind of go ahead of you and teach you or mentor you. You were figuring it out on your own. So almost all homeschooling families that I knew did this. I mean, they would literally have school desks in the house with a chalkboard and an American flag and pledge allegiance to the flag. And you’d have to raise your hand, ask a question, and you have to get permission to go use the restroom and recess. It was ridiculous. And eventually parents figured out that oh, this is not the best way to home school. So I would say that that’s really one of the first mistakes. And my perspective I have a little bit of a radical perspective on some things because I was homeschool. I didn’t grow up in an institutional government school. So I don’t have so many things to unlearn. So some things seem really obvious to me. But just on that point about avoiding the mistake of trying to replicate the public school in your home, if you say, well, how do I recover from that? Or how do I avoid that? My best advice to you would be to say, think about pretty much everything that the government school does and how they do it and why they do it, and then do the complete opposite of all of the and that’s going to give you the best chance of being successful as a homeschooler.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, that’s a tough thing because I did grow up in school. I went to a Christian school most of my life and I had a good experience. But of course I came into homeschooling with that same idea that I don’t think we had desks ever, but I had my whiteboard, which we still have a whiteboard. I love having my whiteboard and there are benefits to some of that. But I definitely came into it with, okay, Brooklyn, here’s your worksheet, fill out all the blanks and then we’ll do the next worksheet. And we did the Pledge of Allegiance, we did all that. And not that any of that stuff is wrong. We’re not shaming any families who do that. For some people that works great, but it’s the pressure that is put on moms feeling like they have to, like you said, replicate what the classroom looks like and then you have to be a mom on top of all of that and you have to deal with life and that’s where it’s like, that’s just insanity. You can’t possibly do that. And then moms feel like they’re inadequate and they’re not doing it right, they’re doing it all wrong because it doesn’t look like what it looked like for most of us growing up, except for Israel, who never sat in a classroom.

Israel Wayne:

Right. I think part of that too is just even the definition of what we mean by homeschooling. So again, I think most people, when the homeschool, and they use that term, what they think of is we’re doing academics at home rather than learning academics at school, we’re learning academics at home. That’s not how I think about homeschooling at all. My paradigm is completely, totally different than that. So my definition of homeschooling is that homeschooling is parenting and relationship and that we use academics as one of the tools in the parenting toolbox to prepare our child for life. So this is, I think, another mistake that homeschooling parents sometimes make is that they focus so much on academics. And their definition of homeschooling is that I have to give my child this huge information download because there are a billion data bits out there in the universe that my child has to have downloaded into their little brain before they graduate high school. And of course, who determines what those billion data bits are? Some expert somewhere that we’ve never met. We don’t know their name, but somebody set a standard somewhere, government school committee, somebody somewhere said, these are the things you have to learn at this age and this grade, and these are the things that you have to know to be successful in life. The problem with that is that everybody’s life is different, right? So not all people actually need to know all the same information. Not everybody has to have a standardized education, which I’ll cycle back to because I think that’s a whole nother mistake that we make is the mistake of standardization. But the goal of the parent should not be to try to force all these billions of bits of information into their child’s brain. It should be teaching your child how to learn rather than because the thing is, you will forget almost everything you learned in school, even in home school. You just will. It’s the nature of it. The only things that we retain or that we remember from our formal schooling years is pretty much the things that we use on an ongoing basis and everything else we completely forget. That’s why it’s so hard. And parents feel like, oh, I don’t know that I can homeschool my child because I don’t know any of this information that I’m trying to teach my child. It’s like, well, you went through school. Why do you not know any of it? Well, it’s because most of it’s completely irrelevant to everyday life and you don’t use it. And so therefore, you don’t remember it because you, for the most part, don’t even need it. Rather than focusing on cramming your child’s head full of information bits, rather you should look at your goal as a parent is, how do I parent this child and guide them and lead them to prepare them for life and to prepare them for God’s call on their life and what God wants them to do? How do I do that effectively and successfully as a parent? And you’re going to need some academics for that.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure.

Israel Wayne:

And the academics have a place, for sure. But I think more importantly than focusing on the academics is to focus on relationship. And the relationship piece is one that a lot of people run away from. I hear it all the time. We just had a conversation a couple of days ago with a mom who said we were homeschooling, but my daughter and I didn’t get along, and so I put her in public school. And so the problem in my view with that scenario is we have a relationship conflict, and so we’re going to solve the relationship conflict by simply avoiding each other.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Israel Wayne:

And avoidance ends up being really a thing that kills the opportunity for influence and relationship. And so rather than running away from relationship, it’s kind of like saying, well, my husband and I or My wife and I are having a conflict. We’re not getting along. So what we need to do is just avoid each other as much as possible. Well, yeah, it makes the conflict go down, but it also almost completely removes the possibility of relationship. So God created this scenario or this paradigm that he talks about in Deuteronomy Six where he says we’re supposed to teach our children from the time we wake up in the morning till the time we go to bed. We’re supposed to teach them whether we’re sitting at home inside of our house or whether we’re walking outside of our house. He says, Teach your children diligently. Yeah, I mean, that’s a comprehensive, like, all day, every opportunity, every lesson you teach your children. And yeah, you’ll use academics. But academics are not an end goal. They’re just a means to an end. And most of the time, what I find is that the academics actually just brings out a lot of press and conflict and sometimes character flaws and sin in us, where our children are lazy, where they don’t want to do their studies, where they become rebellious, where they have attitudes and they push back against their parents. And then we’re trying to teach them. And then what do we do? We get attitudes and we push back, and we have sin problems and character problems. And the academics actually kind of just brings to the surface a lot of relationship issues that we have to deal with. And we have a choice in that moment, do we run away from that, or do we press into it? And my view, of course, is that God wants us to press into that. Prioritizing relationship over academics is essential because if the relationship doesn’t work, the homeschooling won’t work, and if the relationship part is working, you can figure out the academic.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, yeah, I think Christy Clover hit on this last night a little bit where we were talking about character over know, and that’s basically what, you’re know, the character of our child matters so much more than the curriculum, but the curriculum sometimes helps to bring out what character traits we need to work on. I appreciate that you talked about that not everything matters that they’re going to learn because they’re not going to remember a lot of it, and some of it just is irrelevant to their lives. But those things teach our kids how to learn, and they teach them how to expand their brain. So there is so much benefit to teaching the academics. So we’re not saying, like, don’t teach your kids academics at all. Just play all day long, which play is just as important as academics as well. We’ll talk about that. But yes, there’s definitely some, I think, burdens that need to be lifted from moms who feel like they have to do it all. They have to check every single box. And by the time their kids graduate school, they have had to pour all of these details, like you said, all of this information into their child’s brain, and their kid has to remember it all. Some kids are crazy smart, and they’re going to remember the things that they’re learning, but they’ll remember the things that the Lord wants them to learn, and God will equip them with what they need to know to be Jesus loving, successful adults. And that’s what matters. Yeah, I love that. Are you going to talk about because you talked about the system and living up to these standards, are you going to talk about being behind? I’m assuming you’re going to get to that, because I know that’s a big thing where moms are like, but my kids are behind, what do I do?

Israel Wayne:

Yeah, I hear that all the time. My child’s behind. And I’m like, behind who.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Israel Wayne:

Who are they racing? Right? Is this a race? And your child is not catching up to the child in front of them. And so I would say another one of the mistakes that parents make is the myth of the necessity of standardization. The government school is predicated on that. And there are reasons why the government school has to have standardization for them to be who they are, do what they do, and accomplish their purposes and their agenda. But for us as parents, this concept of standardization is very fallacious and not helpful. I have eleven children, and not one of my children so far is standardized. They are all completely unique, completely different from each other. They have different learning styles, they have different interests, different personalities, and so God didn’t make them all the same. And yet the government school says that you have a ten year old, and so they are in fifth grade, and so they need to learn these things at this age. It’s a very arbitrary type program. And then we test the of course, to make sure that all the children are standardized, and then we grade them on that. And the biggest problem that I have, like, with standardized testing, for example, is whether parents and educators mean to do this or not. It is the net result of it. But a child’s entire sense of self worth is predicated on their performance on the standardized test. If they score high on the test, then they are a valuable human being, and if they don’t, then they’re a failure and that they will never amount to anything in life. And even the issue of grades, fifth grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, I believe are completely arbitrary and really unnecessary. So, like the example I use for people who still have the public school mindset, they can’t get their mind around that idea is I have a son who is 13 years old. He’s doing like 11th grade math. He’s doing like 9th grade science. I think he’s doing fifth grade English, probably like 6th grade history. So what grade is he?

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Israel Wayne:

And of course, what people do immediately is they think, oh, he’s this age. Well, that corresponds to maybe 7th grade. Well, he’s not doing 7th grade anything, basically. So what grade is he in? So it’s really very arbitrary. And sometimes I’ll also say, let’s say that you and I got hired to work for a company and we’re computer programmers, and somebody says, okay, you need to take this class. What level should we start you in? I would be in the preschool level.

Yvette Hampton:

Me too.

Israel Wayne:

Computer programming. So we’re sitting here in preschool, kindergarten class, right. Does that make us preschoolers? Does that make us kindergartners? No, it just means we haven’t learned that yet. Right. So in one sense, the concept of levels kind of makes sense to me. Not so much grades, but levels. And some of the homeschool, curriculum publishers who actually create curriculum for homeschoolers, they don’t use the term grades. They actually do use levels because it builds sequentially as a knowledge base. So a year from now, if you and I work at this company, we might be in fourth grade programming, right? Yeah, but that doesn’t define who we are. We’re not fourth graders. We just don’t know the next material yet.

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Israel Wayne:

So there can be value in us having levels. So we know what stage or what level we’re moving into. But in terms of this, you’re in 6th grade, almost no student learns that way, right? Almost no student is always at grade level in all of these subjects. Nor should they be.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Israel Wayne:

Because we’re all different and we learn differently. And then back to standardized testing. Standardized testing? Well, let me just say this. Testing a child can be helpful in that as parents, we want to know, did the learn the material? Did they comprehend it? Did they retain it? And do they have the ability and capacity to be able to repeat it or communicate it to somebody else?

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Israel Wayne:

And so testing can be helpful in that respect. So let’s say we’ve studied something on the Middle Ages, and we test them to find out, did you learn the material that you studied? Do you know the material? Can you communicate effectively what you learned? Testing can be helpful in that respect, but I think this concept of them measuring themselves among their peers and deriving their self worth from that or parents assigning or ascribing their self worth to the child based on that, I think is hugely detrimental. And the scripture even speaks to it, where the apostle Paul says, comparing ourselves among ourselves, we are unwise. And that’s really what standardized testing does, is it compares us among ourselves and then says, well, your worth or your value? Is this based on where you score and what percentage points you got and even taking tests? I use this illustration a lot when I talk to people about this. That Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill and C. S. Lewis and some of the most brilliant people of all time were horrible students. And some people said that, like Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison had the inability to learn. They believed that teachers believed that they couldn’t be taught, and it wasn’t because they were stupid. It was because they were genius. And sometimes geniuses just don’t do well on tests.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Israel Wayne:

And the are other people who are great test takers, but practically, if you hired them, you would fire them because the can’t apply that to something productive in the real world. Yeah, the fact that somebody has good grades and somebody has bad grades doesn’t really even tell us a lot about intelligence. It doesn’t even really tell us a lot about whether somebody’s smart or not, capable or not. What it tells us what it teaches us is that some people are really good at taking tests and some people are not good at taking tests. And maybe that’s helpful information in the real world, but for the most part, it’s not. And I think as parents, we have to just, again, kind of deconstruct our government school paradigm and realize that education and schooling are completely and totally different from each other.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, let me take that one step further, though, and say we have this idea that kids need to ace everything, right? You see the bumper stickers, my kid is an honor student. And it’s always this competition of my kid got straight A’s. My kid has a 4.0 GPA. Well, not every child is made to master every subject. I mean, you look at a mathematician. A mathematician is probably not going to be a historian and a scientist as well. Their specialty, the way that God created them, is to be excellent at math. And a scientist is created by God to be excellent at science, and a historian is created by God to be excellent at history. And that’s the world. That’s how the body of Christ works together. That’s how we reveal his goodness, right? And his creativity is that he created us all so differently and so uniquely, and we all have different gifts and talents and abilities. And so why do we put so much pressure on our kids to have to ace everything? You have to be an expert at every single one of these subjects, and you have to be an athlete, and you have to be an artist, and you have to be able to play music, and you have to do all these things. And we put pressure on our kids even in the homeschool world. I’m not talking about just traditional schooled kids. I’m saying in the homeschool world, we do this same thing where we feel like we’re somehow messing it up if our kids are not experts at all of the things. And that’s such wrong thinking. We have to look at our kids through the lens of scripture and through the eyes of God, their Creator, and see how he created them. And that’s one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling is that we get to be students of our children and we don’t put them in this perfect box when they’re around peg trying to fit into this and going oh, they don’t fit. Why am I frustrated? Why is this homeschooling thing not working? Let’s put them back in school into a different box and it just doesn’t make any sense. And so I’m so grateful for the blessings and the benefits of homeschooling because we get to look at our kids, we get to study them and as they grow we get to see who God created them to be so that they can fit into the perfect box that God created them to fit into. I know for myself has taken so much weight off just realizing my kids are who they are. They’re going to do what God created them to do and I don’t have to put all that pressure on them or on myself.

Israel Wayne:

One of the first things that I remember as a child that kind of gave me this idea that you can be smart in different ways is one of my best friends when I was a kid. And I don’t know why we end up having the friends that we do when we’re children but we would ride bikes around the neighborhood. Just neighbor kid that I grew up with and he went to public school and his parents always had the bumper sticker my kid is on the honor roll at such and such elementary school and so forth. Always a top student, always top grades. And I was not a good academic student. I was homeschool but I struggled. I was dyslexic, I was ADHD. I actually didn’t learn how to read. I don’t like brag about this, but I didn’t learn how to read till I was like eleven. I struggled as a student and yet this kid was one of the smartest kids in his class and I could never figure that out because I knew him. We would go out and do stuff together and I was always thinking to myself, how could he be the top student in his class? He is as dumb as a bag of rocked. The one time when we were outside in the wintertime he decided to go stick his tongue to the flag in the wintertime just to see what would happen. Another time he peed on the electric fence to see what would happen. Not bright. And yet he did really good on tests and he got really good grades and here I was, this totally stupid kid from the world’s viewpoint, right? Because I couldn’t read and it wasn’t that I was stupid. I was just dyslexic and it didn’t get identified well early on because I was good at faking it. Anyway, long story there, but as you grow up, you start to see that there’s just different kinds of intelligences. And some people can be super smart in an area. I have a friend who is a PhD and that guy can’t find anything, just loses his keys constantly. He’ll walk out of a store and he doesn’t know where his car is. Brilliant in one area, but not in another. That’s why I’m saying this comparison that we have to have, like you were saying, know, our child has to be like other children. No, they don’t. They have to be the best version of themselves that they can be really quickly.

Yvette Hampton:

I know this is a little bit of a sidetrail, but I remember in the movie in Schoolhouse Rock, so Israel is part of our movie Schoolhouse Rock to the Homeschool Revolution. He’s one of our cast members and has a really important part in that film. And you talk in there about how your mom never even graduated high school and raised you as a single mom, and I find that to be remarkable.

