Pastors, churches, Christians, Elders, Bride of Christ, what is the Missions Budget Challenge?
Simple…
“Consider how much your church is spending on foreign missions. Now consider how much you are spending to enable the children in your church to have a Christian education at home. How does it stack up?”
My conviction and challenge for you is every church should put AT LEAST as high a priority on the mission field of the children in the church as they do on faraway tribes.
Well over 80 percent of the kids in Christian churches still go to government schools, to be educated in the religions of Secular Humanism and Marxist Statism.
No matter how faithful Christian adults are in the church, if the next generation is being trained by the state to be secular humanists, the church dies in a generation – and this is exactly what we are seeing.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.”
“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.
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.
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…
Share the movie and your favorite podcast episodes on social media.
We know that homeschooling isn’t easy. We also know that the costs and sacrifices to make homeschooling work can be a huge concern for many families. That’s why we have worked for years to make the barrier to entry as low as we possibly can. Over the past year we have been able to make all but one of our resources free (and we’re considering how we can make that one free too).
“Schoolhouse Rocked is the movie this confused, convicted, unconfident mother wishes had been available to watch from the first moment I considered homeschooling. This film addresses most every area of doubt and insecurity that a Christian parent faces when tossing around the idea of exiting the public school system. It laid those doubts to rest and I walked away feeling a renewed joy and confidence that homeschooling is the RIGHT choice and we CAN do this! Thank you for your hard work. I can’t wait to share and educate those around me using this film as a wonderful resource!”– Heather
2) The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast continues to dive deep with Biblical homeschooling, parenting, and family discipleship encouragement and advice every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To date, we have released over 600 episodes of this powerful show!
3) The Homeschool Insights Podcast gives you practical, Biblical, home education and parenting encouragement and resources in under ten minutes a day.
4) The Homeschool Survival Kit is a 72-page ebook that provides a simple roadmap to help parents start strong and finish well. Everyone who streams Schoolhouse Rocked online gets a copy.
5) The Homegrown Generation Family Expo is an online homeschooling conference that we have hosted twice, with over 50 hours of homeschooling, parenting, and marriage instruction and encouragement available for just $20.
If you are interested in helping us to make the Homegrown Generation Family Expo available for free please reach out to us. We’d love to see the next conference be completely free for attendees.
We want to thank every donor and sponsor who has supported this ministry over the years. Your support is making an ETERNAL impact!
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…
In a demonstration that free speech died long ago, once again, we were blocked by a social media media giant. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last time.
I’ll cut to the chase. If you want to see our content on social media or streaming platforms you can’t just follow us. You have to hit the notification icon and make sure our content is prioritized in your feed. Otherwise we don’t exist.
As “Pride month” heats up we are taking every opportunity to warn parents that the public schools are NOT SAFE for kids. The indoctrination doesn’t just go on in June. It’s a year-round full court press. It’s time for parents to bring their children home – and June just may be the best time to do it!
So we’re advertising Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution and the Homeschool Survival Kit across a few platforms – at least the ones that don’t reject our ads because they don’t “comply with our [sic] Ads About Social Issues, Elections or Politics policy” or contain “references to religious services and any religious call to action.”
Both the movie and Homeschool Survival Kit are powerful FREE tools to change the hearts and minds of parents – and to impact families for the Gospel.
More than that, when you see our posts on social media, YouTube, or streaming platforms be sure to Like and Share them. It’s free and this helps us a ton with the algorithms.
With your help we will continue to fight for families and for the King of Kings!
You can find us on the following platforms (for now). Just make sure to follow, hit the notification button, and jump through any other necessary hoops to make sure you actually see our posts.
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!”
Listen to Yvette Hampton on the Family Renewal Podcast with Israel Wayne
Join Yvette Hampton as she tells Israel Wayne the story of how she and Garritt began homeschooling their daughters and why they went out to make Schoolhouse Rocked. In this episode Israel also discusses the rise of public education and home education and contrasts the story of Schoolhouse Rocked and Indoctrination, which he was also involved with. Israel is a great friend of the Schoolhouse Rocked team and has been an important part of the movie, the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, and the Homegrown Generation Family Expo.
Sam Sorbo is passionate about faith and families. We had the chance to sit down for an interview with Sam for The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, in which Sam shared her story of going taking her own kids back from the schools and how that decision has blessed her family. Please enjoy this transcript of their heart-felt and encouraging conversation.
Sam Sorbo studied biomedical engineering at Duke University before pursuing a career in entertainment. An award-winning actress, author, radio host, international model, and home-schooling mom to three children with Kevin Sorbo, Sam Sorbo seeks to inspire parents to home educate. Her books, They’re YOUR Kids: An Inspirational Journey from Self-Doubter to Home School Advocate(Reveille Press) and Teach from Love: A School Year Devotional for Families (Broadstreet Publishing), are available at SamSorbo.com. Sam co-wrote, produced, and co-starred in the 2017 feature filmLet There Be Light(executive producer, Sean Hannity; director, Kevin Sorbo.) To correspond with the film, Sam and Kevin wrote their devotional, Share the Light. Their newest film, Miracle in East Texas, due in theaters in 2020. Sam and Kevin have teamed up on a new book, True Faith: Embracing Adversity to Walk in God’s Light, due out early 2020.
Yvette Hampton: Hey everyone, this is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so excited that you are with us today because you are likely listening to this podcast because you likely saw the guest that I have on today. Her name is Sam Sorbo. Many of you are very familiar with her as a homeschool mom, as an actress, as the wife of Kevin Sorbo. She is just an amazing mom, an amazing wife, and she is such a blessing to me. Sam, welcome to the podcast.
Sam Sorbo: Thank you so much for having me.
Yvette Hampton: Yeah, and welcome Aby too. I’ve got my co-host here with me as well so the three-
Sam Sorbo: Hi, Aby.
Aby Rinella: I’m here. Hi, I’m so excited to get to know you a little bit better and be encouraged.
Sam Sorbo: Its fun. It’s just like us girls.
Aby Rinella: Yes.
Yvette Hampton: Right. We need our cup of coffee. Right?
Aby Rinella: I know.
Yvette Hampton: We have a neat story of when we got to actually meet you Sam, you are a really important part of Schoolhouse Rocked, the movie.
Yvette Hampton: It was about two years ago, several people had said to us, you really need to try to get Sam Sorbo in this movie. And I felt I don’t even know how to get hold of Sam Sorbo. One day, Garritt just said, we really want you to try to reach out to her, because I’d really like to get her as part of the cast. I said, okay. I found SamSorbo.com and I went onto your contact me page, sent you an email. Every time I do that, I always just assume it’s going to go into this big black hole of email that no one’s going to see it. At least not the person I’m trying to reach. And a couple of hours later you called me and it was so funny because my phone rang and I was expecting another call at the time from someone whose number I didn’t know. I didn’t expect to recognize the number.
