There is no question 2020 has been full of challenges, but it has also been another year where the sovereign God of the Universe was still at work. One of the greatest things he has done this year has been to bring millions of children home from school – many for good (read more here and here). While this has created a year of chaos for many and required many families to make tough decisions very quickly, this single event will have positive effects for many families that will last for generations.
Through this tumultuous year, as so many new families have experienced the world of homeschooling, God has grown the ministry and impact of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. He has used the practical advice, heartfelt encouragement, and Biblical instruction of dozens of excellent guests to minister to families around the world. Just in 2020 we have seen listenership grow to from around 9,000 downloads January to almost 21,000 in August, with regular listeners in over 40 countries. We continued to be amazed at his goodness and continue to be blessed that he has allowed us to do this important and exciting work.
As we close out the 2020 podcast season we really wanted to go out with a bang, so for the last week of the year we are bringing you a three-part conversation with Kirk Cameron, from his session for the Homegrown Generation Family Expo.
As we listened to this interview we were, once again, reminded that God LOVES families and the instructions he gives us in his Word are for our good and his GLORY! We are certain that this conversation will be an encouragement to you too. Please be sure to share this one with a friend…after you have a listen, of course!
Just because we are closing out the year in style doesn’t mean we won’t be back. We are SO excited to bring you more great guests in 2021. In fact, we’re kicking off the year with an excellent new interview with Heidi St. John!
For the fourth season of the podcast, we’ll be bringing in many new guests, as well as some of your favorite return guests, who are sure to bring you the encouragement you need to stay the course as you journey along this path of homeschooling and since the podcast exists to serve YOU,we want to hear from you!Please email us and let us know the following…
1} What GUESTS you’d like us to have on the podcast
2} What TOPICS you’d like us to discuss
3} How we can IMPROVE to better serve and encourage you {we promise not to get our feelings hurt…we really do want to know}.
Also, if you haven’t left a review on iTunes for the podcast, we’d LOVE it if you would!
Here’s a recent review from a listener:(5 Stars) “This show does not disappoint! Great, in depth interviews on homeschooling, discipleship, family relationships, and more. It has become a must-listen podcast for me.”
Praise God!
We pray that 2021 is a blessed year for you and that whatever the year brings you are able to see God’s good hand at work.
Soli Deo gloria! The Hampton Family ~ Garritt, Yvette, Brooklyn, and Lacey
P.s. If you have started homeschooling in 2020 check out the following great resources.
One of the major effects of millions of students doing public school at home is that the heart of public school education is being revealed to parents who are paying attention to their children’s Zoom lessons. At the same time, our culture has been in a state of upheaval, in near civil war, and the roots of this culture war have been nourished in the public schools. Now the truly radical nature of the indoctrination our public school students are receiving is coming to light.
Alex Newman recently talked with Yvette Hampton and Aby Rinella on The Schoolhouse Rocked about the true nature of what is being taught at public schools. Common Core, Marxism, statism, nihilism, atheism, evolution, the LGBT agenda: these are the philosophies that are central to public school indoctrination, and if we want to see our culture and our Constitutional Republic saved, we must reclaim the education of our children. Education is truly the key to saving our nation!
Alex, talk about the reality … and I’m not talking just about Common Core. Talk about the reality of the indoctrination that’s happening in the public school system right now. We have many friends back who are public school educators. These are people that we love, people that we’ve gone to church with, and they say, “No, our kids need to be salt and light in the public school. We need to have these Christian kids in there. They’re doing okay.” And for whatever reason, a lot of these parents are still not really seeing the full picture of the indoctrination that’s happening.
Can you talk about that and just bring it? I mean, I really want these parents to know the reality of what is happening to the minds of their children and why so many children … even if their children aren’t walking away from the faith … why it’s dangerous for kids, not just physically. I mean, of course we see that. My niece goes to a public school in Saugus, California and several months ago they had a school shooting. So physically, it’s not safe. But spiritually and emotionally, what is the damage that’s being done in these schools?
Alex Newman: This is, I think, the most important question, and the data now is very clear. Dan Smithwick at the Nehemiah Institute has been studying this for quite some time, and what he’s found is that the overwhelming majority of Christian children from good Christian homes who spend 12 years in a government indoctrination center masquerading as a school are going to leave the faith. I mean, it’s up there in the 80% range. And that’s the kids who come from good Christian homes with two Christian parents whose parents take them to church. I mean, the data now is very clear. For my generation, millennials, a poll just came out late last year and 70% of millennials now describe themselves as socialists. This would have been unthinkable to earlier generations of Americans, that we would give up all our freedom, that we would give up our understanding of God and trade it in for this cheap fraud that is socialism, that always and everywhere results in death and misery and shortages and tyranny. I mean, it would have been unthinkable.
The reason this is happening is because of the indoctrination going on in the schools. Nowadays, it’s gotten so extreme, especially in California, but this is now a nationwide issue, in kindergarten, they’re telling children they might have been born in the wrong body and, “We won’t tell your parents if you want to wear a dress to school.” I mean, that’s the level we’re at. In California, now, they’ve got gender support plan and individual transition plan where they’ll start giving your kid hormones and puberty blockers to prepare them for genital mutilation. I mean, I can’t even believe I’m saying this, and yet this is the reality of what our children are going through now at the youngest possible ages in government schools. They’re being just saturated in this race mongering and the hatred of America and the hatred of Christianity.
Our kids are not safe in the public schools, folks. It’s that simple. We’ve got to get them out. And so, for people who really want the condensed version, we have produced a special issue of The New American all about education. You can get it in PDF for like 75 cents. If you want a physical copy, we have to mail you one. I think it costs like three bucks, and you can get 100 if you want to give it to your pastor and your neighbors. It’s an excellent tool, because we have Duke and Israel and great Americans who’ve worked on these things showing the problem and then the solution. So that’ll give you a really comprehensive overview of what’s happening and where this is going and how you can free yourself and protect your children.
“The idea that we would send our children into battle, alone, without us, where our enemy holds all the power, where the enemy holds all the commanding heights, and they’re the ones who are going to teach your children, I mean, it’s just unfathomable to me.”
Alex Newman
But I’ll just wrap it up by saying … People tell me all these different excuses. “Oh, I can’t afford to get my kids out.” You can’t afford not to get your kids out. When they come home, and they want to mutilate themselves and they’re suicidal and they’re taking heroin … I mean, I’ve seen this in my own family, in my own community. This is ubiquitous now. You can’t afford not to get your children out. And then the salt and light thing, “My kids are going to be salt and light.” Would you send your children into a war? Would you send your children off to go fight in Iraq or whatever? Of course, you wouldn’t. We know better than to send our children into armed conflict. And yet God tells us crystal clear … Go to Ephesians 6:12. We are in a spiritual war.
Yvette Hampton: That’s right.
Alex Newman: And if you don’t recognize that you’re in a spiritual war, you might be on the wrong side, so you probably better get up to speed. But we’re in a spiritual war right now. The idea that we would send our children into battle, alone, without us, where our enemy holds all the power, where the enemy holds all the commanding heights, and they’re the ones who are going to teach your children, I mean, it’s just unfathomable to me. I know a lot of Christians, they don’t want to think about it this way because, “Hey, we both have to work and we don’t have enough money.”
I tell people, “I would live in a cardboard box before I would send my children to a public school.” And I don’t mean that in a condescending way at all. Mom and Dad who you’ve got your kids in a public school, I’m not judging you. It’s just you don’t know these things because your pastor hasn’t told you and the fake media hasn’t told you. So now I’m telling you because I love you and because I love your kids and I don’t want them to be destroyed. I don’t want them to be brainwashed. I don’t want them to turn against you and turn against your church and turn against our country.
I think, frankly, the only solution … If you go with the title of this show … the only way we’re going to be able to save our freedoms, our nation, our families, our churches, absent just straight divine intervention and God just comes down and fixes it all for us, is going to be to get our children out of the public schools and to make sure they’re getting a good, godly, Christ-centered education either in our homeschools or in a good Christian school if for whatever reason you absolutely can’t homeschool. But parents, you have no higher responsibility to your children than to make sure they’re getting a good education in the things of God, and that’s on you, folks. That’s on you.
If you are considering homeschooling or just need some great homeschooling encouragement, please check out HomegrownGeneration.com for over 9 hours of FREE homeschool videos from the 2020 Homegrown Generation Family Expo.
Yvette Hampton: A listener asks, “How long is a homeschool day supposed to be?” So Aby, how much time should a family spend homeschooling each day?
Aby Rinella: Okay, your homeschool day is as long as it needs to be for your family. The answer is not going to be “as long as a public school day.” I’ll tell you that.
Yvette Hampton: Right. Now, explain that real quick, because you were a public school teacher, so I want you to unpack that a little bit.
Aby Rinella: Okay, so let’s say my class started at 8:00 and we got out at 2:30. It’s different at different schools, but that’s a long day. But let me tell you what that day was filled with; 23 kids getting their snow clothes on and off. It was filled with bathroom breaks and it was filled with helping one kid while the rest of the kids waited. It was filled with trying to walk in a line 58,000 times to get to music class. It was filled with all of these things that we, as parents at home, don’t have to think about or worry about. So your homeschool day is going to look different based on how long it takes your kid to accomplish whatever it is that you, as the parent, have set out for them to accomplish.
That looks different at different ages and in different seasons of life, but if you are doing five hours of kindergarten, you need to stop it!
Yvette Hampton: You’re doing too much.
Aby Rinella: You need to knock it off. So many parents ask this question. The thing that we fall into as parents is to think, “I’m not doing enough because this is only taking two hours” and I want to say, “It really shouldn’t take much more than that in those elementary years.” Honestly, it’s that you have been programmed to think that a school day is eight hours or seven hours and that is absolutely not the case with homeschool.
“I used to get so frustrated because we would get up and we would do our morning chores and we would do all this stuff that needed to be done in the morning and then by the time everybody was up and ready and moving, it was 11 or 12.”
Yvette Hampton: Right. And it depends how you define homeschool day, because for our family, I used to get so frustrated because we would get up and we would do our morning chores and we would do all this stuff that needed to be done in the morning and then by the time everybody was up and ready and moving, it was 11 or 12! It’s typically 11 or 12 before we’re really into our schooling academics.
Aby Rinella: Your academic studies, yeah.
Yvette Hampton: Until we’re actually doing math and science, but part of that morning time we’re doing morning basket and we’re reading together and sometimes we’re playing games. The other day we sat and played googly eyes for 45 minutes and we’ll play Yahtzee. That’s all just part of life. Sometimes we go grocery shopping. Last week, I got my girls up one day and I was like, “We’re going to go get donuts this morning!“ And it’s shocking how quickly they will get up and ready when you say the word donuts! Anyway, that’s a different topic.
Life is part of homeschooling and so how are you defining your homeschool day really matters, because there are often days where we’re still doing history or science or math or any of those things until five o’clock in the evening, sometimes six o’clock in the evening, but we have done a whole lot of other stuff through the day. It’s not like they have been sitting at the table from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM doing schoolwork.
Aby Rinella: Exactly.
Yvette Hampton: We’ve done it kind of sporadically, throughout the day because we’ve had interruptions and stuff, but that’s the beauty of homeschooling. That’s how our family works.
Aby Rinella: Yeah, and that’s really the beauty of homeschool freedom. And that’s what really is important, is the freedom that we have as parents to make those schedules and to be interrupted because really it’s not an interruption, it’s life. And so, every family’s homeschool day is going to look different, so try to get out the box of thinking your day should look like a typical school day. The worst thing you can do as a homeschool mom is make your home look like the public school.
Yvette Hampton: Right.
Aby Rinella: That’s not what we’re trying to do.
Yvette Hampton: Or make your homeschool look like your neighbor’s homeschool or your friend’s homeschool, because Aby, you and I are very different…
Aby Rinella: Very different.
Yvette Hampton: In the way that we schedule our days. I mean, you kind of get up and get going with your kids and you guys are done earlier than us. You’re two hours behind us and you’re probably done before we are and that’s okay. It’s just how our family works.
Aby Rinella: And here’s the thing, it’s going to change. You might have teenagers who have a job to get to, so they need to do school at a different time of day. Look at your family and go to the Lord seek His wisdom on how your day should be scheduled.
Yvette Hampton: Right, and do what works best so that you and your children are not constantly stressed out and on edge all day long.
Aby Rinella: Totally.
Yvette Hampton: Like you said, it depends on the age of your kids. I have a high schooler now, so academics have gotten a whole lot more serious this year than they have been in the past and my youngest is in fourth grade and so she’s getting a little bit more serious about her academics as well.
Aby Rinella: I think one of the greatest things we could do is throw away the clock and do school based on how long your kids’ attention span is. This may not always be possible, because we live in the real world, but we get bogged down by the clock.