Israel Wayne:

Yeah. Dropped out of high school in 9th grade homeschooled, six kids, started her own business. Pretty amazing story. But yeah, she was a hippie. It’s kind of interesting because there’s kind of a new awakened awareness of the hippie movement with this Jesus revolution. Jesus revolution, yeah. But my mom was a hippie and she didn’t become a Christian until I was twelve. So she homeschooled us initially, but not for religious reasons. And then when she became a Christian, then she was a Jesus freak. Right. And so that was a whole new experience for us. But yeah, my mom taught us. Let me just jump on that real quick. I remember when I was twelve years old, I was getting ready to start doing high school classes and she said, you probably wonder how it is that you’re going to be able to do high school with me as your teacher when I didn’t even go to high school.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah.

Israel Wayne:

I said, yeah, that’s kind of a good question. How is that going to work? And she said, Well, I’ve made a few commitments to you and I just want to tell you what they are. She said, I’ve made a commitment to teach you how to read. And she said, that’s been really painful, but we’re making progress on that. I mean, by this time I’d been, I would say, kind of functionally reading for about a year, right when I’m twelve. And she said, So you’re starting to read? But she said, My view is I don’t have to teach you everything that there is to know in the universe because I don’t know it all and you’ll forget most of it anyway. But I’ve made a few commitments. I’m going to teach you how. To read. I’m going to teach you how to think. I’m going to teach you how to reason. I’m going to teach you how to study and how to learn. And she said, if you know how to read and you know how to reason and you know how to study, where to get the information that you need to get in life, you can teach yourself anything that you want to learn in life. And so I’m going to give you the tools of education that enable you to teach yourself, and you can learn anything you want to learn. And she said, and what you do with that is up to you. If you want to squander that and waste your time and waste your life and not apply yourself, that’s on you. Because all I can do is give you an opportunity. Opportunity. I can’t force you to learn. I can’t make you learn, but I can give you an opportunity. And I’ve done that, and I will do that. But she said, it’s ultimately going to be what you make of it. And it was kind of like the Chinese proverb of you can give a man a fish or you can teach him how to fish. My mom taught me how to think and how to learn and how to be a lifelong learner. And so if my single parent high school dropout mom can do that with a Dyslexic ADHD student, I think anybody can. Homeschool. You just have to teach your child how to learn, as opposed to, again, trying to cram their head full of all this information.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, let’s park there for just a second. Now we’re going off just a little bit. But talk to the mom who has a child who really has no interest in learning. They literally have no desire whatsoever. They just want to play video games all day, or they want to play outside all day, or they just want to curl up in bed all day. I mean, they just don’t care. And this mom is frustrated, and she’s pulling her hair out, and she’s like, I don’t know what to do with this kid. They’re lazy. They have no desire. How would you encourage that mom? What would you encourage her to do?

Israel Wayne:

Well, let me jump in real quick here with a plug for a book, if I can. This book is called Answers for Homeschooling the Top 25 Questions critic. And this book literally answers almost every conceivable question that’s ever been asked about homeschooling. And so I deal with so many of these things in this book. So you can find it at our website, familyrenewal.org, but look for Answers for Homeschooling Top 25 Questions. But on this particular one, I hit that stage when I was about nine years old, and my mom realized that I had really only one interest, and that was baseball. And so this was before I had ever heard of unit studies or anybody had ever used that term. I don’t even know if it was a coined term at the time, but my mom basically invented this concept of unit studies for me. I’m not saying she invented unit studies, but, I mean, that’s what it was. And she basically made my whole year, that year be all about baseball. So for math, for example, I learned how to do percentages by studying batting averages and earned run averages on baseball cards. I was learning history by studying about the history of baseball and then how it fit into the timeline of everything else that was happening. So we studied about Jackie Robinson and integration and how there had been segregated leagues, and so we learned about that, but we also learned about what happened during World War II and that Ted Williams was actually in the military and got drafted, all these different things. I think he volunteered, actually. But how there was all these other things that were going on in the world while still following the baseball track. Right. And one of the assignments that she gave me, which now seems kind of crazy for a nine year old, but she told me she wanted me to make a proposal to an imaginary city that I want to build a baseball stadium and to calculate, somehow had to research it. How much would this cost? So if it was going to cost $70 million to build the stadium, how long would it take me to recoup that money based on ticket sales? And so that was awesome to me because I knew so much about baseball. I could tell you every fact there was to know about baseball, but I knew that the Bleacher seats were this much and the mezzanine seats were this much, and the seats over the dugout were this much. And so I had to calculate how many seats the stadium had, how much potential if you filled all the seats, how much you could make per game. There’s 162 games a year, how much you’d make annually, but then you have player salaries. I was so obsessed with baseball at that time that I just wanted to learn. And so then she had me study, like, what makes a curveball curve. Physics and science was on learning about the physics of a curveball, and I was obsessed for the whole year and just couldn’t get enough of it. I’m sure it was really hard on my mom because there’s no written curriculum for this. Right. She’s just having to kind of use the library, and there’s no Internet. Right. But what an amazing opportunity for me to just hone in and do a deep dive on my interest for a whole year now, in one sense, that’s very difficult to sustain. I get that. And that may not be terribly practical if you’re trying to homeschool four children and you got this one child, but I think that’s what I’m trying to show with that is just that homeschooling can give you a completely different paradigm where you don’t have to do things like the public school. You can create your own path, you can make a completely different approach and hone in on your child’s one interest if that’s all they have. Another thing I would say there is if possible, and this isn’t always possible. In my case it wasn’t possible. But in those cases you often have to get dad involved as well. Because when mom’s trying to pull the whole cart up the hill by herself, it’s really unfair and unreasonable. But oftentimes dads can come along if they’re willing and if they are agreeable to it, they can come along and just be a humongous help in sometimes teaching it in a different way, spending a little time working with the homework, tutoring, whatever. And sometimes you’ll see that they can connect or communicate in a way that sometimes mom doesn’t. And the finally there are some things that we just have to do even though it’s not fun and we don’t like it.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah.

Israel Wayne:

And so there’s a certain amount of just dedication because we all have in our jobs things that we like and things we don’t like and we have to do all of it. And so you can’t just say, oh, my child doesn’t like this, so we’re not going to do it.

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Israel Wayne:

There is a point where you have to teach your child to be diligent as well.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure. And for mom and dad they have to be diligent too. It takes intentionality for us as moms to figure out what works best for our kids. And it would be nice if all of our kids fit perfectly into that box. They all learned the same, they all wanted to learn the same thing, had the same interests, had the same giftings, but it doesn’t work that way. Praise God, it doesn’t work that way. We’d live in a very boring world if we all thought and learned exactly the same way. But as parents, we have to be intentional in the way that we teach our kids, right? And it takes work for a mom to be able to do that. So we also can’t be lazy. I think sometimes moms come into homeschooling thinking know, I’ll just throw this curriculum at them and they’ll be fine. And there are lots of resources and we outsource lots of stuff. CTC, Math, BJU Press has amazing online courses. So some of our subjects for our girls during some of the years we’ve outsourced things. I’m not a math person. I cannot teach my kids math because remember, algebra doesn’t really matter for me, so I can’t teach that to my kids. But there are sources that I can use to teach those. And so you can outsource some of this stuff, but we still have to be intentional about teaching them and being flexible and able and willing to change things when they’re not working and realizing, like you said, every kid is so different and really honing in on their strengths. Some kids are super academic, some are not, but they have other strengths. And so helping our kids to realize what strengths they have is so.

Israel Wayne:

So I’d like to jump in on that too, real quick if I can. Yeah, I should say I did video high school, so I had traditional textbooks, but video classroom supplements at the same time. I know BJU offers that. That’s the kind of thing that I did in high school. And that was helpful because basically I had teachers who were able to teach me these classes even though I’m still at home. My mom would still do the grading and all of that because she had a teacher guide with an answer key. Right. But that was helpful for me. So at a time where she’s working with younger children that she’s having to give her one on one attention, it was a lot like sitting in class for me in high school because I’m watching the video, doing the text. It was a lot like a classroom experience, but that was helpful for me, and that still is an option for some people. So I wanted to mention that that worked very well for me in high school.

Yvette Hampton:

Absolutely. And co ops as well. Both of our girls do co ops this year and it’s fun. They love being able to learn from other people who we trust. They don’t learn everything from them, but they are learning how to cook and they’re learning creation science and different things. And it’s amazing. So many great resources out there for us. Moms, you don’t have to do it all alone. All right, what’s your next point? We have a few minutes, and again, if you guys have questions, please pop those in. We would love to answer them, but I’ll let you continue on with some.

Israel Wayne:

Of the the one is what I call the myth of the magic curriculum. And so I was at a home school conference, I was talking to a mom, and she came up to me at the booth, and after she’d heard me speak and she said, what math curriculum do you recommend? And I said, well, tell me about your situation. She said, Well, I have this daughter who’s eleven years old, and she said, we just have not found a math program that works for her. And I said, okay, so what have you used? And she went down through this whole list. I’ll just throw out some names, but I’m not endorsing or condemning anybody, I’m just throwing out names. But she said, well, we’ve tried teaching textbooks, we’ve tried Saxon, we’ve tried Matthew C, we’ve tried Abeka, we’ve tried, you know, she just goes through this whole list. Right. And so I’m going, wow. And she had bought like nine different math curriculum programs. And so what she says, we’re trying to find a good math program. And I didn’t mean to laugh, but I just did. And I said, well, can I just throw an idea at you? And she’s like, okay. And I said, I’m just going to suggest the problem is probably not that there’s something mortally wrong with any of those math programs, although they are different from each other, and some of them have different approaches and so forth. The problem is very likely that your daughter doesn’t like math. That’s a real possibility here. And that you could spend another $3,000 on math programs, and it may just be that she just doesn’t like math, and that’s how it works. Sometimes I don’t particularly like lima beans. People say, oh, you just haven’t had them. Right. I can fix them in a way that you’ll let well, probably not, actually. You can make the best lima beans on the planet.

Yvette Hampton:

What if you put bacon on them?

Israel Wayne:

Israel chef there is and I probably personally, I probably still are not really going to connect to those lima beans. And so there is a sense sometimes where I think parents often throw way too much money at curriculum thinking that the curriculum is the problem or that the curriculum Is going to solve the problem that their student is having. And oftentimes it’s just as very simple as your child does not like math, and they won’t. And it’s one of those things that they don’t necessarily have to enjoy it. They do need to learn it. And there’s probably not going to be a perfect magic curriculum that they just think is fun. And I think sometimes we do fall into too much of a trap of trying to make everything fun for our child. And I know I sound like I’m contradicting myself after what I said of a year of learning baseball. Right. So there’s a balance there. I think homeschooling does give you the capacity, if you can, to make something more enjoyable rather than less, and that’s always A desirable goal. If you can make something Less painful for your child, that’s great. But at the end of the day, you will always have a child who doesn’t like writing or doesn’t like english or doesn’t like history or whatever it is, and they’re all going to be different. But sometimes you just have to learn how to slog through some things, and we can’t always just blame it on the curriculum, and it’s not always wise. Sometimes it is. It’s not always wise to just throw money at curriculum and think, well, if I just spend A few more $1,000, then that’s going to fix the problem.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, absolutely. Agreed. Do you have others to go through? I mean, I know there’s lots of mistakes that people can make with homeschooling. I think you’ve hit on the really important ones.

Israel Wayne:

Sure. I think another thing to consider is I mentioned this sometimes about when you buy a curriculum that’s made for a school classroom, and that was all that was available when I was growing up. And most of the curriculum that’s still out there that people buy for homeschooling was originally designed for a school classroom. One thing to keep in mind with that is the school. Even like a private Christian school, their school day is kind of patterned after the public school. So for the most part, they’re trying to keep those students there for an hour of class. So I remember when I was being home schooled in fifth grade, I was diagramming 42 sentences a day.

Yvette Hampton:

Oh, good. Golly.

Israel Wayne:

In fifth grade, using a curriculum you would all know because they were basically just having to keep you busy for an hour in English class. And so it was really super painful, especially for me as a Dyslexic kid, and I just hated every minute of it. And so my mom finally started to wise up to the fact that homeschooling doesn’t mean we have to sit there for 7 hours a day. We’re not a classroom. We don’t have to do that. We’re not on the clock. Right?

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Israel Wayne:

So the idea is teach the concept, learn the concept, test the concept, drill the concept a little bit, and then move on to another concept and then eventually kind of cycle back to that concept later to make sure you still remember it. But this concept of I call it drill and Kill, where we’re just going to go through 42 sentences a day, diagramming what it does is it frustrates the student, and it makes them hate learning, and you don’t have to do that. So in a situation like that, either look for a curriculum that’s published specifically for homeschoolers that cuts out a lot of the busy work, or if you found a good quality textbook company that creates for the classroom. Just realize you don’t have to do every single drill or every single question on the test if it’s just repetitive drill information. So you can skip a lot of that. You can say, look, if there’s 42 of those, do five, and then let’s move on to the next thing.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, love that. We do that with our girls. Specifically with math, if you know how to do the problem, don’t waste your time for the mom who makes their child sit there and complete every single 42 sentences. And if it’s causing frustration for your student, that is breaking the relationship between you and your child because then they’re going to be frustrated actually probably more with you than they are with the actual parsing of the sentences. And so again, that goes back to the relationship part and build that relationship. And again, I mean, make them do things sometimes that they don’t want to do, but if it’s unnecessary, it’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

Israel Wayne:

Sure.

Yvette Hampton:

All right, let’s answer a couple of questions. So Leah asked this. She said, I have twin 14 year olds and I’ve homeschooled the since birth, but still struggle with how to individualize their education, and they struggle with comparison with each other.

Israel Wayne:

That’s where we have to, as parents, put the parenting hat on and make sure that our children recognize their identity is who they are in Christ and that they know that the are loved for who they are as individuals and that we do do what we can as parents to help them establish their own personhood in life. Right. And I think the more secure they become with that as a macro concept just in the relationship and parenting and family dynamic side. And then what 14 year old doesn’t feel awkward, right?

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah.

Israel Wayne:

I don’t mean this disrespectfully, but we were all 14 year olds, and that’s like, if you look up the definition of awkward in the dictionary, it says 14 year old.

