Child Education: Public, Christian, or Home Schooling?

Well, welcome to another

Theology Throwdown. This is where all of the podcasters at the Christian Podcast Community are invited to have discussion on different topics.

Tonight's topic—well, tonight when we record it, it may be morning when you listen or who knows what time—but tonight's topic is going to be

Christian school versus public school versus home school. Which is best?

Child -rearing. There's never any debate on this online. No one has strong opinions ever.

I'm jesting, of course, but I don't know that we at the

Well, you got to be pretty conservative to get on with us in the first place.

So I have a feeling we're going to have a lot of agreement, but still maybe some different views.

And I will say that in prep for this show, two of us—I won't say which two it was, but two of us—were having a lengthy discussion in a car this past weekend and getting lots of ideas.

So the rest of you who were not in that car—oh, you were just left out.

Sorry. I'm going to have a lot of questions.

I'm just saying. So I just gave away one of the two people. So now, you know, you just got to figure out who the other one is.

I'm sure that person will reveal himself. I just eliminated three people.

Okay. So now we're down to four. All right. So 25 % chance of getting it right. So with that,

I'm going to let each of us introduce ourselves so that we can mention ourselves and our podcast so you as a listener could know a voice to a name and something about our podcast so that you may go, hey, that guy said some pretty good stuff.

I want to go check out what is the rest of what he's doing or she's doing. So I will start at the top there.

The one, the only, the New York bomber, Dominic Grimaldi.

I feel like I'm a wrestler. Never mind a podcast. All right. Anyway, yes,

Dominic Grimaldi. It's fitting with that. Come on. Yeah. I used to watch wrestling when I was a kid.

Anyway, Dominic Grimaldi, Street Talk Theology. And in our podcast, we take theology and bring it to the street.

So I appreciate all my podcast brothers and sisters and the

Christian podcast community has been a blessing to myself. I'm a pastor here at Desert Sky Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

So we are thankful for the Christian podcast community. Heath Helsley, who's currently in space from his picture.

All right. Hear me? This is Keith Helsley of Quest for Truth. I do a show with my co -host,

Nathan Caldwell. And we talk about, well, seeking the truth in the

Bible. We seek things about worldviews and how they don't match the

Bible. We like to make fun of them, do some role playing with that. But we try to always seek what is true, the reality of the world around us.

And that's always found in the Bible and extends out from there. We also have a monthly episode.

I think we just released it today, where we dive into the Bible for a deep dive called Truth Exposed.

We've been going to the book of John. And well, I can't think of too much else, but we just rolled over a milestone this past week.

I think we hit 100 ,000 downloads. Oh, wow. Congratulations. All right.

Next up is, and Keith has one of the most probably eclectic, because you got the audio dramas you do.

You have the podcast where you discuss topics. And then you have a couple other audio dramas, once in a while, that are on.

Yeah, we have a couple. We do have one called Dangerous Christian. It's kind of,

I would call it a superhero story, sort of.

The guy's not, I mean, just wears regular clothes, does like a superhero kind of guy. But I kind of envision he's kind of like a

MacGyver type, or a Michael Landon type in Highway to Heaven. He goes around helping people.

Then we have our Luke audio drama, which I have some scripts done.

I just got to gather up actors to do them. It's the trouble with having free help.

You just have to wait sometimes. And our co -host Nathan has also got himself involved as being an editor on a

Clean Christian magazine. So he sometimes will post interviews and things with that.

That's neat. Didn't know that one. So you can always have the next person, Mr. Brewster, because he probably could do characters too.

He can seem to do everything else. But, you know, we're going to see, we're going to test. He also claims, not only does he claim he's a ninja and a counselor.

You're the one claiming all this, man. No one ever hears me say it. You do say that you have a fifth degree black belt in ninjutsu, right?

I've heard you say it. I'm just saying that if I really were a ninja, would

I say it? I'd be all stealthy hiding in a corner. That's all. So we keep learning more about Aaron.

He's got many talents. So this is for the regulars here, you'll get a kick out of this, but we're doing a

Q &A this weekend. And one of the questions was, how do you use your ninjutsu with your parenting?

And so we get up for the Q &A. And these were submitted digitally. So we didn't like, we just saw them listed out.

We got to see them, but we can't see, it's all anonymous. And so we sit down. And of course,

Andrew would have been the one to submit something like that. How do you use ninjutsu in parenting, blah, blah, blah.

And I'm just like, Andrew, whatever. Only it wasn't.

When I saw that question, I knew he was going to blame me. And sure enough, I did not put that question in there.

And we still don't know who did. I have no idea who did. I am curious, but as soon as I saw that question,

I knew if that question gets asked, Aaron is going to say that's mine. I was waiting for that question to be asked so I could say that wasn't my question.

Ridiculous. So Mr. Brewster, you got a couple of podcasts there. I do, yeah.

So one of them is called Truth, Love, Parent. And Truth, Love, Parent is, as you would imagine, it's all about parenting.

And Ephesians 4 .15 model, where we're speaking the truth in love and building up our families into the maturity of Jesus Christ.

And we have over 500 episodes. And our most recent series was kind of a big recap, not a recap so much, but kind of hitting the big points that we've been making over the past number of years.

It's called the Biblical Parenting Essentials. And I'll actually have the privilege of speaking on that exact topic this

Saturday at a church in Michigan. So I'm really looking forward to that opportunity. And then the other podcast

I have is called the Celebration of God, which we don't, hasn't been around for as long, but it's all about how we use our holidays and our every days to worship

God better this year than we did the year before. That really focuses on discipleship and worship and sanctification and maturing how we do that ourselves, but then also how we help the other people in our lives to do the same thing, to the glory of God.

And for those of you who are watching online, I just want to say, just in case there are any questions, I am actually in Michigan right now.

This is not my house, and these are not my guitars, but when I saw this, I was like, oh, that makes for like the best backdrop.

It's so cool, but they're not mine. But you are going to play them so that we know.

I'm not going to play. It doesn't even fit the topic. Do something on music and I'll come in and jam.

Rebecca, you're up next. Hey, I'm Rebecca. I am the host of One Little Candle, and it's a weekly podcast that encourages and equips believers to stand for the truth, to be a light in the darkness, no matter who we are or where we're at.

So we, in the podcast, we cover a variety of topics. Some are lighthearted, some are more controversial and challenging, any subjects really that affect our daily lives and our

Christian walk. And the hope is that once a listener realizes that they too can have a purpose in advancing

God's kingdom, no matter where they're at, be that one little candle.

And Rebecca, you have a couple of children's books out that might be a good thing to mention here, since we're talking about rearing children.

Can you talk about your children's books, the topic, why you wrote them real quick and where we can get them?

Sure, I do. They are actually, they're eBooks, they're in PDF form, and they are free for anyone who wants to read them or download them.

Two of them are on God's design for marriage, and I have another two on God's design for permanently fixed gender.

Both of them, there's different age groups for the children. One of them actually on the gender is fiction, and I just put one out about Israel, introducing children to Israel.

And I have another one, it's ready, I just haven't gotten it out. This one is about race.

So it's kind of an anti -CRT book for young ones. You can find those on Lovin' Truth, it's

L -O -V -I -N truthbooks .com. Okay. I just wanted to get it out there for parents because I want to let the parents get there first.

As I always say, get to their kids with the truth first, especially those that are in public schools, their kids, through these books.

Yeah. Yeah. And I did read two of them that you sent to me and they're good, they're well -written, they're good age appropriate.

And I do like how you say that the permanent fixed gender -

Permanently fixed gender. Yes. Permanently fixed gender. I like that. I think I'm going to use that terminology.

I like it. And for folks that don't know what CRT stands for, that is cultural racism training.

That's really what it is. They say it's critical race theory, but it's cultural racism training.

So Eve, you're up next. Yes. I'm Eve Franklin and I am the producer and co -host of the podcast

Are You Just Watching? I guess we just discuss movies from a

Christian worldview and secular entertainment, mostly movies. Yeah.

So you just did one on a movie called Dungeons and Dragons. So as a kid,

I played Dungeons and Dragons. Okay. So Eve, this will be good for your podcast.

You might get a joke, get to laugh at me about this because you mentioned the Chick tracts and that's actually how

I got Chick tracts. I was a Christian still playing Dungeons and Dragons. And I found out that there was,

I heard on the radio about these Chick tracts that speak against Dungeons and Dragons. So I went and just picture the scene.

I convinced my dad, my Jewish dad who hates Christianity. And I got him to write a check to Chick publications for a set of, a sample set of all their tracts.

Wow. And I read those, that was like, that was my introduction to Christianity was

Chick tracts because I just had that in Bible and it was over Dungeons and Dragons.

So, so you got that, that off that one that, that was so totally anti Dungeons and Dragons.

Yeah. Because people thought Dungeons and I thought your, your podcast was good because it pointed out there's plenty of other role -playing games that go into kind of stuff, the witchcraft and all, but it was only

Dungeons and Dragons that was called out. And really because of, of the Chick tract and it really had a bad connotation, but you, you actually almost make me want to go watch the film because it sounded really good.

So I'm waiting for it to be on a, on a flight that I'm on. It was very funny anyway.

It was entertaining. All right. Spencer, should we give time for your wife to get here?

Do you want to introduce her while she's gone? Yeah, I guess. I'm not sure what time she's going to be up here.

As I told you guys, we are strict 5 PM dinner eaters. We very rarely waver from the 5

PM dinner. So that's when these recordings take place. So she is being the good mom, taking care of the kids.

I'm up here playing podcaster. So she will be up here shortly, but I am

Spencer. My co -host is my wife, Nikki, and we host the Religionless Christianity podcast.

We produce about six episodes a week, five short daily devotionals, just reading through the

Bible, giving our thoughts verse by verse as we go through. And then every Saturday we just try to focus on the news of the week, try to keep it pretty relevant to what's going on and looking at it from a

Christian perspective, trying to make sense of this very secular religionless world that we're finding ourselves.

Actually, you guys are in luck. My wonderful wife is arriving. I was going to give you a hard time because you always say you always introduce her as my beautiful wife.

And this time you didn't. Yeah, I felt maybe I should have said that.

She's beautiful, gorgeous, best mom, and all of those things. And a wonderful co -host on our podcast.

She gives a great perspective on news because she largely doesn't engage in the news. She's smarter than me.

So a lot of times what I bring to her, she's like, how is this possibly news in the world we live in? Like, I know,

I get it. Right. So, but yeah, if you want to introduce yourself, honey.

Yeah. Hi, I'm Nikki, Spencer's wife. And yes, all he said is true.

I don't really, I don't watch the news. Beautiful and gorgeous. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say,

Spencer. Real humble, Nikki. Oh, all those things? Oh, yes.