Jesse and I lived off the grid for a while and we got rid of our clock for about a year. And you know what, we worked when the sun came up, we ate when we were hungry, we stopped when the day was done and the stress level went away.I know we can’t do that now, but if you could just hide the clock while you’re doing your school day, and as long as your kids are engaged, keep them there. When they’re done, quit. Don’t let the clock rule your homeschool day!
As I read the newest announcement of back to school plans in light of the COVID-19 situation, I realized every one of these plans opens several cans of worms. Iowa has announced that the state will not require masks or social distancing when children return to the public schools in the fall. While this may or may not be welcome news to Iowa families, there are several very nuanced points that need to be considered in this announcement.
1) Any way you slice it, the COVID thing is going to have a big effect on homeschooling in the coming year. “Jill Pennington Swanson is considering home-schooling her children this fall if students and teachers are not required to wear face coverings in the classroom.
The Waukee mother of six said she is disappointed that Iowa is not taking more stringent safety precautions to prevent the spread of coronavirus in schools.”
2) Iowa has 327 school districts and 119 additional accredited non-public schools?!?! REALLY? Iowa? “Instead, the state will leave those decisions in the hands of local school boards, which could lead to a variety of approaches across Iowa’s 327 school districts and 119 accredited nonpublic schools.”
3) This is going to lead to more CHAOS and arbitrariness, with every district deciding on its own requirements. “Officials at Des Moines Public Schools said this week that they would require students and teachers to wear face masks in buildings. Ankeny, on the other hand, will not require face masks or temperature checks when school resumes.” This will only lead to more parent, teacher, and student frustration – and ultimately, more people leaving the public schools.
4) Parents won’t actually know what to expect until just before kids are supposed to go back to school – and then, things will likely change when the predicted “next wave” comes. “The majority of Des Moines-area school district officials that spoke with the Register said those decisions are still being worked out and it could be weeks before parents know what will happen when school starts.” Again, this will lead to more frustration and confusion. “‘It would just be nice to know what they are thinking,’ Pennington Swanson said. “I know August is a ways off, but for planning it would be nice to know what direction they are leaning.”
Late Friday afternoon, the Department of Education released a statement saying further clarification of the guidelines is needed. It promised to ‘release additional information in the near future.'”
5) People have no concept of the difference between a guideline, an order, and a law – and consequently, too many people are living under unnecessary, arbitrar restrictions, which have endangered peoples health, undermined the economy, and trampled on the constitution and the God-given rights of the people. “Jean Hessburg, a spokeswoman for the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA), the state’s teacher’s union, said the state’s plan doesn’t comply with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for public places.” A plan doesn’t have to “comply” with guidelines. It can meet them, exceed them, or ignore them. They are guidelines, not laws, and not orders (which are normally applied to agencies, not individuals).
6) The media repeats outright lies in their fearmongering effort. They don’t bother to fact check them if they fit with their agenda, even if they are completely illogical. “The recommendations come as states across the country grapple with how to reopen schools during the largest pandemic to hit the United States in a generation.” Sorry, not even close. Many flu seasons have had higher rates of infection and death in this generation.
7) Teacher’s Unions use bully tactics to promote their progressive agenda. “‘It is a gamble and obscene that the governor and the Department of Education are gambling on the health and safety of our students, our staff and school employees,’ Hessburg said. ‘This virus has demonstrated that it knows no bounds and students can bring the virus home to families and ravage a family.'” Note the attack on the governor and state Department of Education officials in their attempt to influence statewide health policy (hint: the union should be supporting teachers and students, and should confine their interests to educational matters, not health policy. Also, recognize the very subtle anthropomorphisation of the virus, “This virus knows has demonstrated that it knows no bounds…” – the union is casting the virus as a sentient enemy to reinforce the fear that we should all be feeling.
8) I wonder how many of the 50,000 Iowa Teacher’s Union members agree with the position of the union and its president. “ISEA President Mike Beranek released a statement Thursday urging school districts to create their own guidelines mandating face coverings, physical distancing and other safety protocols. The union represents more than 50,000 public school teachers and other education professionals.
‘I simply don’t understand why the state of Iowa is not taking a cue from what is happening in our country and implementing guidelines that are scientifically proven and recommended by our health specialists all throughout our country,’ he said. There they go again, with the “scientifically proven” stuff. I will save my rant on the religion of Scientism for another post, but just remember how inaccurate the projections, death counts, early test results, consensus on masks, and treatment protocols (eg. respirators causing more harm than good, and housing infected people in nursing homes) have been throughout this circus.
9) Finally, REALLY, 50,000 members!?! How many of you hear that number – 50,000 unionized teachers in IOWA alone – and get a cold chill as you realize just how big this behemoth of public education is, how much money is spent, and how much influence is bought by these unions (many times, with the money of unwilling members).
For more perspective on this important issue I highly recommend Standing Up to Goliath, by Rebecca Friedrichs. In this EXCELLENT and terrifying book, Rebecca Friedrichs discusses the incredible influence and dangerous agenda that the national and statewide teachers unions wield. She shares firsthand accounts of the abuses of students and teachers that were overlooked and covered up by unions in an effort to protect bad, tenured teachers and their own bottom lines, as massive money making machines. Finally, she recounts her historic court battle against the unions to stop them from coercing teachers and stealing dues from unwilling members (and non-members). This is a must-read if you care about education, labor, or or the founding principles of our nation.
With schools across the country closing due to the Coronavirus pandemic, many families are finding themselves unexpectedly and unwillingly homeschooling for the first time. While this turn of events may have come as a surprise to you, we (the homeschool community) would like to welcome you, no matter how long you are with us. We would also like to put your minds at ease. You really can teach your children at home and no, you won’t actually go crazy spending the whole day with them! Hopefully, during this unexpected period of homeschool exploration, you will find that you actually enjoy the time with your children and that it can be really beneficial to have them at home with you. We also want you to know that many (maybe most) of us were once reluctant homeschoolers too.
As for my family, we said we would NEVER homeschool our children, yet here we are in our ninth year of formal homeschooling. Not only are we homeschooling, but we LOVE it and now, we would have it no other way. In fact, we have dedicated every minute of our professional lives and most of our personal efforts, over the past three years, to spreading the message that homeschooling is good for students, good for families, and good for culture (this is true whether you are in Wuhan, China; Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Britain, or the United States).
As you dip your feet into the homeschooling waters, if even just to occupy your kids while they’re home, I want to give you some encouragement and advice, and provide you with some helpful resources.
There’s a Revolution Transforming Education and it’s NOT Happening in the Classroom!
First things first, you don’t have to be a formally trained teacher to homeschool your children and yes, homeschooling is legal in your state. If you are considering keeping your children home after the Coronavirus scare has passed, the first thing you should do is check our “Homeschooling in Your State” resources. If you have specific questions about how to get started, what the homeschooling laws are in your state, how to formally withdraw your children from school, or what the requirements are to homeschool legally in your state, you should contact HSLDA (the Home School Legal Defense Association) and get in touch with your state homeschool organization. They will point you in the right direction, and HSLDA can help if you get any pushback from the school when you declare your intent to homeschool your children. Because we know that citizens are on lockdown in several countries, if you are outside of the United States, please visit this link to learn about homeschooling in your country.
Next, there are great resources available for educating your children at home! Because home education has become so common, there are several excellent curriculum choices for every subject. At Schoolhouse Rocked, we work with some of the very best homeschool curriculum providers, co-ops, and support organizations. Please take a minute to check out the companies represented here, here, here, and here. Within those links you will find everything you need to provide your children with a top-notch academic experience at home. Just remember, home education isn’t just about academics. It’s about relationship, about training the hearts of our children, about allowing our children to explore the world and enjoy the outdoors, and about preparing our children for success as adults and into eternity. It’s also about nurturing a love of learning in our children that will last throughout their lives.
Because we all hope this trial will end as quickly as it began, I would like you to consider a few things before you send your children back to school and go on as if the coronavirus pandemic never happened.
First, there are great reasons to homeschool, especially if you start with the end in mind. Realize that home education is about so much more than teaching our children, it is about growing healthy, well-prepared adults. While homeschooling won’t be easy, it will be oh so worth it! Not only does homeschooling allow us to nurture beautiful relationships with our children, and between siblings, and to transfer our values to them, but homeschooling also produces excellent academic results and colleges and employers are actively recruiting homeschooled students because they have proven to be ahead of their public-schooled peers.
Next, realize that homeschooling won’t (and shouldn’t) look like school at home. Homeschooling gives you the opportunity to custom fit academics, virtue training, worldview training, discipleship, and work and business training to the individual needs and gifts of your children. Homeschooling gives you the freedom to make school work for YOUR family. Homeschooling gives you the freedom to integrate school into every aspect of life!
Finally, understand that education isn’t neutral. All education is worldview training. All education is discipleship. All education is indoctrination. The only questions are “what worldview are students being indoctrinated into?” “who is discipling our children?” and “to what end?” While many want to believe that public schools are neutral, or that purely secular schools are not religious, you must realize that public schools are the most effective religious organizations in the world. Parents send their children to public schools to be discipled in the religion of secular humanism for 13 or more years (kindergarten to 12th grade), and schools are very effective at making dedicated disciples of this worldview. Some of the markers of this worldview are a committed belief in evolution and a dedication to multiculturalism.
If the secular humanism and radical Sex Ed weren’t enough, we have come to a place in our history where we have an openly Socialist candidate for president. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, yet here we are. But we shouldn’t be surprised. In addition to the secular humanism (a cornerstone of communism) and radical and dangerous sexuality being taught for several decades now, the public schools have distorted history and taught students to reject the Constitution, denounce American exceptionalism, demand “democracy” while ignoring that we have a representative republican form of government, and now openly embrace socialism as “fair.” We are getting exactly what we ordered. The original aims of the founders of modern public education, John Dewey and Horace Mann, have come to pass.
If you are going to send your children off to around 16,000 hours of indoctrination in the religion of secular humanism (otherwise known as atheism, materialism, or irreligion), in anti-family, pro-LGBT philosophy, and in socialism, don’t be surprised when your children embrace and endorse all of these ideals when they graduate. When you drop your children off at school and entrust their training to the “experts” there, you give up your ability to direct their education and to train their hearts. You also turn over your parental authority and significant legal rights (see In Loco Parentis). At the very least, if you have no choice but to send your children to public school, please KNOW what they are being taught, then actively work to teach them the TRUTH. In practice, this will look a lot like homeschooling, so you may just want to keep at it.
If you want to learn more about homeschooling, please join us for the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. Registration gives you immediate access to over 35 hours of practical homeschooling instruction and encouragement, and a wealth of free home education resources. Additionally, new sessions are added regularly and attendees have the opportunity to interact live with the speakers and post questions in the private Homegrown Generation Facebook Group. This is a great way to get all of your homeschool questions answered.
Want to learn more about homeschooling? Watch this full session from the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. Register for lifetime access to all of the content from this online homeschool conference at HomegrownGeneration.com
“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.
“I’ve taught at seven different universities now and I’ve always had one colleague in every English department who looks forward to teaching homeschool kids. One, because they were smart and two, because they saw it as their mission, as one put, to kick the Jesus out of them. So the universities recognize that these kids are smart and they want them because these are kids that don’t drop class, they don’t swear or cut classes. They turn their homework and they say, “yes ma’am,” “no sir.” They like that. But then they want to socially engineer these kids. And so they’ll take them. The universities want them, but a lot of the professors want them for very different reasons.” – Dr. Duke Pesta
Dr. Duke Pesta is the Director of FreedomProject Academy, host of the Dr. Duke Show, and a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. His experiences as an educational reformer, university professor, and high school teacher, uniquely qualify him to address the current state of education in our country. He speaks across the nation on topics including the necessity of homeschooling, the decline of morality and critical thinking in the public schools, and the myriad of ways that colleges and universities indoctrinate students.
Listen to Dr. Duke Pesta on The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. (11/11/2019 Episode)
Dr. Duke is one of America’s foremost authorities on the dangers of Common Core and the federal takeover of education. He hosts A weekly program about education—The Dr. Duke Show—which covers educational issues from preschool through graduate school.
Yvette Hampton, host of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, had the privilege of talking with Dr. Duke about the influence that culture and churches have had on today’s youth, and how we, as parents, can best prepare our children for the secular worldview ideology that they are being exposed to on a daily basis. They also discussed how most homeschooled students fare in a university setting.
Yvette Hampton: We were visiting Heidi St. John this past summer, filming for Schoolhouse Rocked and actually, while we were at her house was when your episode on her show aired. She had talked about you and she’s just so impressed with who you are and the knowledge that you have of the public education system and all things going on in culture, having to do with education. Of course, you know a whole lot about many, many other things, not just education. So, I heard you on her podcast after she had spoken of you and I thought, man, we’ve got to get this guy on the podcast.