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Israel Wayne:

So I think there is a sense in which we’re all still trying to find our way at that point in our life. But I think as they begin to find those interests, feed into that and cultivate that and encourage that and be willing to press into them finding those little things that is their identity. Whenever I see my child, if my child shows a little bit of interest in music or shows a little bit of interest in outdoor stuff or whatever it is, I try to feed that, fuel it, finance it to get behind that. And sometimes it’s a fad. They’ll go through a few months of it and drop it. But sometimes those things really help you to figure out who you want to be in life. So, yeah, feed into that and support it when you see a spark of interest, feed into that.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah. And I’ll say, too, as far as the comparison between the two of them, help teach them to praise their brother or sister. I don’t know if you have boys or girls, help teach them to praise their sibling when they succeed at something. We have a friend who has two boys. They’re not twins, but they’re very close in age. And one of them is just crazy smart academically, and the other one is very gifted athletically. And the one who’s gifted athletically is not gifted academically and vice versa. And so teaching them like, okay, when your brother hits that ball all the way across the field, praise him for it. You’re not as good at that as he is, but encourage him and praise him for it. And when your brother, the baseball player, sees his brother excelling at the academics, praise him for it. Hey, brother, I am so proud of you. You did such a good job on that test. And teach them to encourage one another that way, because that takes away the battle and the comparison that they have and praise them in front of each other, too, man, you did such a good job on that in that baseball game, or you did such a great job on that project that you were working on, whatever. And so that again goes back to you being intentional, but also helping them to individualize their education is knowing what their learning style is, because they’re both very different. I’m sure they have very different learning styles. And so you have to pinpoint what their learning style is. Maybe one of them is an auditory learner and one of them is a visual learner. And so if you haven’t figured that out yet, try to figure out how they learn. And then you might have to use different things for both of them. And that’s okay. You do what you have to do in order for them to learn. You do as much as you can together, use as much curriculum as you can with both of them together, but some things you might have to use different methods for teaching them. And so that really comes down to knowing what their learning style is. And we actually on the Schoolhouse Rocked podcast. We did a whole series on learning styles, and Kit was excellent. But study them and know what their learning style is. So let’s move to another question. This is also from Leah. She said, any encouragement for that as we move into high school years. Also, speaking of high school, if they want to go to college, how do you challenge them without standardizing them?

Israel Wayne:

Well, I mean, again, the whole system of college is predicated on standardization. So if you plan to have your child have a college track, then you kind of have to fit into the standardization mold, particularly in high school, because you are preparing them for the entrance exams and the classes and all that that they’re going to be taking. So it is difficult, I think honestly, in some ways it’s going to be more difficult as time goes forward in the future for homeschoolers to do well. This is my hunch on college entrance exams and things like that, because I just expect that increasingly the standards for getting into college are going to be increasingly woke. And if you haven’t taught to the test, if you haven’t taught their standards, your child may grow up and really may not do well on those tests because you haven’t trained them in revisionist history, you haven’t trained them in Cultural Marxism, you haven’t trained them in critical race theory. And so when they get to a lot of these tests that they’re supposed to be standardized in, your child probably won’t be standardized and may not do real well on those tests. And it doesn’t mean that your child isn’t smart, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not educated. It just means they were educated differently by different standards. And so there are concerns I actually have moving forward that I think college increasingly is just going to be a place that’s going to be harder for independent minded homeschool who weren’t raised in the lockstep system to get in. I think they’re going to have more of a challenge. They’ll probably have to kind of be educated and coached in. This is what they’re looking for, and these are the answers they want, so to speak. So anyway but, yeah, you basically have to kind of learn how to conform to their standards if you want to enter into that realm. It’s kind of the nature of it.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah. Wow. I actually never really thought about that before. Israel, that is a really good point. Demystifying learning styles with Tyler Hogan. That was the episode on the Schoolhouse Rocked podcast. Listen to that. Because if you haven’t figured out your kids learning styles, that episode is fantastic, and it will really help you to figure out how your child learns how your children learn best. Let’s take one last question. This is for Mary, and she says, I’m new to homeschooling and agree that kids don’t need to learn everything or be great test takers, but how do we make sure that they are able to apply for college? I’ll let you jump into that, too.

Israel Wayne:

Again, I have a whole chapter in here on high school. I have a chapter on college. How do you prepare for high school? How do you prepare for college? I’m biased against college. And you say, well, explain that. Well, I don’t have enough time to. That’s why I wrote a whole chapter about it in the book. I think that college should not be the assumed default for homeschooling, families, and their students. I believe college is absolutely necessary for some people to be able to pursue their career that God’s called them to. I want my surgeon to have a whole wall of degrees and not learn it on YouTube. Exactly. Yeah. So it’s not wrong to have some higher education, but increasingly, there’s a book that we sell on our website again, Familyrenewal.org Store, called Is College Worth It? If you really want an in depth look at that question of Is college worth It? Please read that book. It’s written by William J. Bennett. You may remember him, the Book of Virtues guy. I think he worked for Ronald Reagan as education secretary, if I remember correctly, and his book is phenomenal and that it just examines almost every facet and angle of considering the college option. And he basically landed the same place that I do. So I was rather surprised to see someone of his academic pedigree agreeing and saying, really, this should just not be the default for students. Now, we live in a very different world than we did 40 years ago, and there are people who are making a lot of money in the trades right now who didn’t need college for it. And fully three quarters of all people in the workforce in the United States right now are employed in a field completely unrelated to their college degree. Three quarters. So you have the cost of college. You have all of the woke ideology. You have the fact that they continue to dumb down the curriculum. You have the fact that what used to be a bachelor’s degree 40 years ago, now the equivalent is like, you have to get a master’s degree to get the same type of job. Everything’s changed. And I don’t have time to give you the whole thesis there, but you can find out more of my thoughts on that and answers for Homeschooling, but also grab a copy of William J. Bennett’s book, Is College Worth It? And I just think we need to reset from that and assume that our child doesn’t necessarily need college. And then when we find out that they do, then we do what we can to prepare them for that direction. But let me throw this out as well. That basically all Christian young people let me say this, all professing Christian young people who say going into college, I am a Christian, three quarters of them will say, I’m no longer a Christian and I do not believe in Christianity. At the end of their freshman year of one year at a secular college or university, three quarters in their freshman year at a secular college or university. That’s massive. And so as just I think we really need to reconsider yeah, or at.

Yvette Hampton:

Least really reconsider where your child is going to there. There are some really good ones. Bob Jones University I know that there are some colleges that are really excellent and still teaching a very strong biblical worldview to their students. But yeah, definitely be careful where you’re sending your kids. Don’t spend 13 years instructing them at home and giving them a biblical foundation and then think that when you put them into a secular school or a Christian school, that is as bad as a secular school that’s right. That can actually be more dangerous because then they think they’re getting a Christian education and they’re getting the complete opposite of that. So be very cautious of where you’re sending your kids. Israel, tell us again where people can find your books and find out more.

Israel Wayne:

About your ministry, familyrenewal.org. And we’d also love to have you connect with us on social media. Just look up Israel Wayne or familyrenewal, and we would love to connect with you there.

Yvette Hampton:

Sounds great. And they’ve got lots of great resources on there. And Israel, I know you’re speaking all over the place this season. It is now homeschool conference season and so Israel is going to be all over. I think you have a list, if I remember, on your website of where you’re going to be speaking, right?

Israel Wayne:

Yeah. So familyrenewal.org forward slash events. That gets you to quite a few of them. Not all of them, but also if you want to get on our email list, it’s familyrenewal.org subscribe and you’ll always get an email update when we’re in your area.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah. Awesome. Israel’s got some great books, not just on education, but on parenting as well. He can be a parenting expert. He’s got eleven kids.

Unlocking the Power of Homeschooling: Research Insights from Dr. Brian Ray

“I don’t think there’s any way for anybody to make an argument that institutionalizing children in these places we call school, where most of us went, is improving their psychological health.” – Dr. Brian Ray

In a world where traditional schooling can sometimes leave children feeling lost in the crowd, many parents are turning to an alternative education option that provides a personalized and values-driven learning experience for their children – the homeschool revolution! In a recent interview on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, premier homeschooling researcher, and founder of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI.org), Dr. Brian Ray shared his groundbreaking research and powerful insights on the effectiveness and benefits of homeschooling.

The Blessing of Homeschooling:

According to Dr. Brian Ray, children are a blessing from God, and being actively involved in their education is a profound privilege. Drawing from Biblical principles, Dr. Ray notes, “The Bible is sufficient, and it gives us everything we need to know about how to live and educate our children.” He challenges the notion that the Bible does not address education, pointing out that it contains abundant wisdom on raising and educating children.

“The Bible is sufficient; it has everything we need to know about how to live and how to educate and disciple our children.”

Parent-Directed Home-Based Education Discipleship:

Dr. Ray advocates for “parent-directed, home-based education discipleship,” which he asserts is distinct from traditional homeschooling. This type of education places parents at the forefront, recognizing their duty and responsibility as the primary educators of their children, as outlined in the Bible. Dr. Ray believes that this model empowers parents to create a customized curriculum that aligns with their family’s values, ensuring an education that is truly comprehensive and tailored to meet the needs of each child.

In addition to his research career, as a former public school teacher-turned-homeschool-dad himself, Dr. Ray got to apply the principles he had learned and see the effects of homeschooling in his own family.

“Whether it was easier or harder, whatever, whether children were fussing with us or happy with us as parents, it was the philosophy and the theology and the desire to be together as a family that really drove us.”

Insights from Research:

Dr. Ray’s extensive research has consistently demonstrated the merits of homeschooling. His doctoral dissertation focused on examining the academic achievements of homeschool children in comparison to their public and private school counterparts. The study showcased the efficacy of parent-directed education. Dr. Ray explains, “Homeschooling aligns more with effective teaching and learning conditions, such as smaller groups, increased conversation with adults, and customized curriculum,” which all lead to positive outcomes for students.

One significant finding is that homeschool children exhibit greater engagement and interest in subjects like science. Dr. Ray shares, “The study showed that homeschool children were more engaged and interested in science than their counterparts in institutional schools.” This finding highlights the ability of homeschooling to cultivate a love for learning and curiosity in children, allowing them to explore subjects at their own pace and in a hands-on manner.

Addressing Misconceptions:

Dr. Ray addresses common misconceptions surrounding homeschooling, particularly concerns about child abuse and neglect. Although acknowledging heartbreaking cases within homeschooling families, he emphasizes that abuse and neglect occur in institutional schools as well. Dr. Ray explains that when specific research has compared child abuse and neglect rates between institutionally schooled children and homeschool children the results show much lower rates of abuse among homeschool families.

Watch the video.

He argues that homeschooling, when executed correctly, aligns more effectively with research on effective teaching and learning. Smaller class sizes, increased interaction with adults, personalized curriculum, and the absence of negative peer pressure contribute to a positive learning environment. Dr. Ray wonders, “If we know all this about effective teaching and learning, why would we expect homeschool kids not to perform better on average?”

“On average, homeschoolers perform well academically. They outperform the national average by 15 to 25 percentile points.”

The Impact of Homeschooling:

Dr. Ray’s research has not only debunked negative claims about homeschooling but also demonstrated the extensive outcomes. Quantitative data from adult participants raised in homeschooling families revealed that, in spite of factors such as parent education level and income, homeschooled students outperform their public schooled peers in nearly every measure.

According to Dr. Ray, studies indicate that home-educated individuals generally experience higher levels of achievement, exhibit fewer behavioral problems, and demonstrate lower rates of addiction and depression. While he acknowledges that not all home-educated individuals achieve success and happiness, the overall benefits of homeschooling as a collective group are significant.

Watch or listen here.

Beyond Academics:

Dr. Ray advocates for a holistic approach to education that goes beyond academic achievements. He urges parents to prioritize the well-being of their children by limiting screen time, engaging in outdoor activities, and fostering open communication. He highlights the detrimental impact of excessive screen time on mental health and urges parents to reclaim their role as primary influencers in their children’s lives.

Conclusion:

Dr. Brian Ray’s extensive research and insights shed light on the power of homeschooling as a viable and impactful educational option. By placing parents at the core of their children’s education and providing a Bible-centered, personalized, values-driven approach, homeschooling offers numerous advantages for academic achievement and overall well-being.

As the acceptance and celebration of homeschooling continue to grow, parents are becoming increasingly empowered to provide their children with an education that aligns with their family’s beliefs and values and can be assured that their children will not suffer as a result of “missing out” on traditional schooling. Additionally, Dr. Ray’s research not only indicates positive outcomes for individual students, but also demonstrates the homeschooling movement’s abilty to positively impact communities and nations.

To delve deeper into Dr. Brian Ray’s research and gain a comprehensive understanding of the benefits of homeschooling, Listen to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast or subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch the full interview.

Recommended Resources:

The Gen2 Survey, by NHERI (National Home Education Research Institute) – This study examines adults who attended church growing up and seeks to understand the key influences which either encouraged or deterred them from believing and practicing the faith of their parents.

Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask, by Israel Wayne

Education: Does God Have an Opinion?, by Israel Wayne

Israel Wayne, Christian Education: A Manifesto 

Education: The Key to Saving Our Nation – Alex Newman on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Getting Started in Homeschooling – Israel Wayne on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast 

Discussion Questions:

1. How does Dr. Brian Ray’s research challenge the perception that homeschooling is inferior to traditional schooling?

2. What are some key factors that contribute to the academic success of homeschooled children, according to Dr. Ray’s research?

3. How does Dr. Ray address concerns about child abuse and neglect in homeschooling families, and what data does he present to support his arguments?

4. How does Dr. Ray’s personal background and experiences influence his perspective on homeschooling?

5. What are some potential drawbacks or challenges of homeschooling that Dr. Ray acknowledges, and how does he address them?

6. How has the acceptance and perception of homeschooling changed over the years, according to Dr. Ray?

7. How does homeschooling impact the overall well-being and mental health of children, as discussed by Dr. Ray?

8. How does Dr. Ray argue that homeschooling can contribute to the improvement of local communities and nations?

9. What are some practical strategies and suggestions for parents to prioritize their children’s well-being in the midst of societal and technological challenges, according to Dr. Ray?

10. In your opinion, based on the information presented by Dr. Ray, what are the major advantages and disadvantages of homeschooling compared to traditional schooling?