Listen to Sam Sorbo on The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. (2/3/2020 and 2/5/2020 episodes)
Yvette Hampton: I picked up the phone, I said hello, and you said “hi, this is Sam Sorbo” and it was so funny. I actually said, hi Sam, could you hold on just one second and I put you on hold. I looked at Karen, I said “Its Sam Sorbo!”
Yvette Hampton: It was so funny. And then I calmed myself down, and you and I from there had a great talk. I think we talked for about an hour about our families and homeschooling and culture and all things related to those three things. And just it was so neat to get to know your heart, and that made me even now much more excited about having you as part of the movie and so-
Sam Sorbo: Can I be perfectly Frank?
Yvette Hampton: … yes.
Sam Sorbo: I had heard about the movie, and I don’t know if I’d seen stuff but I’d heard about it. I knew some people who had done the movie and stuff. And I was like, I want to be in that movie. When you reached out I’m like yeah. And I had just started this new thing where I pick up the phone now because I’m so tired of texting in the evening and I’m like look, she reached out, she put her phone number right there, she’s getting a call. I picked up the phone and we did, we had a really like mind-meld on the phone that first time that we talked, I think because we share a passion for the incredible grace that homeschooling provides. Is that the right way to put it? It’s such a gift. We feel like we’ve figured out sliced bread, we’ve got the wheel, it’s the most amazing invention, right?.
Sam Sorbo: So when you find somebody who’s like-minded, you just want to hug them. I think when I came to the house I just hugged you. I’m like, hey you’re here!.
Yvette Hampton: There is that there is a connection between moms that choose to school, to raise their own children. There is such a deep connection because it’s a commitment. It’s a beautiful commitment. And like you said, it’s the greatest gift, it is absolutely, next to marriage, it’s the greatest gift.
Sam Sorbo: Yeah. And there’s also the flip side, which is, I don’t want to say that we’re ostracized, but we’re sort of on the outside, and so there’s the mainstream people who send their kids to school and then we’re the other. And so when we meet people who are like us, there’s an instant comradery and it’s such a gift, homeschooling, that we feel like we’ve got that special sauce or we figured something out like it’s the worst kept secret or something.
Yvette Hampton: Well Sam, you and Kevin are from Hollywood and so this is the great analogy, is that when you see a good movie, like an excellent movie, and you want to tell everyone about it, like God’s Not Dead. It’s such a good movie or Let There be Light. You’ve seen a great movie and then you want everyone to see it and so will you tell all of your friends, you’ve got to go see this movie, it’s so good and you get excited about it. That’s how I feel about homeschool. I mean that’s why we’re making a movie about it. That’s exactly why. That’s why we do the podcast. It’s why we’re doing the movie. It’s why we are doing the Homegrown Generation Family Expo, because we want to share the goodness that we have discovered.
Sam Sorbo: And recognize that there are people who don’t want you to share that. Unlike movies, for the most part, it’s like if you like the movie, then go ahead and tell anybody. But if you like homeschooling, there are people out there saying no don’t do it.
Yvette Hampton: Well, I think oftentimes, and I don’t know if you find this to be true, I think oftentimes the reason that people don’t want us to talk about it with them is because they don’t have that conviction, and they don’t want to feel convicted or guilted over the fact that they are not homeschooling. So Aby, do you find that to be true?
Aby Rinella: Yeah, I do. I do find that to be true. As I talk to older generation homeschoolers, I feel like it’s totally shifted. They used to get the, don’t do that, that’s so terrible. And now I almost feel like people are like, aren’t you lucky to be able to do that? But I never could because of a, b, and c and d. The other part I sometimes get is, oh, you think you’re better. And that part breaks my heart because not at all do I think I’m better.
Aby Rinella: I mean, I do with my heart and soul and, and even with God’s word, believe this is God’s best design. This is God’s best way to raise our children. Do I think I’m a better person or a better mom? No. But I do believe, and God’s word says this is God’s best design to raise our own children. He gave us these children to raise, but I think it’s different than it was back on the day of like, this is a bad thing to do now. It seems like people are almost slightly envious that we get to spend as much time as we do together as a family.
Yvette Hampton: And that actually segues perfectly into Sam’s book. You actually have a couple of books, and the first one that I really became familiar with was called, They’re Your Kids, an inspirational journey from self doubter to homeschool advocate. So I would love to talk about that. Let’s have a quick break and then let’s come back and talk about that book.
Aby Rinella: Sam, we had just kind of segued into your book called They’re Your Kids. I love the name of that book because when we were ready to put our kids in school, my husband said, you know, God gave us these kids to raise. He didn’t give them to everybody else to raise, they’re our kids and we need to raise them. So when I first saw the title of your book, I’m like, that was the line, the catching line, that kept our kids home with us to raise. So excellent name. So tell us a little bit about that book.
Sam Sorbo: That’s awesome. So I started homeschooling after my son finished second grade and the school just wasn’t getting the job done. They just weren’t doing what I expected them to do, which wasn’t that much frankly, but they were getting too much, just really wrong. And so I just made the leap and I said, okay, I’m going to do this. At that point I decided to start blogging about it. So that first year I did it until Christmas, and then I said I was going to reevaluate but I knew already I wasn’t going to go back. So the first year was great. Hard, not like oh this is easy, I’ve got this all covered. I was the young homeschooler so I tried to do everything. I checked off every box, it was labor intensive.
Sam Sorbo: And of course I had my third grader, a first grader, and a toddler.
Aby Rinella: You were in the trenches.
Sam Sorbo: So I was blogging about what I was learning and I began learning so much, which I had not expected. Because I was done. I went through high school, I finished, I went to college. I felt like I was done. So why was I learning all this stuff? And yet my kids were teaching me so much and I was learning so much that put me in the position of being able to tutor them and stuff. And the second year I put them back into a little Christian school that had a hybrid program. It was a classical Christian-modeled school, and it was a disaster. And the day that I dropped them off, I cried my eyes out. And the weird thing is, and this is really the reason that I wrote the book, I brought my kids in and my second child was not a great reader, but he was a little mathematician.
Sam Sorbo: He was like a human calculator. He loved, loved, loved math. And so I had allowed him to work ahead in math, and I’d had to tutor him a lot in reading because he was just abysmal. So he was in second grade. I brought him in and the gal said, okay we’re going to test him to see where he lines up with what students. And she comes back and says so you’re right. Because I was apologetic. I said he’s great in math, he’s advanced in math, but he’s remedial in reading. She comes back and she says, so you’re right, he’s testing at about a fourth grade level in math. And I’m like, “yeah”. She said, but he’s reading at about a fifth grade level. And I said, “so I’m the one with the problem?” And she said “yeah, I think so.”
Sam Sorbo: Here’s the thing, right? I made the rules and the rule was I was dropping the kids off that day. So it never even occurred to me, hey look, you’re vindicated. You’re doing fine. Good job mom. Keep up the good work. Take the kids home and keep going. I didn’t, I dropped them off. And the rest of the story is in the book. It didn’t end well. I lasted six weeks and then I stopped and I brought them back home. And somebody said to me about a year later, it took me a while to process what had happened, and somebody said to me, “isn’t it wonderful how God allowed you to make that mistake to teach you that you are enough?”