Talk about what you do because, I like that you’re labeled kind of the educational reformer and that’s really what Schoolhouse Rocked is. The full title of the movie is Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution! And it really is a revolution because we need to reform education not just in our country, but worldwide. Why are we in need of a reformation right now when it comes to education?
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Dr. Duke Pesta: Well, I mean, anybody who’s involved with education who is not trying to reform it as part of the problem. We have an educational system that is getting worse and worse. I mean, because you asked me in one word, one sentence to explain the major problem. It is the following. That our progressive educrats, it’s the progressive left who’s been in charge of our public schools, our colleges who are going on 50, 60 years now. And what they have succeeded in doing now over the last 25 years in particular is transforming the way we educate our kids, whether it’s public schools from kindergarten through high school, whether it’s our universities, to educate them primarily first for left-wing ideological purposes. What you and I would call the social justice movement.
Dr. Duke: We have relegated academic achievement, merit, hard work, we have relegated real serious study to all of these political objectives of the left, which is why our kids know less and less and less the farther they go along but are much more politicized. So you’ve got these kids on college campuses who can’t tell you who their senator is, who don’t know the three branches of government, can tell you nothing about the constitution. Yet they know America’s a racist, sexist, evil place and that capitalism and free markets have to go. What we’ve seen happen is a hijacking of the schools by ideology and leftist politics at the expense of real learning. And it’s really starting to transform this country into something very different than what it was meant to be.
Yvette: Yeah. It’s all about indoctrination and no longer about education. And that’s a scary place to be. And you talk about being involved in and reformation on the end of education. And we just got back from a camping trip, actually, yesterday and I was talking to one of the dads there and we had such an interesting conversation because we were talking about as homeschoolers, sometimes, we feel like, well, our kids are protected and so we’re good. We can just close that door. We don’t worry about the education of our kids because we’ve taken it into our own hands, which obviously is what we stand on as a family. It’s why we’re making a movie about it. It’s why we do a podcast, and a blog, and all that stuff because we feel like it’s important for parents to take that role of educating our children.
Yvette: However, it can’t stop there. It needs to continue on. And we were talking about our tax dollars are going to pay, they’re paying for all of these other children to be indoctrinated, and these children are the ones who are the future of our country, our future political leaders, our future doctors, lawyers. And we’re seeing this crazy shift. I mean, sometimes, I feel, and I know you feel this way too, I’m sure, like I’m in the Twilight zone. I hear the things that are happening in universities and in the schools, private schools, public schools, public schools K through 12. We’re from California and I, I literally cannot wrap my mind around the things that are being taught to these children. How did we get here? How did we get to this point where people are having the freedom, because it really has become a freedom for them, to be able to indoctrinate our kids with these horrible, horrific, wicked ideas and have turned so far away from the truth of God? How did we get to this place? And what do we do? How do we get back to where we came from?
“How we got here is really kind of basic, it seems to me. Our churches have stopped fighting this battle. The churches have … I argue that the institutional Christianity, church Christianity is on life support in this country because they don’t want to lose that 501(c)(3), I have had pastors who haveve told me, yeah, gee, Dr. Pesta, we’d love to have you speak here, but I’ve got four public school teachers in my faculty. I can’t upset them.”
Dr. Duke: Well, start with the first part of your question. It was very clear that Christ in the Gospels wants us to be in the world but not of the world. On one hand, we have to protect our kids, our families, our communities in a Christian way. On the other hand, we have to turn outward to a corrupt culture. We can’t ignore it or it’s going to swallow us up. We have to prioritize protecting the faith but we also have to reach out into the world. And so many homeschool moms and dads, I think you’re right, they think that their kids are safe, that by pulling out of the schools, they fix the problem. They really haven’t because not only are we paying for it with our taxpayer dollars, but we are sowing the seeds of our own destruction because as these kids become more common, still many more, like 9.5 out of every 10 school kids are public school kids.
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Dr. Duke: And so, as they become more indoctrinated, more secular, they’re convinced now that God was never meant to be a part of the culture, that our constitution somehow banishes God from public spaces. These are the lies our kids are being told. And as they get older and older, and the generation that leaves college becomes the millennials, they’re … 54% of millennials believe in some kind of cult behavior, right? They believe in tarot cards, they believe in astrology, 54% of them believe in sort of a cult spirituality and less than 50% actually believe in God. And that’s going to come back to bite us. You and me can homeschool our kids, but will your kids be able to homeschool theirs We’ve already seen California, the state you ran away from, wisely got out of, California’s trying to put the screws to homeschoolers. They’re trying to force state agents into homeschool families to kind of watch and see what’s going on, and this is beginning to spread. So that’s the first part of your question, I think.
Dr. Duke: And how we got here is really kind of basic, it seems to me. Our churches have stopped fighting this battle. The churches have … I argue that the institutional Christianity, church Christianity is on life support in this country because they don’t want to lose that 501(c)(3), I have had pastors who haveve told me, yeah, gee, Dr. Pesta, we’d love to have you speak here, but I’ve got four public school teachers in my faculty. I can’t upset them. And so all of this temerity on the refusal of our Christian pastors to actually wade into this, to take a side … because if they were doing that, if our Christian pastors were doing it, they would ultimately be telling the moms and dads, you got to get your kid out of these schools, you’re not going to be able to fix them. Sorry for being long winded, but the answer to your question is you got to get them out. If we’re going to fix any of this, many, many more American kids have to be educated outside of that system and it’s happening but not fast enough.
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Yvette: Yes, I agree with you completely. We often have people ask us, we’re trying to fundraise for this movie just to get through post-production. And we have had many, many people ask us, well, you know, have you gone to churches? And we’ve said, we’ve talked to pastors before and churches will not touch this movie because it is a movie about homeschooling. And it’s the same exact thing is that they don’t want to offend people because they’ve got people on their leadership board or, elders, deacons, whatever, some pastors who are part of their church who have their kids in public school and they don’t want to ruffle their feathers. They don’t want to. And even people in the congregation as well, they don’t want to upset people. And I don’t understand that because I’m thinking, well, if you’re standing up and you’re teaching the truth of God’s word, we often talk about Luke 6:40. It says, “The student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.”
Yvette: Well, who’s teaching our kids and are we the ones who are coming alongside and teaching them and discipling their hearts? Again, Deuteronomy six, we talk about that all the time. You know, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind and teach this to your children when they rise and when they sleep, and when they walk about their day.” We can’t do these things if … we can’t teach our children the way that they need to be taught if they’re not with us. And when we’re sending them to a public institution, a government school for 40 hours a week, they’re being taught by someone else who is not their parent and who doesn’t have their best interest in mind.
Yvette: Now, there are teachers, of course, you and I both know, I mean you’ve taught in the public school system. There are teachers who love kids, genuinely love their students, but their hands are tied and there’s nothing that they can do about it. What are you seeing? Because obviously, California, I know a whole lot about what’s going on in California because that’s home for us. What are you seeing as far as what’s happening in the California and kind of whole Left Coast part of the world? How is that infiltrating into the rest of the nation and what changes are you seeing even in these so-called conservative states and towns?
“They do not like freedom and liberty. They don’t like the constitution. They don’t like American history and values. And Christianity is at the core of what they don’t like. They see Christianity in 250 years of American history, 2000 years of Western culture as the root of all evil in terms of repression and backwardness.”
Dr. Duke: Yeah, to start with where you started, it always amazes me when I read the Gospels. Christ spoke to the power, he spoke to the churches, basically, spoke to the synagogues, told them the truth, it made them uncomfortable and then you had the great divide. And here we are, the heirs of Christ, and we won’t speak to the culture. We won’t speak to the moms and dads in our parish, our constituency, because, hey, they got kids in the wrong place. And if priests and ministers, if pastors can’t tell their parents, you’re sending your kids to not just a godless place but an anti-God place because you fear your 501(c)(3), that shows you the state we’re in, right? That our biggest ally should be biblical Christians, should be Bible-believing Christians. And when the ministers who lead those congregations will not stand up for the truth, then we really can’t be surprised where we are.
Dr. Duke: But you mentioned California and California, because there is so little opposition, what few Republicans remained in the state have been more or less completely elected out of office. It’s been a landslide for far-leftist politicians and this is of course fueled by a huge base of illegal immigrants, many of whom are finding ways to vote. And what’s happening is that there’s no balance here. There really are no longer any checks and balances in California because they got basically supermajorities to pass any radical agenda item they want to, they’re doing it. Then we have places like New York City where they pass these radical abortion laws where you’re allowed to abort babies while they’re in the process of being born. And so the left has run away and then we know what the progressive left is. They’re atheist or secularist. They are very sympathetic to communism.
Dr. Duke: They do not like freedom and liberty. They don’t like the constitution. They don’t like American history and values. And Christianity is at the core of what they don’t like. They see Christianity in 250 years of American history, 2000 years of Western culture as the root of all evil in terms of repression and backwardness. So we’re seeing this problem. And the problem with California is that there are a lot of states in the union that aren’t as progressive, that still have more of a balance and legislature who are using California as an excuse to do it themselves. And the places like Massachusetts, and New Jersey, and New York, and Chicago, the district of Chicago. So these big liberal cities are incorporating this stuff and using their power, the big cities and liberal states, to transform how state business has done as well. So this is spreading. It’s a virus. And what you see in California today, you’re going to see in Nebraska, you’re going to see in North Carolina tomorrow unless somebody turns this around.
Yvette: Yeah, that’s right. As far as kids being in the public school system, we hear all the time, and we were just talking about this the other day, my husband and I. People will often say, well, our kids’ school is different. We live in a small town. We live in a conservative state. My child’s teacher is a Christian. Are there any kids who are safe anywhere in this country from being taught and indoctrinated with these godless ideas that they’re being indoctrinated with? Are they safe anywhere?
“It’s not terribly intellectual. They’re slipping in sexuality education into all the different classrooms. They’re using math, and science, and social studies, even physical education classes as a way of reinforcing a certain set of liberal, progressive values.”
Dr. Duke: I wouldn’t call them safe anywhere. I would say that some schools have gone farther down the rabbit hole than others. And of course, with this new Common Core scheme and the federalization of education, that starting first in the major cities in every state. So in Wisconsin, Milwaukee is gone. If you’ve got a big city in Wisconsin, the kids in Wisconsin are all getting the same diet of ideology. But in smaller towns, it hasn’t quite got there yet or hasn’t quite got there fully. But even still, even if your kids are in a relatively safe place, and it’s a small school, and there is still some oversight, the fundamental nature of the pedagogy, how they’re being taught, even non-religious subjects is really very screwy. It’s not terribly intellectual. They’re slipping in sexuality education into all the different classrooms. They’re using math, and science, and social studies, even physical education classes as a way of reinforcing a certain set of liberal, progressive values.
Dr. Duke: So, at the best, your kids are being pushed very hard left. At the worst, they’re being downright indoctrinated. So there is really no place. And what’s bad now is going to get worse. There’s no place where your kids can hide from this and that doesn’t even mention the data gathered how the feds are using your kids’ public schools to gather all sorts of private data, how they’re using your kids’ schools, your kids. Something called social emotional learning, SEL, social emotional learning, which is big all across the country where there are actually unqualified elementary school teachers are making psychological evaluations of your kids. That’s happening even in the safest of schools now and it’s dangerous.
Yvette: Yeah. Yeah. It really is. We have a friend who is just a wonderful Christian lady. She’s been teaching in the public school system in Northern California for probably 30 years, a very long time. Loves teaching. I believe she teaches kindergarten or first grade and she was telling me that last year, they had brought in so many books on the LGBT movement into the school library. And so though she is finding ways to not teach that in her classroom, the kids have access to those books. And so she did something that I thought was very clever and she said, I just checked out those books because as a teacher, she can check them out for the school year to quote-unquote use for her classroom. So she just checked out all of the books that she could find to get them out of the library. She obviously didn’t teach them in her classroom, but she was trying to do something so that the children, the kindergartners and, elementary school kids didn’t have access to those books.
Yvette: But like you said, I know these things are being taught and they’re being weaved into all of the curriculum. It’s not like they are just doing it, you know, here’s the sex ed class and you can opt out of it. It’s in everything. It’s in science, it’s in literature, it’s in grammar. I mean, they’re literally weaving it into everything that these kids are being taught. They’re very clever and intentional about it and it’s a scary place to be. How can parents prepare their kids? And I’m not talking just about homeschool parents, I’m talking about parents, homeschool parents, public school, private school parents. How can we prepare our kids for this culture war that we are in right now, not even entering, but we’re in a war right now. How can we prepare our kids as they’re growing into young adults and the future of our country? How can we help them?