Full Transcript:

Yvette Hampton:

Hey, everyone, this is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so glad that you are with me this week. I have a guest on this week that is truly an honor to have him with us. I cannot believe, actually, that it’s taken this long to have Dr. Brian Ray with us. We met years ago at a it was an HSLDA conference. And I’ve always been so just impressed with his work. I feel like I should have a stronger word than impressed, but that’s the word that comes to me right now. He has done so many things for the homeschool community, and if you are not yet familiar with him, you are going to be so encouraged this week. I know that many of you have probably heard him speak at homeschool conventions in the past, and he’s been in the homeschool world for a long, long time. And so I’m so grateful to have him on with us today. So we’re going to talk a lot about just the history of homeschooling and some research on what’s going on with homeschooling, what’s happened in the past, what the future might look like for homeschooling. We’re going to talk just a lot about his study of the homeschool world. Well, Dr. Brian Ray. Welcome to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so glad to have you with us. Introduce yourself to our audience. And when I say, like, you know, just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you and your family do. And I would really love for you to give a pretty good overview of NHERI, which is your organization, which we’ll talk about, but also your credentials, your qualifications, because that really matters in our talk this week and the things that we’re going to be discussing.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yep. Thank you so much, Yvette, for having me here. It’s great. Thank you for your work. I was just telling Yvette before we started talking how my wife said this morning, I’m so happy about all these young people who are doing the things we don’t even know about in the homeschool movement. And years ago, I don’t know, maybe ten years ago, we started hearing older people. Like I am saying, woe is us, woe is me. That we’re all the young people, the pioneers like we are. Well, you know what? God has raised you up. Here you are. He always has whomever he needs to do the things right. I mean, he’s just done it. And so I’m very thankful. I’m very thankful that there are younger folks who are so excited about God’s principles and raising children. But what happened was, okay, so I was institutionalized a vet, right? So I was raised in a Roman Catholic environment. Roman Catholic. Went to Roman Catholic schools. But from a very young age, god designs people a certain way. And I think a lot of us know early on what it might be. I’ve always loved animals I’ve always just wanted to watch them and play with them and study them and all those things. So I went after high school, went on to get a bachelor’s degree, bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Puget Sound. From there, I went off and traveled all over the United States with my brother before many people watching this were even born. I’m sure this is back during the bicentennial of America, United States of America 1976. Traveled all over the US. For 100 days and 15,000 miles, came back and I taught, ended up teaching. I got a carpentry job, and then I ended up teaching at an outdoor school, 6th grade, public school students. I’ve always liked being around children and teaching children. Even in high school, I went down to a local grade school and tutored children in that elementary school. So that was just something I did there. And from there then I went on and got a Master of science degree in zoology at Ohio University. And therefore my research. I studied pack rats neatoma Florida. So I was really into mammology and learned all the mammals of North America and all that kind of thing. Now I finished that and want to do I want to be in a lab all my life, or would I like to maybe get out a little more and be with people or something? So from there now, in all that, Betsy and I got married in graduate school. Graduate school is when I got saved, when the Lord got me and brought me into his kingdom. And right after that, Betsy and I got married, came back to Oregon, and she was finishing a degree in teaching. And I decided, hey, why not? So I got a teaching degree in Oregon. So I taught for a few years, middle school and high school. So now you can see kind of the science and then the education formally, right? So I did that. And after three years of that, I got kind of I’m tired of know, teaching the same class over and over and over, and I need a challenge. I need a real challenge. So I decided to go and work on a PhD in science education at Oregon State University. So while there, I was teaching in biology, and I became a teaching assistant for the dean of education and all kinds of things, all kinds of experiences while there, Yvette, we were starting to have babies. And while we were there, I was very interested in alternatives. And Betsy and I have always kind of been interested in alternatives. Maybe you could say we are right wing Christian hippies. So we were interested in organic farming, and we were interested in drip irrigation on gardens. And while at Oregon State, I met some people who wanted somebody to teach their children part time. It turns out they were basically kind of left wing hippie homeschoolers, but nobody called it that yet. And from there I started looking into homeschooling and almost no research was done. So I pulled together a paper all about homeschooling and research on homeschooling and presented it as actually it was an exam for my doctoral studies. It was not my dissertation. And all of a sudden after I wrote that paper, I was an expert on homeschooling. So one way to be an expert is do something almost nobody else is doing and then you’re an expert. That’s basically what happened. During all of that, Betsy and I heard about homeschooling and I started studying homeschooling and one thing led to another. I did home research on homeschooling and bingo, as soon as I got my PhD, the NBC Today show called me and flew me from Oregon to New York City, picked me up in a limousine and put me on the NBC Today show with the president of the National Education Association, the big teachers union. That was amazing. I’d never done anything like that in my life. That was my introduction to the media and interviews with the media. Just two years after that, some other guys and I started the nonprofit National Home Education Research Institute. NHERI. Nheri.org. So that’s kind of the preliminary before what happened, how we got there, god just led me from one thing to another. I went off to teach at Seattle Pacific well, I’ll just say a university in Seattle, and then started the Research Institute during that. And I went and taught at another college and kept the research institute going and about 25 years ago full time with the Research Institute.

Yvette Hampton:

That is an incredible story that you talked about before. And I don’t know that you would call it a story, but just your qualifications and what you did before even getting into the world of homeschooling. You are well educated. And the reason I wanted you to share all of that stuff is because I didn’t want people we’re going to talk a lot this week about your study of homeschooling. And I don’t want people to think that you’re just some guy off the street who maybe talked to ten different people. And now all of a sudden, you’re the expert on homeschooling. Your bio says that you are a leading international expert in research on homeschooling. And I would argue that you are the leading international expert in research on homeschooling. I don’t know anyone else who has done as much research as you in the past years. And we’re not just talking about the past ten years. We’re talking about you said, I think 33 years ago that you started researching homeschooling, is that right?

Dr. Brian Ray:

I said that the institute was started 33 years ago, but I actually started studying homeschooling more like 39 years ago. So before I left out a step event you got it right, though about the research. I left out that in 1985 I started the journal Home School Researcher. And keep in mind it was three words, home school research. So that tells you something that was before it evolved in America to a one word. We used to have discussions and debates about whether it should be one word or two.

Yvette Hampton:

Well, we’ve seen that debate as well, even as recently as when we chose the name for the movie schoolhouse Rocked the Homeschool Revolution. I remember us talking about that. Like, dude, we put home school or homeschool and we did our own little bit of research and we thought, okay, most people are saying it as one word, and so we’re going to just go with homeschooling instead of homeschooling. Yes, you have been in this world for such a long time, and you have really put your whole, I would say most of your adult life’s work into researching homeschooling and not just the history of it. I mean, you talk about the history of it, but really you have a really deep understanding. And so talk for a little bit about your research that you’ve done. And I would love for you to take us not through every step, but kind of what it was like from the beginning, 39 years ago when you started researching it. And I know this is a big question, this could take a long time. We have about, what, 1012 minutes here. So we can continue this on, if we need to on Wednesday. But talk about your research on homeschooling and where you’ve seen it go.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Okay. Way back in that time machine around 1989 ish, I can’t say the exact date, but I was already into it. I was already into it. In fact, I wanted to do a study on homeschooling for my doctoral dissertation. But it’s a story we won’t get into, and I can never prove it. But they did not want me studying and having a dissertation coming out of Oregon State University on homeschooling. So I did my work just on public school kids, but on my own. On the side, I was collecting data on private school children and homeschool children with the same questions as my doctoral dissertation. So as soon as they handed me the dissertation, boom, I went out and started publishing on homeschooling. And it was kind of an off thing that almost nobody would look into. It was called the Theory of Reason to Action, and it was comparing home school, public school, and private school students in terms of their interest in doing science, in their interest in doing studying science, and their interest in doing laboratory science, and then what would motivate them. And as it turns out, and this is going to start to sound like a broken record, the homeschool children were more engaged and more interested in science than most of the others. I mean, that’s what I found. That was way back in around, like I said, 1988. Now, around that same time, just after that, Mike Farris, who was one of the founders of the home school legal defense association was making a speech somewhere or writing an article or something. He said, you know what we’re not we need in the home school movement? We need parents with their children to go down to their state legislatures and visit with legislators and so that they can see their children, they’re real, they’re not weirdos, all that kind of stuff. And he said, number two, we need good, solid, sound, empirical research evidence. Well, HSLDA was the main sponsor of one of my first big studies, and it was a nationwide study of homeschooling. And we got into all kinds of things like parents demographics, their income level, their ethnicity, education level, children reasons for homeschooling, and standardized academic achievement tests. Though even though those test scores are not the most important thing in the world. And I know you know that, Yvette it is something that the public and the courts and the legislatures want to know about, right? A lot of parents want to know too. Can my child I’m not a government certified teacher, I don’t even have a college degree can my children possibly learn from me to do basic math and reading and writing? So it was a big study. It was a first of its kind, and it got a lot of publicity. We went into the news, we made booklets, we did all those kinds of things. And we found out that on average, homeschool children do very well academically. We mailed out thousands and thousands of paper envelopes with stuffed with a family survey, and then probably three copies of each child’s survey with self addressed stamped envelopes. And then those got mailed in from all over the country to our little place in Seattle, Washington. We lived up there for three years, and then we had to open all those and then we had to hand enter all of that into probably an excel oh my goodness spreadsheet. Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of hand entries. That’s how it happened.

Yvette Hampton:

I can’t even imagine because you look at how easy it is. I mean, now you just can create a simple forum on Google, shoot it out, know thousands of people, and have answers within hours if you need them. I mean, it’s just amazing to see how technology has really helped in that way. I’m assuming this was back and I don’t remember when the date was, but this is probably around the same time that Dr. Dobson did his famous interview with Dr. Ray Moore, right where they started talking about homeschooling.

Dr. Brian Ray:

I would say that was more like probably closer to 1985. Ish around in there okay, maybe. Okay, yeah, close. So people started hearing about homeschooling from different angles, just alternative education discussions, ministries like focus on the Family, all that was bubbling and simmering and coming about at the same time. I met people who had never heard of homeschooling, and they started homeschooling they hadn’t heard about it on a radio nowhere. And they just said, God wanted us to do this. He did not want us to put them, especially in public schools. I met people all over the country who were doing that. Yes, it was around that time.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah. That’s incredible. I know that there have been so many hands who God has used to bring homeschooling to where it is today. And we take it for granted. We forget about those homeschool pioneers like yourself who really did pave the way before us so that we have our homeschool freedoms and so that we have what we need to homeschool successfully so that we can have those. Test scores so that we can have all of the things that we can take to our legislators and say, hey, look, this is what’s going on with us. Oftentimes you will hear of kids who were homeschooled back in the even I would say that the early two thousand s. And they’ll say, oh, my mom didn’t do a good job of homeschooling. I didn’t have a good education. I was deprived of my education. And so people will look at those kids and they will say, oh well, look at those homeschoolers, none of them are educated. Well, look at the public schoolers, many of them aren’t educated. Look at the private schoolers, many of them aren’t educated either. Sometimes I think it really just depends on the parents and on the child. And so I love your research because you really do show and prove that home education really does work in most cases. Not in all cases, but in most cases academically, it really does work for students. And so I want to kind of hang on that right now and I want to pull that into Wednesday. I want to kind of kick off Wednesday’s episode with that and talk about why Homeschooling does work according to the research that you’ve done. Homeschooled kids, like we talked about on Monday, across the board, overall, homeschool kids do really well. So talk about what your research really has taught you, what it tells us as the world of homeschooling.

Dr. Brian Ray:

The first thing that happened in my research and I want to mention and I mentioned this event earlier that I’m going to talk a lot about my research, but there are a lot of other people studying homeschooling now. There was a time when there were very few of us and I knew all their names, basically. But now there are dozens, if not hundreds of people around the world studying homeschooling. So in the early days of the modern homeschool movement, put that in context because homeschooling is thousands of years old, people just wanted to know, well, who are they? What do they quote look like? What are their demographics? We were just asking questions like, well, how old are you parent? How many children do you have? What’s your ethnicity background? What’s your education level? What’s your family income, just all those basic statistics. Everybody kind of wants to know about a group of people so we can generalize and so we can pigeonhole you, so we can have a measure of central tendency. So that was the first phase of research. And way back in 25, 30 years ago, it looked pretty like in America, I’m talking about United States, okay? It looked pretty much, I call it overall middle classy, overall disproportionately, white, Anglo, overall, maybe just a little bit more education level the parents than the general public. Kind of like that. Now, remember, whenever we say generalizations, there’s always a variety. Because to get an average, you have to have one end and the other end. So people just always have to remember that. Okay, way back then, also, we wanted to know, well, all right, this is what they kind of quote, look like. But how is it possible that people who are not government certified teachers could possibly teach their children anything like academics? So we wanted to ask that question, how are they doing academically? And even though we can have all kinds of debates about achievement tests, let’s face it, people still use achievement tests in the public schools, in the private schools. And in some states, it’s actually by law, you’re supposed to do that. So we started looking at academic achievement test scores. And right from the very get go, we were finding that homeschool children on average were 15 to 25 percentile percentile points above the public school average, which is 50. And if you’re not familiar with test scores, go study it. But 50th percentile is the average. That doesn’t mean 50% correct on a test. It just means if you’re at the 50th, you did better than 50% of the kids and you did worse than 50% of the kids, roughly.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Dr. Brian Ray:

So that’s what we found. And others started finding the same thing. Now, as the research world kind of progressed, we wanted to have more sophisticated studies. But also then people asked, as you know, Yvette, everybody kind of knows the s question. What about socialization? Socialization? Everybody knows it. It’s a big inside joke in the home school world. What about that? Okay, for the last, whatever, 100. Now, 20 years, most kids have been institutionalized to be with same age peers, plus or minus eleven months their age. So what’s going to happen to them if they’re not doing that all day? So a lot of researchers, I did much less of that kind of research. So I might have asked quantitative things like, what are the activities your children are involved in? How many per week, whatever. I asked kind of quantitative approaches to that.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Others did other research like, well, what about self concepts, self esteem? What about actual behaviors acting out too aggressively or not assertively enough? And all these different studies. Fascinating studies. Fascinating studies. But when I did a review of research a few years back, 87% of the studies, peer reviewed studies, found that home school students were better in terms of social and emotional development than their institutional school peers. And if we have time, maybe you could ask me why. Okay, if we get to that, I.

Yvette Hampton:

Do want to know why. But my question also is, as you’re doing this research, obviously you’re researching homeschool families. Are you also at the same time researching public school, private school families with the exact same questions?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Okay, so the way most of this research works is if you do a standardized achievement test and you put that in your studies, already, you have the norm for public school students because that is the norm for that test. So the average is 50. So then you would just mainly collect data on home school kids. Now, a few researchers, this takes more time, and it usually takes more money if you could get fresh, brand new test data scores from both home school and institutional school at the same time. A few studies have done that, but that’s a lot more intensive. And like I said, it takes money to spend all the time getting all that together. Let’s say there’s an inventory, or most people call them a test. All right, let’s just call it a test. A test that deals with self concept, right? Well, already researchers have developed these tests, and they do what’s called studies of validity and reliability on these tests. So they exist out there. And already, mainly it’s being used on public school children. So you have the scores and the norming group for those children. So now you pull in, let’s say it’s been normed for nine to twelve year olds. So now some researcher goes and gets a bunch of nine to twelve year old homeschool kids and gives them the same inventory and compares them to that norm group. That’s one way. And the other way, just like an achievement, you could have live, brand new, fresh subjects in the study. It could be a group of 25 homeschool children and 25 public school children and watch them, see how they interact, behave, play, don’t play, fight, all those things. It’s kind of fun to be research because you get to do all of that. So it’s both preset scores from tests that have been developed already, and sometimes it’s fresh, brand new data comparing the two groups live on the spot.

Yvette Hampton:

Well, that’s really cool. So sometimes it’s not just a check a box kind of survey. You actually get to observe people in real life and how they’re responding to other people, how they’re responding to their peers, and maybe to their parents and to their teachers if they’re in school. Things like that.

Dr. Brian Ray:

One that I got to do was kind of fun. The Montana homeschool. So I’ve done several big nationwide studies, but I’ve done several state specific studies, and some homeschool leaders in Montana are very forward thinking. Many years ago, they asked me to do this study where I actually brought in because some people would say, well, these homeschool kids do well just because only the smart, brilliant parents or the parents who cheat would be in your study. So we got a group of students that were just sort of like a convenient sample, and then we had another group, and they were tested under a watchful eye, making sure nobody was doing anything unseemly or cheating and all that kind of stuff. And we found out they scored almost identically to one another. So that was kind of fun to have. A new group of data, new group of students, a new group of data. So studies come in all shapes and forms and sizes and approaches.