Like I am the best mom. Gosh, I was talking about the news and stuff. Ignorance.

Avoiding the news is what keeps her beautiful. So we should just clip that one part.

That's how we could use that. All right. Your podcast is Religionless Christianity.

Melissa, you're up next. Thanks, Andrew. My podcast is called

Thoroughly Equipped, and it's for women. And on it, what we do is we look at women's ministry in a whole.

I address women speakers, some of the popular ones. What we've been doing this season is looking at the

If -Gathering. And I am coming to an end. Praise be to the

Lord. Coming to an end of looking at the If -Gathering. Our final portion is looking at If -Gathering and justice and how they bring in analytical tools such as psychology.

And yes, there's even critical race theory that is brought into it through her promotion, through Jenny Allen's promotion of certain ministries, such as Be the

Bridge. So we're going to be looking at that in the next couple episodes. And then I will,

Lord willing, be done, and I can move on to another woman in the ministry.

Well, you won't be done too quick because we're going to pull... Once you're done your podcast, we're going to put you into Apologetics Live to talk about it.

Daniel Minnick, we haven't seen you for a while. Welcome. Yes, thank you. It's been a while since November, I believe it was,

I was last on. Yeah, it's not that I want to avoid

Theology Throwdown. I try every month, but my wife has kind of a schedule every other

Monday to do some paid cleaning for a friend's house. And often it ends up to where I just can't do it, even though I don't when or if I'll do it.

But this time, I was able to eke it out. So yes, my name is

Daniel Minnick. I'm the host of the Truthspresso podcast, and my wife is a co -host most of the time.

We talk about practical Christian topics, family, politics, theology, and we often start a series, our recent series that we started is the

Historical American Revivals. And I know one problem we often face when we start a series is that we get interrupted by some things that happen, such as our local state politics that we ended up in a very, you know, difficult battle with.

But we're really hoping to get back to continuing the series on American Revivals and talk about John Wesley.

So, I recommend that you listen to Truthspresso and keep up with our Revival series.

All right. And so, I am the host not only of this podcast, where I'm just kind of like, kind of just direct conversation, but I'm also, my name is

Andrew Rappaport. I am the Executive Director of the Christian Podcast Community, and I am also the host of Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report and Apologetics Live, which is a live show every

Thursday night, where anyone can go to apologeticslive .com, come in, ask any questions, and every once in a while we get some black

Hebrew Israelites trying to dominate our show, which has been the last couple of weeks. And so, but it's always good, fun discussion.

We never know what we're going to be, what we're going to have. The one thing with Apologetics Live, for those who watch that or listen to that, is the fact that other people know they're planning a debate on our show.

They come in ready for a debate, and I have no idea a debate's coming. So, it becomes entertaining where I'm at a loss because I can't prepare for whatever topic they're going to debate me on.

So, it makes it quite entertaining. Alright, so let's get into the topic tonight. Let's start with discussing, the order

I'd like us to discuss is start with public school, then Christian school, and then homeschool.

And so, we'll go in that order. I think as I talked to most of you before we went live,

I don't think there's anyone here that is going to be a big public school supporter.

I'm just saying that for the audience to say there are people out there that truly believe their children should be in public school.

And so, though I do not take that position, I will give the arguments for that position so that those of us here can have the discussion.

So, let's start with homeschool, and I'm going to just start, and then you guys could just raise your hands, and we'll see who wants to start us off.

But when we do have those who are proponents of public school, the biggest argument that they make for it is that we should send our children to public school so that they could be a witness to the world, so that they could be a testimony to those that are in the public school, that they would be the light, you know, as Rebecca might say, one little candle in a public school setting, though I don't think she's going to agree with that argument.

She's shaking her head no. That's usually the argument we hear. Now, I want to start with that one.

A secondary argument that I want to pick up is that public school is, well, kind of free.

I mean, the rest of the community is paying for it, not necessarily the parents, but the parents pay through their property tax and things.

So, the issue, I think, for many, is it's cheap, it's easy, and it's common.

And so, those are the two areas in the public school that I'd like us to start discussing. So, I don't know who'd like to tackle the first one.

Should we be sending our children to public school so they could be a witness, a testimony, to evangelize?

Who'd like to start us off? Okay. I just assumed, like, people were going to jump on that one, but there's

Aaron. I was going to assume Aaron would go first, so we'll go with Aaron and then Rebecca. Okay, so what I'm going to do is,

I'm going to argue for a position that I don't agree with.

I don't think you should send your kids to public school. I'll just say that right up front. But I do want to say, I want to give voice to a lot of people who have spoken to me as I've done debates about this and talked about this, and some legitimate observations, okay?

So, number one, I do want to acknowledge the fact that there are many Christ -honoring, God -fearing,

Bible -believing Christian school teachers out there, all right? It's hard to quantify exactly how many there are out there, but I've known some, and I've known a lot of people whose kids had those teachers, right?

So, those people have a slightly different situation than the majority of people who don't have that, and that's one thing that gets said, and so I wanted to say that that's definitely a reality.

Obviously, the finances thing can seem really overwhelming for people.

I don't know that it's wise to make an unwise choice simply because of money, but you know, that is something

I hear from time to time. And then the other argument that I hear is that, you know, by God's common grace, not every public school, not every classroom, not every kid in that classroom is as bad as the stuff that you see when you go on YouTube, right?

Or, you know, you're reading the Daily Wire or some other, you know, conservative, and you're finding that these kids are beating their teachers unconscious because the teacher, you know, confiscated their

Switch that they were using to play games on during class. You know, we hear about all that kind of stuff, and we know it's out there, but not every classroom is like that.

And I'll say that some, my pastor, we actually just hired a new pastor, and his children have always attended public school, but their experience, if you listen to them telling you about it, you might actually have to clarify, your kids go to public school or Christian school?

Just because of their unique experience. So, again, I don't know that I, I'm going to have a very hard time siding with that particular argument, but I can understand how, if I have a second grader in a class with a woman who goes to our church, and we know her, we know how she runs her class, we know that she's a testimony for God in the classroom, and for all intents and purposes, to a certain degree, it's not too many steps away from a

Christian school, second grade class. I can see why those parents would push back on the criticism that, no doubt, all of us, including me, are going to throw at this whole public school thing.

All right, Rebecca, I saw your hand up. Yeah, for me personally, as far as the argument that, send your children to public school so they can be witnesses, in my opinion, they're not ready, they're not equipped yet to be to be put in that position,

I guess, just because of the constant, because they are young, and their minds are still being formed, and the constant, we know now, indoctrination that is happening within the public schools.

Again, these children, when it's coming, especially up against teachers who are pushing it, it makes it very, very difficult for them.

One example that was coming through my head, this was a high school young man I was talking with, and they were talking about Google.

The boy said to his teacher, well, yeah, we know Google's not always right, because Google says that there's more than two genders.

The teacher corrected him and said, there are more than two genders. I said to the young man,

I said, so what was your response? He said, well, what am I supposed to say? He's the teacher. I just feel, especially even for younger children, it's just coming at them through the curriculum, through what the teachers are saying.

Like Aaron said, yes, not every school, not every classroom is going to be like this, but chances are, most of them are, and it's getting worse.

I just feel that we need to, and I don't mean shelter them, put them in a closet, but I mean we need to protect them from everything that we can while we are teaching them and training them biblically to protect their innocence,

I guess. Okay. Spencer, did you have something you wanted to say first?

Yeah, I was just going to say, and it's not so much the teachers, it's the other students that have more of an impact on kids.

All the peer pressure comes from students, and yeah, that's my main reason,

I guess, too. That's why we didn't want to send our boys when they were beginning junior high.

You just hear the things with the kids. It's not the issues with the teachers because they're going into junior high.

It's that age and the peer pressure and just a lot of worldliness. I think that is more likely going to affect them and to be a more common issue than the teachers teaching them something false.

Your kids are more likely to fall away from the faith on account of who their friends are versus what the teacher is teaching them.

Yeah, and I'll just say, because I do think we also fall victim to the social media syndrome where you see all the

TikTok and Twitter videos, and you might assume that that's everywhere, but it is very school dependent.

If you know your local school district and stuff like that, you may be able to determine the level of in -your -face

Satanism they might be exposed to from the teacher level. I think it's really dependent on your kid as far as that idea of them being a minister or a light in this darkness.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, and it was a time gone by, but I think Charles Spurgeon was preaching at the age of 16.

So if your son is Charles Spurgeon, sure, maybe encourage them to go and be that light in the darkness.

And then there's also the cases too, where we're kind of in a society with an epidemic of single parent households.

And I think a lot of times when you get in these discussions of homeschooling is the best option, yada, yada, you can kind of make people feel maybe ashamed or something like that.

Well, I can't homeschool my kid. So in those situations, I don't think it's a negative.

It is cheap, easy, and common. And if you're a single parent, that sort of thing, I don't think you should be overly ashamed that that's the situation you're in and that's the best option for you.

Yeah. And before we go to Daniel, I was going to introduce someone who came in, but he's not at his chair.

So, okay, he's coming back. So wait for him to get his headphones on. All right. So Garrett just came in.

So if we, Garrett, if you might be able to introduce yourself and your podcast, because I think you're going to have a lot to say on this particular topic, and you may even have a movie for us to check out.

Just a thought, just a thought, just maybe some resources for people, but introduce yourself.

We do have a movie. So we have quite a few resources for homeschooling families, and I'm sorry to jump in late.

We're actually preparing for a trip out of state and couldn't make it early, but my name's

Garrett Hampton. I am the director of Schoolhouse Rocked, The Homeschool Revolution, a feature -length documentary on homeschooling.

And also I produce the Schoolhouse Rocked podcast, which is hosted by my wife.

And we have spent the last seven, almost seven years now, in full -time ministry specifically to homeschool families.

So we're deep in the education world. Yeah. And so there is a little bit of a buzz on your line, just so you know.

I don't know. I'm sorry. No, no, just so you know, there may be some interference, but just...

Very sorry about that. Is it better now? Yep, it is. Good deal. Sorry about that. You know exactly what it was, too.

Wow, that was quick. Yeah, sorry I had to jump on fast tonight. All right.

Daniel, you had... So the question, Garrett, that Daniel's going to answer, we're starting off with public school, then we're going to talk

Christian school, and then homeschool. And so the argument that we sometimes hear made for public school is that we want to send our kids to public school to be a witness, to be a testimony to the unbelievers, and that's what we're answering.

And Daniel, you're up for answering that next. Yeah, I definitely do not agree with that premise.

I know it can happen in some cases where I did see a video today, a short clip of a nine -year -old girl at a school board meeting, standing up against school board tyranny.