Sam Sorbo: And that was a huge lesson. So after that I didn’t look back. But before that, you can’t help it, you look back, and the reason is because the system has taught you that you’re not enough, that you’re inadequate, but you can’t. In fact, the system has taught you everything that you can’t do because you can’t do anything that you haven’t been formally instructed to do by a teacher standing at a blackboard. Like this is the paradigm, this is how you learn, and everything else is not learned. And so we have this weird, honestly it’s like we’ve been brainwashed, we have this odd idea of what is really education. I got to tell you I have a new initiative now to revamp the way that we even define the word education. In fact, I may have a way to put it into the political campaign this coming year.
Sam Sorbo is a cast member in the upcoming documentary, Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution.
Sam Sorbo: And I’m very excited about that because people need to reexamine what constitutes education, what counts for education. We saw the parents that are being indicted for purchasing their children’s way into college. Really what is a college degree worth if all it takes is some cash that your folks have to get you into the school of your choice or the school of their choice. So we’ve seen that more recently, there was a young man who they found out his parents had bought his way into school, and they were considering rescinding his degree. If we get into the take-backs, then what? And now of course we have the socialists saying, well, education should be free. Well then know how much it’s going to be worth, right? The fact is with the internet, we all have the facility to learn anything we want, basically at any time we want for free. For the most part. It’s insane. So education is in the offing. It’s out there for the taking, and we need to get away from this old, dead paradigm of sending your children into an institution. It’s killing our young men. It’s just destroying them because it’s not geared to young men. Little boys should be outside picking up critters.
Yvette Hampton: Yes. And on that point, Sam, you know it’s really important, and we talk a lot about this on the podcast in that the whole idea of raising up our kids and homeschooling them is to teach them how to learn, and to teach them to love learning. It’s not just an issue of teaching them a bunch of facts, pouring it into their brains so that they can then go off and rattle them off on a test and mark, all the right check boxes. It’s really teaching our kids how to be lifelong learners because like you said the internet is full of all sorts of information that our kids can try. First of all, they need to have the discernment to know what is real information and what is false information. And where that comes from too is then takes us back to the word of God.
Yvette Hampton: Are we training our children up in discernment and in wisdom and teaching them how to be wise and how to discern right from wrong? Just because Facebook says it or the internet says it, or your friends say it certainly does not make it true. And we’re seeing that all around culture right now and this whole new generation of kids has been raised up, and they have no idea what they believe, but they’ve got degrees and they’ve got a piece of paper saying $60,000 in debt to tell them that they have this great education and they don’t know anything.
Sam Sorbo: What’s worse is they don’t know how to find joy. So I just want to step back for a minute, and say that it’s our job to teach our children to love learning. The fact is, no teaching required. Children love learning. They’re innately curious and they’re innately creative. There’s a great Ted talk, well the first half of it, by Ken Robinson, I think it’s been viewed 64 million times. And he talks about the death of creativity. How schools basically kill creativity because you need to get it right. And the only way to be able to get things right is if there’s a culture of the ability to fail. That embraces failure as a way of getting to the right answer. We don’t have that. If you get it wrong, it’s a red check mark, it’s a cross out. Well now they don’t even discern between right and wrong.
Sam Sorbo: As long as you feel good about the answer it’s cool, crazy stuff. So our job is actually even easier, because all we’re supposed to do is inspire the children toward your goal of learning, towards their creativity and that’s the wonderful thing. But now we’ve got these kids who have grown up in this environment where there is no right and wrong, there is no moral yardstick for them. They’ve been taught everything but Christianity there, it is not, no religion. Let’s get that straight. It’s not that we have no religion in our schools. We absolutely have a religion. It’s actually called irreligion now. It’s the combination of atheism and agnosticism and it’s irreligion, and it is the antithesis of Christianity or Judeo-Christian principles. And the reason that I’m so desperate to get the word out is because our freedom is completely intertwined with our Christian faith. And so as we lose the faith in our culture, we lose our freedom because they don’t have the same value as they did, and so we will squander them because they’re completely intertwined, and it’s a very powerful thing. People who have no faith have no concept of what that is, so they’ll squander it freely.
Aby Rinella: That’s why you see so much selling out, without that foundation of a faith, you’ll sell out to the highest bidder, the almighty dollar or whatever they’re going to offer you.
Yvette Hampton: Let’s close out this episode and let’s continue on for part two on Wednesday, because I want to talk more about this, but we are out of time for this one. So Sam, for those listening to this one, where can people can find out more about you at SamSorbo.com, correct?
Sam Sorbo: At samsorbo.com and I do have a new book coming out, so I’ll just throw that up there. It’s called Through Faith. This is my mock up, so it’s not a real copy, I wrote it with my husband Kevin. It talks about marriage, movie making, and miracles, oh my!
Yvette Hampton: When we come back on Wednesday and we talk a little bit more about that book.
Sam Sorbo: I would love to. Just go to SamSorbo.com for all the information you need.
Yvette Hampton: All right, sounds great. Thank you guys for listening. We will see you back here on Wednesday and have a great day.
“My friends, Garritt & Yvette Hampton, are creating what I believe will be one of
the most important projects to expand the message of homeschooling
that we have seen in the past decade.” – Israel Wayne
Dear Reader,
There is a serious war raging all around us for the hearts and minds of our children. As early as preschool, a secular ungodly foundation is being set for them in schools all across our nation. Children are being indoctrinated with a worldview that undermines the value of life and teaches them that they have no purpose. They are also being taught that their parents are not the authority in their lives. This agenda is robbing our children of who God made them to be. Desperate parents are crying out and they don’t know what to do.
But there is hope! As parents, we have the freedom to remove our children from these government institutions and teach them at home the values and morals set before us in God’s Word. However, many parents don’t home educate because they don’t realize this option is available to them, or because they don’t feel like they are equipped to do it. Schoolhouse Rocked will help to open the eyes of these parents and show them that they can be successful in homeschooling.
As many of you know, by the grace of God, this past summer we finished filming Schoolhouse Rocked in Vancouver, Washington with Heidi St. John and her family. Filming is done! This was the first monumental step. Now we are pulling it all together into one excellent, engaging, and life-changing film. And that costs money.
You can change lives!YOUR help is needed to finish Schoolhouse Rocked. Since post-production has now begun, full funding is critical and needed immediately in order to complete this film with excellence. The post-production budget for the film is $198,157 and that budget still needs to be funded. Following post-production, the P&A budget (marketing) will need to be raised in order to get Schoolhouse Rocked into theaters nationwide through Fathom Events.
We were never meant to do this alone. And we haven’t. Whether you have been a cast member in the film, a guest on the podcast, a prayer warrior, or a previous donor, THANK YOU. The role you have played in the ministry of Schoolhouse Rocked is vital. But we have a great financial hurdle to overcome and once again, your help is needed. We need you…the body of Christ to rally around us and help us finish this important film.