Dr. Duke: Well, I mean, think about what you just said. I want to reiterate it. You have a well-meaning and incredibly brave young teacher in California who is evading the system to some degree. The entire library has been stocked with books that are harmful to these kids’ development and she’s checked them out. And that’s the best you’re going to get. She hasn’t protected her kids from that. In her classrooms, they don’t get it. But in other classrooms, they will. So even the best-case scenario, you see how dangerous it is. And so the way to prepare them, I say, I think I go back to what I said before. Number one is you’re praying with them two or three every night before they go to bed, if you take them to church on Wednesday and Sundays or you spend an hour every night doing Bible study, that pales in comparison to what they’re getting eight hours a day, nine months of the year. It is relentless.
Dr. Duke: So, the answer is our kids need an education. But they need an education that is our education. It is Christian based. It is Biblically-based. It is knowledge-based. They need to be able, these kids, and unfortunately because we’re attacking kids at younger and younger ages, in the public schools, they start this when they’re six and seven years old. We need to prepare our kids to answer those things. It’s not enough just as you teach the kids that God loves them and to teach them the moral values. That’s important. We’ve got to give them a reason to believe intellectually. So many of our kids, we homeschool them and they know the Bible, and they know their prayers, and they believe in their country, and they believe in God. And then they get to the university if you’ve homeschooled until high school. And then they meet really smart professors with PhDs after their name who don’t engage them on a biblical level, don’t engage them on a moral level.
Dr. Duke: That’s a battle they won’t win. Instead, they engage them on a rational level. All right, you know, prove to me your God exists. And they started hitting them with those kinds of questions. Our kids have to be able to rebut secular arguments. It’s not enough simply to be able to cite the Bible. And that’s an education they used to get. They used to get it before we corrupted the schools, they would get a sound logical education and then that would be reinforced by their faith. Now they’re getting an education that is hostile and absolutely the opposite of what their faith teaches them. And when they say that they’re not allowed to use the Bible, they can’t use scripture to prove their point. So every tool we give them is rendered moot by the professors. And so they dutifully line up.
Dr. Duke: Either they drop out or they fight and get lower grades. We’ve got to do a better job of, when I say giving them a Christian education, we’re handling the Bible stuff well. We’re not handling culture well. Why should you? Why is chastity better than libertinism? Why is humility in this culture, where it’s a total narcissistic self-esteem culture when it comes to education, why is humility perhaps the primary virtue Christ witnesses to us? Why is humility better than pride? Why is my self-esteem less important than making somebody else feel better about their lives? They don’t get that anymore. And we as Christian parents aren’t giving it to them. And again, our pastors aren’t giving them. We don’t talk about … everything is the prosperity gospel. Sin is judgmental. Many of our pastors actually believe talking about sin is prejudicial. It’s one-sided. So without that kinds stuff, it’s a bleak landscape unless we as parents decide to give them those things.
Yvette: Yeah, well, it hurts people’s feelings when you tell them that they’re sinful and we don’t want to do that. And you’re exactly right. It’s all about apologetics. Teaching our kids to understand what they believe, ask the questions, and then understand why they believe what they believe. Because if they don’t understand why they believe what they believe, they’re never going to be able to defend it. We’ve watched this happen time and time again with kids and it happens to kids in public school, private school, homeschool where they think, well, we’re good. And the parents think they’re good because we’re Christians and they go to church, like you said, a couple times a week and they can play their cards right, and they can say all the right things. But if they don’t really own their relationship with the Lord, then they have no solid foundation to stand on. I’m curious to know because you’re a university professor, what is your viewpoint of Christian universities today? How are you seeing those kind of shake up culture?
Dr. Duke: The vast majority of them are worse than the public schools. You take schools, the obvious Catholic ones like Notre Dame or Georgetown, and these Christian schools, and the Protestant ones do it as well, in the name of plurality, in the name of open-mindedness, the Christian universities all hire non-Christian faculty. They don’t want to be seen as discriminating like the pastors. They want to invite secular teachers in because our Christian kids need to hear both sides and immediately when they get to campus, these non-Christian faculty members who are now 70% and 80% of the faculty now. That number of Christians keeps shrinking, and they’re demanding LGTBQ, and they’re demanding socialism, and they’re demanding an end to borders. They’re turning around and accusing the Christian theology that governs the school of being exclusionary and there’s nobody to stop it. But I’ve said this many times. I would much rather my kid lose his faith from a public school teacher or a public university professor because you expect it.
Dr. Duke: You expect them when they go into a non-Christian classroom to have their face challenged. It is really dangerous when our kids go to so-called Christian schools and they encounter in Christian environments really anti-Christian ideas. they begin to think that Christianity is either evil by definition if all these Christian professors don’t like it or their Christianity becomes really social justice pretending to be Christianity. And many of our kids are working again, many of our Christian kids think that Christianity now means radical left-wing politics. And so it’s undermining faith. I’d rather have my kids in a secular school than in a Christian school that’s lost its way. And there are very, very, very few Christian schools that are faithful to their heritage and their mission.
Yvette: Yeah, I agree with you completely. And it’s so deceptive because they think they’re getting a Christian education and these parents think that they’re sending their children to a good, solid Christian school. It’s got all of these awards, and accreditations, and blah blah blah. Okay. But are they really teaching the truth of God’s word? And I know that there are some out there that really are, but I appreciate you saying that because we’ve talked a whole lot about that and that’s a scary place to be as a parent.
Yvette: We’re looking at, our daughter is going into high school next year and starting to just think through, okay, what direction is she going to head? And we were talking to a pastor several months ago and he was saying the same thing. And I said, “Would you ever consider sending your kids to a public university?” He said, “Most of them are better than private universities today.” And he goes, “And at least they know that they’re getting a secular education.” And hopefully my children will have been trained and have a very solid foundation and be able, again, back to apologetics, they know what they believe and why they believe it. And so they know that going into it.
Dr. Duke: Well, one piece of advice I give your parents, I can give you, even. When you go to a Christian school, Christian college to find out what it’s really like, don’t ignore the administration. They’re going to give you some student is going to give you a tour of a Christian campus and talk about how faith-friendly it is. That’s all propaganda. Go to the cafeteria, sit down with a couple of strange kids and say, hey, my daughter is going to be coming here. Can we buy you lunch and talk to you? Sit down with the kids. The kids are much more honest. Ask them, is there regular church service? Are the faculty really open to Christian values? You’ll find out quick from the kids whether or not. They’re a much better gauge of what’s going on than the school’s trying to get, they want your money. They want you there.
Yvette: Yeah. That’s a fantastic idea. We have a few more minutes left. Let’s talk about FreedomProject Academy. Tell us what that is.
Dr. Duke: It’s one more way to try to help homeschool moms and dads. There a lot of homes. There are a lot of moms I’ve encountered across the country, oftentimes, secular moms or Christian moms who are overwhelmed by what’s happening in the public schools, but they got to work two jobs. The husband and wife have to work. Sometimes it’s single mothers. These are families that desperately want out of public school, but they can’t afford the costs of private Christian schools and they don’t have time or they feel like they’re not qualified to teach the kids the way they have to. So what we do at FreedomProject is we have real live teachers teaching over the computer just like you and I are watching each other right now. And they teach in real-time and they come right into your living room. We can do everything from kindergarten through high school. We can do one or two classes or an entire range of classes.
Dr. Duke: We are accredited. So kids who come with us can get a high school diploma. And our kids are getting into colleges all over the place. So we’re a Christian school, we teach Christian values, we teach biblical principles, we give a high-quality classical education. And so for moms and dads who use us, we’re not for everybody. I mean, it’s a lot of screen time but we do give a really good education in a Christian vein for families who want to homeschool but don’t think they can quite do it themselves. We can either help them or do it for them.
Yvette: And can they choose from specific classes or you just sign up and you get everything?
Dr. Duke: No. We have moms and dads who are great at homeschooling, the only thing they can’t teach their kid is chemistry at junior year of high school. So they’ll just take our chemistry class or we’ve got moms and dads and keep the kids in the public school, but they don’t like the fact that American history is so bad. So they’ll send their kids to public school all day and then in the evening, they’ll do one of our courses on American history so they get to see the other side of the story. We have other parents for whom we do five classes a semester from kindergarten through high school and we give them a diploma. So it depends on what you need, what you want. We’re very flexible that way.
Yvette: Okay. I know you started classes at the beginning of this semester. Will you start new classes mid-year? And can people sign up for it mid-year or do they have to wait until next school year?
Dr. Duke: Rolling admissions is too difficult because, especially because, and this is a fact across the board when kids come to us from the public schools, they are at a minimum two years behind where they should be. So it’s very hard in the middle of the semester to try to place that. So unfortunately, we need to wait until the following August, September. But we can do it then. And we’re very serious about that. The nice thing about this online course stuff is if your kid comes to us and she’s a fourth grader and she does fourth grade English, she’s doing good, but her math grade is second grade, we can keep her in all the other classes at her age and then put her back into math classes a little earlier and then catch her up. So this is something that public schools can’t do. It’s not something we do.
Yvette: Okay. And do you assess the children before you assign them to a class?
Dr. Duke: Anybody who applies to FreedomProject and you could do it for, even if you want to find out where your kids are, we’ll do placement exams in math and English for you. Even if you have no intention of coming to us, it won’t cost you anything. And then we’ll tell you where your kids are. Vis-a-vis where they should be. It’s not that complicated. If you want your kids to be able to read at a high level and you want them to be able to do at least precalculus by the time they graduate high school, then at every grade you have to get them a certain place. And so every parent that comes to us, we give the two exams, we let them know. And even moms and dads who don’t come with us, we tell them where their kids are so they know, they have a sense of where their kids should be and where they are.
Yvette: Okay. That’s fantastic. We’ll definitely link to that in the show notes. One last question. As a university professor, I don’t know how many homeschool kids you get in your classroom, but are you seeing that homeschooled students going into college and universities, are they well prepared? Are they better prepared? Are they less prepared? What are you seeing?
Dr. Duke: It’s undeniably true that the homeschool kids we get at college are better because … it takes us full circle back to the beginning of the interview. We’re not educating anymore kids to be good readers, to be good mathematicians and scientists, we’re educating them to be woke, socially aware, progressive. So when they get to college, most of the public school kids shouldn’t be there. I estimate about four out of 10 of my kids in every class, every one, shouldn’t even be in college. They don’t have enough knowledge or they’re unwilling to work at it. But when I get homeschool kids, they’re fine. I mean, they’re solid. They’re literate. They have a basic foundation that the public school kids don’t have. So then even if they’re not completely ready, you can catch them up quickly.
Dr. Duke: It’s the public school kids. And even many of the Christian educated kids who get a solid Christian education, they’re more or less ready. But certainly, the public school kids aren’t. And then the sad thing is, the tragic thing is that the universities too are catering to the progressive kid who doesn’t know anything rather than the Christian kid who could succeed. So we’re lowering our standards. We’re bringing kids to college, not on the basis of achievement, but on the basis of how woke they are and how malleable they are to progressive arguments. So universities, to the surprise of nobody, universities are worse even than the public schools in terms of turning kids into good little progressives.
Yvette: Yeah. Yeah. It’s encouraging to know that universities are seeking out homeschooled kids. We’ve talked to a few university professors and that’s one of the fears, of course, that parents often have of homeschooling is my kid’s not going to be able to get into college. And so we talk about that in the movie and say, yes, they will be able to getting to college. Not only that, but there are actual universities now, many of them and more and more each year who are seeking out homeschooled kids because they really are better prepared.
Dr. Duke: Absolutely. And I’ll tell you, at every university, I’ve taught at seven different universities now and I’ve always had one colleague in every English department who looks forward to teaching homeschool kids. One, because they were smart and two, because they saw it as their mission, as one put, to kick the Jesus out of them. So the universities recognize that these kids are smart and they want them because these are kids that don’t drop class, they don’t swear or cut classes. They turn their homework and they say, “yes ma’am,” “no sir.” They like that. But then they want to socially engineer these kids. And so they’ll take them. The universities want them, but a lot of the professors want them for very different reasons.
Yvette: Interesting. That’s really interesting. What is one last bit of encouragement that you can give to the moms and dads who are listening to this podcast? How would you encourage them in regards to either bringing their kids home from public school, why should they do that, or just homeschooling in general?