Yvette Hampton:

In your research, you have found that overall, homeschool kids do really well, and oftentimes they do better than their peers in public school or private school. Why do you think that is?

Dr. Brian Ray:

I think it’s one of the most fascinating things and it’s the hardest thing to answer in research. We could say what? We can have descriptive statistics. The question is why? Why does it come out that way? Because when you look back 35, 40 years ago, there were a lot of negative people toward homeschooling, a lot of skeptics.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure.

Dr. Brian Ray:

I mean, even some people start homeschooling were skeptical of themselves. But I kind of look at it this way. Many years ago, I started going into the body of research on what makes for effective teaching and learning in institutional schools. Okay? So it’s not necessarily going to be the same, but that’s all we had, right? For a long time, we mainly had institutional schools in America and especially during the era of research. And I just want to just say leave out the H word, leave out homeschooling and just say, ask any public school teacher, private school teacher, government certified teacher, principal of a school, superintendent of a school district, whatever. Just start asking a bunch of questions. When do children usually learn more? When they’re in a group of 28 or when they’re in a group of three or four or five. When do children usually learn more? When they have more turns of conversation between adult and student or less. They all know the answer. When do children usually learn more? When they can master a subject or a skill? Before they move on? Or when they have to move on. Just because it’s a new day or a new semester. It doesn’t matter whether they learned it or not. When do children usually learn more? When there are fewer distractions or more distractions in their environment. We all know the answer. When do children usually learn more? When the curriculum or the pedagogical approach is customized for that child’s learning style, strengths, weaknesses, dreams and desires or not customized? We all know the answer. When do children learn more? When they’re being bullied or they’re not being bullied. We all know the answer. When do children learn more? When they’re being psychologically stressed out by teachers in a school system or not? And we all know the answer. So when do children learn more? When they’re being pressured to get into drugs and alcohol or not? When do children usually learn more? When they’re being pressured to get into premarital sex or not? We all know the answer. So you just start going down through this whole list of questions and say, well, which side of those answers does institute schooling lie on more? And which one does parent led home based education lie on more? And systemically by its very nature, parent directed home based education fits the bill more. So really, Yvette, the question is, why would homeschool children not do better?

Yvette Hampton:

Right? That’s fantastic. And I would know as the big, pretty bow on the end of that, who learns more? The kid whose parent loves them more than anyone else and knows them better than anyone else? Yes. There are some excellent teachers out there. There really are. We have a lot of friends who are teachers. We have a lot of friends who are administrators, and they have such a heart for the children that are in their classrooms, but they cannot it’s impossible for them to love your child the way that you love them and to cater to their needs the way that you do as their parent. I’m glad you brought that up.

Dr. Brian Ray:

The list I went through is not an attack on certified teachers.

Yvette Hampton:

Sure.

Dr. Brian Ray:

It just shows us that no matter how hard we try in institutional schools, we cannot replicate what I just went through. I mean, I’ve been a classroom teacher. You can’t do it. You just can’t do it. It’s impossible. And if you tried to make the classrooms that small, then they’d have to raise your property taxes fivefold.

Yvette Hampton:

So let’s park there as a parent for a minute, because you were a homeschool parent, right? You have eight kids, is that correct?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton:

You homeschooled your eight children. What was it that kept you homeschooling? Was it all of your research? What kept you and Betsy in this world of home education? And talk a little bit about your experience as a homeschool dad, especially back in the day when it know, as mainstream as it is now?

Dr. Brian Ray:

There were, I would say, a few core things to answer your question. First, no, it was not my mean, Yvette, I’ve told so many people from the speaker’s podium over and over and over and over. High test scores are not the main reason for homeschooling. It’s not. I mean, I’m a Christian, so what’s driven Betsy and me has been theology and philosophy, really? And actually just enjoying our yeah, we want to be with our children. Okay. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, right?

Yvette Hampton:

That’s why you had them.

Dr. Brian Ray:

They’re a blessing from God. They’re a blessing to be. Around. I don’t mean they’re always wonderful to be around, I just mean it’s a blessing to be with our children. Yeah, it’s good to be with them. So when I first got saved, when God brought me into his kingdom, I knew immediately that the Bible, the Word of God, is what is sufficient for everything we need to know and how to live and how to enjoy God and let Him change us and sanctify us. I knew that. So if you’re a Christian, there’s no choice. You must be a scripturalist. You have to go to God’s word to answer questions about everything in life. And so way back, I asked myself, what does the Word of God say about the education of children? And education is a very holistic, broad term that has to do with things like academics, reading, writing, arithmetic, math, whatever. And it has to do with values, morals, ways of thinking, how to do things, how to treat your neighbor. All of that is a part of education. And I will challenge any Christian who’s thinking, I don’t want to home school or I shouldn’t have to homeschool, or there’s nothing in the Bible about education. There’s a lot in the Bible about education all through the Proverbs, in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy, in the Psalms, in the New Testament. There’s a lot about the education of children. And over and over and over again I ask people, who does God say, has the let’s quit using the word right? Who has the duty and the responsibility responsibility to be the main educators of children? And I present this, and you’re going to have to say it’s the parents. And then you say in the Bible, does God give you the choice to just delegate it to anybody you want? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. So whether it was easier or harder, whatever, whether children were fussing with us or happy with us as parents, it was the philosophy and the theology and the desire to be together as a family that really drove us. And I like to call it parent directed home based education. Discipleship. Now, that’s just a clunky mouthful, but homeschooling, the word homeschooling does not capture it at all because it’s not institutional school at home.

Yvette Hampton:

Right? It’s not called home academics.

Dr. Brian Ray:

No.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, no, you’re right. One of my favorite lines in the movie is where Heidi says where she got to the point where she realized that homeschooling was discipleship. And I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about. And so many parents, and I’ve talked to many of them parents who will say, I don’t think I’m called to homeschool. And we’ll say, you are called to homeschool if you love and I don’t say that if you love Jesus and you don’t homeschool, clearly you’re not a Christian. I don’t mean it like that. I’m just saying if you are a professing Christian and you are committed to discipling the hearts of your children, it’s impossible to do that all of the time when they’re away from you, most of the time. And God really does give us the responsibility, like you said, and the duty to home educate, to disciple our kids, to teach them His Word day in and day out, when they walk, when they sit, when they wake up. Psalm One says to not walk in the counsel of the wicked. Yes, it is so important.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yeah, there’s a lot on this event. I used to teach a philosophy of education course at a Christian college for five years. And every year I got two sections of people who are planning to be teachers. So I got to kind of teach and indoctrinate ten groups of teachers. And when we would go through the Bible on education, on children, many, many of them, and they were raised in mostly Christian homes, and a lot of them went to Christian schools and we would just be reading the Bible and studying. And I would not mention homeschooling, but most of them by the end of it said, you’re just talking about homeschooling. I said, I never used the word. You just came to that conclusion on your own because you’re studying the word of God. And I’d like to challenge people gently but firmly. Parents who have, whether their oldest child is three years old or their oldest child is twelve year olds, they might say something like, well, I just don’t know. Why would home school I want to flip the question around. Why would you send your child away from home, away from you to be taught, trained and indoctrinated in a system that is not designed and never was designed to lift up the name of the King of the universe, Jesus Christ, and has never been and never will be designed to preach the gospel to your child? Why would you send your child away to know that’s really the question. And right now in that question, I’m leaving out Christian schools for now, because that’s a little more complicated conversation. But that’s the real question for parents who profess Christ, what does God say in the Bible? Not what does somebody else say? And why would you send your child away to be taught, trained and indoctrinated by mainly people who hate Jesus?

Yvette Hampton:

And we talked about why you and your wife Betsy chose to homeschool. And then we talked a little bit about the philosophy of home education. That’s kind of what we ended on yesterday, on Wednesday. Do you have any more to add to the philosophy of homeschool?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yes, I said something at the end that I wanted to flip the question around for parents, especially those who profess to be Christians, when they say, well, I’m not sure I should homeschool, or why would I home school? And I asked them, let’s flip it around and say, why would you send your child away from you and away from home for 6 hours per day, maybe more on a bus ride and all that to be taught, trained and indoctrinated by people who do not like the gospel. They do not like the good news of Jesus Christ. I even said something like hate Jesus. Well, remember Jesus said you’re either with me or you’re against me. Right? So I’m not making up stuff here. But I also wanted to say that it’s important for everybody I don’t care whether right now listening is a new Ager or a secular humanist or a pagan, or a Wiccan, or a Christian or a Muslim or a Mormon or a Jew, it doesn’t matter. All education, whether it’s being done at a thing we call public school or at a thing we call private school or by homeschooling, is the teaching, training and indoctrination of children. That is the truth. And I know it really bothers people when I use the word indoctrination, but all that means go look it up. There are different definitions of indoctrination. I’m not talking about under a bright white light. You haven’t been able to eat for 39 hours and they’re keeping 120 degrees in your cell, your isolation. So that’s not what there’s. Indoctrination just means putting in doctrine, putting in propositions, putting in concepts, putting in principles into a child’s heart and mind. We all know that’s what’s being done in private schools. We all know that’s what’s being done in public schools. We all know that’s what’s being done in homeschooling. So if you’re a professing Christian, you are supposed to be doing that the biblical worldview with your children. And regardless of whether you’re a Christian, I’m glad that you’re considering homeschooling. Because you see, parent directed home based education is a design by God. It’s not something that people in the last 35 years in America made up. It’s not just this fabricated idea. And actually a parent directed home based education improves our local communities. It doesn’t matter what your worldview is, it improves our nations all over the country. So I wanted to say that about it, that it is a good thing for communities and societies regardless of the test scores. I’m glad what you said about the test scores. Yvette, I mean, on average, statistically speaking, let’s say your child is below average on a test, he or she would do even worse probably if in public school. So just keep that in mind, right?

Yvette Hampton:

So you’re talking about indoctrination and you gave a fantastic definition of it. I want to actually read out of Webster’s Dictionary the definition of indoctrination is this it’s teaching a doctrine, principle or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view. And so you hit it right on the nail. I mean, that’s exactly what our kids are being indoctrinated by somebody. It doesn’t matter whether they’re being indoctrinated by the public school, private school, social media, or their parents. Every child is being indoctrinated somewhere by someone. And so as their parents. We have to take that role on and say, okay, this is where indoctrination is going to happen in our kids lives. It’s going to happen in our home under the umbrella of God’s Word, and we are going to indoctrinate our kids, and really, we’re just training them up right as God has called us to do so. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can do this. I know it’s a scary thing. It’s scary for me. It’s scary for pretty much every homeschool mom I’ve ever met. But by God’s grace, we can continue doing this. All right, so we’ve talked about, again, the academic achievement. Let’s talk you touched just a little bit on this, but I want to dig into this a little more about the social and emotional development of homeschool kids. What have you found with your research on that?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Something you just said made me I was ready. You gave me a segue of it. You said it can be scary for parents to think about doing this homeschooling thing. I don’t think you meant this, but it could imply in people’s head, I’m doing it all alone. No, you’re not. You’re not doing it all alone. If you’re a human being, you are a social creature, right? And if you are a Christian, you’re engaged in what we call a local church. And when you home school and you don’t quit homeschooling, that means you never send them away to be indoctrinated by somebody else, or you decide to stop them being indoctrinated by somebody else, and you bring them back home. You have all kinds of possibilities. You have what everybody knows now we call home school co ops. And I don’t even know if people know what that means. Cooperative. That’s what it means. It’s a cooperative. So you do things together. You have colleagues, you collaborate, you have fun know, you help each other, cry on each other’s shoulders. You give each other ideas. You maybe say, I hate math, and I don’t even want to learn math, so I’m going to have Susie Q in my co op. She’s going to teach the math class in our group, and then you have fun doing it together. So that is my segue to the research on homeschooling. The implication by the negative critics and the naysayers from 39 years ago till now is homeschool people hide in Sellers in northern Idaho, and they never interact with anybody. It is so absolutely false. It’s a tiny, tiny minority of homeschoolers who might do something like that. I’m not saying there are none, but it’s a tiny minority. And even then, hey, look it go back 180 years in American history. There were people who lived basically alone, a mom and a dad and maybe 23456 children, and they maybe got look.

Yvette Hampton:

At the Ingalls family.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yeah. And they maybe got to see somebody once a week or once a month or whatever. They were law abiding. Citizens. They learned how to read. They knew how to work hard. They knew how to be more. What more do you want? I mean, what more do we get than that? Or do we even get that from half the graduates of public schools? Maybe not. Okay, so we have the fact that homeschooling interact with other people, and they have a mom and a dad. And I think a really key important thing for people to keep in mind here is that most of the time when children go to institutional schooling, they model much of the time after peers. So seven year olds are looking at seven year olds as their models. Twelve year olds are looking at twelve year olds as their models. But what would we all say? Do you want your child to model after a mature, kind, hardworking adult or after a seven year old? You want them to model after the adult. So we’re all kind of messed up in our heads about what this whole peer interaction thing is about. There’s no research. I’ve looked and looked and looked and looked. There’s no research anywhere that shows children need to be with 25 other kids plus or minus eleven months their age turn out to be how to read, knowing how to read, knowing how to do basic math, knowing how to be law abiding, knowing how to keep the golden rule. There’s no research like that. And now we have the opposite. We have almost 40 years of research saying that when you look at homeschool kids, they’re doing better in terms of social and emotional development. They model after adults. They know how to interact with adults, they know how to interact with babies. They’re respectful, they’re kind. I’m not saying they’re all perfect. Nobody’s saying that. But on average, they’re doing better.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, I agree. And I see that in a lot of ways. I’m going to kind of twist this question a little bit for you because I’m curious to know if you’ve done any research on this specifically. I feel like kids in general, and I may be opening up a huge can of worms here, and if I am, just say we’ll talk about that on another episode, and then we’ll have to come back. Kids today, I think as I’m watching my girls who are both in the teen ish years, one’s closer to being an adult, one’s just entering into her teen years. There are two things that I see that have really impacted them socially and emotionally. And I don’t this is not just home school related. This is kids related, is COVID and social media. Those two things, I think, have had a great impact on kids emotions and their social anxiety, ability to socialize with other kids. Have you done any research on that end at all? And if so, what are you seeing?