But my thought is that that's really should not, you know, be an expectation that we should have young children having to enter this battle, because as was mentioned, children are not ready yet.

We should be equipping them, teaching them then to go out and go into battle.

And we know that even in college, some colleges, their freshman level curriculum, especially the science, they're preparing for Christians even to go there.

They're preparing the curriculum and the questions to try to challenge their faith then, so we know that public schools have an agenda to target

Christian students and to, you know, brainwash them there.

So we shouldn't send our children expecting them to go to battle because of the convenience of public school.

I think it's kind of really an excuse for the reason that, you know,

I don't know how to deal with anything other than public school. And I have a few verses for this about equipping children.

So the beginning of Proverbs chapter 1, it says in verse 2, to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity, to give subtlety to the simple, to the young man, knowledge and discretion.

So we want to make sure that our young children have knowledge and discretion before they're forced to put what little knowledge or discretion they might have to the test of going to war in schools.

All right. Melissa, I see your hand up next, so if you want to respond.

Yeah, so I too disagree with the argument. I think also what's missing when you think about kids going to school is to combat and be a salt and light.

It's not just being able to testify clearly the gospel, but also to have discernment.

So and discernment is something that needs to be trained, and you need to be equipped, and you need to understand what you believe and why you believe it.

Not that God can't bless a nine -year -old or a 16 -year -old with, you know, discernment, but just that's kind of where you when you start to hear false teaching or are addressed with bad behavior, you have to first know what's good and true, and to put a five -year -old in a place where they're going to be for most of the day in a godless system, then you're going to have problems, and you're going to have conflict, and you're not setting them up with the right foundation.

I'd also like to say about Mr. Brewster's comment about the teachers and good

Christian teachers in the school system, and God bless them. I mean that they're going into the battlefield.

Absolutely. The problem is the school system and the curriculums that are being taught there start with the foundation that there is no

God, and that is where you're going to be having your battle.

So first, we have to train up our children that they know that there is a God, but we need to show them and reveal that to them, and we use education, if you're wise, use education to show them

God, to show them the Creator, and unfortunately, teachers, as Christian as they are, are restricted and cannot do that.

Okay. Keith Elsley, you're up next. Keith, you're muted.

How about now? Yeah, that's better. All right. Well, on the topic of the public school,

I would say that a big reason why parents send their kids there just because it's there, it's convenient, it's just always been done that way.

That's just the mentality of people who go to public schools. On the topic of having

Christian teachers, I mean, I have a niece who is a teacher. I know she's a

Christian. I know other teachers there who are. I've had conversations with some of them and said, well, what are you going to do when they start making you teach all this diversity and inclusion stuff?

Their response is, well, they're not going to come to my little rural area of the state and make me do that. Don't count on that.

What are you going to do if they do? Well, their hands are tied. They have to teach the curriculum that's given to them.

So, I mean, you're taking your chances anymore to go to public school.

I mean, my grandkids are all in it, but I would rather they not. We've even talked about homeschooling some of them, but some of them aren't quite ready to depart their comfortable ways,

I suppose you might say. Yeah. And I think that what ends up happening is the argument that our children will influence the unbelievers when they're all by themselves in a public school setting, compared to the chance that the unbelievers will influence the children.

Think through that. Think of scripture. It's going to be more likely you're going to have the world influencing the children.

I remember, and this is at college level at least, but my daughter had a choice between two universities.

And if I mentioned a university that is your favorite and I mentioned it in a negative way, I'm sorry. But she got down to Cedarville University and Liberty University.

And I fully let her make the choice in what she wanted. And she chose

Cedarville. And her reasoning was quite interesting. Her reasoning was because Cedarville required you to have a

Christian testimony to get in. They were focused on discipleship, discipling college students for the rest of their life.

Where Liberty was accepting unbelievers to come in with the hopes of evangelizing them with all of the

Christian students. And my daughter said, you know, there's probably a greater chance of unbelievers influencing the believers than the believers influencing unbelievers.

And for that reason, she said, I would rather go somewhere where I'm going to be discipled. And so she chose

Cedarville. Now, my children have done the full gamut. We started off in public school system.

We then went to homeschooling. And then for high school, they went to a

Christian school. So, we've done all three. I can say, yes, it was easier to just walk down the street and put them in public school.

But we had battles with the school, with different things, little things in those early years.

Because, you know, my son had certain food allergies and that they just weren't ready to handle things like that back then.

People that were had gluten, were gluten free. And so, but the thing was, was that I know that my son was very evangelistic in school, because he'd come home and ask me questions.

He's always maintained that he was evangelizing other students, but the challenges he was coming home and asking me sure sounded like it was a teacher or an adult.

But he was very bold. Now, what pulled us out of, you know, like, kind of when we really started to say, we can't do this anymore, we actually pulled him out mid -year.

And so, one of the things that we said, this has got to stop was when there was a, my son went into the bathroom and there was another boy in the bathroom from his class.

And the boy turned to him and says, have you ever kissed another boy? And it was just like, you know, my son's like, well, no, because that would be wrong.

You know, but we talked about, I talked with the principal and I was very concerned because it told me, and I said, the principal means somebody's been doing something with this other student, because this boy isn't doing that, either an older sibling or somebody's, something's going on there.

And I thought back then, like, the school needs to get involved to protect this child. Now, the schools are the ones doing it.

The schools are the ones teaching it. So, it's even worse now. So, I look at this and just say, like, this is something where I don't think, as time has gone on, no,

I don't think you can, as believers, do everything possible not to allow your children in public school.

And there are other options. And I understand that some of it, you know, Christian school, it's expensive and people can't afford it.

Homeschooling isn't for everyone, we're going to get into those. But if you have no other option and you have to go homeschool as a public school, then

I would say, you know, kind of to Melissa's point, you better be putting six hours of, six to eight hours a time a day into pouring into them and strengthening them and giving them good, strong Christian values and preparation to defend what they're going to be hearing every day in school.

Because they're, Melissa made the good point, they're getting six hours a day of someone else indoctrinating them.

And then you think one hour of church is going to compensate that. No, it won't.

Garrett, I thought I saw your hand up and then Aaron's. Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, it's funny when we send missionaries out on the field, we do it after years of training.

And yet parents expect our kids to go into the schools as missionaries. And the irony is that the teachers there have already been through the years of training.

So you're sending unprepared children into a place of very well -prepared wolves who are literally after their souls.

I think it's really irresponsible. The other thing though is I honestly have to question parents who believe that the public schools are a place for our kids to be witnessing.

It's clear there are places in culture which are kind of off -limits for the gospel. We don't go into strip clubs specifically to share the gospel.

And the public schools at this point have been essentially set up as churches of statism, churches of secular humanism.

At the very best, parents and teachers who are Christians may be okay to be in there, but I think it's really, really dangerous ground for our kids.

Yeah. Aaron? Agreed. So just a resource and then a personal testimony on this.

If you check out TruthLoveParent .com and you go to our podcast series page, we did a series called

The Family in Education where we walk through all the exact same options and more when it comes to education.

And each one gets its own podcast episode. So definitely check that out. It starts on episode 79, so it's one of the earlier ones we did.

And so this is a personal example. I never went to a public school, but I was the negative example in this.

So I was homeschooled at the time, I had other homeschooling friends, and there was this one boy that it was obvious he needed to have good influences in his life.

And my parents looked at me and they saw that I was, in their eyes, I was much more mature.

I was a leader and I could be a good influence on that child. If my parents were here right now, they would candidly and easily tell you they were wrong.

One of their biggest regrets was encouraging me to be a good influence on this boy, because they were wrong about how mature

I was. They didn't know the stuff I was already doing. I hid it well.

I was a fantastic liar. There were just so many things in my life that were so wrong.

And what this other boy, what they wanted me to lead him away from, was the stuff that I was embracing.

And because of that relationship that my parents encouraged me to have, it ended up being a huge turning point in my life where at best

I was a double -minded man, unstable in all of my ways. And I bear a lot of scars to this day because of that relationship.

My parents realized that and they regret it. So you don't know your child the way you think you do.

I'm not saying your child's not awesome. I'm not saying your kid isn't Charles Spurgeon. I know kids who really are, as far as everyone knows, they really are standing strong in the public school system.

Praise God for that. But a lot of times we think we know our kid, we think they're ready, and they're not.

And we may end up having some pretty huge regrets in the future. Yeah. Daniel?

Yeah, as a parent of four homeschoolers, yeah, I definitely resonate with a lot of what is said here.

And I know that I could make the argument, even politically, that public schools are not even constitutional.

But we live in the reality of today. And so given that we have public schools and some parents might find themselves in the situation where they've reasoned that, yeah, this is the only option we have, well then, yes, being a parent would also,

I would encourage that parents of children in public schools, yes, spend time, be involved with your kids when they come home.

Ask them questions like, so what did you learn today? Because kids will often tell you what they were told, what they encountered there.

They may not know exactly what's right or wrong, so they'll reveal some things that, you know, will leave the parents wondering, okay, so that's what they were taught?

Because, you know, the children might are not necessarily going to always know, should this have been taught?

But yes, be involved. What did you learn today? You know, ask them, show your interest in the subjects.

Like, what did you learn in math? What did you learn in social studies and stuff? Because, I mean, a lot of parents sending their kids to public school, it's like, okay,

I dumped them in school. And when they come home, then it's like, oh, okay, I just got to get through the evening.

And oh, they have all this homework, and there's not a lot of parenting involved there. But so if you have to send your kids to public school, demonstrate that you're interested in their schooling and ask them what they learned and talk about it.

Yeah, well, I think one of the reasons that homeschooling is on the rise is because COVID.

All of a sudden, everyone was home and parents were suddenly seeing what was being taught in the schools. And they were like, what?

And I think that's why we're seeing what we're seeing now, where parents are starting to get more involved in the local school district and wanting to change it, because now they were wanting to say,

I mean, I really think, and this is, I'm just going to throw this out there.

There may be discussion on it, but we do have to get the other two topics. But I really believe what we should do in the public school system is there should be cameras with audio in every classroom, where parents can watch and listen to what's happening in the classroom.

Now, the same liberals that would be against that are the ones that fight for the fact that they want police to have body cameras.

So if you want the police to have body cameras, like, why not the teachers?

These are our little ones. So yeah, I think that would probably, there'd be a major change in the school systems if that happened, just like what happened with COVID, when all of a sudden students were home and their parents were watching.

And many schools during COVID required that parents not be in the room when the students were having class.

And I knew of one case where the student got in trouble because her mother was in the same room, because they only had one room that they could do everything.

So she was working, the mother was working while the student was in school.

And so she was able to listen. So that's my view.

I think it would radically change our school system if parents knew exactly what was going on, and that it wasn't the indoctrination would be known and seen, and we wouldn't be able to have some of this nonsense.