Yvette Hampton: Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so excited to have my guest, and I want to say kind of new cohost, on with me today. This is Aby. And many of you who have listened to the podcast know who she is. She has been a great friend, and just an incredible encouragement to my family and I over the past year or so, as we’ve been filming Schoolhouse Rocked and working on the podcast and doing all things Schoolhouse Rocked. And God has just done amazing things in our friendship.
Yvette: So, Aby, welcome back to the podcast. I’m excited to have you on. Because we’ve been talking a lot about just kind of the future of Schoolhouse Rocked and the podcast and what the Lord is doing with all of this stuff. And so you’re kind of jumping on board with me, right?
Aby Rinella: I am so excited to do so. Yes, absolutely.
Listen to Yvette, Aby, and Karen on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, in a special two-part interview. (5/23 and 5/30/2019 episodes)
Yvette: I love this. We got to do an interview together. It was me, you, and Karen DeBeus. And this was several months ago. And the three of us just had a great connection with one another, and then you and I have done several podcast interviews together. And we’ve just become good friends outside of the podcast. And we’re so like-minded. God has really brought us together clearly on purpose. And so I love your heart for homeschooling. I love your heart for family. I love the encouragement that you have given to me. I feel like you have just done an incredible job of standing beside my family and I as we’ve been on this crazy journey, which is what we’re going to talk a little bit about today, right?
Aby: And I am so excited to talk to you about this crazy journey and this incredible journey that you guys have been on. It is a story that needs to … Maybe there should be another movie of the making of the movie. It has been an amazing journey. And we connected about a year ago. And I was so captivated by you guys. And not only what God was doing through you guys but what you guys were willing to do for God. And it was just incredible. It’s incredible to see. The verse Matthew 4:19 just hits me when Jesus says, “Come and follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”
And he asked the men to drop their nets and walk away from everything that they knew, everything comfortable, everything that they kind of had figured out. And he said, “Let it all go. Leave it all behind, and follow me into the unknown. But know that I’m with you.” And I just feel like that is what I see with your family, is that’s exactly what you guys have done. And I feel super privileged to know the story. And I know that the podcast listeners have heard bits and pieces of it. But I’m just hoping that you will share with us from the moment Jesus said, “Come and follow me.”
Well, that was way before he called you to the movie. You followed him. But when he said, “I want you to leave behind everything you know and everything that’s comfortable and I want to do something incredible through you guys for my kingdom.” So will you share that journey with us?
Yvette: Sure. Yeah. It has been an incredible journey. As we’re recording this right now we are in California, which is where we’re from. This has been home to our family, to my husband and I and to our kids pretty much our whole lives. So we have lived in other places for a few short periods of time, but for 40-some years this was home and it was all we knew, and so I guess I can kind of start it a little bit at the beginning, for those who don’t know the whole story.
Garritt used to work in the Hollywood film industry and he did that for many years, and he was very good at what he did. He loves filmmaking. God has just gifted him in that area, and so many other areas as well. But he really felt like the Lord had called him to do this. But he didn’t want to do it in an industry that he didn’t believe in. And so he quit working in that industry, went on to work for our church and teach film in a Christian school for a year. And this was in 2015 through 2016 school year.
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So, he was teaching for that year and working for our church. And through that year we knew it was just a one-year commitment and we knew that at the end of that year it was going to be time for him to figure out what next. They wanted him to come back and teach. But he just didn’t feel like that’s what the Lord was calling him to do. I don’t know if I’ve actually told you this part of the story, but I vividly remember it was April of 2016 and we were sitting in church, and I can still picture it perfectly. We’re sitting in the middle of the service, and we have a great pastor, so usually I was really interested and engaged in what he was talking about.
And I don’t even remember if he had said something that triggered this idea in my mind, or if the Lord just put it on my heart. Either way it was certainly from the Lord. But I thought, “You know, we should …” We knew his job was ending and I thought, “We should just sell our house and sell all of ours stuff and go travel around the country.” And at that time we had felt like the Lord was leading us out of California, but we didn’t know where we would go. We had family in a couple of other states, but we just didn’t have any idea where we would end up.
And so, I wrote on our church bulletin, and I said, “I think we should sell our house and sell all of our stuff and get an RV and go travel the country.” And I passed it over to him, and he kind of looked at me like, “Are you crazy? That’s insane.” And so after church he just said, “We can’t do that. That’s insane.” So I just let it go, and I thought, “Okay, well whatever. Clearly if the Lord’s not going to put that big idea on his heart then it’s probably not the best idea.”
Well, fast forward several months and the school year ended and so his job was ending. And he had so many options for work at the time. The economy was really looking a lot better. And he’s a very talented man, very gifted in many areas. He has tons of experience. He’s got his marketing degree. So it would have been easy for him to go out and find a job. And there were so many people who were saying, “Weil, you should go and do this,” or, “You should do that. And I’ve heard about this job opening or that job opening.”
He also was in the Air Force, so he also has a background in aircraft. And none of it sat right with him. He just didn’t feel like that was the right thing for him to pursue. Like any of those things were right for him to pursue. And so we just prayed through that summer, “Lord, just show us where you want us to go. Show us what you want us to do.” And I don’t remember exactly what month it was, but it was probably somewhere around July, maybe the end of July or so.
And I remember him just kind of sitting on the edge of our bed and he just said, “I don’t know how to tell you this.” He said, “But, I think we should sell our house and sell all of our stuff, load up in an RV and go travel and see where the Lord takes us. And I think we need to film a documentary on homeschooling.” And instantly, without hesitation, I said, “Yes. Let’s do that.”
And it was just incredible that the Lord had put that on my heart many months before that. Because I think had he come to me and just said, “I think we should do all this, I have this crazy idea,” I would have followed if I knew that that’s what the Lord was calling him to do. But I don’t know how excited I would have been about that. But I didn’t just say yes. I was excited about it. And understand, California, like I said, was home. It was where our family is. It’s where our church is, all of our friends, our homeschool community. Our whole life was in California.
And so, the idea of just driving out aimlessly should have been a really scary thing for us. But it wasn’t. Because we knew the Lord was in it. So we just prayed, and we said, “Okay Lord. We’re going to trust you to just orchestrate this. And if this is really what you want us to do then we’ve got to sell the house first.” And we had a really nice five-bedroom house and had the minivan, because of course we’re a homeschool family. So every homeschool mom must have a minivan.
And so, we had our comfortable life. And we said, “If this is what you want for us then you’re going to have to just open the doors. And He did. I mean, we put our house up for sale. The very next day we had an almost full-price offer on it. We sold the house. All of our stuff sold. I mean, it was amazing. It was really cool, because we had friends and family who just came over to our house and they were like, “Okay, we’ll take this, this, this, this and this.”