Dr. Duke: Well, I think rather than give them some platitude, I would simply cite your story. because I’ve heard your story tens of thousands of times. Concerned parents who are Christian, who watched their kids’ education, who see what’s happening around them, who hear the horror stories, who understand what’s happening, who never thought, and you and I’ve talked about this before, I mean, you never thought in a million years you would homeschool your kids. You’re a good Christian, but you thought that those homeschool kids were a little socially maladjusted. And now that you’ve taken the leap, I love the phrase you said, it’s St. Paul on the road to Damascus. The scales fell from your eyes and now you wouldn’t trade your homeschooling for anything.
Dr. Duke: I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever, I’ve been to 48 States, I’ve given over a thousand talks on this stuff, I have never met a single homeschool mom and dad who regrets doing it. Not one. And that tells you something that if you take that commit, that you make that leap in God’s name to give your kids a godly education, God is going to allow you to do it. God will give you all the tools you need. Every financial, every sociological, every family obstacle that the devil has thrown in your way will fall away. You just got to take that leap of faith and as Christians, we all we do every day. Do it. You’ll be happy.
Yvette: Yeah, that’s right. Well, you guys heard it from Dr. Duke Pesta and he knows his stuff. So where can people find out more about you and FreedomProject Academy?
Dr. Duke: Well, you can go to our freedom project website. It’s FreedomProject Education, fpeusa.org, and there’s all sorts of stuff there about the school. One thing I would urge you to do maybe is if you like podcasts like this one you’re watching now, ours too, the Dr. Duke Show. It’s four times a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and it’s absolutely free. You can get it anywhere you get podcasts and you’re going to you, at the very least, you will be a very, very informed person as to what is actually happening in the schools.
Yvette: Yes. Well, I appreciate it so much. I listen to your podcast. I have been since I heard you on Heidi’s podcast, and you and Katie are a riot.
Dr. Duke: It’s such a sad, depressing story. We try to make it as fun as possible. And that’s the Dr. Duke show.
Yvette: Well, you do a good job of it. It’s hard to talk about the issues of today sometimes and it’s not entertaining where you sit and laugh all the time, but you have made me think about a lot of things and really opened my eyes up to a whole lot of things going on in our culture. And so I get a lot of my information from you, so thank you for what you’re doing. You are a blessing.
Find out more about Dr. Duke’s FreedomProject Academy, an online homeschool curriculum that offers a fully accredited, Classical education for Kindergarten through High School.
“September 11, 2019 (Thomas More Law Center) — The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has uncovered evidence of a well-orchestrated Islamic propaganda campaign aimed at teachers in school systems throughout Michigan and several other states.
Concerned about a two-day mandatory teacher-training seminar on Islam conducted by a Muslim consultant hired by Michigan’s Novi Community Schools District, TMLC filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the workshop.” – LifeSiteNews.com
Those who believe that education is “neutral” are tragically deceived. There is no such thing as a religiously or morally neutral education. Education is discipleship. ALL EDUCATION IS WORLDVIEW TRAINING.
“DIVERSITY” is the RELIGION of public schools. Under the banner of diversity many religious and philosophical worldviews are promoted as valid, but none of these are based on the TRUTH of GOD’S WORD. Public schools enthusiastically teach secular humanism, materialism, blindnaturalism, socialism, communism, multiculturalism, transgenderism, homosexuality, New Age thought and eastern mysticism, and list list goes on – with the glaring exclusions of Christianity or Orthodox Judaism, which are defamed as foolish and hateful.
Now, public schools are openly promoting Islam. This is happening across the country, and has been steadily increasing since 9/11, when weak-kneed politicians felt compelled to sweeten every reference to Islam with the phrase, “religion of peace”. Whether Individual Muslims are peaceful or not, Islam is not a religion of peace and it is not a path to salvation, and to actively promote it within our schools is to feed our precious children yet another false worldview that leads to destruction. John 14:6 says, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'” (ESV)
Luke 6:40 says, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.” (ESV) Who is teaching your children? What is their worldview? Remember, when your children are fully trained they will be like their teachers.
“I became passionate about this topic because my daughter was taking some leadership training classes to help prepare herself for working at our local Bible camp, and the conversation turned to how she would be less equipped to work with some of these kids because she was homeschooled. She came home really bothered about that, and at the same time actually, our youth pastor made the comment about the kids needing to be the salt and the light in the public school system, and how that’s one reason he had never homeschooled is because he wanted his kids to be the salt and the light… She felt like she wasn’t doing what God wanted her to do because she was homeschooled instead of being in the public school system.” – Misty Bailey
Listen to Misty Bailey talk about salt and light in the public schools on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. (8-13-2019 episode)
Yvette Hampton and Misty Bailey recently had the opportunity to discuss whether our kids have the responsibility of being “salt and light” in public schools. Are we missing an opportunity to evangelize when we remove our kids from public schools, and if they do not have the responsibility of being “salt and light” there, who does?
Yvette Hampton: Misty Bailey is a blogger, a podcaster, and she is a homeschool mom. I recently had the opportunity to discuss an exciting, and maybe a little bit controversial, topic; “our kids being salt and light in the world.” We often get that question. People will say, “well, we’ve got to have Christian kids in the public school system so that they can be salt and light.”
Misty, welcome. Tell us about your family.
Misty: We have been homeschooling since 2009. My kids, right now, are 14, 11, and seven. I was a former public school teacher and I kind of went into homeschooling begrudgingly. I didn’t really want to do it. Kind of went kicking and screaming, but God just started laying it on my heart when my oldest was four, as she was entering into those preschool years… You have to send your kids to preschool, right?
Backstage Pass members can watch the behind the scenes video of this episode, which includes 30 minutes of bonus content.
At the time, I was teaching in the public school system. So I ended up quitting when I got pregnant with my second, but my husband at this point was against homeschooling, even though the Lord had been laying it on my heart. So we sent her off into public school, and shortly after she had entered public school, we started noticing changes in her, changes in her personality. There were some issues that had come up with the public school system at the time, and so my husband said, “If you could teach her to read, you can homeschool.” So no pressure. But I did it, I taught her to read, she was actually the easiest of my three kids to teach.
And here we are. We’ve not looked back. My husband now is my biggest cheerleader. So he is pro, pro, pro homeschooling. Like I said, my kids are 14, 11, and seven. My youngest son does have special needs. He has apraxia, ADHD, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. So we are also homeschooling with special needs which has opened up a whole new world for us, for homeschooling. I’m passionate about helping homeschool moms on this journey. Just encouraging them and being that mentor to them that I needed when I first started homeschooling.
Yvette: I’ve really enjoyed listening to your podcast and you’ve had some exciting guests on there, and you are just full of so much encouragement. I appreciate your ministry so much.
You said your husband was really against you homeschooling in the beginning. What was it that caused him to feel so negative about homeschooling?
“I was a former public school teacher and I kind of went into homeschooling begrudgingly. I didn’t really want to do it. Kind of went kicking and screaming…”
Misty: Yeah, so he thought homeschoolers were freaks. He didn’t want our kids to be weird or just stand out, and at that point we only knew one other family who homeschooled, and their kids were really good kids. It’s not like they were freaks at all. That mom ended up being my biggest homeschool mentor, but they were the only other homeschoolers he knew. So it was kind of funny because as the Lord was dealing with me to homeschool our kids, God kept putting homeschoolers in his path. From the mechanic who were fixing our van, to where he’d be at quiz bowl and he would bump into somebody and they would start talking about how they homeschooled their kids. So he started to see that our kids wouldn’t be the only weirdos out there, and I just thought that was so funny because I mean, I think God has a sense of humor, especially. I think if you ever say the words, “I would never homeschool.” You know, he’s going to come along and very likely change your mind and that’s what happened to us. He’s my biggest cheerleader now. He talks to everybody about homeschooling and I really couldn’t do this without him so.
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Yvette: I love that so much and that was our story too. We said, “We would never ever homeschool.” Now we’re making a movie about it! So I think we need to just stick on this never train and say, “I’ll never ever, ever make it to Europe.” “I’ll never ever, ever go back to Hawaii.” Let’s use those nevers to our benefit, right?
Misty: Yes, absolutely.
Yvette: Well I love that he is now really on board with homeschooling, and that is a big part of why we’re making this documentary. We want to open the eyes of parents to see what homeschooling really is and, because we had all those misconceptions too, like our kids are going to be weird.
You were actually one step ahead of us. You had a van it sounds like, because you said you were having your van worked on. So, every good homeschool mom has a minivan, and I didn’t have a minivan, but I still call myself a homeschool mom, so it’s all good.
If not, you have to have some kind of other bonus points like really, really long hair, or something like that. I’m not exactly sure what all the requirements are.
Misty: Denim jumpers.
Yvette: Right. Anyway, there all of those stereotypes. we think that homeschooling should look a certain way and it doesn’t. It is so individualized and so different for every family, and it’s what makes it so beautiful, is that every family can do this and do what’s best for their family, and every family looks differently, they act differently, they have different methods and ways of schooling, but it all points back to doing what’s best for your kids and your family.
Misty: Yes, absolutely.
Yvette: So, let’s talk about this whole salt and light argument. I know this is something that you’re really passionate about, which is why I was excited to have you on to talk about this because often times people will talk about the argument well we can’t take our kids out of public school or even private school because they need to be the salt and light of the world. There are, you have, I mean, we have so many great arguments against this, but I really want to talk and focus on what scripture says about this. What does God say about our kids being salt and light, and are we being unbiblical by taking our kids out of that public school system and not allowing them to be in there as salt and light and telling other kids about Jesus, or are we … Is there a benefit to having them out of the public school system? I know parents teeter both ways on this.
Misty: I became passionate about this topic because my daughter was taking some leadership training classes to help prepare herself for working at our local Bible camp, and the conversation turned to how she would be less equipped to work with some of these kids because she was homeschooled, and that really, she really came home really bothered about that, and at the same time actually our pastor, our youth pastor had made the comment about the kids needing to be the salt and the light in the public school system, and how that’s one reason he had never homeschooled is because he wanted his kids to be the salt and the light. So at this point my daughter felt very negative about, not negative about homeschooling like she wanted to go to public school, but she felt guilty. She felt like she wasn’t doing what God wanted her to do because she was homeschooled instead of being in the public school system.
“I cannot find anywhere in scripture where Jesus goes and he tells kids to go out there and to preach the Gospel, because throughout scripture whenever children are mentioned, even Jesus as a child, they’re learning. They’re not out there discipling or teaching other people.”
Misty: So she and I were talking about how it’s just not our kids’ job to be the salt and the light, and I say that because if you look at scripture, a lot of times when people talk about that verse, or they talk about being the salt and the light, they are referring to in scripture where in Matthew 5:13-16 Jesus tells his disciples that they are the “salt of the Earth and the light of the world,” and that they need to go and “let their light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your father which is at heaven.” But I think a lot of times what people don’t look at is whenever he’s talking about that and talking to his disciples about them going out and being the salt and the light, he’s talking to adults. He is not talking to children, and I cannot find anywhere in scripture where Jesus goes and he tells kids to go out there and to preach the Gospel, because throughout scripture whenever children are mentioned, even Jesus as a child, they’re learning. They’re not out there discipling or teaching other people.
Schoolhouse Rocked producer, Yvette Hampton, recently appeared on the Joy in the Journey Podcast to talk with host, Misty Bailey about overcoming the feelings of inadequacy that so many homeschool moms face. Click here to listen to this encouraging episode of the Joy in the Journey Podcast.
They’re learning under their parents; they’re learning under people within the temple. He’s telling the children to come to him, but he never, I can never find a place in scripture where he’s telling people to go, telling children to go out and be missionaries because that’s not their job.
Yvette: Yeah, that’s right. It’s not their job.
Misty: Yeah.
Yvette: It is their job to be salt and light wherever they go, but that doesn’t mean putting them in a system that is teaching everything contrary to the word of God and expecting them to be strong enough to defend that, and kids don’t … Kids can understand God’s word of course, kids are really smart and they are usually in that process of trying to figure out what they believe in and why they believe it, but a child does not, I would say even many middle school and high schoolers, they don’t completely understand yet what they believe and why they believe it. They’re still in the stage of asking questions and trying to figure out okay, this is what my mom says, this is what the world says, this is what my dad says, this is what my neighbor kids, my neighbors say, and where do I fit into all of this and what do I really believe. So expecting these kids to be able to say, “Well this is exactly what’s true and this is what I believe, and here is how I’m going to defend it.” They haven’t been taught yet how to do that.
Now, there are some amazing Christian parents who of course teach the word of God to their kids on a daily basis, and they have their family Bible time and stuff, but it’s very different when you’re not being able to teach them that day in and day out in a home setting where it’s you and it’s them, and you get to observe their struggles, and their victories, and all of the things that your kids deal with in their childhood, and you get to be the one to instill truth into them. When they’re apart from you for 35 hours a week, it’s not possible to be able to do that.