I mean, it drives me nuts that a student needs permission from parents to get, you know, like an

Advil, but a teacher's not allowed to say if a student wants to get an abortion or change genders, that a teacher can take them in some states to a hospital to get a medical procedure without the parents' information, and the teachers are not allowed to tell the parents.

Like, it's mind boggling, but that's where we're at. So real quick, we're going to try to, if we can get these real quick to get to the next one.

So Melissa, Dominic, and then Rebecca. So go for it, Melissa. Yeah. So I just wanted to make mention that I think being in the homeschool community for a while and actually having teachers in the family,

I've heard the sending Christian family members who teach, I've heard the children as missionaries argument, and I think that that argument is failing, and even people in the public sphere,

Christian families in the public sphere understand that it's failing. So now the new argument is kind of what

Daniel was alluding to, well, suggesting that parents be involved. Now their argument is that they send them there to get those, to hear those arguments, to be presented with wokeism and all the false ideologies so that they can go home, and then the parents can somehow counteract that in a certain amount of time.

I mean, this has become, Jen Wilkin, this was her main argument for why she sends them to school in the gospel coalition when they did their good faith debate on homeschooling.

And you're starting to see that a lot more. So that's something that's probably worth presenting, debating on here.

I don't know if you guys had that, brought that up. Well, I think we can answer that pretty quickly.

That's a bad move. Parents can do, give those arguments on their own. So why throw them into the lion's den just so they have that?

I mean, that's part of apologetics is to teach that. I mean, I'll go into youth groups and role play where I'm an atheist or a

Muslim or someone like that so that they're in a environment to hear the actual arguments that I hear all the time.

And so I get invited into youth groups to do that by many churches so they can get that in a much different way.

So, yeah. Dominic, you're next. Yeah, a couple of things. I think that we have to be careful that the school system doesn't want to make our children wards of the state.

I think we want to be careful of those things because the ideologies that they're teaching, and all due respect to Daniel, I love

Daniel, the ideologies that they're teaching, sometimes the parents don't even understand them.

They don't understand this stuff that's even going on in the schools that you can counteract it.

They don't, you know, some of this supplemental material that sometimes is not privy to the parents, some of the supplemental material where they're getting from videos and things like that.

If a teacher's got an agenda, there's no way that some of the parents are even going to be, let me use the word, informed on these ideologies.

So it's a tough play when the kids are going to school.

Usually kids are going to public school because the parents are working all day. The parents come home, they're tired.

I don't know if they have the bandwidth to sit down, and though they should, Daniel makes a good point,

I just don't know if they understand enough of what's happening in the culture and how this,

I believe, that the public school systems in cahoots, I don't want to start a big huge debate here with the

Democratic Party, making them wards in the state. So that's my fear somewhat.

I doubt anyone's going to disagree that that's what their goal is on this. I think we're all going to be in agreement there, but but yeah, no,

I think that this is the thing that you bring up a valid point. This is why to the second one that we probably won't really touch on a little is it's just convenient.

It's easy for people, and really what I think happens a lot is the fact that they are, parents are not, well, take for example, you know,

Nikki, who doesn't follow the news. She's probably not alone. There's a lot of parents.

They're busy. They got to work. They come home from work. They take care of the family, got to take care of the house.

Lots of responsibilities, especially nowadays when so much of it is, well, we got to take them to this sport event, that sport event, do this and that, everyone's so busy, and one of the things is, you know, people are not busy for doing church, by the way, but they're busy, and that busyness, a lot of times what happens is they just do what's easy, and what's easy is just put them into the public school system, and they're not aware.

I mean, kind of like I said earlier, the reason there was such an uproar after COVID was because parents finally became aware of what was going on.

They didn't know that their children were being taught to hate their parents.

They didn't know that their children were being taught to hate their neighbors because of the color of their skin and things like this, so they found out about it and are trying to put a stop to it, but I think you're right,

Dominic. A lot of parents just don't know, and it's just, hey, I grew up in public school, and I was fine, but public school has changed, so Rebecca.

I was just actually going to say what Dominic had said in talking about the curriculum and the fact that they are using more and more supplemental curriculum that the parents don't have access to or can't see, and even for the textbooks, it is harder and harder now for the school or for parents to find out what their kids are learning, and I just wanted to add to what

Nicole was saying earlier about also worrying about the children, the influence from the children.

I have a daughter who is, my oldest daughter teaches elementary school, and my sister -in -law is a kindergarten teacher, and I have to tell you, it's,

I mean, my sister -in -law had issues several, several children in her class this year where she had to take all her stuff and bring it back home because the kids, especially one, was completely trashing the classroom, and he slammed her fingers in the door at one point.

She had to leave and get stitches. He wrapped a phone cord around his neck, hitting, biting, punching other kids, and not the only kid in the class, and the thing is, the administration just, their rule is don't make expectations of the children, and my daughter is witnessing the same thing.

There's a lot of violence with young children against each other and the teachers, so it's, and they are very limited, the teachers, as to what they can do to control the kids, unfortunately.

Very limited, so. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. All right, so Spencer.

I was just gonna say how parents expecting their kids to be a light, and they're gonna evangelize, and, but parents themselves, are they doing that, you know, at their job or whatever, but if you aren't doing that as a parent, or you see the struggle, and you know the arguments, it is kind of silly to expect your kid to do something that you can't even do, and you know that salvation is by grace, and it isn't really like how equipped we are or how well we are at argumenting, you know, it's like putting that pressure on the kid, like it's up to them in their skill, in arguing the faith, and it is more your wa,

I mean the kids, it's just keeping them, keeping them from the world, and it is hard, it's hard for us to walk the narrow path, and there are kids in that situation, putting them on really on the wide path, expecting them not to fall.

Well, and I'll just mention here, I know we got to roll to the next topic, but even if your mindset is get the kids in school so that they can minister and be a light in the darkness,

I think if your eyes are open, you can see that that's a strategy that by and large is failing, and it's failing fast, and you know, to use a military strategy,

I mean a tactical retreat is a very sound military strategy, so even if that may be a sound strategy at some point in the future, you're walking them into almost a lost battle at this point, you know, so maybe the best option is to tactically retreat, you know, come up with a different game plan, right, because we're losing this is what you can see, you know, as far as a public school, so yeah, don't send your kids into a lose -lose situation,

I would say. I don't think that that's necessarily fair to put the weight of the souls of those children in the school on their back at such a young age.

Eve? Yeah, I'm actually in agreement with everybody.

I just thought I'd present my one and only comment about public school and a transition,

I think, to Christian and homeschooling. I think that one of the biggest faults that we have with public school nowadays, especially, and I think it's always been a case, is that the actual education, which is the reason you are sending your kids to school anyway, is inferior because of the student -to -teacher ratio, the agendas, and a number of other things.

The kids just are not getting the type of education that you're actually sending them to school to get.

And when I was in college, I was, as an English major, I was working in a tutorial writing lab where the kids who were incoming freshmen would come to get remedial help in writing because they weren't getting it in high school.

And in order to enter any of the English classes in this college, they had to have at least a basic understanding of writing, and so they would have to come in and get help.

And it was amazing to me how many of these kids who were graduating from high school couldn't even write an essay.

So if we're sending kids to school, presumably to be educated, then the amount of actual education that they get in the classroom should be just as important as any other reason that we send them to school.

And I agree with everybody, we shouldn't be sending our kids to school to evangelize, but if we have bright young children who need an education, public school is not where they're going to get it.

Correct. So let's talk then, we'll transition over to Christian schools.

So parents who recognize all the issues we've raised with the public school system, is

Christian school a viable option? Now, it's a greater expense.

Sometimes, Eve, as you mentioned, it's a smaller ratio of parents to teachers.

But, you know, we had on Apologetics Live, you can go search Apologetics Live for the name

Wayne Israel, he was on and gave statistics that show that public school, Christian school, it doesn't have much difference with as far as the kids and issues as far as the way they turn out, things like this.

So it may not be, and part of that is that what a lot of people don't think about is

Christian schools also have a lot of people who send their kids there because they want their kids to have a better influence.

I know that my son, when he was in Christian high school, we had an incident, and this was a

Fundamentalist Baptist school, King James only, so they're super conservative.

And yet, my son one day had to walk up to the principal and say, hey, you may want to do a locker check.

He didn't want to say why, he didn't want to, they did a locker check and the police were called for a drug bust because one of the students was dealing drugs in the

Christian school. And if he was dealing drugs in school, it means people were buying in the

Christian school. Okay, so it's not, I think, and I'm going to put this out for discussion as well, but I think one of the mistakes people make is to think that just because it's

Christian school, it's a safe environment, and there's nothing bad going on, and they're going to have good influences, and they're going to be discipled.

Well, not always. I mean, the school that we ended up putting our kids in, and after that experience with that school, we went to a different school where they focused on leadership, they focused on discipling the kids, and there was a big difference there, and that was a much better environment there.

But I will say, you know, a number of those students that my kids went to school with deny the faith today, so it meant they weren't believers then either.

So is your thoughts on Christian school, Garrett, you're up first.

Well, thank you. I'm going to go about this from personal experience and then a bit from the scientific side of education and pedagogy.

First, my personal experience. I was a horrible student, and so when

I was in eighth grade, I got kicked out of school, and my only option was to go to the local Christian school so that I could finish.

So while I was at Christian school, being one of the kids who was a troublemaker anyway, I was among the troublemakers there who were the majority, and in my time in high school at a good

Christian school, I got to party and drink and do recreational drugs and mess around with women like every other kid at all the public schools because all of my friends at that Christian school were doing that thing.

Years later, I had the privilege of teaching at our area's premier

Christian school, and I got to see it from the other side, which is the teacher's side, and I got to realize why so many

Christian schools just replicate the results of public schools, and that's that there's two major flaws with the system, and I put my hand up early to go first because I really wanted to throw a wrench in the works and get the communication going, but the first issue is that biblically, the only people who are instructed in the

Bible to teach kids is parents and grandkids. You mentioned

Israel Wayne. Israel Wayne wrote a great article called Christian Education, a

Manifesto, and in this article, he shares dozens of verses where the

Bible references Christian education, and I actually went through it today, and one of the points he makes is that over and over, the

Bible instructs parents and sometimes parents to train their kids up in the way they should go, and the

Bible never gives the authority or the charge to the state or to peer groups or to anyone else, and so the principal issue is that just primarily the people who should be teaching aren't teaching biblically, but the second major problem is that even the best

Christian schools are built on the same pedagogical systemic foundation as public schools, and these systems were developed by people who were rabidly anti -Christian, rabidly anti -family, and rabidly anti -American, so that the core of the system is the foundation is rotten already, and the system is built to produce a certain result, which is this mechanized worker, a worker who can fit in, not raise his head in culture, not make too much problems.