And then we had a huge estate sale and pretty much sold everything that we didn’t absolutely need to keep. We got rid of all of our childhood trophies and camp pictures, and I mean everything we’d been toting around for 20-some years of marriage. And so the Lord gave us such peace about it. So we in December of 2016 … It took obviously a few months to pull all of this together. Actually, we started pre-production on Schoolhouse Rocked in August I think. So it was almost three years ago.
Started in August and then it took until December for us to actually leave. But in December, on December 15th of 2106 we got in our RV, pulled by our Excursion, and even through the process of that there were so many answered prayers. We wanted a very specific travel trailer. That was the kind of RV we decided that we wanted. And the Lord provided exactly what we wanted. Even more so actually. And it was a mile down the road from us. We wanted a Ford Excursion. He provided the Excursion that came with the travel trailer. You know, they were already attached, and it was perfect.
And so just there were so many answered prayers through that time that we just saw the hand of God move. And so we set out to film this documentary and to really just explore and see where the Lord would take us. And we ended up going straight to Georgia, because we knew that we wanted to be with family for Christmas. And so half of our family is in California. The other half is in Georgia. And then we’ve got kind of other extended family scattered throughout the country.
So, we ended up in Georgia, and that was where we kind of parked ourselves for the past two and a half plus years. And through the process of just being obedient to God we have had to rely on him and depend on him for everything. Everything. It sounds crazy when we tell people that Garritt has not had a steady paycheck, as you will, for over three years.
Aby: Amazing.
Yvette: And the Lord has provided our daily bread. I mean, it’s been incredible to just see the hand of God move and provide for us because we’ve answered this call that he’s put upon us to film this documentary. And so-
Aby: Can I interject really quick?
Yvette: Please, yes.
Aby: It wasn’t, from my understanding, that you guys were not like on the homeschool speaking circuit, and you knew all these homeschool people to interview. And you didn’t have one foot in to the whole … You were just a normal guy, a normal mom, and normal kids. And so it wasn’t like we kind of have this figured out and the Lord-
Yvette: Right.
Aby: It was totally into the unknown. And share a little bit about just God’s incredible hand on … I mean, you’ve interviewed … This movie has the top, the cream of the crop, the most inspirational, wisest, incredible cast. And that, share a little bit about how God put that all together.
Yvette: Sure. Yes. Well, as you say, we were just your typical homeschool family. I didn’t know anyone, and Garritt certainly didn’t know anyone in the homeschool world. We’d been to a couple of conventions and we’d heard some speakers that were really encouraging to us. But there were a couple of people whose names we knew. And Andrew Pudewa was one of them. And he was one that I said from the beginning … We had used IEW, which is his company, we’d use their curriculum. And I just really respected him, and I really liked his style of teaching. And I just knew he was very well respected in the homeschool community. And so I thought, “I want to interview him.”
And the Lord worked out the details of that. Before we left California we contacted him. He was the first homeschool expert that we contacted and we just said, “Hey, we’re making this movie.” At the time I don’t think we even had a title for the movie. We didn’t even know what we were going to call it. We just said, “We’re making this documentary on homeschooling.” We thought it was going to be kind of a small direct-to-DVD type documentary. And he said, “Oh, I’d love to be a part of that.”
And he lives in Oklahoma. He said, “But I’m coming to California in a few weeks. If you’re still in California I would love to just do the interview while I’m there.” And we said, “Well, that would be fantastic.” So that’s what we did. He actually drove out to us from … He was in Long Beach and we were way south of him. We were north of him actually. So he drove to where we were, and we got to interview him and just, I mean, we were blown away by his wisdom and his knowledge and his incredible interview.
And then he went on after the interview and he just said to us, “You know, I really believe in what you guys are doing.” He said, “Here are some suggestions of people that you may want to interview.” And he listed off a whole bunch of names. And it was really funny because he said, “All these people are great. I highly recommend trying to connect with these people. I’ll be more than happy to connect you with them, because I know all of them,” he said, “But if there’s any one person that you really need to get in this movie it’s Heidi St. John.”
And I was familiar of course with her. Interested read a couple of her books. But I had never actually heard her speak at that time. So I was like, “Okay. Well, yes, I know who she-
Aby: You really were in the dark, weren’t you?
Yvette: Yes. I was in the dark. And so we just prayed about it and I guess it was about a year and a half later or so the Lord opened the door for us to be able to interview Heidi. And so she’ll come in a little bit later in this story again, as you know. But having Andrew Pudewa in the movie, and having interviewed him, just opened up the door to all of these other people. Because we were able to contact these people and we would say, “We’re making this documentary. This is why we’re making it.” And it was we really want to encourage and equip the homeschool community. We want people to understand the great benefits and blessings of homeschooling and debunk all of the myths and misconceptions that people have of homeschooling. And we would say, “And we’ve interviewed Andrew Pudewa and several other people.”
And as soon as they would see his name they would say, “Oh, well, if Andrew’s in this movie then certainly it must be legit. And so we would love to do this.” And that’s how the Lord opened up the doors for us to interview so many of the cast members that we have since interviewed.
Aby: Obviously God’s movie.
Yvette: Obviously God’s movie, because it’s not anything we’ve done. I mean, we’re not these amazing people that anyone even knows. No one knows our name or anything. So we were able to go to a couple of homeschool conventions where they were speaking. So that spring we hit a few of them and we were able to interview a bunch of people all at one time. I mean, not together, but while we were at the conventions. And that was a great blessing that the Lord just allowed us to be able to do that.
When we started interviewing people for the movie, one of the people that we wanted to interview was Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis. So we called Answers in Genesis, and we said, “We would love to interview him for this movie.” And we were going to be in Cincinnati, which is near where the Creation Museum is. And we said, “We’re going to be there on these dates. Would he be available?” And they said, “He’s not going to be available,” but Bryan Osborne, who is one of their speakers and he is one of their curriculum developers, they said he would be available and he would be happy to be interviewed for the movie.
And we said, “Okay, great. We don’t know who this Bryan Osborne guy is. But yes. If this is the door the Lord is opening then let’s interview him.” So we got to go and interview Bryan. And he was just fantastic. He was a public school teacher for 13 years and just an incredible, wise, godly man. And so the Lord just kept orchestrating all of this and bringing people to us who we didn’t even know that we needed to interview. And God just would say, “Here you go. Interview this person.”
And again, through the course of this God kept providing for our family in just the most amazing and miraculous ways. We’ve had several families who have just come alongside us and just said, “We’ll support you monthly.” And some of them have been just a little bit per month. Some of them have been a couple hundred dollars per month. And the Lord has just put that on their hearts. And other people have supported us by donating large amounts at a time. We had one family who they donated $5,000 and just sent a really sweet note with it. And she said her husband had been homeschooled and his mom had passed away before she was able to see the fruits of her labor. And so they wanted to just bless this ministry that God had called us to.
And that has just happened over and over again where God has just put it on people’s hearts to support it. Because it’s really not our ministry, as you know. It’s the Lord’s ministry. And so, anyway, as we’ve been on this journey and seen God open the doors for us to pull this whole movie together, he brought us to a point about a year ago where we were almost done with filming but we needed just to finish the narrative of the movie. And when you have a documentary you can’t have just a bunch of interviews with a bunch of talking heads. You have to actually have a storyline through the movie.