Misty: Yeah, and I think that that’s exactly it. I think that particularly when our kids are young, their job is to be trained up by their parents. It’s to hide the word of God in their heart so that when they’re older they can go out and serve him. Now, that doesn’t mean that our kids can’t be a positive witness to those around them, but it also doesn’t mean that we need to place them in a spiritually hostile environment at a young age just because we think our kids should be the salt and the light to the public schools because I think that our public schools are set up to where really our kids, our Christian kids are failing in the public school system. They’re not set up to where they are a place where our kids can even be a light to an extent because everything around them is so anti-God, and particularly I look at my two younger kids, and they’re seven and 11, and I don’t feel that I have had the time to fully prepare them for the world, to prepare them to be missionaries, to go into an environment full of people who are not Christians and spread the love of God.
Misty: Now, they can do it with me. We can go out somewhere as a family.
Yvette: Sure.
Misty: And they can be that light. They can be that light on a sports team. They can be that light if we go out as a family and serve homeless people, or serve at funerals. There are ways that they can still be a light, but it does not have to be within the public school system, and I don’t feel at that, at their age that’s really what they should be doing anyway.
Yvette: Right, yeah, and I agree. I think that’s a huge responsibility that we put on them, and to be quite honest, most wouldn’t do that. Now, that’s not to say that there are not Christian kids in public school or in private school who are really impacting the lives of other people because I’ve known them personally.
Misty: Yeah.
Yvette: There are certainly are kids out there who are, they’re hosting Bible clubs, and they’re leading Bible studies, and they’re inviting their friends to church, and they’re inviting their kids to youth camp and things like that. There are definitely kids out there who love Jesus and who are very solid and confident in their walk with the Lord, and they go out and they can really make a difference. So it’s not to say that that doesn’t ever happen, but I.
Misty: But it’s a rarity.
Yvette: It’s a rarity.
Misty: And those are the rare cases.
Yvette: Yes.
Misty: And a lot of times how old are those kids too? I mean, I don’t think they’re elementary age students or even early middle school. Most of the time they’re high schoolers, right?
Yvette: Right, right, yes, yeah. I definitely would think so, at least at the very youngest usually middle school.
Misty: Yeah.
Yvette: Yeah, and you know we’ve talked a lot with our girls about foundations, and you just use the structure of a building. You wouldn’t, we were driving by recently some houses that were being built and they were pouring the foundation and I said, you know, they would never build those walls around that house and start putting the roof on before building that foundation because the house would not be able to stand. You have to build that foundation and it has to be a strong solid foundation in order to hold up the walls, and hold up the roof, and be able to protect the family that’s inside of that home. So why do we do that with our children, with their hearts?
We think oh, let’s just ship them out there and then we’ll undo everything that they’ve learned, and we did a great interview with Bryan Osborne for Schoolhouse Rocked and he had been a public school teacher for I think about 13 years, and one of the things he said is he said, “If you are a Christian parents and you have your kids in a public school.” He said, “You need to be prepared to know everything that they’re being taught and then be willing to undo all of the lies that they are being taught.” And he, I mean, this is, he taught public school. Our kids are going out there in these schools and they’re learning lies, and so to have to bring them home, and it’s not even possible to know everything that they’re being taught, but to bring them home and then have to undo it all, well, you may as well just homeschool them because that’s, it’d be much easier to just teach them the truth in the first place. But talking about the foundation and our kids being able to build that solid foundation.
That’s our job as their parents, is to build that solid foundation of what they believe and helping them to understand why God’s word is truth, and then they can go out and defend that. That’s what apologetics is all about, and so I love that. One of the verses that constantly comes to mind is Luke 6:40, that, “A student is not above the teacher but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.”
Misty: Yeah.
Yvette: So first sending our kids out to these schools that are teaching untruth and we’re telling them okay, your teacher is telling you two plus two is four, believe them, that’s true, and your teacher is teaching you that evolution is true, okay well don’t believe that. Okay but believe this, but don’t believe that, but believe this, but don’t believe that. How confusing is that?
Misty: Exactly.
Yvette: For any child.
Misty: Yeah, exactly, and I think if we look back to when we were kids, I was never taught to question my teachers. I was never taught to even remotely doubt what they were teaching me, and particularly when we send our kids to public school we want them to be respectful to their teachers, we want them to listen, we want them to learn, but like you said, they’re filling their heads with all of these untruths, and I don’t know about where you guys live, but where we live, our kids really they’re not, we live in pretty much the Bible Belt, but at the same time there are so many issues as in our public school system where God has been mocked, where religion has been mocked, and to where even Christian kids that my daughter is in youth group with have all said that they feel uncomfortable being a Christian within the public school, and these are teenagers, and I don’t remember. I was a church bus kid. So I grew up, my parents were divorced and I was one of those kids who was not raised in a Christian home but I had a friend who invited me to church, and the church bus took me to church every week.
So, I was a Christian in high school. I felt I had a very good grasp on my faith, but I also remember being tempted on a regular basis within the school system. I remember being mocked for having Christian T-shirt. I remember being one of those kids who felt like they didn’t fully fit in, and even though I had that good grasp on my faith, I don’t remember teaching or talking to other people within the school about God. They knew I was a Christian, but I never felt comfortable ministering or being that light within the school system because it did feel so dark, and if it felt that dark 20 years ago.
Yvette: Right.
Misty: What does it feel like today? And I don’t know any of us that can look back as a child and say that we really had a good enough grasp on our faith, a good enough grasp on scripture that we could have really made a huge difference in a world that was so, so, so dark, and I think one-on-one ministering with our kids, one-on-one going as a family and doing those mission-led activities, it’s just a much better way to train our kids up in the word of the Lord, and to train our kids to be ministry focused and mission focused, than throwing them into the dark system of the public schools so.
Yvette: Yeah, and I love that you said that because that’s one of the questions then is if our kids are not going to be salt and light in a public school, how then can they be salt and light? How can God use them? Because certainly God can still use our kids. We’re not at all saying well, kids are kids, they can’t be used at all to impact the kingdom of God, certainly they can. How does your family do that?
Misty: So, for us, I feel that our kids are able to be the salt and the light by going out, and our church as a church we do back to school bashes every year and we give free backpacks to kids. My oldest took leadership training like I said at our church camp, and she was able to work as a cabin leader this past summer with eight, nine year olds, and six and seven year olds, and so many of those kids came from rough homes and they would talk to her about things that they had experienced within their home, and she was really able to pour the love of God on those kids, and there was one scenario where one of the girls was talking to her about some things about her home and she didn’t know how to respond, and I wasn’t there, I wasn’t at camp with her. So, she went to a good friend of ours and she was able to talk to her. Okay, one of the kids in my cabin told me this. How can I help them? And that right there, that mentorship relationship is exactly how our kids need to be trained up in the mission field and in the ministry.
So they were able to talk together and then she was able to go back to this child and talk to this child and really be the light, and I saw those kids when I came in and watched her at camp and how they just loved her and how she had just poured so much of herself into these kids.
Yvette: So cool.
Misty: Other ways that we do that is as a family, if there are people within our church or people within our community that we knew that passed away, I’ve always told my kids if somebody dies, take them food. Take their family food, go serve that family, and that is something that we as a family have always done, and we counted a school. That is going out and showing our children how to be servants, how to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
Yvette: Yeah.
Misty: So, we do that. My middle is a huge, huge animal lover, and while I would love to encourage her to love people more, she prefers the furry four-legged creature, but I feel God can still use that gift.
Yvette: Sure.
Misty: God can use that gift and that passion she has for animals. So we have went and worked with abused dogs. We’ve went and walked the dogs at the animal shelter. We have, she did one year for her birthday instead of getting birthday gifts she took up donations for the animal shelter and then her and a couple of friends went and worked for the day on her actual birthday at the animal shelter, and they spent the whole say scooping poop. But she was still being the light of God. Those people knew she was a Christian within the animal shelter. She had talked to them and said, “I’ve been praying for these animals.” And there are ways our kids can make an impact without being in the public school system.
Yvette: Yeah.
Misty: And I think that one thing we don’t talk a lot about whenever it comes to the question about our kids being the salt and light is, we don’t talk about the aftermath of some of these Christian kids who go into the public school system. Is the public school system changing, or are Christians in the public school system changing the public schools or is the public schools changing our kids?
Yvette: Yeah.
Misty: And I think that’s something too that we need to ask ourselves whenever the question about the salt and the light comes up.
Yvette: Yeah. Yeah, I agree, and statistically more kids are walking away from the faith coming out of high school and more of the public schools. I’m not going to say every kid who is in public school is going to walk away from the Lord, and certainly not every kid who is homeschooled is going to continue walking with the Lord. We’ve known both sides of it. We’ve definitely known-
Misty: Yeah.
Yvette: Public school kids and private school kids who are strong in their relationship with the Lord and they’ve gone on to do ministry and serve the Lord in amazing ways, and we’ve known homeschooled kids who have just said, “No, this God thing is not for me and I don’t want anything to do with it.” And they completely go off the other direction, but statistically there have been studies done that have shown that a larger majority of kids who are raised in homeschool families continue down that path of serving the Lord, and many, many sadly who are raised up with a Godless worldview are walking away.
Misty: Yeah. The studies that I found show that about 80% of Christian teens walk away from the Lord when they enter into their college years, but I’m thinking that the statistic of homeschoolers is somewhere around 10%. It may be 20%. I know it was no higher than that, but the difference is phenomenal to me and I think it goes back to making sure, like you said, with the house. With that they have that foundation.
Yvette: Yeah.
Misty: They have been raised in a biblical worldview. They know how to discuss other cultures. They know how to discuss the Bible. They know how to talk about all these questions that they may get asked like well why do you believe in God? And well why would a good God let so many bad things happen? They’re raised to talk about bad influences and how can they can turn away from those bad influences, and they also have more Christian examples. They have more influences around them that are biblical and they get that more solid foundation, and I don’t think if our kids are away from us for six to eight hours a day, how can we do that? How can we teach them diligently? We can’t, and if we can’t teach them the word of God, and teach them those biblical principles, and those foundations in the little bit of time that we would have them if they’re in public school, then how do we expect our kids to go out there and to be a salt and the light in a world full of darkness, which is what we are doing. We’re expecting to send our kids into these public school systems as missionaries but they’ve never been properly trained.
Yvette: Right. That’s right. That’s exactly right. And it’s not like they’re not going to have opportunities to do that. They’ve got neighbors most of them that they can go and talk to and just be a good witness to. In our house that we left in California, we had a great neighborhood that had so many kids in it, and we didn’t keep our girls from playing with the kids, but there were many times, I mean, our girls would invite them to church, and they would invite them to just do all kinds of different things, and they would talk to them. They gave one of our little neighbor girls a Bible, and so my girls weren’t afraid to talk about those things, and so there were still plenty of opportunities for them to tell others about Christ.
Let me ask one quick question because we got to wrap here in just a minute, but if we’re not sending our kids out to be the salt and light in a dark world, who then? Who do we send out? Who goes to be the salt and light to tell these kids who desperately need to hear about the love of God?
Misty: Yeah. So I think that there’s a couple different ways we can do that. First of all, I want to say real quick or that something that had come up recently with the salt and the light is my daughter has been doing cross-country for our local school system, and she had ended up inviting a bunch of the kids from cross-country to a recent youth night. So even though she’s not in the public school, she still has this association with the public schools through sports teams.
Yvette: Yeah.
Misty: And she was able to lead one of those little girls to Christ actually this past Sunday night.
Yvette: Wow.
Misty: She was living that example of being the salt and the light even though she’s homeschooled to these public school kids.
Yvette: That’s awesome.
Misty: So, I think that is one way right there, particularly as our kids get older. My kids where we live in Ohio, they are able to participate in sports teams. So even though they’re not within the public school system, they can still have those relationships with some of those public school kids, and my kids always invite them to church. They always invite them to church. They always invite them to Bible school, but they’re able to do that more in a controlled environment. They’re not being thrown into a school system without me. I’m able to be at practices, I’m able to know these kids through games and different kids. So there is that.
Also within, one thing that has happened that I’ve heard a lot of is something called the Good News Club. They are actually a Christian organization that go around and set up Bible schools or Bible clubs within the school system, and anybody can do this. I’ve actually thought about looking into starting one in our area. There’s programs like that. Also one wonderful example that I know personally, actually my homeschool mentor. So, her name is Janie and she raised her kids, she homeschooled them and they grew up to be wonderful, wonderful adults. They’re all serving God in the churches where they’re at. Her son is actually a missionary in the Middle East. They’re in the process of going over there. Wonderful, wonderful family, but after her kids were grown, she’s now working in this, in the public school system, and I think that is something to consider too. Public schools, they do need that light, but it doesn’t have to be our children, and when I look back on my school days, I do remember the teachers. They might not have been able to tell us about God, but I could tell the ones that were different.