He's easy to control and easy to get to the desired result, and the fruit of that is being seen all over culture now, where we have essentially a complete cultural breakdown.

Well, ultimately, the problem is that Christian schools repeat that same system, but sometimes they plop

Jesus on top. I want to raise one more point, and then I'll turn it over to everybody else. The last thing is that I was at the premier

Christian school in town when I was teaching, and while the school claimed to be all about Christ and discipleship, the truth was that ultimately the goal of the school was to be an elite academic school, and this is actually the case of most private schools across the country.

I would say literally the vast majority, while they may claim to be Christian, their actual desire is to provide a great academic education, but here's the dirty secret.

Unless you are a senator or a president or a Hollywood elite, you don't have the money to send your kids to a private school that can compete with public schools on academics, because what most parents don't understand is that across the nation, the average price we pay to educate a kid is over $15 ,000 per student per year, and private schools just can't afford to compete.

Teachers are paid poorly. They don't have the computers or the robotics or the machine shops that public schools do, so they even fail in their ultimate goal, which is to be great academic outlets, and at the same time they fail in producing sold -out disciples of Christ.

All right, so before we go on to someone else, you threw it out for a challenge, so let me give a little challenge.

You mentioned some of those passages in the Scripture that talk about that. Let's focus in, are there

New Testament ones, and here's what reason I'm going to ask this, because at the time of the

New Testament, this is after the synagogues were established, and so the synagogues would be a place of training, and so now, and I'm not mentioning what ages yet they start training, okay, because I see you grinning like you probably already know this, and if you do, you can answer as well, but do we see it in New Testament?

I mean, we know that Timothy was trained by his mother and grandmother, but outside of that, do we have a lot of passages that talk about training when they had the synagogue?

I mean, the synagogue was almost like the public school system. Well, here's the thing. I'm giving the arguments so that you could...

Sure. It actually wasn't, and I'll answer your first question first, which is, are there New Testament passages?

And the long answer is, there are not. Everywhere in the Bible, the only place that were instructed to teach children is parents and grandparents.

Now, the synagogues would have been teaching and instructing, and we were told that Jesus' disciples were discipled by Christ, right?

But the thing was, in that culture, those were kids who were bar mitzvahed. They were young adult kids, adolescents now in our culture, but then these were essentially young, fully formed adults, and they were working on their adult education, but parents were still training them up in the way they should go until they were ready to turn them over into the world.

These were already, essentially, discipled children who were then going on to grow in higher education.

So there are New Testament passages, plenty about education. One of the good ones is, don't be deceived.

Bad company corrupts good morals, right? 1 Corinthians 15, 34.

But there are also tons of Old Testament passages like, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the

Lord. And it's very difficult to not sit in the seat of scoffers when you're in a place where your major influence is all of your peers, which is actually the fourth great failure of private schools, is that even in the best situation, if you have godly teachers who love these kids, when your kids spend seven hours a day in that system, their greatest influences are the kids around them.

And we know that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. Yeah, you know, one of the things also we could mention, this is kind of back to the public school system in a sense, but the way we have educated has changed.

You know, it used to be that they'd have a single schoolhouse and you had the older kids influencing the younger kids, helping them, training them, teaching them.

So they were helping with the education because they already learned those things. And it wasn't this division by grade, which by the way, this is one of the things

Dewey and others had an influence on, specifically because he wanted to have that division because this was their goal of breaking up the family, breaking up some of that so that they can indoctrinate.

Like, once you realize that they broke up grades, they came up with the whole grades system to allow for their indoctrination.

And then what do you have in churches? You have churches that have taken that into the church, right?

That same thing of the division and they're not having that.

You know, I was in a Chinese church where when we had church, there was one class for any of the kids that were under,

I think, 10 or I think it was about 10, but it was one class. But whenever we had a fellowship, all the kids were together, older kids would watch after the younger kids.

And so we practice that older style. So I think that there's a lot there that I said, but the point being is

I think that we often don't think about how the division of age by grades, the purpose of it and how it is being used.

And I think that, you know, I think there is at least one passage that we see that parents or at least a mother and grandmother are training in the

New Testament. But Spencer, you're up next, or Nikki. Yeah, I just wanted to piggyback quickly on two things

Garrett said. You know, the idea of, you know, the Christian and the private schools being, you know, of kind of a lower fiscal stature than the public counterpart.

You know, my sister, she taught at a private Christian school in our town that we lived in. And the salary that she was paid was substantially lower than what the public school was offering in the same town.

And you know, teachers are already not paid very well. So I would say rare it is to find the teacher who's willing to forego a substantial pay raise in a already underpaid career field, just to stay and teach at a

Christian school. And that's anecdotal, I know, but I'm sure it's not uncommon for the Christian school system.

And then to his point about their Christian schools, striving to be these elite academic institutions,

I would say as well, you know, from the town that we grew up in, the sort of big Christian school in our community, they strove to be an elite football school, that was kind of what they prided themselves on.

So, you know, most of their focus, and everybody knew the Christian school there, they were focused on football.

And, you know, so academics and training and righteousness was not number one on their plate there.

And then just the idea of Christian school in general, I think by and large, it's not feasible for most families.

You know, I know me and Nikki, we've looked into private Christian schools for our kids at, you know, years gone by.

And the more kids you have, the more unlikely it is you'll ever send your kids there because it's just unreasonable financially.

And then you still run into all the same problems in a Christian school, the kids that are there are just as worldly as the kids in the public school, by and large, you still have all the same problems where the kids are being taken out of the parents purview for, you know, eight to 10 hours a day being raised and groomed by other people that aren't their parents, which is still an issue in a

Christian school. And then I had another point,

I can't remember what it is, but I bet you it was going to be awesome. You should write notes like I do.

Oh, I should have wrote notes. We'll let Nikki talk and it may pop back into my brain unless you have nothing to say, and then we'll just move along.

I was just going to say, yeah, I went to a private school up to fourth grade and it was a

Catholic school and no, we couldn't afford it. My mom's boyfriend, who's as well, paid for me and my brothers to go there.

We were not raised Christian at all. We were probably a bad influence. Yeah, the kids there, you know, going to public and private school, they're the same.

All kids are, yeah, filled with sin. And I don't really remember growing in the

Lord there at all, though I was a very young child. But I know a lot of the kids from the elementary that moved on to the high school.

I think it was Lou and Chris, you were probably talking about that. That was their football rival. I know all of them that I can think of, you know, just keeping in touch on Facebook, whatever, finding people, but they're like all atheists.

It's not that they're just worldly, but they're just publicly announcing they're atheists.

Yeah. Ones from the private school, the Catholic school. Well, I know growing up that, you know, for me,

I always found it interesting that all the because we had our elementary school and the Catholic school right next to each other.

So we know the students and all I know is that, boy, the Catholic kids were the worst. They were worse than the public school.

So yeah. I remember by a third point, if I can get to it real quick, because I think you'll be able to speak to it and maybe Garrett can as well.

But, you know, we talked in the public school topic about how important it would be for parents to be involved in the education and making sure they know what their kids are being taught.

And again, I don't know, but I would assume that parents that send their kids to Christian schools, maybe feel a sense that they don't need to be quite so involved in what's being taught, who the friends are, who the teachers are.

So it's almost like you're exacerbating that problem because you think now they're fine. The Christian school is going to take care of what

I should otherwise be taking care of. So that could maybe be a problem that's worse in a Christian school than even a public school.

That's a great point, because I think a lot of people do that. They hand off this, you know, oh, my kids in Sunday school.

So he's going to learn. I don't have to teach him during the week. I don't need to have devotions with my family because the church will do it.

So I'll put my kids in Christian school and now I don't have to follow up on like, yeah, I think that's probably a valid point.

Dominic. I told you it was going to be a great point. I didn't say it was an awesome point. You said it would be an awesome point.

Dominic, you're up. Yeah, you guys almost persuade me to quit my job teaching in the Christian school.

You know, I'm a pastor. So, you know, we have a small Christian school here in town.

And I'm able to work with the principal, writing the curriculum. We, you know,

I teach spiritual formation. Next year, I'll be teaching biblical doctrine. The pay is very, very minute.

But I'm able to speak, you know, and I do know that some of the parents and the kids there and the parents are not

Christians. Maybe some of the kids are not Christians. But as a pastor, I'm able to, if the parents are not bringing them up in the fear and admonition of the

Lord, I'm able to give the gospel. I'm able to, like I says,

I mean, I have students 14 years old that are telling me in Genesis three, that Satan is using the name

Elohim instead of the personal God of, you know, Yahweh and things like that.

So I'm able to, by God's grace, you know, speak into their lives. You know, so, so as a pastor,

I mean, so what do I do? Do I just quit? Do I say, well, you know, no,

I mean, I have an opportunity to teach God's word. And hopefully and prayerfully, the

Bible is clear, they should be getting their training in the fear and admonition of the Lord home. But at the end of the day, if they're not, so if I can give it to them, if God has opened up a door for me to give them the gospel to give them the opportunity to repent and believe the gospel,

I'm going to do it. And get let me give you and I don't want to be long winded. I'm long winded enough on Sunday.

But one thing, but one thing I do, we do do in this church here, we have a whole community of homeschoolers.

What I do is we open this church up once a week for all the homeschoolers to come into the church.

So the kids have fellowship with each other. So we have the homeschool community in this church at Desert Sky Baptist Church, every

Tuesday, from eight o 'clock in the morning to 330 in the afternoon, where they are where they are being homeschooled by their parents, but also fellowshipping within the community of believers.

So we are full or in Desert Sky Baptist Church in trying to give the kids the gospel, equipping them to being brought up in the fear and admonition of the

Lord, and be good stewards of the gospel. The rest is up to God. They know

I'm reformed in my theology, they allow me to speak in the school. So by God's grace, that door was opened by the

Lord and until it closes, I'm going to stay there. Yeah, and I think you should.

I mean, I'm surprised that you think you're long winded on Sunday. Have you made it through that one verse in Ephesians?

Was it three episodes? You're still trying to get through one phrase? I'm sorry. But God?

For those who are listening to Street Talk Theology, you got to go listen now to figure out why

I just said that. Melissa, you're up. First of all,

I want to say I think Christian school can be a viable option if you are wise in choosing.

And unfortunately, I think most Christian schools are just like Garrett said, they are looking at academics.

And here is where I think Christian parents in general, because I cannot put non -Christian families into this category, but Christian families in general need to think about the purpose of education.

What is the real goal of education? For me, this took me a long while to really realize.

And by God's grace, I think it's just studying in God's word, right?