And so, we got in contact with another production company and we were talking with them and working with them for several months. Actually it was about I think seven or eight months that we were working through trying to solidify a partnership with them. And the Lord closed the door on that, and there’s a whole story behind that that I won’t get into. And it was not anything … There was nothing wrong with them or with us. It’s just the Lord just said, “This is just not the direction that I want you to go.”
So, we actually walked away from that deal. But before we had a signed contract with them. And at that time, that was just in April, this past April, it had set us back several months because we had spent all that time working through that potential partnership. And so April came around and we were like, “Well, what do we do now? We still need to finish the movie.” We still need to have the narrative of the movie filmed, and then we were going to be all done with it. And the Lord over and over again kept putting Heidi St. John on our hearts and said, “She’s the one.” She’s the one that he wanted us to do it with.
So, I called Heidi. We had interviewed her before for the movie in Tennessee. And her interview was excellent. But it was just a regular interview. It wasn’t the storyline of the movie. So I called Heidi and I said, “Here’s the deal. We need to finish this movie and we need a storyline. And we would like to do that with you.” And it was going to by myself and another homeschool mom talking through our journey of homeschooling. And she just said, “I’m in. Let’s do this.” But as you know, Heidi lives in Washington. She lives in-
Aby: On the other side of the country.
Yvette: On the other side of the country. We were in Georgia. She’s in Washington state. So we just started to pray again and say, “Lord, we’re going to just trust you to get us there. It’s not like we have all this extra money to travel across the country. It’s very expensive, obviously, to do that.” And so we just prayed. And again the Lord provided for us to be able to do that. And you were an exciting part of that, Aby, because as we were traveling across the country, you are in Idaho, and you and I … You know, you talked in the beginning a little bit about how you had reached out to us over a year ago and just said, “Hey, I’m excited about what you’re doing. How can I pray for you? How can I help?”
So, the Lord has just formed a really good friendship between you and me. So when I realized that you were on the way we were able to stop by and meet you and your family and stay with you for a few days. And that was such a huge blessing. Clearly a friendship and relationship orchestrated by the Lord. So we got to spend time with you and then we went on to Washington. And we got to go spend time with Heidi and her family. We were there for about two and a half weeks. So that was towards the end of June.
So, we got to finish filming the movie with Heidi. And we filmed the narrative with her, and then we filmed also, she and her family about two years ago opened the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center. And this place is absolutely amazing. It is exactly what every homeschool mom would dream of having. It’s this huge warehouse. It’s set up with classrooms and a theater and an art studio and a science lab, and they’ve got music rooms, and they’ve got beekeeping, and they have a recording studio where Heidi records her podcasts. And they’ve got a computer lab. I mean, a coffee shop so the moms can go hang out while their kids are doing classes.
It’s just amazing what the Lord has done with their ministry. And so we were able to film there with a bunch of their families who are part of the Homeschool Resource Center as well. And it was just incredible to see how God, again, opened those doors, provided for us to get to Washington, film the rest of the movie with Heidi and with her family, and at the Homeschool Resource Center. And then bring us to the place where we are now.
So last month, we finished in July, so last month we finished filming the whole movie.
Aby: That’s amazing. That’s incredible.
Yvette: It was amazing. Yes. Yeah. It was an amazing day when we finished. As a matter of fact, I can’t wait till the movie comes out because there was this one part where we needed to kind of tie up the whole message of the movie. And Heidi and I were sitting in the coffee shop and Garritt’s filming, and we’re talking with one another. And Garritt is saying, because he’s directing the movie of course, and he says, “Here’s the message that we need in order to just bring it home.”
And I was trying to get it out. And I just couldn’t do it. I could not form the words together properly in order to get the message across that we were trying to get through in this movie. And so he looked at Heidi, he said, “Heidi, do you think you can do this.” And I’m like, “Of course Heidi can do it.” And ironically she wasn’t even feeling very good that day. She was just having one of those days where she was just feeling kind of crummy.
And so, she didn’t even know what she was going to say exactly or how this was all going to end. But we had prayed beforehand and Garritt just said, “Okay, Heidi. It’s you. It’s on you now. Bring it home.” And it was literally like the Holy Spirit just came down on her. And she just gave this amazing … And it was probably three minutes of just bringing the whole movie together in one beautiful kind of speech, if you will, to the point where we were all about in tears. Actually I think Garritt was in tears at the end of it. And it was so funny, as soon as he cut he was like, “Yes.” And he screamed really loud and kind of Heidi and I jumped and we were like, “What?”
And he said, “That was it. That’s the end of the movie.” And that was it. And it was done.
Aby: Three years wrapped up in three minutes.
Yvette: Three years wrapped up in three minutes. Exactly. It was absolutely incredible, and it was only-
Aby: And it’s incredible because God knew from the very beginning, from the moment you wrote that little note to him on the church pew. God knew that that powerful last three minutes of the movie was where it was going to be delivered, who was going to say it, in exactly the time and place that he had planned for it.
Yvette: Yes. Yeah. It was a beautiful thing. So that’s where we are right now with the movie. We are done filming. It has been really neat. As we’ve been here in California we’ve been able to meet with a lot of friends and family and just kind of share the journey of where God has taken us over the past few years. And I think three years ago had God laid out for us, “This is what your life is going to look like,” I don’t know that we would have been so quick to sign on the dotted line. Because it’s been a huge blessing. But it’s also been a really difficult three years, because for this whole time we haven’t really been settled anywhere. We’ve been traveling a lot. We have not had a real solid homeschool community. We’ve gone to church in Georgia when we’re there, but we travel so much that we haven’t had a solid steady church community.
It’s been difficult for our whole family. But there have been so many blessings that have come from it. And we know that we are exactly where God wants us to be.
Aby: And he knows exactly where you’re going. So the movie’s wrapped up, and if anybody has not seen the trailer to this film, it will … If that didn’t give you chills, what the story the Yvette just told, the trailer will. So we’ll link to that at the bottom of this, because you’ve got to go watch that trailer. And then it needs to be shared everywhere so that you can get just what’s behind this film. And just as a side-note, because you would never plug this, but I will. That trailer won an incredible award, right? Didn’t that trailer win some award?
Yvette: Yeah. It won best film trailer at the Christian Worldview Film Festival just back in March. So yes. That was really exciting.
Aby: Which just shows you what kind of film this is going to be. This is going to be a top-notch film. So tell me now, it’s August 17th. I know God knows the plan-
Yvette: When we’re recording this.
Aby: So, the plan… Oh, sorry, yes.
Yvette: This is not live.
Aby: Right. So what is it going to take for me to see this movie on the screen?