I think that you can still be that light. You can even get involved as/us homeschool parents, we can get involved in the PTO. We can still get involved in our public schools without sending our kids into those environments to be the missionaries.
Yvette: Yeah. No, it totally did and I think that’s perfect. We have a good friend who is our public school math teacher and he’s a cross-country coach, and he is just, he always finds opportunities to talk to his kids about Christ, and he has led some of his students to the Lord and it’s just been such an amazing thing. He’s a homeschool dad, but he’s an adult who knows what he believes, and no one is going to shake his belief. So he goes out. He uses the platform that has given him to be able to be a light to these kids in a very, very dark world, and so it’s really exciting. And there are things, Young Life is another organization that goes out into public schools and has Bible clubs and tells kids about Jesus, and you’re right. I mean, there are a lot of ways that we can get involved as parents and then just pray. I think pray for the kids in the public school system and pray for the Christian teachers and administrators who are in the thick of it because it is a huge battle that they’re fighting right now and they really need our prayers, and I so respect those Christian men and women who are leading these kids in a very, very difficult time and in a very dark world, and everything is against them and they don’t have the freedoms to tell these kids what they desperately need to hear. But God can still open up opportunities for them to do that.
Caleb Schroeder is a public school teacher and adjunct college professor, and brings his wisdom and insight from his experiences in the public school system to this important interview for the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.
Yvette Hampton: Hey everyone. This is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the Schoolhouse RockedPodcast. I am really glad you’ve joined us today. I have a really exciting guest on today, and you are going to be so encouraged by him. He is actually … Well, he and his whole family are good friends of ours. We’ve known them for well over 20 years, and I think you’re going to enjoy what he’s going to talk about. He’s going to talk about being a teacher in the public school system in California, and whey he homeschools his kids. So his name is Caleb Schroeder, and I’m excited for you to get to know him. So hi, Caleb!
Listen to Caleb on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. (Airing April 15, 2019)
Caleb: Hey. How are you doing?
Yvette: I’m good. I’m so glad to have you on the podcast today. We actually interviewed you for Schoolhouse Rocked, the movie a little over two years ago, right?
Caleb: Yeah.
Yvette: Yeah. And so for those of you who are on … Actually, I want to say who are on the Backstage Pass membership site, but I actually think that your video has been seen by people who are not Backstage Pass members. I think we made that available to people for free. And we will actually do that again. We can talk about that at the end of the show, but people can go to the show notes for this podcast and see your video. But you had a great interview, talked about spiritual leadership in your home, and just about how you come alongside of your wife and encourage her. And so that’s a great video that you guys definitely are going to want to see.
But today we’re going to talk about something a little bit different with you, on kind of the other side of homeschooling, and that is public schools. So before we get rolling on that topic, tell us about you and your family a little bit.
Backstage Pass Members can watch the bonus video from this episode, which includes an additional 30 minutes of content! Not a member, keep reading to find out how you can get a free 3-month Backstage Pass Membership!
Caleb: So I’m the father of six kids, and all six of my kids are homeschooled. My oldest is 14. She just started high school, just finished up first semester of her freshman year. And then I have a 12-year-old daughter who is in 7th grade. I have twin boys who are nine years old. I have a daughter who’s seven, and then the youngest is four and a half. We use a classical model for education. We love Classical Conversations, and we’ve been doing that for, I think, four years, now.
I’m a practicum speaker. I usually speak at different practicums over the summer. I love encouraging homeschool parents. My wife and I are actually both homeschool graduates. We were homeschooled K through 12, in the ’80s and ’90s, when you had to do that with your curtains closed and the phones turned off.
Yvette: Yep.
Caleb: … in California. And we love what we’re able to do with our kids with homeschooling. I’m a public school teacher. I’m really involved in ministry at my church, both in my kids’ ministries, and then I direct the college ministry in my church.
Yvette: Yeah, well you guys are busy. You’re a busy, busy bunch. We love your family dearly. We are good friends with you guys, and as a matter of fact, your wife Leah and I are really good friends. And her parents, the first time we met, I think Leah was 12, and her parents were my and Garritt’s pre-marriage counselors.
Caleb: Yeah.
Yvette: And that was 24 years ago. That was actually a little over 24 years ago, because we are just celebrating our 24th anniversary so we’ve-
Caleb: Oh, congratulations.
Yvette: Yeah, thank you. Only by the grace of God. So it’s been really neat to see your family grow. I know I got to be kind of a little part of helping with your wedding and so we’ve seen your family grow from the very beginning.
I love your story of having been homeschooled to where God has brought you today. And I was talking to somebody recently, and she said, “I don’t see that a lot of homeschool graduates are doing a lot of things and being really successful in life.” Now, this is someone who does not come from a background of homeschooling.
And I said, “Well, you know, the reason that you may not see that quite yet is because that whole first big generation of homeschool graduates are just now really into their adulthood. You know? They’re in their maybe late 20s to mid 30s, and really starting to shine as adults. And so you’re one of those, where God has done amazing things with you. Talk a little bit, first, about what your homeschool journey was like growing up, because I know you were … I don’t want to say … I mean you might say unschooled, but I won’t say that you were unschooled, but I know you had kind of a loose school structure growing up, and then to where you are today and what God has done with you.
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Caleb: So I don’t know if I mentioned this, but my dad was a public school teacher for 37 years. He was teaching high school. And that’s what sort of motivated him to make the decision to homeschool. It wasn’t necessarily because he wanted to protect us from indoctrination, he just saw the system was broken. Educationally, students were not learning; they were not being taught. And so he realized, “I could do this better on my own,” and he did. I just finished my second Master’s degree. Most of my siblings have Master’s degrees. A lot of us are very successful working professionals. But because his response wasn’t to try to maybe pull us out and protect us from the system, it was very educationally focused, he had some radical ideas about how he was going to educate us. And some people might describe it as unschooling, but it wasn’t, because our mathematics was very structured. So mathematics was something that we did everyday. We had to put in time, we had to work systematically through … He wrote our curriculum for mathematics. For reading, that was very structured. Reading was very structured. And he sort of designed it like those are they keys. If you have your math, you have your reading, you can do anything.
And so outside of that, it was more whatever our passion was. So I remember one year when I was in high school, instead of doing US history, I just spent the entire year doing research on George Washington. He just fascinated me, and so I just did all this research on him, and I learned US history by studying the life of George Washington.
Yvette: Right.
Caleb: And so that was sort of the unschooling bit, is it was a little bit passion-driven. But the math and the English portion were very structured. My dad is a strict grammarian. Even in my Master’s graduate programs, I would send my research papers to him and say, “Hey, can you check my grammar?” And he would always, inevitably, find something. I was hoping after my second Master’s degree I’d finally arrive where he wouldn’t be able to find any errors, but he could always see them.
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Yvette: Yeah.
Caleb: So our experience … Because he really structured the math and the reading, we’re able to excel in anything we wanted to. And we’re also able to keep our passion. So I’m still somebody who’s extremely passionate about learning.
Yvette: Yeah. You learned to love learning.
Caleb: Yeah.
Yvette: Which is really the purpose of education. It’s not just to put a bunch of facts into our kids’ heads so that they forget them after the test, and then move onto the next subject. It’s really to teach our kids how to love learning.
Caleb: Exactly.
Yvette: So how did he do that with you? What was the key that you found that caused you to love learning? And how are you doing that with your kids?
Caleb: So I would say the key was having enough structure so that we could acquire the tools necessary to be successful. Let me illustrate it this way: When I was taking a … I was taking a PE class when I was in college, on teaching PE to students. My degree was in education. And our professor was explaining to us … She was like, “This is the most important class you’re going to take,” and a lot of people laughed that off, “Well, this is a PE class. This is not important.” And she explained that people’s quality of life is tied towards how active they are. And she said, “People aren’t active if they’re not skilled enough to enjoy activity.” And so when you teach a child how to throw a ball correctly, when you teach them how to jump correctly, when you teach them how to run correctly, they can then enjoy those activities.
In the same way, with education, is your mind is equipped where you understand the inner workings of mathematics, so you have … Your brain automatically sees the logic in systems, looks for the logics, understands how to put it together, and then you can read, you can do anything.
So the first key was having that structure in place, there. But the second key was my dad and my mom were passionate learners themselves. So their passion was caught by us. They were excited. My dad was a biologist. So everywhere we went, he was just pointing out the wonder of what he saw. And it wasn’t faked at all. It was just like he was in awe of God’s creation everywhere we’d go. We’d spend a lot of our summers up at Mount Whitney here in California, and we’d spend a lot of time on the trails and hiking around, and he’d just be showing us all these things as we’re hiking, and we’d be looking at the stars at night, and he’d be teaching us. So the world was our classroom.
And because of that, everywhere I go, I want to learn. I was going on a run this morning with this lady who was … There’s a local running store, and they do a run there every single Saturday morning. And I was running with this lady who is a … She has a PhD in nuclear fission, and I was like, “Wow. This is amazing. She can answer all these questions that I have.” And so I was just grilling her while I was running. And that’s not something that I’m researching, but it’s fascinating to me. I want to know about it.
So everywhere I go, I’m asking people questions, trying to learn about the world that’s around me. So I just have … We’re born with an innate curiosity, and the school system destroys that. And I’ve been able to preserve that. So I have the same curiosity I did as a five-year-old. I never lost it.
Yvette: Yeah. Yeah, and you’re passing that along to your kids, now, just like your dad passed that onto you.
So Caleb, you are a public school teacher. You teach math. Do you only teach math, or do you teach other subjects, as well?
Caleb: Yeah, primarily math. This year I’m doing a study hall. I teach a lot of dual-enrolled students, so I work for a local community college, and I work for the high school. And so I have a lot of students who are enrolled in the community college classes and the high school classes, so I run a study hall for them to come in and get help with their homework, and just sort of stay on top of them. I make sure they’re getting work done. So it’s not math, per se, but I end up helping them with a lot of mathematics.
Yvette: Okay, so here’s the question: You are a public school teacher, and many would ask the question, then why would you not have your kids in public school? If you own a business, maybe creating … Who knows, I don’t know. T-shirts. You would obviously want your kids to wear that t-shirt that you create, because that’s your thing. That’s your family business. That’s what feeds your family. And so everyday, you go into the public school system, and you have decided that that’s not what right for your kids. Why is that?
Caleb: You know, I guess it might seem strange from the outside, but because that’s how I was raised, that was sort of assumed. It wasn’t assumed that I would become a teacher, but it was assumed that I would homeschool my kids. The system’s broken, and it’s broken beyond repair. Education is a … There’s so much political activism in education now, that the working professionals who actually know what’s best for students and what’s going to help them cognitively, we can’t even do that. We can’t teach students where they’re at; because we’re working with 30 or more students at a time, we have to force everybody to fit into the same cookie cutter mold. And so it becomes indoctrination.
Public school flowed out of the industrial revolution. And in the industrial revolution, it actually made sense for what they were trying to do. In the industrial revolution, they needed a good factory worker. They needed somebody who would clock in, do the same mundane tasks without asking any questions, and then clock out. We don’t have those jobs anymore. We don’t have any careers … Yeah, there are some factory workers, but if you look at it, the majority of what factory workers are doing now, is they’re troubleshooting. They’re working on the equipment because the equipment does the work that a worker used to do.
Our education system is the same as it was 100 years ago. And because of that, we’re still preparing students to go into a job where they don’t think about what they’re doing, they don’t know how to troubleshoot, they’re just really good at, what I call, regurgitating on demand. So the teacher tells ’em, “Okay, here’s everything you need to know. Come back tomorrow and recite it to me.” That’s useless. There’s no value in that at all, in our culture anymore. So no matter what your religious background, but just cognitively, looking at what the brain needs to be effective, for a worker to be able to be successful, those skills aren’t given at all anymore.
And so I made the decisions to educate my kids primarily because I saw how broken the system was. Why I’m in the system, it’s not that I necessarily think that I can change it. I felt like I could. I’m teaching at a small, rural high school. And I have a principal who gave me a lot of freedom, and we were able, for about five years to be extremely innovative. Drastically change, within the confines of what California restricts us to, drastically change how we set up math instruction. And we were really, really successful. I have a student right now at Harvard Medical, who graduated from my program. He’s going to be a medical doctor. And I have students who are at UCLA. And so I was able to create an atmosphere where I was able to sort of salvage the students’ education in their last three years. The school is small enough that I had students for three years, and I could get them to that point where they became autonomous learners and I sort of shocked that curiosity back inside of them. But that’s an anomaly.