Dr. Brian Ray:

I’ve only reviewed research, not personally done research. But it’s fascinating to ask that I just read today another set of statistics from the CDC, the federal government. Not that I necessarily trust them, but anyway, depression rates are completely gone out of off the charts. It’s like at least 20 some percent of adults are depressed or more depressed. There’s research that’s very clear from the past year that researchers have been doing about teens. The suicidal ideation is up statistically in the last few years, and it was already going up, it looks like. I don’t think there’s any way for anybody to make an argument that institutionalizing children in these places we call school, where most of us went, is improving their psychological health. I don’t know where there’s an argument for that. When you look at the government lockdowns and mask mandates and injection mandates and all that, and scaring the children and adults half to death, that to even interact with people would make them sick. And I’m going to be careful here, too. But it has had a very negative effect and many research are now admitting that the same things that they once called conspiracy theory are true. And so it’s not good at all. There’s been a lot of that. And the social media Yvette, we know from research that there’s addiction, it’s not health, it’s negative to their social skills. So I really would pray that parents here’s the problem even parents who profess to be Christians and who homeschool their children have to admit that they have been slowly boiled in the water like that frog we all know about. And I’m guessing a large portion of people listening right now are way more on screen time and social media than they ever should be. They need to get off of it and get outside with their children, do things with their children. Not only we have all that. I mean, you’ve got me on a roll, NHERI Vet. Not only do we have that, we have skyrocketing obesity rates. The majority of American young adults cannot even get into the military now because they’re obese. All of this is tied together. It’s all tied together. And it’s also tied into the fact that many parents, including some watching, are more worried about what their children think than what they know is good for their children. So when they say, hey, Billy and Susie, get outside and you’re going to go play for 15 minutes, I don’t want you, then the parents buckle to that, but they’ve got to say you’re going out. And then even better would be if the parents would go outside with them. But you’ve got me on a topic and there’s a lot of negative impact, especially over the last few years from both government controls on those things we were just talking about and children and parents spending way too much time sitting and looking at the screen.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, and social media is you’re right on all of that. When I think about kids being in school, public or private, social media is one of the reasons now that we can add to the list of not having our kids in school because they are exposed to everything. There are no limits. Teachers can try to take phones away. Administration can try to put lockdowns on them, whatever. It’s never going to happen.

Dr. Brian Ray:

It doesn’t work.

Yvette Hampton:

As long as kids have phones in their pockets and in their backpacks, all it takes is sneaking into the bathroom and pulling up some websites, even if they’re not looking at anything inappropriate. It’s just the addiction of all the kids standing around on their phones all Ray long. And so all the kids feel like they have to do that because it’s what all their friends are doing. And you don’t want to be the odd, weird one out who’s not on your phone. And so, I mean, it just is so destructive. And so you talk about weird.

Dr. Brian Ray:

There’s research on it, home school research on it. It’s harming them. It’s harming them all the way through. So homeschoolers, you have the option to not do that. And mom and dad, you have the option to be disciplined yourself. So when you all get home at night and you say, hey, there’s the basket over there. And if your children do have cell phones and mom and dad, your cell phone goes in the basket for a couple of hours together as a family.

Yvette Hampton:

I want to talk about the success of the homeschooled kids now who are into their adulthood, because we’ve heard, of course, that there are adults who are like, oh, I hated being homeschooled. It was a terrible thing for me. And then you’ve got adults who are like, I was homeschooled my whole life, and it’s been amazing. And you have definitely both ends of the spectrum. And then, of course, as homeschooled parents today, we worry about whether or not our kids will make it into adulthood successfully and what that will look like. And when I say successfully, I know Dr. Ray’s heart is the same. I don’t mean being able to get the best education with the best job so that they can make the most money and have the biggest house and the best vacations. I mean, success according to what God has called them to do. So talk a little bit about success of the homeschool in adulthood now that.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Has been studied in many different ways. I’ve got to do a few of those studies, and some others have done it. And so they range all the way from, okay, now you’re an adult. How often are you depressed? Okay, how much are you into alcohol abuse? If you went to college, what’s your GPA? And did you finish college? Do you vote? Do you trust the government? I mean, there’s so many fascinating studies about adults, but here’s all of those together, when you put them all in one big pot, stirred up, get this 169 percent of peer reviewed studies on adults who are home educated show that they are doing better statistically than those who went to institutional schools. So in other words, the large majority of the studies say they’re doing better. So what about the other 31% of the studies? Most of those say, hey, no difference in what we measured. So in other words, they’re doing as well or better less addiction to drugs, less depression, less problems acting out toward other people doing better in college, if they go to college. So that’s just what we know so far. I mean, again, Yvette, everybody has to remember this does not mean all people who are homeschooled are rocket scientists who love life and never get depressed. It doesn’t mean that. But it does mean, as a group, there’s something about home education that is helping people more than other people. And you kind of mentioned something there for a minute about we have all these stories of, well, I was home educated. I hated it. Well, I was home educated. The best thing since sliced bread. Remember, those are just anecdotes and now this is my experience. I’m going to tell you my experience. Most of the ones who say it was bad, they were raised by Christian parents, and they themselves now, these adults are not Christians, okay? They’re making complaints about the philosophy under which they were raised. Remember all the schools we said, whether they’re public schooling, private school, or homeschooling, teach a philosophy to their children. And you know what? Home of them, when they get older, reject that philosophy. Some people who are raised in public schools who are taught a secular humanistic, evolutionistic status, Marxist LGBTQ philosophy, they reject that and they become Christians. Right?

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Dr. Brian Ray:

So you have the same thing with homeschooling. But overall, if you look at it kind of from a research, quantitative, qualitative perspective, the home educated are doing better in adulthood.

Yvette Hampton:

That’s exciting news. It brings hope, I think. I know for myself as a homeschool mom, that gives me a lot of hope. Let’s talk really quickly about the changing demographics of the homeschool community because you have seen it change drastically in 39 years. I mean, we’ve seen the public school system change drastically, but homeschooling, I think, has really changed drastically. Talk about that for a minute.

Dr. Brian Ray:

At the beginning of the modern homeschool movement, there was a stereotype, and there’s always a little bit of truth to a stereotype.

Yvette Hampton:

Right?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Homeschoolers were either kind of like left wing, hippie wear birkenstocks, move to the country, blow up your TV, and raise a know that was one stereotype. Or they were more like right wing, white, Christian fundamentalist Bible thumpers. All right? So those stereotypes are not exactly true, but there was some truth to it. There was always the variety. But keep in mind, there was always the variety. So what we’ve seen over the last 35 to 40 years, the variety is there, and it’s just increasing, whereas maybe I’m just going to make up numbers here. Maybe 20 years ago, you would not have found online well, there wasn’t so much online, but anyway, you would not have found a Wiccan home school group, or you would not have found a Naturist home school group. Now you can find almost everything online. You can find almost everything online. In terms of philosophy. Why do I mention philosophy? Because the philosophy drives almost everything. Right. So philosophy drives what kind of curriculum you choose and how you sure.

Yvette Hampton:

It goes back to indoctrination.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Sure. And remember, we’ve had john Holtz was one of the first people promoting what we call homeschooling today, and he talked about unschooling. We’ve had that for 40 years. Right. I mean, that’s a big difference from structured school at home. So we’ve had all these varieties. Another significant change we’ve seen is that many more people from different ethnicities are homeschooling or different skin colors, whatever you want to call it. Way more of that than we saw before. Yes, it did look very white Anglo before, and now it does. Not anymore. I mean, homeschooling has grown tremendously, especially in the last five. Very diverse amongst black families. African Americans and Hispanics are coming. Most people don’t even talk about down. When you go to the Southwest and you speak at a homeschool conference in the Southwest, people don’t even specify Hispanic or not. They’re just NHERI. It’s interesting. That tells you something about our culture. But anyway, so we’ve seen changes in that. We’ve seen a big variety in what’s available to people online. So that kind of alters what people do and how they do it. There’s just a lot of changes. Many changes.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, many good changes. Some not so exciting, not so good. But I think overall the changes have been really good. And I think from personally, the change that I think is the most exciting is the acceptance of homeschooling is that people no longer look at homeschoolers and are like, what you’re doing? What you’re teaching your kids at home? I mean, I’m out with my kids all the time, and this is our 13th year of homeschooling, and we lived in Southern California. And always, I mean, since my girls were in kindergarten, we always have made our way out into the grocery store, into the library, wherever. We just have done life. And we’ve had a couple of people give us funny looks, oh, are you girls out of school today? And they’ll say, no, we’re homeschooling. Oh, okay. But not so much anymore. I mean, it is just so widely accepted, and not even just accepted, it’s celebrated. I think more and more parents, more and more people, I should say, are opening up their eyes to what’s happening in the public schools. And they’re going, oh. And almost always they say, oh, I have a neighborhood home schools, or my niece home school or my daughter home school. And it’s like they’re excited to know someone else who’s part of this club. So that’s really cool. All right, I want to end with one question. This is kind of a tough topic, and I don’t want to park too long NHERI. But I think that it needs to be addressed. And I think in your research, you have tackled this a little bit, and people will talk about child abuse and neglect in homeschool families, and of course, you’ll hear stories about these kids, which it’s so heartbreaking. They have been terribly abused, and the parents will state, oh, well, we homeschool them because people always ask the question, well, why weren’t they in school? Why didn’t anybody notice that these kids were being chained up or rocked up or neglected, malnourished, whatever? And they put that homeschool label on them. And of course, kids who are in institutional school, there’s lots of child abuse that goes on there too. Have you done specific research when it comes to the area of child abuse and neglect of institutionally schooled kids versus homeschool kids?

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yes, it’s a study that I had been thinking about doing for probably at least ten years of it. And finally okay, wow. A couple of years ago, we got on it, and people like people watching right now gave us money to support the study. Before I get into that, because I know we got to go fast. First of all yes. In public school families, home school families, and private school families, sometimes parents do evil things, and it’s evil and it’s bad. So let’s just get that off on the table and off the table. So no one’s excusing that ever, right?

Yvette Hampton:

No justification for it, ever.

Dr. Brian Ray:

Yeah. We wanted to know from a quantitative perspective and to help an honest discussion for policy and law. Okay, so is there any difference? Because we’ve had people, including professors, just throw out wild claims that homeschooling either disproportionately abuse their children or it’s a way to really hide it, that kind of thing. So we really want to know about so my colleague and I, Dr. Denise Shaquille, worked on this, and we started collecting data, and we finally got it done and published it in a peer reviewed journal last fall. You can find it, and it’s posted online, and it’s open access, which means anybody can read it, and you don’t have to pay $40 to read the article, which is wonderful. This is what we found, two big, major findings. Our subjects are adults, okay? And they’re looking back at growing up. There are a lot of reasons for doing it that way. It’s extremely difficult to query minors about this kind of thing. So we worked with adults and told us they told us what happened to them growing up. First major finding when you statistically put into the model demographics, like parent education level, family income, how many years children had been or not been in foster care, ethnicity. Race, all those things when you put those in like you should do in most any study, no significant difference between those who were institutionally schooled and those who were homeschool in terms of abuse and neglect growing up. No significant difference. Now we’ll come back to that second major finding for the no significantly different amount of abuse that had been perpetrated on those who were homeschooled. So remember, no significant difference home school versus schooled for those who were homeschooled, it was not being done the evil things by their parents in the home. It was being done to them outside the home at places like schools or museums or sports or those kinds of things. So that’s the second major of two major findings of the study. So what does that mean? People who wanted homeschooling to look good were a little disappointed and people who wanted institutional schooling to look good were kind of disappointed. No significant difference. And then for that which was happening to those who were homeschool, that was actually a positive finding that it was not happening at home, it was happening outside the home. So that’s really a big deal. It doesn’t sound like the end of the world kind of study, but it’s a big deal because it’s the opposite of what a lot of negative critics were claiming without, you know, first of know, we presume in America that people are innocent until they’re found guilty. And the biblical role of government is to punish evildoers. It’s not to try to catch somebody who might do something wrong. We just don’t work that way. So the people who want to control homeschooling thinking maybe it’ll do better for life, I mean, they’re wrong in terms of constitutional philosophy and they’re wrong in terms of biblical philosophy. Secondly, now we have concrete evidence that there’s no problem. There’s no problem to try to solve.

How To Homeschool – My Original Roadmap

When I was just diving into homeschooling for the first time, my good friend, Holly Lerner, gave me a simple two-page document, which became my early roadmap for success. Over the years, Holly served as a homeschooling and motherhood mentor to me, and her example has been a constant inspiration and encouragement.

I still have that original document from Holly. Simply titled: “How to Homeschool,” the guide that inspired me can now inspire thousands of new homeschooling moms.

I recently sat down with Kristi Clover to record an interview for the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast (this four-part interview will air 9/4, 9/6, 9/7, 9/8/2023), and as I was planning I realized that with so many new families beginning to homeschool it was time to go back to the basics and record a “How to Homeschool” guide. So, once again, I brought out Holly’s instructions, and these served as a guide to my interview with Kristi.

How to Homeschool, by Holly Lerner

Foundation for Parenting

Ecclesiastes 12:13 “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Why We Homeschool

  • Train our children in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), godly character
  • Teach obedience (Colossians 3:20) Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”
  • Titus 2:3-5
    • “teaching what is good
    • “love [our] children” (delight in them)
    • “workers at home”
    • “that the word of God may not be dishonored”

How to Make Decisions

  • Pray (Phil 4:6) “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
  • Focus on God: glory to God and serve God
  • Always LOVE (1 Cor 13:1-3) If I have lots of great things, “but have not love, I gain nothing.”
  • Remember the future: Learn these and teach by modeling godly character traits in our home
    • Diligence
    • Faith
    • Moral excellence
    • Knowledge
    • Self-control
    • Perseverance
    • Godliness
    • Brotherly kindness
    • Love
  • 2 Peter 1:5-7 “… make every effort to supplement your faithwith virtue, and virtuewith knowledge,and knowledge with self-control, and self-controlwith steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,and godlinesswith brotherly affection, and brotherly affectionwith love.”

Priorities in Education & Training

  • Have a mindset to guide our thinking in discouraging times (What Scripture do we need to dwell on when we are discouraged?)
  • IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT ACADEMICS!!! Academics are one aspect of one of four areas of the chart. Don’t let it take over everything else.
  • Prioritize academic subjects (don’t try to do everything every day)

How to Approach Teaching Academics

  • Academics are an opportunity to…
    • Teach character
      • Do it when they don’t like it
      • Do it diligently
      • Persevere when it’s hard
    • Learn skills to equip children for future service to God
  • Realize and Remember that…
      • We are not imitating the school system or a school setting, so don’t compare to schools or grade level skills or government standards
      • Children will learn quickly when they are ready, so don’t worry if you think they seem “behind” or if you are not accomplishing what you had hoped to accomplish
  • Pick one thing to do well and consistently
      • Aim for independence
      • Read
      • Write
      • Math
      • Choose something that you can do with all your children
    • Choose 1 subject to focus on each year (so you can build slowly and get better at all of this!)
  • Manage Age Ranges and Abilities
      • List activities that the little ones (nonreaders) can do independently
    • Limit individual instruction for the older ones to how long the youngest can be independent (or juggle with an older one working with a younger one so you can teach a 3rd one or more…)
  • Set Goals for each year – as a family and for each child
  • Use what you have!
    • You don’t have to buy curriculum or find the “perfect” thing in order to be successful/productive/teaching well.

I pray that this simple outline serves you as well as it has served our family.

Recommended Resources:

Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for free.

Free Homeschool Survival Kit

Homegrown Generation Family Expo – Online Homeschool Conference. Get instant access to all of the sessions from 2023 and 2020 (over 50 hours of content)!

The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast – Biblical homeschooling, parenting, and family discipleship encouragement and advice. Each show shares practical advice to help point our children to Christ, build a solid Biblical worldview, teach effectively, preserve our marriages, manage our homes, and approach child-rearing and discipline issues with a heart-centered focus that will result in confident, biblically-minded, wise, well-balanced adults.

The Homeschool Insights Podcast – Practical, Biblical, home education and parenting encouragement and resources in under ten minutes a day.