I love that Garrett did point out about the book. I forget the

Christian education and pulling all the verses out about education, where I think biblical education is not about knowledge, worldly knowledge.

It's not about gathering facts. It's not about even knowing national history or things like those.

Those things are good, but real biblical education is about wisdom and training our children up in wisdom so that no matter what they end up wanting to learn further down the road, because we all have this natural inability to learn, it's

God given, we're going to keep learning, making wise decision and having discernment.

And I mean, choosing what's right and rejecting the evil way, rejecting what's wrong, and wisdom should be the goal.

And unfortunately, people think, and even Christian churches think that the goal of education is knowledge and the goal is academics and grades and competition in that area.

Not that I'm against competition, but wisdom is not the main focus, which is probably

Andrew, why you saw a huge difference in Christian schools is because they started to disciple kids, your kids, and discipleship is really the main key.

So if you want to say that Bible, New Testament doesn't talk about education, it does talk about discipleship.

And we are called fathers specifically are called to raise their children and disciple their children.

And I have to say the fourth commandment helps with that too, in instructing our children to obey their parents, to especially

Christian parents who are going to train them up in the way that they should go. So we lost our co -host.

Yeah, no, he told me he'll be back if you wanted me to jump in here. Andrew, he just gave up.

He threw his hands up and he stormed out. So I have taught in two different Christian schools for 13 years in total, faculty and associate administrator in a rather large

Christian school in the Chicagoland area, and obviously everyone's experience is different.

We did have fantastic academics. That's one of the things that, despite the fact that a lot of Christian schools really do struggle in that regard, we really had a stellar system going on with that.

We also did desperately want to have a positive Christ -honoring influence in the children.

I was, among other things, I was a Bible teacher, I was a student body advisor, I was chapel speaker, and so on and so forth, as well as a family counselor there and a guidance counselor in the school.

But the reality is, is that sinners sin, so all of the same issues that, maybe not all of them, but a lot of the same issues that were being dealt with in the public school system were happening in our school.

As associate administrator, I was dealing with the discipline. I saw every demerit that was handed out, every expulsion.

I was actively involved in that, and the stories I could tell of a really fantastic, what

I think is a really fantastic Christian school that I dedicated seven years of my life to, those things are there.

I do want to say this, we're not going to transition just yet to talking about homeschooling, but I just want to say that I was homeschooled, and that kid that I described, describing myself when

I was younger, well, that was the kid who my mom was homeschooling. So if every child in the world were homeschooled, all the kids who are selling the drugs, all the kids who are doing inappropriate things in the bathrooms, those kids are just now in the house.

So it's not like, well, we're going to take our angel child and protect them from all the wicked kids out there. No, your child's not the angel child.

We need to realize that even when they're at home, and that's why we have them at home, for those of us who homeschool. I think most of us recognize that, but anyone who's listening,

I don't want you to think that we're like, oh, we're going to protect our kid from all the bad kids. Yes, the influences are huge out there, but we also,

I think, are balanced, and we know our kids well enough to recognize the fact, for the most part, that we have them at home because we want to minister to them.

We want to influence them. But here's my thing about the Christian school.

Dominic, I agree with so much of what you said. As a biblical family counselor, I have parents coming into,

I'm working with families where these parents, oftentimes, not all of them, but I've worked with a lot of families, there are a lot of them who honestly are bad parents.

If we're talking about an extreme situation where a father is beating his child, I think every single one of us recognize we need to get that man out of that situation, out of that influence in the child's life.

Though I do not believe, I don't utilize terminologies like spiritual abuse and things like that,

I've worked with enough parents to recognize that there are parents who are such bad parents that there are bad influences on their kid.

Having those parents homeschool their kids would just make things worse. That would not be a good situation.

Now, obviously, the best case scenario is that all of us as parents surrender to God and become the people that God wants us to be.

The reality is, though, as broad as the way that leads to destruction, narrow as the way that leads to life. I'm going to say, just from my own experiences, there are people who, at this moment in time, should not teach their children.

I'll even go so far as to say cannot. Not that they don't have the ability to learn to teach their children, but they are ill -equipped at this moment.

It would take a whole lot of work and a whole lot of discipleship and potentially even evangelism to get them to a place where they could do their children justice that way.

I think in those situations where homeschooling is not the best option, the

Christian school is a fantastic option to the degree that the public school is not a good option.

Public school is a terrible option. Christian school is better. Going back to something that Andrew said,

I think a lot of the reason that we make the decisions that we do as parents and as people who are living in this world, we're not intentional.

We're not premeditated. We don't have a plan. I talked to a dad recently. He's realizing the importance of strategy.

That was the word he used, and I like that. We don't have strategies. We grew up in America. Everyone goes to school.

All husbands, all wives work. That's just what we do. We didn't really think about it.

We didn't research it. We didn't study it. We didn't come up with a plan, and so we just do this thing.

We just send our kids to school, and that has been a huge issue.

Then when we do think about it, we think to ourselves things like, my kid's in Sunday school. They're learning to love

God. They're in a Christian school. That's being done. A Christian school worth its salt is going to say to the parents, hey, we're not here to do your job.

We're going to come alongside you. We're going to supplement what you're doing. We are going to teach your kids about God, but that doesn't mean you get a pass.

That doesn't mean you should stop. The good Christian school is going to do that, but so many of the parents who are just mindlessly sending their kids to school, they would think, oh,

Christian school is a good idea, but they're not thinking deeply and biblically about the fact that it's not a substitution because the reality was, again, in a

Christian school setting, yes, I was a Christian. I talked about God a lot, potentially more than the other teachers did, but I still had to teach math.

I still had to teach English. I still had to teach acting. We're still doing that. No, the child's not.

It's not a monastery where the child is getting Bible teaching all the time, and they need that at home every single day repeatedly.

Those are my thoughts. It's a mixed bag. I've had some fantastic experiences in the

Christian school. I think some do some really fantastic—a lot of them do some fantastic jobs, but there is a lot of sin if we think that our kid's going to go and be protected from all the quote -unquote bad kids out there.

They won't, and your kid's probably one of the bad kids, whether you know it or not, and the fact that sometimes it is the best option.

It really is to have a child being in a situation where they have godly men and women who are trying to disciple them in the classroom versus moms and dads aren't going to do a good job.

I'm just going to put it out there. They're bad parents, and they need to grow, and they need to be challenged. It's my job to help people like that, but I would not wish for those kids to be in homeschool like that to save their lives because they're not going to.

I was going to bring that up when we get to homeschooling a bit because I was going to be— Yeah, but you left. But Spencer's saying acting question marks.

See, Spencer, this is the thing. The more time you spend with Brewster here, you learn more. I learned that this weekend that he's got an acting career, too, there.

He's a layered man. He's got playing music, acting. Yeah, we keep learning.

Jack of all trades, master of none. So let's go to Garrett. Well, I wanted to address something

Aaron said real quick, and first of all, Aaron, I want you to understand that I agree with you that in some cases, it is better for kids to be out of the home because they're really poorly equipped parents.

Dominic asked when he was saying, what do I do as a pastor? What do I do? And I think the first step is that pastors and churches have to start addressing this issue head on.

Right now, there's a really popular trend in the church where we make heroes of public school educators, and we give our blessing and approval to what goes on in the public schools.

I can't tell you how many churches I've been to where, like, the week before school starts, the pastor will bring all the public school teachers and administrators and students up on the stage and bless them and send them out into the world and never say once to parents, but parents, they're going into a den of lions.

Please be careful, train their kids. So day to day, year by year, pastors and churches have to be discipling parents.

Again, too, Aaron, there are always going to be those cases where there's abuse, there's neglect.

Parents are completely incapable of training, and in that case, a Christian school is definitely a better alternative than public school, likely much safer, and at least they'll hear the name of Jesus, whereas at public school, it's verboten.

I did want to bring up one more quick point about private schools, and Aaron, you may be able to speak to this, and Dominic, you as well.

I know that at the private school I spoke with, and I also know this to be true across a lot of private schools, that we used a mostly

Christian curriculum, but as soon as you got into AP classes, there were no approved

AP curriculums that were Christian curriculums. So our school, where we were a Jesus -first

Christian school, used secular science books, secular history books, secular

English books to teach AP students because they wanted that college readiness, right?

And so I do think it's imperative for parents to know exactly what your kids are being taught, whether they're at private school or they're at public school, and at the end of the day, you still have to come home and say, okay, kids, let's talk about what you're learning, and let's break down some of those strongholds that Satan's building up and instead put in place a foundation of biblical worldview and biblical truth.

And just to your point, I think you're right. I think, I don't know when, how long ago were you interacting with that school?

I left seven years ago, 2015, or summer of 2016 was my last year, so six, seven years ago.

Yeah, and I think to a large degree, I think for something to be considered AP, there is some standardization across the board.

I do know that in the school we taught, a lot of our AP classes were biblical.

I know that any kids doing dual credit were, not any of them, but a lot of the kids who were doing dual credit were doing it through Christian universities, which is different than AP, but I think it's actually better to do dual credit through a

Christian university if you're in a situation like that. But at the same time, just to be fair, it's possible that a math or something may not, they may be using a secular math.

I don't think that we had a secular AP science, but I do know that Bob Jones University Press and Abeka Press were the two main ones that our school used.

All of our stuff was Christian in nature to the degree that I'm aware.

I didn't teach any AP courses. I wasn't that smart. I didn't either, but we had an exchange student who was in them, and my hair curled when

I saw her books and saw what she was learning and had to help her with her science as she was being taught millions of years along with every other public school student in town.

Daniel's been up for a while. I'm trying to say something. Yeah, Daniel, you have your hand raised.

Okay, yeah, so very quickly, because I know we want to move on. Yeah, I would like to echo what others have said that, you know, as we're talking about public school,

Christian school, and even home school, like, yeah, there can be situations where we'll find that one situation for particular people might be better than the other, even if we have our ideals.

Like, I would prefer home school, but yes, there are situations where the parents are not suited, and a

Christian school might be better. So it'd be on the parents to—of course,

Christian schools, if some could be better than others, the parents should vet them. And of course, you know, like,

Christian schools, probably the ones that are the best would be the ones that aren't trying to evangelize the students.

Like, you know, say they have a stricter enrollment as far as the students that come in, and I know, rather than, hey, come in and let us preach the gospel to you, because then you have more influence coming in.

And of course, with teachers' salaries and academics and stuff, yeah, most likely teachers at a small

Christian school would probably be ones who are kind of semi -retired, recognizing that the position is a ministry rather than a career there.

And of course, we also realize we can't perfectly protect our kids from, you know, bad influence, because, you know, we have the command in the

Scriptures to assemble together. We go to church, and kids can meet other kids in church that can give them bad influence.