Usually, you don’t have a principal who will give you that freedom. And that whole system was dependent upon the administration I had, and that administration just shifted, and my new administration will not work with me at all. And so they’re coming in and they’re dictating, and they’re destroying everything I’ve built, which is sort of … That’s standard fare in California public schools. Education is determined by the politicians.
A big thing for mathematics, every single incoming freshman that I have, I’m required to put them in an algebra I class. I’ll give them an entrance test, and they can’t add a fraction, they can’t multiply single digits, they never got through … If you guys are familiar with the classical method, they never got through those grammar stages. They never mastered that grammar stage. They were never taught to mastery, and they need that. You can’t go on if you don’t understand how the brain works. You can’t go on to that dialectic or rhetoric stage until you have the grammar of a subject down, but I’m required to put them in an algebra class, which is-
Yvette: Wow. It’s like building the roof first on a house before you’ve built a foundation.
Caleb: Exactly. Yeah, it’d be like putting a student in their third year Spanish class when they haven’t had Spanish I or II.
Yvette: Yeah.
Caleb: And so that’s just because the government requires us to do that, and it’s because algebra is a social justice issue. Instead of being a math issue, it’s a social justice issue. And there are social justice components there, for sure. There’s pockets of racism, where people will put students in a class just to hold them down. But as a rule, that’s really not happening in California, and it really shouldn’t be how you determine what class students are put in.
So really, the reason that I’m there is I never felt called to be a school teacher. I felt called to be a missionary. And that’s how I see it. I think that the public schools are the front line of the culture war in our nation today. So if you want to be making a difference, the biggest difference that you can make is to be right there in the thick of it. So California public schools … I’m on the front line. And how I shine my light in that is not by going out and lecturing my students about their immoral lifestyles. I love kids. I love kids. And students are attracted to the love of Christ. And so what happens is, is I’m able to develop relationships with them. They know that my classroom is a safe space, and they come in there and they share their hearts with me. They share their struggles, and I’m able to share Jesus with them.
Caleb: And you know, one of the young guys I got to share Jesus with. And now he’s a pastor at your home church.
Yvette: Yeah.
Caleb: So that’s why I’m there. I’m there because … I’ve described it this way: The public schools are the cesspool of our society. If you look around and you think, “Wow, the media’s bad and this is bad,” well imagine the next generation that’s raised by that generation with those lack of respect and any moral compass whatsoever. Those children, their lifestyles, their moral compass, it’s despicable. And to go into that, it’s almost my … I’m passionate about missions. I love to read missionary stories and that’s sort of how I’ve always envisioned it. I’m sort of an anthropologist. I’m studying how these students work, how their minds work. How do I communicate to them, how do I get through to them, so I can communication the gospel to them.
Yvette: Yeah, well you do a good job of doing that. You know, you talk about being on the front lines, and I did a podcast a few weeks ago with a homeschool mom named Misty Bailey and we talked about being salt and light in the public schools, and how often times, that is the argument that Christian parents will say, “We want to put our kids in the public school system because God calls us to be salt and light.” But God does not call the student to be salt and light. He doesn’t call a student who’s not old enough to really understand what they believe yet. I mean, sure, they might believe in Jesus. Hopefully they do. But they’re not really quite solid enough in their foundation as a child to be able to go out and stand against the forces of evil that are taking place in the public school system.
Caleb: Yeah.
Yvette: And so how do you answer that? I mean, if a parent says to you, “Well, I don’t want to homeschool my kids because I think God has called us to be salt and light, and so I want to put my kid in the public school system so that they can be the salt and light.” What would you say to that parent?
Caleb: I would ask them what they’re doing to have such amazing kids who can go out there and be doing what I’m doing that’s exhausting me, that’s really, really difficult. But at the same time, I do know Christian parents in my school who are very involved. You know, they’re on campus and that’s what I would say is, “Okay, I know that some parents can’t homeschool their kids.” Just, their life situation doesn’t allow them to do that for whatever reason. My wife and I, we just make it happen. California’s pretty expensive to live here, so living on low income, I’ve got to work a couple jobs. But God is good, he provides for us. And so I know … I’ve talked to people, sometimes, where they feel like that’s a necessity and I say, “Well, you need to understand with that, that the responsibility for discipleship still lands squarely on your shoulders.”
And one of the problems is when you start entrusting the education of your children to somebody else, you can begin to think, “Well, maybe because I’m not educating them, I don’t need to be as active in what’s happening in their mind. And part of discipleship, it’s for sure spiritual, but you’re also discipling your children’s minds. And you need to be learning how they’re thinking. And if you can do that as a non-homeschool parent, then more power to you. But for myself, I can’t. I need to be teaching my children at home.
But one of the things that I saw as a homeschool graduate, in the ’80s and ’90s, a lot of my contemporaries, a lot of my peers, their parents were making that decision because they feared the culture. And what happened is they completely removed their children from that culture, and then those children, once they graduated, they weren’t able to engage with that culture. And we have a mandate from our Lord to make disciples, which means we have to be interfacing with people who aren’t yet disciples. We need to be fishers of men, which means we need to have venues where we’re interacting with people who are in the world.
And so I actively pursue that for my children. That’s something my parents actively pursued for me. So my kids, they interact with people outside of just our home, and our homeschool community. My daughter was on my cross country team at my public high school this last year. I think within the first two weeks, she’d shared the gospel with all the other freshman girls on the team. You know?
Wow.
And I mean, that’s my heart. And she sort of knows, “Hey, that’s why I’m here.”
Yvette: Yeah.
Caleb: Another untapped venue that I think a lot of homeschool parents don’t recognize is youth groups in the church. Often times, in a youth group, you’re going to have unchurched kids coming in and visiting and homeschooled kids, that can be in a place that they learn to be salt and light.
And so I think that parents who make that argument, there’s something valid there, and we need to own that and recognize that, and think how are we helping our children right now prepare to engage in the culture? We’re training up a child, but part of training up a child is, we need to be teaching them how to make disciples. You know? So to be their friend across the street that they play with.
Yvette: Right.
Caleb: “Hey, let me challenge you to invite them to come to church with you. Let me challenge you to tell them what it means to believe in Jesus, to share your faith with him.” I can remember as a little kid doing that, and making a mess of it with my next-door neighbor. You know, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was trying to … I asked him if he was a Christian, and he said yes, and then I didn’t know what to do, ’cause I knew he wasn’t, and I didn’t want to argue with him. But that was something my parents did for me. They put me on the public parks and rec basketball teams, and I would do swim teams. And so I was interacting with the world constantly, and then learning how to be a witness, but my dad was my coach.
Yvette: Right.
Caleb: So he was right there watching me, encouraging me, but also giving me enough space so that I could learn to do those things.
Yvette: Yeah.
Caleb: We can’t just bring our children up to the place of being 18 years old, they graduate from high school, and then they go out there and they’re ready to engage in the world. If the first time they ever hear somebody use profanity is after they graduate from high school, that’s a problem.
Yvette: Right.
Caleb: You know? And so … I mean, yeah. My daughter probably learned some new works this last year as a … She’s actually 13, as a freshman in the public school system. And she doesn’t like that, but also I’m not worried about that affecting her, because I know that her light is stronger than those bad morals. And I know that she can stand up on her own two feet. And that’s really a decision you make child by child, year by year; how much you’re engaging them with the culture and how much you’re not.
Yvette: Right.
Caleb: I talked to a mom recently … Not recently. Probably eight years ago, who was … She was really struggling with the decision of whether she should put her son in public high school or in a private school. And what I told her is, the public high school’s the cesspool of our culture. And your son, maybe he’ll learn to stand up for himself, and he’ll learn to share the gospel, but it’s going to be vexing to his soul. It’s like Lot when he was in Sodom. Remember what Peter says in his epistle, he says, “Every day his righteous soul was vexed.” So if your children love Jesus and they’re in public school, everyday their righteous soul’s going to be vexed.
Yvette: Right.
Caleb: And so you need to be figuring out a way to be bringing massive support to them because their soul is just going to be attacked day after day after day. This mom put her son in the public school, and within two months, she pulled him out, and she called me up and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, you were right. It is just a cesspool. His friends are constantly just trying to push stuff on him and challenging him to do all these things that he knows he shouldn’t do,” and she pulled him out and she put him in a private school.
Yvette: Yeah, yeah. It’s tough to put kids in a situation like that where … Often times I think they feel like they’re standing alone, or then, they’re the ones who get labeled as the bully, because now you’re telling this kid that what they’re doing is wrong. Or, whatever the situation might be, and that’s a really hard place for kids to be. And so-
Caleb: Yeah.
Yvette: I love that. And we’re like that with our kids, we’re very intentional. We travel a lot, we do a whole lot of things that are not homeschool-related, but we get to spend the days and hours with our girls, training their hearts, and training them up in righteousness, teaching them God’s word so that when they go out into the culture, they can recognize good from bad, truth from lies, and I agree completely. I mean, I’ve known kids who were homeschooled their whole lives, and they came out and they were like, “Nope. Not for me.” And did not even know how to interact with culture because their parents kept them so isolated and so protected. And you can’t do that.
Yvette: But it is our job to protect our kids. And so you have to find that balance, and that’s what it is, is a balance. But I think sending them into that cesspool for 35 to 40 hours a week, and then expecting them to come home and be able to undo everything that they’ve been taught and seen, seems nearly impossible to do, ’cause you can’t undo what’s already been done to them.
Caleb: This last year, Leah and I both read a book called The Gospel Comes With a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield.
Yvette: Okay.
Caleb: We really enjoyed that book. And she’s a homeschool mom, and how she creates that space for her kids to learn to reach out, is by having a home that’s constantly open. And so her kids are learning to make disciples because she’s having unsaved people in her home all the time, and she’s making disciples. And so they’re seeing that. What happens often times when somebody comes to Christ, within about three years, they don’t have any more non-Christina friends. I mean, either their non-Christian friends have stopped being friends with that, or they’ve just stopped engaging with the world. And it’s important for … One of the reasons I’m part of a local running club is that gives me a space where I can interface with people in the world. My public school lets me do that. My college students … I run a college ministry for my church, and I have them in my home. And they’re constantly going out and bringing other people, and those people are in my home and part of my ministry is, I do it with my kids. My ministry on the context of family, I think that family makes you more effective in your ministry. And kids are learning it.
If I go out and I’m sharing the gospel, I take my sons with me. You know?
Yvette: Yeah.
Caleb: And they hear people reject us, and they get to see how to share their faith. And so we just need to be making sure as parents that we’re engaging with the world, that we’re letting the world into our home; inviting strangers. That’s what hospitality means.
Yvette: That’s right.
Caleb: It means loving strangers. Also, we’re inviting strangers into our home. That’s how our kids are going to learn to make disciples. Sending them off away from us where they can’t be learning from us and seeing us model it, and knowing how to do it? Not really effective.
Yvette: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I agree completely.
Caleb: Yeah.
Yvette: Unfortunately we are out of time for the podcast, but if you can stay on with me, I would love to continue this conversation, ’cause I want to keep talking about this. So for those who are Backstage Pass members, this video, of course, will be on, and you guys can view the rest of this interview.
For those who are listening on the podcast, thank you guys for listening today. We are so grateful for you. We’re grateful for the encouragement that you continue to bring to us. Continuing praying for us. God is doing some big things with Schoolhouse Rocked, and with the podcast and with our family, so we would love your continued prayers as we move forward in post-production with the movie and just continue doing what God has called us to do.
So thank you guys, for your encouragement. Thank you for listening. And please, please share this with your friends. It’s always exciting to hear when someone says, “Oh, I had a friend who told me about this podcast.” I got to talk to a dad the other day, and the mom actually said, “Oh, my husband Ryan always listens to the podcast, and he’s always the one telling me, ‘You’ve got to listen to this one! You’ve got to listen to this one!'” And I was like, “That is awesome!” I love that dads are listening as well, so hi to the dads listening, and hello Ryan. I’m glad you’re listening.
But thank you guys for being with us today and we will have a new podcast for you next Monday. And for those of you on the Backstage Pass membership site, stick with us, and we’re going to continue this conversation with Caleb.
So Caleb, thank you for being on the podcast with me today.
Yvette: So, let’s talk about this whole salt and light argument. I know this is something that you’re really passionate about, which is why I was excited to have you on to talk about this because often times people will talk about the argument well we can’t take our kids out of public school or even private school because they need to be the salt and light of the world. There are, you have, I mean, we have so many great arguments against this, but I really want to talk and focus on what scripture says about this. What does God say about our kids being salt and light, and are we being unbiblical by taking our kids out of that public school system and not allowing them to be in there as salt and light and telling other kids about Jesus, or are we … Is there a benefit to having them out of the public school system? I know parents teeter both ways on this.
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