Yvette: Well, that’s a good question. It’s going to take the Lord, obviously. The hand of God continuing to move. As we have filmed, about a year ago we went and we got to stay with a couple who had invited us to stay in their home overnight. They knew that we were going to be traveling through their town and they said, “We’d love to just have you guys over,” which that’s actually one of the amazing things God has done over the past several years is that people have just opened up their homes to us. Hospitality has been amazing. And people have just loved on our family and randomly they’ll just invite us in, and it’s been incredible because we have friends now all over the place.
But we stayed with them overnight, and the morning that we were leaving the husband, he said, “I really, I just want to pray over your family.” And when he prayed for us he prayed … Do you remember the story of course of the Israelites and Moses is leading the Israelites into the promised land. And there’s the one part where they’re fighting the Amalekites. And the Israelites are winning as long as Moses is holding up his staff. And as soon as his arm gets tired and he starts to fall, then the Israelites start to lose.
And so, Aaron and Hur come alongside Moses and they hold up his arm, and the Israelites end up winning this battle. And so that was what he prayed over us. And he said, “Lord, just bring people around the Hampton family as they fight this battle and get this movie done. Bring people alongside them who will help hold up their arms and encourage them.” Because there’s been several times where we’ve just been weary. We’re tired. We are overwhelm. It has for the most part been I’ll say a four-man show, because we’ll include our girls in that. They’ve done a lot with this movie. And so it’s just been our family who has done most of this.
But the Lord has brought alongside us people who have supported us through prayer, through encouragement, through finances. And writing blogs for us. Just podcasting with me. I mean, so different things that people have done to encourage and support us. And it’s not anything that we’ve done on our own. We are, to be quite honest, we’re totally lame on our own. We are not capable of doing any of this without the grace and mercy and power of God. But the beautiful thing about that is that in the end, and we talk a lot about this as a family. Because it’s been such a difficult journey in many ways and a journey that we couldn’t do on our own, in the end all we’re going to be able to say is, “Look what God did.”
It’s not because we’re such amazing people and so gifted in a million different areas. It’s because God has equipped us to be able to accomplish what he’s called us to do in making this movie. And so he gets all the glory for it in the end.
Aby: Well, and I think too, it is a movie, but it is so much more than a movie. And I think that that’s maybe the message that also needs to get across, is this isn’t just a movie. I mean, look around our culture and see what’s going on. We are in a whole new set of times that we’ve ever been in, and we are raising children in, they’re not scary times because we know who’s in control and we know the end of the story. But they’re difficult times. And our culture is going down fast. And our families are being torn apart. And our children are having to fight things that we never thought they would.
And so, this isn’t just a movie. This is a message that God has placed on your guys’ hearts. But the reality is it’s a message that every one of us who has chosen to homeschool, and even those that haven’t, this is a message that’s on the hearts of the people. And this is a tool. This movie is a tool for all of us. I’ve said so many times, if I could just pay someone to answer all the ridiculous questions people ask me about homeschool, if I could just hand someone a movie and say, “Check this out,” that they would be as inspired and passionate about not just homeschool, but about the design that God made for parents to teach and train their children in his righteousness.
I mean, that sounds like a cop out for me, but I’d love to just hand someone something that they could watch. And that’s what this is. This isn’t just a movie. This is a message to God’s people and to people that wonder and question and aren’t sure. Because more now than ever this message needs to be heard.
Yvette: Yes. Oh, I could not agree more. It’s interesting, because we’ve talked a lot about this over the last even just couple months, in that since we started filming three years ago, the time has gone by so quickly but so much has happened in the last three years in culture. I mean, we have seen a drastic change in the way people are responding to God’s word, in the way that the church is responding, in the way that public schools are responding, and that the deeper their indoctrination is going and what they’re teaching these kids. It was bad three years ago. It’s worse today. And it’s gotten so out of control that parents, they need help, and they need hope. They need to know that there’s another way, another alternative to homeschooling, or I’m sorry, to public schooling or private schooling.
And so that’s why God’s called us to make this movie. But we can’t make it alone. I mean, we are the body of Christ and we are not meant to do this on our own. And we haven’t done it on our own. We’ve been kind of the daily hands and feet who the Lord has called to do this. But we certainly cannot do this without the help of people. I was reflecting recently on … I don’t know, I’m reading a lot of the Old Testament, as you can see. Our family’s actually reading through the New Testament, but in my quiet time I’m actually reading through Joshua right now.
And I love reading about the Israelites because it’s amazing to see what God has done with them. And I was thinking recently about, you know when God brought them out of Egypt and they’re standing at the edge of the Red Sea, and they’re standing in front of this huge sea, and they don’t know how they’re going to get through it. Because what are they going to do? If it had been a little stream or if it had been maybe even like a larger river there were enough of them that collectively they could have said, “You know what, if we just stack these rocks just right or if we lay these logs just so we can figure out a way to get across this stream or across this river.”
But God didn’t bring them to a stream or river. He brought them to the sea. And so they’re standing there and they could not at that point even have said, “Well, we’re just going to stand here and wait, and clearly God’s going to split the sea and we’re going to walk through on dry ground.” Because that had never been done before. And so all they could do was stand and wait. And they were scared. And now the enemy’s chasing them. And again, God just said, “Moses, you hold up your staff and watch what I do.” And he parts the sea. And they walk through on dry land. I mean, that’s an incredible story.
Aby: It’s incredible. Yes.
Yvette: And the same God who can split the sea for the Israelites to walk through is the same God who will provide everything that we need in order to get this movie done. Because again, it’s his movie. It’s not ours. And we, as far as budget-wise, I know you didn’t ask this, but I’ll just say anyway, just so people know where we are, as far as budget-wise it’s going to take close to about $500,000 to get the movie into theaters.
So now that we’re done filming, we’re done with production, we now are moving into postproduction. And post production is where we bring in a composer and a colorist, and probably a second editor, and all the other names that you see in the end credits of the movie who will make this movie excellent. But we have to hire all those people and then all the resources that we need in order to complete this. So post production is about, I think it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of $198,000. So that’s what we need to finish, post-production on the movie.
And then another, well, whatever the difference is of that. So close to $500,000 total to get it actually into theaters. So the rest of that budget is for marketing the movie, which I know that sounds like a big number, but if no one knows about the movie then no one’s going to see it. So it’s not too big for God, though. You know, we realize that [crosstalk 00:38:29]-
Aby: It’s not. And I know a lot of people are probably thinking, “Okay, why would I get behind … There’s a million movies out there. There’s 100 movies out there. There’s lots of movie makers out there.” But what I want to say is getting behind this, we’re not getting behind a movie. We’re getting behind a message that needs to be heard, and God has a message that he wants heard in a culture that desperately needs to hear it. And you know, when we send missionaries out into a strange world where people aren’t following Christ to spread the gospel, missionaries don’t go without people sending them. And there are people sending the missionaries, there are people praying for the missionaries and encouraging and supporting them financially, and in many ways.