More on this topic:

This is Why We Homeschool

Homeschooling Multiple Ages: 20 Secrets to Simplify Teaching and Make History Come Alive

Rescuing Our Children: An Urgent Call to Take Back Education

Rescuing Our Children: An Urgent Call to Take Back Education

“Parents must understand that sending their children into the public school system without adequate training is like sending them into a spiritual war unarmed.”

Alex Newman

In March, we had the privilege of having Alex Newman join us as a speaker for the Homegrown Generation Family Expo, with a session titled “Rescuing Our Children.” In that session, Alex hit upon a topic that is crucial to parents. Alex argues that parents have the sole responsibility of educating their children, and using government funding to provide that education jeopardizes not only the quality of education but also religious freedom. He presents a passionate plea to parents to reclaim their rightful role as the primary educators of their children. Newman’s insights shed light on the dire state of our current education system and offers a compelling case for homeschooling as a powerful antidote. Let’s take a closer look at some key takeaways from this eye-opening discussion.

“God has given clear responsibilities, clear authorities to different people, different institutions. And the Bible is very clear about who is ultimately responsible for the education and the discipling of children. It’s parents. And maybe you could argue there’s a supplemental role there for the church, certainly not the civil government, not Caesar.”

Alex Newman

The Perils of Government Funding:

Newman ardently argues that relying on government funds for education may compromise our educational and religious freedoms. He cautions against accepting any financial assistance tied to government regulations, citing examples from Canada, where government funding has led to restrictions on private and religious schools. He believes that such reliance on government funding, albeit seemingly beneficial at first, can ultimately lead to government control over what can and cannot be taught in schools. Newman stresses the importance of seeking support from communities and churches, rather than placing trust in government programs.

For more on this subject, read our comprehensive article on school choice here.

“Using government funds for education puts educational and religious freedoms at risk.”

Alex Newman

Homeschooling as a Vital Solution:

Within the episode, Newman underscores the importance of homeschooling as the best alternative to public schooling. Citing concerns about the public school system as a wicked place, he emphasizes the urgency of providing children with solid biblical education and grounding in God’s word. Newman draws from Psalm 1:1-2, which urges parents to guide their children away from wicked counsel and seeks to equip parents with the necessary tools for homeschooling. He understands that parental responsibilities may seem overwhelming, but encourages hesitant parents to “just go for it.”

Safeguarding Educational and Religious Liberties:

Newman strongly recommends reading Education: Does God Have an Opinion? by Israel Wayne, as it provides deep insights into the biblical foundations of homeschooling. He advocates against bills like HB1 in Florida, which plans to provide tax money to homeschoolers and private school students, but also subjects them to Common Core-aligned tests. Such measures, Newman suggests, place vulnerable homeschooling families at risk and interfere with their educational autonomy.

“What I tell people is, first and foremost, get your own children out of the public schools. And once your own children are safe, then you can worry about what’s happening in the public school system. I don’t believe that it’s a sensible strategy, and I don’t believe that it’s a biblical strategy to send your kids into a spiritual war when they haven’t been properly trained. Your kids are not going to end up being assault and light.”

Alex Newman

The Unsettling Truths and Solutions:

“They’re being dumbed down on an industrial scale. […] What they are going to learn is a fraudulent version of history, a totally fraudulent worldview, a totally fraudulent understanding of science, and some of the most grotesque things on sexual issues that you can even begin to imagine.”

Alex Newman

Newman delves into the troubling origins of our public school system, tracing its roots back to non-Christian thinkers like Plato and Robert Owen. He explains how these ideologies paved the way for the adoption of government-based education, ultimately aiming to undermine Christianity and promote socialist ideals. With the system hell-bent on indoctrination and dumbing down, Newman highlights the urgent need for parents to shield their children and dismantle the public system through homeschooling or alternative educational approaches.

Quoting Alex, “The public school system was designed to control children and create worker drones.” He unravels how the path towards total power for totalitarians lies in molding young minds, capturing not only their educational growth but their souls as well. This revelation serves as a wake-up call for parents to take back control of their children’s education.

Conclusion:

As parents, we are left with a resounding call to action. Alex’s wake up call encourages fervent prayer, research, and equipping ourselves with the necessary tools to provide our children with a holistic education founded on biblical principles. The power to rescue our children lies in our hands.

If you resonate with the urgency to reclaim education from the clutches of the public school system, we highly recommend giving this episode a listen. You will find not only a wealth of knowledge and inspiration but also practical steps you can take to become the primary educator your children deserve.

Remember, by shaping hearts and minds with a biblical worldview, we can empower our children to be discerning, courageous, and capable individuals who will impact the world for God’s glory.

Recommended Resources:

Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children, by Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman

Education: Does God Have an Opinion? by Israel Wayne

Education: The Key to Saving Our Nation – Alex Newman on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Fighting For Our Children – Alex Newman on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Discussion Questions:

Want to use this interview for a co-op meeting or small group? Here are a few discussion questions to keep the conversation moving in the right direction:

1. What is Alex Neman’s perspective on the public school system, and why does he hold this opinion?

2. What are some of the examples cited by Alex to support his arguments against government funding for education?

3. Why is the guest critical of the HB1 bill in Florida?

4. What are Alex’s thoughts on colleges actively seeking out homeschoolers? Why does he believe this is the case?

5. What is Alex Neman’s opinion on elite universities, and what is his advice for finding a good college?

6. What does Alex believe is the ultimate agenda behind the public school system?

7. What does Alex propose as a solution for parents who wish to opt-out of contributing to public schools with their tax money?

8. What are some of the historical roots of government-based education?

9. Why should we be concerned about the indoctrination and “dumbing down” of children in the American public school system?

10. What is Alex’s advice for parents who wish to protect their children from the dangers of cultural trends and spiritual warfare?

It’s not too late to enjoy the Homegrown Generation Family Expo – now at a new, lower price! Register today for lifetime access to every session – and BONUS access to the 2020 conference – all for just $20.  Register at HomegrownGeneration.com.

Keep it FREE:

We have always wanted to make the barrier to entry for homeschooling as low as possible, so we have made all but one of our resources completely free (and we’re considering how we can make that one free too). READ MORE HERE.

We pray that the Schoolhouse Rocked Ministry is a blessing to you and your family. Here are a few ways to be involved in this important mission…

Read the full transcript to “Rescuing our Children,” with Alex Newman below:

Continue reading “Rescuing Our Children: An Urgent Call to Take Back Education”

Equal Poverty For All: A Miserable Goal for Education

Yvette and I got to do one of our favorite things over the weekend. We attended a homeschool conference in Moore, Oklahoma where we showed Schoolhouse Rocked and spoke on a few panels. More importantly, we got to connect with homeschooling families. We always leave these conferences encouraged and energized.

We were once again struck by how many NEW homeschooling families were there. One of the most important things that COVID-19 did was open millions of parents’ eyes to how desperately public schools were failing. And many parents chose to bring their children home for good!

By What Measure?

But is the public school system actually failing? From the consumer perspective – that of the student, parent, and taxpayer – it’s clear we are not getting what we desire. Students are provided with poor academic outcomes. Parents have their authority undermined and their trust betrayed. The American taxpayer watches as every year school spending increases while school safety declines, test scores decline, and the anti-Christian, anti-family, and anti-American values being taught in the classroom result in moral decline, political unrest, and cultural chaos.

From the perspective of the founders and the architects of the system it should be understood that government schools are a raving success. The worldview and values taught in the classroom are adopted by the majority of the students and the system produces millions of mostly compliant workers who will continue to pay taxes and won’t overthrow their leaders. Further, they will continue to feed the system with fresh generations of disciples to repeat the process.

I often say, “public schools are the world’s most effective evangelistic organizations.” The vast majority of disciples who pass through the system come out dedicated, unquestioning adherents to the religious worldview of the schools – regardless of the religious upbringing they receive at home or church. 

“The model for utopia…equal poverty for all”

John Dewey

In order to understand the true aim of the public school system and what they are succeeding at, let’s look at what the father of progressive education, John Dewey, had to say.

Here are a few excerpts from the excellent book, Crimes of the Educators (2014) by Sam Blumenfeld and Alex Newman.

“John Dewey (1885-1952) is generally lauded as the father of progressive education” (p. 1). 

“Dewey stated that the only way to undermine the capitalist system was to get rid of the emphasis primary schools placed on the development of high literacy and independent intelligence” (p. 1).

“Destroying the brainpower of a nation is an act of war against that nation” (p. 4).

“Dewey admitted that the reading program he was proposing would not be as effective as the traditional method” (p. 7).

“The plea for the predominance of learning to read in early school-life because of the great importance attached to literature seems to me a perversion” The Primary-Education Fetich by John Dewey (p. 8).

“The model for utopia…equal poverty for all” (p. 9).

Co-author of Crimes of the EducatorsAlex Newman, is a regular guest on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast and a speaker for the Homegrown Generation Family ExpoYou can hear more from him on this topic here.

(Hat tip to Dr. Douglas J. Pietersma for sharing these quotes.)

As homeschooling parents we have the perfect opportunity to fight back. We have the privilege of training our kids’ hearts and minds in truth, day by day. In the words of Deuteronomy 6:5-7, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Meeke Addison, co-host of Airing the Addisons on American Family Radio, recently joined Yvette Hampton on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast to talk about how to train our children for the cultural battle that they will inevitably face. She explains why we need to keep a close eye on politics, pop culture, and the church; and how to equip our kids to effectively engage in and transform culture.

We pray that the Schoolhouse Rocked Ministry is a blessing to you and your family. Here are a few ways to be involved in this important mission…

Post Thumbnail photo credit, Yves Alarie on Unsplash.com

Why June is the Perfect Month to Start Homeschooling

It’s that time of year again. Each June public and private school teachers, unions, and education associations fall all over themselves in the ultimate virtue signaling contest – trying to demonstrate who has the most “pride.”

Even while Target, Bud Light, The North Face, and Kohl’s are reeling from large-scale boycotts in response to woke LGBTQ+ ad campaigns and product displays, teachers and administrators are doubling down on their support of gay and trans indoctrination in classrooms and school libraries across the country.

On the first night of the month, in a little under an hour, I was able to find dozens of instances of teachers and their representative organizations changing their social media avatars, and posting their “pride month” celebrations. Tens of thousands more of these posts will be made throughout the month.

But it’s important to remember that the indoctrination isn’t reserved just for June. This is their agenda year round. Atheism, Marxism, Globalism, Multiculturalism, and unrestricted sexual exploration are the underlying values that modern public education is built on – and unfortunately, many private schools are following suit.

It’s not just individuals and private organizations pushing this agenda. The U.S. Department of Education is heading up the charge toward sexual deviancy, abortion, gender confusion, and genital mutilation. Not only do they openly advocate for LGBT positions, but they set the national standards and hold the purse strings that direct the activities of schools in every state (yes, even the conservative ones).

In fact, not only are they pushing this agenda in the classroom, but they are using affirmative action to actively hire teachers who will promote these ideals.

National Education Association Policy Statements for 2022-2023 state, “NEA reaffirms its strong support for the use of affirmative action in employment (a) to cure the effects of past ethnic or gender discrimination by the particular employer involved, and (b) to achieve or maintain ethnic or gender diversity in an employer’s workforce.”

In their push to normalize gender confusion the NEA is training teachers through their National Education Association Pronoun Guide, which includes the following instruction for teachers:

“Role model your pronouns before inviting everyone to introduce theirs.

‘Hi, my name is Meg and I use she/her/hers pronouns. Could everyone please go around and share their name and pronouns.

Explain what pronouns are and why you’re asking people to introduce theirs before you do.

‘Hey everyone! So during introductions we are going to introduce our name and pronouns. Pronouns are words that we use to replace names, like she/her/hers, he/him/his, or they/ them/theirs. I want to make sure that we are referring to each other in the way that feels most accurate, so we are going to be going around and if everyone could share their name and pronouns that’d be great!‘”

I’m sorry parents. The problem is pervasive and it’s no longer enough to say “it’s not happening in my school” and ignore it. This is the publicly-stated position of the teachers unions and the state and federal education departments that run your schools. It is happening everywhere, you can’t opt out, and it’s your responsibility to protect your children.

“A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.”

Luke 6:40 ESV

Here’s the great news. June is the PERFECT month to start homeschooling!

SUMMER IS HERE!

With the school year ending it’s the perfect time to start fresh. The school year has wrapped up and you can use the summertime to prepare for your first year of homeschooling. Check out our free Homeschool Survival Kit for a step-by-step guide to beginning your homeschool journey. This guide will help you make sure you’re in compliance with your state laws (it’s legal to homeschool in all 50 states) and will give you all of the resources you need to start strong, including recommendations for curriculum, teaching methods, and fun activities to keep your kids engaged.

IT’S THE PERFECT TIME TO DESCHOOL!

We always suggest that parents take some time to “deschool” when transitioning their kids from the classroom to homeschooling. Because home education is so different from the “traditional” school model that most of us are accustomed to, it takes some time for everyone – parents and kids – to adjust. This is where deschooling comes in. During this season of adjustment take it easy. Use this time to build relationships, enjoy the outdoors, build memories together, and rediscover what it means to be a family.

“This is not an exaggeration to say, this is the movement that is needed to save this country.”

Rick Green, Wallbuilders

For parents, this is a great time to observe your children and try to discover what their passions and gifts are. For kids, it’s time to rediscover CHILDHOOD. During this time your kids should re-learn what it means to be a child (or adolescent or teen). Let them play, explore, get dirty, and soak in the sun – and know that the whole time they’ll be learning valuable life skills!

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
    fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Proverbs 1:7 ESV

A quick note: during this deschooling period we do recommend two “academic” pursuits. First, spend time reading God’s Word to your kids (this is a great time to explore the concept of a “morning basket”). If you’ve never done family Bible time together this is a great time to start. As you move into this new season of home education, it’s important to build your academic model on the true foundation of knowledge and wisdom – God’s Word. In fact, homeschooling allows you to integrate the truth of Scripture into every subject.

Next, spend time reading great books to your kids and encourage them to read on their own. While this my seem “school-y,” reading should be viewed as a life-long activity, and reading aloud to your kids is a great way to bond with them.

START THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR FRESH – AT HOME!

If you are reluctant to make this big change, if you think you’re not capable, or if you just don’t know where to start I would encourage you to sit down with your family and watch the documentary Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution tonight. You can stream the film for free here. Not only will it help you to understand the “why” and “how” of home education, but you’ll hear from other parents who NEVER thought they could or would homeschool their kids and are now outspoken advocates for this revolution in education.

Schoolhouse Rocked” will rock your educational world to the foundations and give you and your kids great hope for the future! The old-school paradigm has proven broken and a new way of learning is here. Don’t miss this important film!”

Kirk Cameron

Phonics or Sight Words: What is the Best Method for Teaching Reading?

Recently, Alex Newman, was a guest on The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, with Yvette Hampton and Aby Rinella, to address the current state of education in our nation. During that conversation Alex covered the very important topic of teaching reading through phonics or sight words (also called “look say,” “see say,” whole-word, or whole-language method).