So yes, we do the best we can with the situations and the discernment that we have as Christian parents.

Yes. And, you know, we have to recognize that there are going to be limitations of what we can do as parents.

You know, this is somewhat to what Aaron's point was, is we have to know ourselves. And we'll get to that a little bit in the next...

Garrett, you had your hand up and then down, so... Yeah, just real quick, I wanted to speak to the issue of our kids not being angel kids, like Aaron was talking about.

Part of the reason I know my kids aren't angels is because I'm with them every day, and I love my girls to death, and I see that my girls are sinful to the core, like my wife and I are.

And this is one of the reasons that our influence day -to -day is so important, is because I get to observe my kids and know how influenced they are by the world.

I know their proclivities to sin and what those are. And because I'm their parent, and I care about their heart, and I care about discipling,

I get to address those issues every day. And at a Christian school, while they may have teachers who care about them, they don't have teachers who are so present and have such a small student -to -teacher ratio that they can address those individual sin issues day -to -day.

The other thing is, I understand I am not a perfect teacher, and my wife is not perfectly qualified to teach as well, but on the same account, we are there day -to -day in it with our girls, and we get to address our sin in front of them and allow our girls to watch how adult

Christians wrestle with sin and confess and turn those things over to the Lord and move through them.

So part of the beauty of being with our kids, and I know we're not to the homeschooling section yet, is that we do get to wrestle with sin very firsthand.

Yeah, and so we should move to, I think, where we're going to have probably not so much the most discussion, but maybe the most resources.

And let me just do some before we get to that, because we haven't done this on this podcast, but since they are a sponsor of Striving for Eternity, they do sponsor all of our shows, which would include this one, is

MyPillow. We have a sponsorship with MyPillow. If you want to get yourself a good pillow, good night's sleep, whether it be their towels, they have great,

I love their towels, by the way, but their towels, their mattress toppers, pillows, they came out with the 2 .0

pillow, so if you have people who sweat at night, they supposedly have solved that problem, or at least a little maybe.

But if you want to get yourself a great pillow, go to MyPillow .com and use promo code SFE, it stands for Striving for Eternity, so MyPillow .com,

SF, use the promo code SFE, it lets them know that you heard about it here with us, so they keep supporting us, to be able to put on podcasts like this.

Garrett says, I love my MyPillow. I travel, I went to Israel with MyPillow, and I was limited on a 50 -pound bag, that was it, one 50 -pound bag.

MyPillow was one of the things that made it. I cut a lot of things, not my Bible, but MyPillow was with me.

So, yeah, I don't have any socks. They do have socks. No, you didn't have any socks, that's what you gave up.

Oh, no, I gave up my waterproof Bible because that was heavier, and I took a lighter

Bible. Did you give up socks for Lent, Andrew? I'm only kidding. Oh, my.

So, let's talk homeschooling. I kind of think, I could be wrong,

I think Garrett, I don't know, may have a resource or two in this subject, having a podcast called

Homeschool Rocked, and a documentary on the subject, maybe has some things.

And we already mentioned, Rebecca, you have some books for kids. So, I want to talk about things that are, first talk about homeschooling, and then we'll wrap up with some resources for folks, because I think we're going to have a number of them.

So, I think when we look at statistics, the statistics show that homeschooling is generally better.

I'm saying generally for this reason, and I know, Aaron, you kind of already brought it up. I don't believe homeschooling is for everybody.

So, this is not me playing the advocate here. It's me being a homeschool dad for a time, not obviously now, because my kids are having their own kids now, but when

I was a homeschool dad, and we would have events where we did things together with the other homeschoolers,

I remember there was one couple, and they kind of ran the homeschool group, and she had a child that was older than my son.

I think he was, I want to say, fourth or fifth grade, and he couldn't spell the word tiger.

And I asked both he and his parents how their homeschooling looked.

And basically what it was, was mom was so busy organizing homeschooling events that she would just hand him materials for him to do on his own.

And there wasn't anyone actually working with him or teaching him. There's the some that you have the, was it the

Bob Jones has the curriculum where you just watch the DVD, and parents see that as easy.

And so here I just stick a DVD in and watch it, and parents go about their day.

And I think that does a great disservice to children. Now, I think homeschooling, you have one of two extremes.

It's either really, really good or bad. You have parents that do it because they think spiritually they're supposed to do this, but they're not equipped to do this.

My bride, especially when it came to like high school, wasn't feeling she was really equipped to teach the high school level.

And there's some that they, okay, well, we're going to learn what we have to do to get to that.

And so it could be really good for the parents as well. But I don't think everybody should be homeschooling.

So let's start with that as a discussion. Garrett, you had your hand up first. Sure. I am an aspirational homeschool evangelist, in that I think that homeschooling should be for everyone, but I also understand that in the real world, many aren't prepared.

So it's kind of like evangelism. I want to see as many people accept the gospel as they can.

I want to see as many people in heaven as we can see. And yet we understand that we are on the narrow road, and the broad road is much more populated than the narrow road is.

And so I think that ultimately, it's something to aspire to. But realistically, we have to strengthen the remnant in a lot of cases.

That said, you mentioned that you see homeschooling usually as either really good or really bad.

And I'm going to be the first to admit, we are super mediocre homeschoolers in our house.

And we lead a homeschool ministry. This is all we do. And honestly, there are parts of it that we stink at, and then there are parts of it that we're really good at.

But I know one biblical truth, and that is this. When Jesus was addressing people in the

Sermon on the Mount, He talked about, look at the birds of the field, look at the flowers of the valley.

Jesus understood that we had real needs, and education is a part of getting to a point where we can meet those real needs, right?

But Jesus said this, but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

And we've come to understand that, like Melissa was talking about, the why of education is much more important than the quality of the curriculum or the academia.

And so we've concerned ourselves much more with why we're doing it, which is to teach our kids to know

God first, to fear the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning of knowledge.

And we're trusting the Lord for the outcome on the other end, knowing that we're total failures in a lot of places.

However, we also exist in a time when there are really, really good resources for mediocre homeschoolers.

So our high schooler is in a really good co -op where she takes an anatomy class and a forensics class and an

English class and gets taught better than we would at home, but we're still ultimately responsible for that education.

Same with our middle schooler. She gets different classes at a co -op, and we get to be a part, a central part of their education while still allowing other people to teach where we stink.

Good point. Spencer? Yeah, I just wanted to, you know, you mentioned kind of that there's, you know, maybe some parents and stuff that aren't equipped to homeschool, and really that homeschool can be good or bad.

But, you know, I actually think maybe that that's more of an old timey thought on what homeschooling is.

And at least the way I look at it, I think it's actually the public school and the Christian school structure that's of a bygone era.

You know, this whole go to school all day, nine to five, so the parents can work. You know, homeschooling is, in 2023, is really as hands -on or as hands -off as you want to make it.

You know, when we first got our children into homeschooling, we did it 100 % online.

It was the exact same public school curriculum that the kids took in school. They just did it at home.

They had a teacher on Zoom calls. They had kids in their classes. They even did monthly, I believe, field trips with a class.

So it was almost completely hands -off for us as parents. And because of technology now, you can be as involved or uninvolved as you want to be and really kind of pick and choose the curriculums.

Whereas, you know, the public school structure, it's, like I said, I think it's from a bygone era. I think homeschooling is really the future.

You know, we've talked about it on our podcast. It's the real revolution this country needs is homeschooling kids. And it just provides enough freedom to where even if you aren't, now outside of what

Aaron's talked about, the abusive parents and these sorts of things, yes, they don't, they shouldn't have their kids around them.

But even if you're just not that intelligent or you're just not that capable, you can be still a homeschool parent and be almost completely uninvolved and still have your kid in your care, you know, under your purview, watching over them and doing all the, you know, things that a normal homeschooler would without any of the responsibility to actually have to educate them.

I mean, the technology today, even, you know, and even in places where we live, like New Mexico, you can do almost like 95 % homeschooling.

But if there's one specific class you want them to take, you can send them to the public school for that one specific class.

And now there's even states like Florida and Iowa, where they're passing bills to attach the public funding to the student.

So if you want to homeschool and you think, well, maybe I can't afford it. You can in some of those states. And if you get your state to pass these sorts of laws, then the tax dollars would go to you as a homeschool parent, or you could even send the money to send your kid to a

Christian school or whatever happens to be so. I think 2023 and going forward, homeschooling is really, you know, it's far more advanced and it's far more capable,

I think, than what we give it credit for. All right. We got a lot of hands up.

I expected that this was going to be the most discussion. We've had a number of more than we usually have in here.

So Melissa, you're up next. Yeah, I just want to say what both

Spencer said. That's fantastic. And what Garrett said is spot on, especially bringing up the verse about that God provides that.

And I never intended to homeschool. Medical issues came up.

And so I felt like, okay, now we're just going to take it little by little. So when I decided to homeschool after learning about the public education and the history behind it, that blew my mind.

I started to just implement school at home. And if I could go back and give wisdom to somebody who's starting out,

I would tell them, no, do not do that. Recreating school and home and just trying to get all those academics in.

Again, it's the whole reason for homeschooling. It should be thought about.

We should all have some wisdom when we come into it. These are our children. Where do we want to lay the foundation for them?

And God has clearly said that parents are equipped.

Are equipped. He, especially Christian parents, if they have Christ and they have faith, they are fully equipped to train these children up in the gospel and that should become number one and central.

And then you teach them about wisdom. And from there, again, all the academics, really all of you who are on this panel, did getting an

A back in history in eighth grade, does that help you where you are today? No, I don't use history at all.

Well, okay, let's not say that. I do use history. I love history. But in my vocation,

I do not need special knowledge in history.

That A or even that F that I might have gotten in public school under that subject means nothing.

Absolutely nothing right now. It might mean something for whatever profession you're going to get in.

And that's where we, like Spencer was saying, you have so many resources now.

College is opening up to homeschoolers because one of the things that they really want with college kids, college students, is the motivation.

Growing up in public school, you are taught to, these are your teachers, you obey them, you do what you're told, just pass the test, move on.

Colleges are starting to realize now that they want students with innovation, students who can think outside the box, students who are not just told what to do and how to do it, but can come up with the system or the structure themselves.

And these are things now that we're starting to see because of the boom of the internet and because it's 2023 and knowledge is everywhere, we can get knowledge.

Now it's about using that knowledge and actually the process of learning and continuing to use that process, even into adulthood, that you can do whatever you set your mind to.

Yeah. I mean, look, that AI got in history class, I've used that multiple times for bragging rights and, oh, wait.

Okay. Keith, you're up next. There we go.

This might be kind of a target back to the public school issue, but it could be a way for those parents who aren't good at homeschooling to have the best of both worlds.