And that’s how I want people to see this, is this is a mission. This is a mission that has been put on your guys’ heart. And as parents who have already answered the call to homeschool, we need to get behind this mission. We need to have a heart for the lost. We need to have a heart for parents. They were once probably where we were, that said, “Yeah, I would like to but there’s no way I could.” And they have all the reasons as to why they don’t think they’re equipped. Or even maybe aren’t sure that it’s even the best, the right way to do it. So we need to spread this message. And the way to do that, because not everybody’s an eloquent speaker. Not everybody can make a movie. But God has placed those gifts in the speakers that you have in the movie, and in you and Garritt to make the movie. And so we need to get behind you, homeschool families.
I want to get behind you guys to do this because I look around my neighborhood and I cry for the children. And I cry for the families who they know that they don’t, they don’t want to send their kids out every day, but they don’t know another way. And so this is for those families. This is for our neighbors, this is for our church families, this is for ourselves to be encouraged and our parents and the naysayers, or the people that want to do it but just don’t know how.
So, getting behind this movie isn’t just funding a movie. Getting behind this movie is supporting missionaries who have answered the call to go out into a culture that rejects God and give hope and a message that just must be spread right now. So how can we do that? So now what? I’m on board. What can we do now?
Yvette: Yeah. Thank you for your encouragement with that. There are a couple of ways that people can help. The quickest way is to just go to schoolhouserocked.com. If people want to donate they can click right on the front page. There’s a blue button that says, I think it just says, “Donate now.” But then there are also several different ways that people can help. So I think on the front page there’s a button that says, “Support Schoolhouse Rocked.” I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s labeled. And they can go on there and they can see how they can partner with us. Homeschool friendly organizations can sponsor the movie. That’s a huge way that organizations can help and get on board with us.
People can donate. People can invest. We’re actually looking for bigger investors, and donors. Bigger donors as well. Though honestly, I mean $10 or $10,000, it doesn’t matter. It’s all God’s money and it’s all the same in his economy anyway. But that shows the different ways that people can be involved in helping the movie. And then also, obviously, just praying for us. Pray for us as we go about doing this. We have several people who are on our prayer team and they will send us regular text messages or phone calls or emails and just say, “Hey, how can we pray for you. How are things going.” And that means the world to us.
I think people don’t realize how much we need that encouragement and how much that keeps us going. And, I mean, Aby, you’ve been one who the Lord, I am certain he has placed you in our lives exactly at the right time because you … I think I shared this with you, but a couple weeks ago Garritt and I were out to dinner and just talking through, “Okay, what now? What are we going to do? How are we going to move forward with this? Which direction is the Lord leading us to get this movie done?” And you had sent an email, no, a text message to me that morning and just said, “I’m so excited. I can’t wait till the day that we get to actually see this movie completed, and I don’t care if it takes 10 years for it to get done. It will get done in God’s perfect time.”
And at the end of it you said, “Stay the course.” And as Garritt and I were talking he was sharing with me, he just said, “You know, I just, I know that this is what God’s called us to. There’s no doubt in my mind.” And I know it too. “Because we’ve seen his hand move in so many different ways.” But we need people to remind us of that. To just stay the course, just keep going, don’t give up, keep going, keep going. Have you ever seen Facing the Giants? That’s the Kendrick brothers’ movie.
The Death Crawl Scene from Facing the Giants
Aby: No.
Yvette: Oh, you need to watch it. It’s so good. For those of you who have seen it, you may remember there’s this part in there where Alex Kendrick is a football coach. And you need to see this part because I don’t know that I can do it justice. But there’s this part where he’s got this football player and this big football player has another of this smaller football player guys on his back. And he’s getting him to crawl across the field. And he’s blindfolded, the one who’s crawling with the other one on his back, he’s blindfolded. And he’s trying so hard to get across the field, and he’s exhausted. I mean, he gets halfway across and he’s just so tired. And he’s like, “I can’t go one more step.”
And Alex Kendrick is on the football field on the ground with him. And he’s down on his hands and knees with him, and he’s like, “Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Don’t stop. Keep going.” And I often feel like people like you and our family members, you know our parents have been incredibly supportive of this and what God is doing here. There are so many people who are just on their hands and knees with us and just saying, “Keep going, keep going, stay the course, keep going.” And so when people leave reviews on the podcast, when they email us, when they text us or call us, that is a huge way that people can support and encourage us as well.
Aby: Awesome. Well, I cannot wait. I cannot wait. I keep thinking about sitting in a seat and watching it on the big screen, and hearing a message that is so important to be heard and bringing my friends and my family. And this is going to be wonderful. And there’s been another big movie that’s just been released that is just, it’s changed lives and it’s addressed things that are happening right now that are against God’s word in the culture. And it reached peoples’ hearts. And that’s what I can’t wait to see this movie do, is reach peoples’ hearts for the kingdom of God.
And I can’t wait. And I’m so blessed to be with you in this journey. And I just keep thinking, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me.” And I think this movie is going to give parents the encouragement they need and the tools that they need to not hinder their children from coming to Christ. So I just, I’m so thankful for what you guys are doing. I want to encourage everybody listening to this to get behind this, to get behind this film. It’s for all of us. It’s for God, but it’s for all of us to share and to use. And then share it. It’s just, get on, if you’re on social media share the trailer, share the movie, and share the need that it’s going to take people getting behind this movie to see it in the theaters and to have it in our hands. So-
Yvette: Yeah. Thank you. And I want to just throw out there too, it’s not just the movie. Schoolhouse Rockedis a ministry that God has called us to. And we’re building this whole kind of ecosystem around the movie, which is why we have the podcast, it’s why we have the blog, it’s why we have the Facebook page. It’s not just here’s a movie, now leave and go figure out how to do it on your own. It’s the movie is the base of it, but then you’ve got all of these things that go along with it to help continue to encourage parents in their journey of homeschooling. And that’s really what we feel like the Lord has led us to do, is to build a ministry to homeschool families to help them to stay the course, to help them homeschool with excellence. Because anything we do for the Lord it should be done with excellence, including this movie, including the podcast, including everything that we do, we do it for the glory of God.
And so, it’s not just the movie, it’s the whole package. So when people support Schoolhouse Rockedthey are supporting everything that we’re doing with this ministry.
Aby: Yeah. A ministry to encourage parents and equip parents who homeschool. And for such a time as this. All we have to do is look around and this message is one that needs … And we all need the encouragement. I need to get on to Schoolhouse Rockedand get encouraged. So thank you for answering the call. Thank you for letting us all be a part of it.
Yvette: Yeah. Thank you, Aby. It’s so fun talking to you. And I appreciate you being on with me. This ended up being kind of a reverse podcast where I feel like you were interviewing me, but I love being able to share of God’s faithfulness, and again, it’s all for his glory.
Aby: Absolutely.
Yvette: Only by his grace. So thank you, Aby, for loving our family, and loving us through this journey. And thank you guys for listening to the podcast today. I know we went way long today. But please pray for us, and please consider supporting us in any way you can, whether it’s through prayer or through a financial contribution or donation or investment, or whatever it is. Just pray about that, and we would love for you to just partner with us in this important ministry. So have a great day you guys, and we will be back next week.
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