Yvette Hampton:           I want to go back to something that you talked about just a little while ago. You were talking about phonics versus other methods of teaching reading. Talk about that a little bit, because I know that’s something that you’ve studied, and I understand the difference between the two, but I’ve never actually heard anyone explain how has that played into what’s happening today in education?

Alex Newman:              I’ll try to condense it into as quick a time as possible. It’s such a huge subject, but it’s such an important subject. I had the chance to work with Sam Blumenfeldwho was banging the drums on this for 60 years, so I’m so glad you asked me that because I know there’s a lot of homeschool moms out there right now who are thinking about this exact thing. And I know how hard it is because my wife and I — me knowing all this — we tried to go out and find phonics books for our children and we’d order one and we’d open it up and the first page would say, “Here’s the list of sight words your children are going to remember.” Oh my goodness. Kick me in the face, please. Really?!?

Alex Newman:              I’ll try to boil it down quick. There are two basic ways today of teaching reading, and then there are some variations on those, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s just call it two. There’s the phonics method, which has been used from the time we had our written alphabet, going back clear to the Phoenicians. It was an incredible development in human ingenuity. Instead of having symbols represent words or ideas, we had symbols that represented sounds. And so a P makes a “puh” sound and an O makes a “ah” sound, and a P is a “puh” sound, and so that spells, “pop.” That’s very, very simple. That’s phonics. Each symbol represents one or more sounds. You blend those together and then you can decipher any word that you might come across. I mean, it could just be any combination of symbols, and you can sound that out and understand what it’s supposed to mean, assuming it has meaning.

Alex Newman:              The other basic way of teaching reading, which is used all over the United States today, is the whole-word method. It’s got such a bad smell, they started coming up with new disguises for it. They call it the “sight word” method and the “look say” method and now they’ve got “whole-language”. They introduced some caveats and stuff to try to conceal the craziness. But the heart of this one is, you treat the words as symbols themselves. And of course, words are not symbols. Words are collections of symbols that you can sound out to determine what that word means. So the history of this is really instructive.

Alex Newman:              I mean, I don’t want to give any bad feelings toward the people who developed this. They were actually good Christians who had the best of intentions. The guy was called Reverend Gallaudet. He was running an asylum for … they called it the deaf and the dumb back then … in Connecticut, and what he said was, “Well, we can’t teach a deaf child how to sound out a word because you can’t teach a deaf child what the symbol corresponds with in terms of sounds. So, what if …” And he got this idea from some French monastery where they had been trying this out on deaf and mute children. “So, what if we teach the children to memorize entire words as if the word itself were a symbol?” So, take the word “cat” as an example. If you were teaching it phonetically, you would say a C is a “cuh,” an A is a “aah, and a T is a “tuh,” and so the child could then read that by deciphering what each of those symbols stands for.

Alex Newman:              Gallaudet’s method – he actually created a primer for this in early America – was, “Let’s teach the children how to decipher ‘cat’ just from the symbol.” So, C-A-T, you don’t decipher that as a C, an A, and a T. When you see the squiggly lines like that, that means “cat,” and you can memorize those. And what he figured out was really smart kids could memorize hundreds, and really, really smart kids could maybe even memorize thousands of words that way. And so, if you’re a deaf child and you’ve never been able to access the written word because you can’t hear sounds, that is an enormous leap forward in terms of being able to communicate with the world. It was a great development.

Alex Newman:              But then Horace Mann said, “Hey, why don’t we try this in the public schools that I’ve created in Boston?” And they did, and it only took a few years for the quackery to be exposed. I’ve actually got a book behind me right here, The New Illiterates, by Dr. Sam Blumenfeld in 1973, and he has got a treasury in there. In the appendix, he republished the letter that the schoolmasters from all the public schools in Boston wrote to Horace Mann about this quackery that he had put into the schools, teaching non-deaf children to read using the whole-word method. It’s beautiful, it’s eloquent. It’s not written like it would be today. “You’re a poo poo head and we don’t like you, so you should be quiet.” It’s just a beautiful, eloquent explanation of why the whole-word method is not a proper way for teaching reading when you have a phonetic … In China, that’s how they do because that’s the writing system they have. For them, a symbol actually represents a word, so you actually have to memorize tens of thousands of symbols. Our writing system is not like that.

Alex Newman:              So they took it apart, they dismantled it, and in this beautiful essay they said, “Sorry, Mr. Mann. We tried it. It didn’t work.” They actually explained that the children were getting symptoms of what we would today call dyslexia. They said they couldn’t read. They would read words backwards

We didn’t hear about it again until our good friend John Dewey came along and said, “Hey, let’s resurrect that whole-word method.” And he tried it out in that experimental school that the Rockefellers funded. Actually, the kids graduated illiterate. They couldn’t read properly. And John Dewey thought, “Hey, this will be perfect. Let’s create some reading primers.” And he did. He created the Dick and Jane series, which a lot of our parents and our grandparents used. “See Spot run. Run, Spot, run.” This is just teaching the children to memorize the whole word.

Alex Newman:              Now, this is ubiquitous in America. Now, there are still a lot of rogue teachers who will defy the Common Core standards and who will use only phonics, but if the administration figures it out, if the school board figures it out, if the state superintendent figures it out, there’s going to be a big problem. Now, a lot of parents now have figured this out, so they teach their children to read using phonics before they send them to school. And after you know how to read using phonics, all the sight words in the world are not going to hurt you. But it’s such a tragedy and it’s so unnecessary. America was the most literate society on the planet before this innovation came. If you look at the literacy data we have from the early 1800s it is very clear. Dupont de Nemours did a study of literacy in the United States in 1812. He said “not more than 4 in 1,000 young people were unable to read and write even legibly,” he said.

Aby Rinella:                  Wow.

Alex Newman:              If you look at the reading statistics from the government today, they will tell you that most of our children today are below basic proficiency. We have tens of millions … maybe a hundred million, maybe more … who are functionally illiterate. Some parts of Washington DC, half the population is functionally illiterate, and the reason why is very simple. They were taught to memorize words rather than to sound out the words.

Alex Newman:              So, what they do under Common Core now, they say, “Well, first we’re going to do the sight words, then we’ll sprinkle in a little bit of phonics,” after you’ve already built that faulty reflex in your brain. And so that really does enormous, devastating damage to the children, and that’s why so many children today can’t read

I think Satan probably just thought this was brilliant. “Hey, if they can’t read, they can’t read the Bible.”

Yvette Hampton:           That’s right.

Alex Newman:              “And they can’t go to the library, they can’t educate themselves, they won’t know their history, they won’t be able to read their Constitution.”

Yvette Hampton:           That’s right.

Alex Newman:              “This is positively brilliant.” And that brings us to today.

Thankfully, the solution to this problem is clear. There is an effective method for teaching reading to our children. Phonics works.

For more on this subject, listen to our interview with Andrew Pudewa, entitled “The Importance of Reading Aloud.” In this lively conversation, Andrew Pudewa, founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), explains the importance of reading to our children to establish a firm foundation as they become great readers, writers, and communicators. 

Alex Newman is an award-winning international journalist, educator, author, speaker, investor, and consultant who seeks to glorify God in everything he does. In addition to serving as president of Liberty Sentinel Media, Inc, he has written for a wide array of publications in the United States and abroad including the Epoch TimesThe New American, the Law Enforcement Intelligence Brief, WND (World Net Daily)FreedomProject Media, and many more. He also serves as executive director for Public School Exit, a ministry to rescue children from government schools. One of his major works was an exposé of government schools with internationally renowned Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld called Crimes of the Educators published by WND Books, endorsed by conservative leaders ranging from Phyllis Schlafly to Ron Paul. Last year, he travelled across the United States for the “Rescuing Our Children” speaking tour urging parents to get their children out of public school. Alex has appeared on hundreds of TV shows including Newsmax, One America News, the Dove Network, the Christian Television Network, the SonLife Broadcasting Network, and many more. In addition, he serves on several advisory boards for education-focused organizations, including U.S. Parents Involved in Education (USPIE), the Nehemiah Institute, and the Samuel L. Blumenfeld Foundation for Literacy. For the last seven years, Alex has also been teaching advanced economics to some of America’s brightest high-school seniors through FreedomProject Academy, an accredited K-12 Christian school offering a classical education to students worldwide. Alex and his wife homeschool their 4 children. 

Recommended Resources:

Alex Newman – Rescuing our Children Video

Rescuing our Children Special Report

https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-alex-newman

libertysentinel.org

Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children, by Samuel L. Blumenfeld and Alex Newman

Why Johnny Still Can’t Read: A New Look at the Scandal of Our Schools, by Rudolf Franz Flesch 

If you are considering homeschooling or just need some great homeschooling encouragement, please check out HomegrownGeneration.com for over 9 hours of FREE homeschool videos from the 2020 Homegrown Generation Family Expo.

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Teaching Financial Freedom: Hint, Banks Aren’t The Only Option!

Are Banks the Only Option for Our Money?

We learn about the importance of money from a pretty young age.  Whether the lessons come from our parents when we’re young (“money doesn’t grow on trees!”) or when we get old enough to make purchase decisions and realize how much money it really takes to get things we need, want, and desire. As homeschoolers, it is our responsibility to transfer this wisdom to our kids, and while “money doesn’t grow on trees” is a start, raising financially literate, faithful stewards is the goal.

When it comes to business, money plays a vital role. Without it, just like in our personal lives, we are unable to purchase things we need to move our businesses forward.  The need for money can range from product inventory, office equipment, machines for manufacturing, or funds for a marketing campaign.

Most of the lessons we have been taught regarding money revolve around banks.  Banks were established in this country back in 1791 and are usually housed in large, robust buildings that exude a powerful mystique about them.  These institutions tend to make us feel confident that the banks will keep our money safe due to the fact they are FDIC insured, but did you know banks only have 1-2% in reserves to cover deposits? That means, if the banks really were to go under, they are roughly 98% short on covering the loss.  Is it just me or could that be a problem?

We are taught that our money grows when we utilize bank products.  Is that true? What is the current interest rate offered by a bank savings account these days?  Somewhere under 2% as of this writing.  So, with inflation being around 10% rather than the 3-4% we’re usually told, that means our money is losing between 4% and 8% of its value in this scenario – and the longer we save, the more we lose!  Even the magic of compounding interest can’t beat this sad reality. That just doesn’t sound like a good idea. Well, at least we can rely on banks for loans when we need to make a large purchase or to adjust cash flow in our business.  Unfortunately, that’s not a great option either as 50% of bank loan applications get denied.

Here’s the reality, once we deposit our money into a commercial bank, we no longer own that money.  Wait!  What? That’s right, at the moment we deposit our money into a commercial bank we become a creditor to the bank.  Our deposit turns into a short-term unsecured loan to the bank.  Then, because of fractional lending, every dollar deposited into a bank tends to get loaned out twelve times. What?  The only logical definition for that is making money out of nothing.

Before you completely come unglued, there is another option for storing your money where none of these challenges exist.  It’s an option that’s actually existed for many years, but has not been readily available.  It offers control over your money, avoids market volatility, provides a financial legacy for your family and allows you to earn interest on your money while you use it.

Just like education options for our children, we are trained to think within a particular box (traditional school) and it takes a great deal of effort to see what lies outside that box (homeschool).  Teaching our kids financial freedom and controlling our money falls into that same scenario.  We have been trained to fully rely on the banking system to store and grow our money. Once we learn there is another way, it opens up a world of new possibilities for our families and businesses.

To learn more, contact John Robinson at Purple Monkey Garage at 704-870-7318.

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The Missing Link in Special Education Homeschool Instruction

Missing link in homeschool special education

Missing link in homeschool special education

Recently I received a call from an exasperated mother who was desperately trying to find a way to teach her son.  After homeschooling for 14 years and graduating her oldest who was also a struggling learner due to a brain injury, she felt she had exhausted her teaching arsenal and was still coming up short in being able to teach her younger autistic son.

Our conversation started with this mother asking if I knew of any different curriculum options she could try.  But, instead of offering my best advice on curriculum, I led her through a series of questions to find out what teaching techniques had worked with her son and what his main interests and hobbies were.  At first, her responses to my questions centered around all the curriculums she had bought in the past that were now filling her shelves but no longer being used for one reason or another. But, as I continued my questioning she started deviating from talking about curriculum to talking about her son and the success he had experience through their homeschooling endeavors. Eventually, our discussion moved into ways she could use the curriculum she already had, employ the services of her local librarian to find books focused around her son’s interests, and start to build learning around those interests.

As our conversation came to an end, this mother confessed to me “Maybe I just need to change how I teach my son instead of trying to find another curriculum.”  Of course, this conclusion had been the main goal of my questioning, but if I had just told her to change her way of teaching at the beginning of our conversation, she wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about.  It was only after leading and letting her discover the importance of individualizing her son’s education, that she truly understood how teaching her son was more about what she did instead of what she used.

Did you know in a survey done in 2002 of special education homeschooling parents “the majority of survey parents (58%) designed a curriculum for their children.” As a matter of fact, this same study reported that “All the parents in the case studies designed the curricula for their children based upon their ability and interest levels” And, “most of the mothers criticized packaged curricula.” Now, you must understand that back in 2002 when this survey was conducted, there weren’t many homeschool curriculum options specifically targeted to children with learning challenges.

It is interesting to note though, that in 2012 when special needs homeschooling curriculum was starting to abound across the country at homeschool conventions and book fairs, Dr. Brian Ray of NHERI summarized in an exploratory study of homeschooling outcomes the main advantage of homeschooling both learning disabled and gifted children was “The informal environment that homeschooling provides allows ‘differentiated instruction,’ not a one-size-fits-all version that is typical in public schools where teachers must meet the varied needs of twenty or more students in the classroom. The personal approach of schooling at home provides a natural environment to customize the curriculum for learning disabled and academically gifted children alike.”

In looking over many studies and surveys, including those cited above, as well as drawing from my decade of experience in consulting with special needs homeschooling families, it’s clear that differentiated instruction utilizing student specific accommodations and modifications is not only the best way to homeschool a struggling learner but a homeschooling freedom that’s particularly advantageous to utilize with children who do not adapt well to traditional teaching methods.

I apologize ahead of time to anyone I may offend with my following remarks, but the reason I feel many special education homeschooling parents have moved away from implementing specific differentiated instruction has to do with special needs homeschooling curriculums marketing products towards a specific diagnosis or learning disability.  Now, I love curriculum and do feel parents can benefit from using both regular and special needs homeschooling curriculum, but when a parent believes a specific curriculum will teach to their child’s specific need to the point the curriculum itself provides the necessary differentiated instruction, that is a problem.

Too many homeschooling parents have reasoned themselves out of providing specific and individualized instruction for their child because they believe their special needs curriculum is providing enough learning variation on its own.  Unfortunately, with the vast spectrum of learning disabilities and challenges confronting special needs homeschooling families, it’s impossible for curriculum providers to create materials able to meet the specific needs of all these unique children.

Ultimately, parents who homeschool children with special educational needs will find the most effective way to teach their child doesn’t come in a package.  Rather it comes from being a student of their child, learning how to implement specific teaching strategies and methods and figuring out which ones work best in teaching to their child’s needs, locating resources that work with their child, and coaching their child one-on-one through the learning process.

Written by Peggy Ployhar at SPED Homeschool