Whenever I was in school, back when dinosaurs were around, the teachers, when you would have open house or a

PTA meeting, one thing I remember hearing the adults saying is they loved it when parents took an active interest in their child's work.

The kid brings home the homework, they loved it to have parents involved with the kids, making sure that work was done, which is a form of homeschooling.

You're just taking the schoolwork, making sure the kids learn it. Whenever my kids were in school, it's much the same thing.

We were told by the teachers and faculty, we love it when parents get involved because you're showing interest in your child, you're showing interest in their work, you're showing interest in what they're doing and it reinforces what they're learning in the classroom.

Unfortunately, these days, whenever my grandkids come home from school, I ask them, where's your homework?

They don't have any because they don't send homework anymore. And of course, as was mentioned earlier, with all the

COVID and the Zoom calls and parents finally discovered what's really happening in school, they don't want you to know.

But if you can manage to get involved and actively participate with what your kids are doing, what they're learning, even if they're not in the best school, maybe they're learning junky stuff.

But if you're actively there helping them or participating, if you're not inclined to be a homeschool parent, but if you can do that, you can let the teacher carry the mechanics of learning, reading, writing, arithmetic, but while you are there to help reinforce that.

And it could be a solution to having the best of both worlds where you can let the teachers do their job and you can participate as much as you can or are able to do with your level of comfort level.

That's a good point. Garrett? Yeah, I wanted to hit on what Melissa said a little bit.

When she started, she said homeschooling is for everyone. And she was saying how she was such a reluctant homeschooler as we were.

One of the things that I want to remind everybody is that years ago, homeschooling was for everyone.

It's only been about 150 years that public schooling or common schooling has been the rising trend and now the most common thing.

And under this system, we still have kids who drop through the cracks. We have sky -high illiteracy rates.

We have a failing moral culture. We have sky -high dropout rates. And so now we've got this system that seems so complete, and yet kids fail all the time.

And to what Aaron said earlier, which we discussed a little bit, that there are some families where they're just not fit to homeschool.

That may be true. However, public school doesn't stop abuse. In fact, the rates of abuse that happen in schools are out of this world.

Kids are abused in every way possible at schools. But for those kids that have abusive parents or neglectful parents, public schooling or private schooling may provide a respite during the day, but it doesn't remove them from the abusive situation.

It's again why I say I'm an aspirational homeschool evangelist, because I do think we can get to a place where homeschooling is, again, the common thing and maybe the majority -accepted system.

And I think we should shoot for that. Okay. Trying to get through everyone here.

Daniel, because there's still more we want to talk about. Yeah, definitely like to echo what

Garrett said about wanting to kind of evangelize the ability of some people who might not think that they can homeschool, that it's not as difficult as a lot of people might think.

Now, like, of course, there's a learning curve with everything, figuring out how to do it.

But then once you start, like the hardest years are going to be the earlier years of your child, like teaching them how to read, eventually teaching them how to kind of school themselves.

Because, you know, we homeschool our kids and, like, we actually haven't even used any kind of video curriculum at all.

And our oldest boys can, you know, manage themselves.

They read the books, they do their own schoolwork. And if they have questions, then, you know, the mom can try to answer if it has to do with like math or language sometimes, then when

I'm done with work, then I'll help with that. But yeah, like a lot of it, eventually, as Andrew mentioned, or Aaron mentioned that, oh,

I lost my train of thought there. But you know, it can be as, you know, involved or not involved as you want or need it to be.

And yeah, so the, and also with homeschooling, unlike with public school, or even with Christian schools, where they follow that kind of grade system, you know, your kids can sometimes be held back in that system.

But you know, my, my oldest who finished his math for the year early, he's supplementing it now with like doing some

Python programming and stuff. So learning valuable skills, because a lot of schools aren't teaching kids how to do employable skills.

And when you children learn easier when they're younger. And so yes, getting them involved in learning actual practical skills is something that homeschooling makes more available, because there's also more time to learn some of those things.

Okay, let me let me just do this. Dominic, I know you got to get going. We're going to go a little bit longer, because I want to make sure we give resources, we usually cut it at two hours.

But it's getting dark where Dominic is, and he's got to walk home. You know, and he's so any any last things you want to add,

Dominic, before you take off? You're muted, though, if you if you're trying to add anything.

I see his lips moving. But I don't hear anything because he's muted. So Dominic and technology don't get along well together.

How's that? That's better. Now we can hear you. Listen, I just want to tell you, I love you guys, man.

And I this is a big enjoyment to me. And I just got to. I know this sounds crazy for a New York guy, but it's getting dark.

And if I don't get home, Rachel's got the car. So I got to walk home. Well, you you, you, my encouragement to you is get home safely.

Keep teaching. We even though with that small amount of pay, it's enough for you to, you know, get me a good meal when

I come out to speak at your church, you know, in nice. He's been dying. He just trying to convince me to get him out here to speak in my church.

I just know it's it's you brag about your wife's cooking. That's really what it's about. Listen, love you guys.

May the Lord bless and keep you and shine his light upon all. All right. God bless.

God bless Dominic. All right. Next up is Rebecca. So. Yeah, I just I totally agree with everything everyone is saying.

So I've got four kids and they range range in ages thirty four to twenty one.

And we did a combination of homeschooling and private school. My youngest was twenty one.

I homeschooled all the way up through. But, you know, with all the resources out there,

I used to tell people that would approach me about homeschooling that you really would have to work at failing because there are a lot of resources, there's a lot of support.

And for us, I just told people homeschooling was a way of life. And everybody had good points about, you know, not trying to imitate the way the schools do things.

For us, sometimes math was shopping at the grocery store. You know, they had a book called grocery cart math or my husband's a carpenter.

The one of the boys would go off and work with my husband for the day, you know, and learn learn a lot of math there.

So it's just, you know, anyone I think who is in touch with their with their children really want to instill that.

Of course, the first priority is God, you know, in with with the curriculum.

But I just it was such a benefit for me compared to private school, to to homeschool the kids.

And, and I don't know if you're gonna, you know, nobody mentioned socialization. I know that was always one of the big arguments about against homeschooling.

But it's interesting, because all throughout the years, people would comment about my children, especially the clients that my husband would, you know, what he took one the boys to work with him, but they always commented on how mature and how well my children talked, or responded, you know, how involved they were in conversation, they were surprised by that, that the kids that they seem so well rounded, they didn't even know they were homeschooled, some of them.

So I just, you know, I, I agree with everyone homeschooling is not for everyone.

But I think it's a lot more intimidating for people than it really needs to be.

That's a good point, as I think, I think homeschooling has changed a lot over the years, when

I was doing it, it wasn't as big as it is now.

And so they the resources have changed, and they've recognized to adapt the resources to different parents.

And so it really is a thing. Even when we were homeschooling, you did a little bit of a mix, you know, we used one curriculum for math versus another for English.

And so, and this is on, I wanted to get into, we may not get as much time. But this is where homeschooling groups, whether it's a conference or things like that,

Melissa, you, you are involved in a local homeschooling conference you organize.

These things are helpful. One of the reasons they are helpful, if you're going to do homeschooling, is so you can learn from different parents, benefits of different curriculums.

Because there, there are curriculums that are better for certain parents and certain students.

And knowing you, knowing your child, knowing the curriculum will help you really get the best environment that you have.

So what we end up with is something where there's enough out there today, so that it shouldn't be that intimidating.

I mean, there's, there's programs, like I said, Bob Jones, stick a DVD in, and they do all the teaching.

There's some areas where the homeschoolers get together for some of the more difficult topics. And so you'll have someone who's an expert in a topic, say chemistry, and all of the homeschoolers take a class together.

And they get some socialization. I know that Rebecca, you said the socialization, there was always the claim, oh, socialization, they need socialization.

Yeah, that's the exact thing I was trying to avoid by homeschooling my kids. Because the socialization in the public school is the problem.

Right? Well, if you think about it, Andrew, it's not how is that socialization when you have kids of all just the same age, stuck in one room together, eight hours a day, five days a week.

That's not very well rounded, I would say, you know, with homeschoolers, you can be out in the community with your kids.

And I don't know who it was that brought up the point about colleges. It wasn't Melissa, maybe preferring, you know, people that are involved in the community and think outside the box, they love homeschoolers, colleges do, because of those reasons, because and I it goes back to socialization in a lot of see, the thing is, homeschoolers are socializing with adults.

That's the thing everyone forgets. That's why they're more mature. Because they're, they've, this goes back to what

I said earlier, back in the day when when schools didn't break it up by grades and ages, you socialize with people who are older than you and you matured quicker.

Hence the reason by 14, you were considered an adult. And now by 25, we're still questioning it.

But don't worry, a three year old knows their gender. Okay, and understands all the ramifications of that.

So yeah, let me let Eve, you're you're have your hand up. Yeah, I've mostly just been listening to this discussion, because I think

I'm maybe the only person in this group who is unmarried and has no children. I have looked at education more from the standpoint of how it has affected, you know, the youth in my church, the youth in my church, the youth that I see among friends and family.

And one of the things that I find interesting listening in on this discussion is that a lot of you are still speaking about education as preparation for college.

And I am seriously concerned about the way our, our generations have really put college as the, the pinnacle that you're training your child to go to college.

And because I have seen in my church, and in a lot of the young people, how much college, especially if you don't specify that you're sending them to a

Christian college, that college is one of the battlegrounds that leads children astray.

I have seen so many good young people who, some of them are even homeschooled in my church, really active in the youth group, really know their

Bible, are just in every way showing the fruit of the Spirit, and then they go away to college.

And, and within a year to a year and a half, they are completely lost to the world.

And it breaks my heart every time I've seen it, because I don't want, I know that college is necessary to some extent, but as somebody who has a four -year degree that I have never used in my professional life,

I think it's in, in our culture today, I think college is just the next step up from that high school diploma you think you need in order to function in the world.

And so I, I am of the generation where homeschoolers were weird.

I was never homeschooled. I split my time between private

Christian schools and public schools. I graduated from a boarding high school that was a Christian school.

I, I found that those three years that I spent at a Christian boarding school were the best preparation

I had for the real world, because it separated me from my parents to the point,

I was very much a introvert, apron string child where I was not capable of even having a conversation.

Even though I never was homeschooled, I was very clingy to my family and I always pushed my mom forward to speak to me, speak for me in situations

I didn't know how to speak for myself. And so that, those years of boarding school were really good for me because they prepared me for standing on my own two feet, speaking my own mind and that kind of thing.

So I have a different experience maybe than some people did, but I really feel like school has changed a lot since I turned 50 recently.

So I, I come from a slightly different generation and I, I just am cautioning, you know, even through this whole discussion that we, we take the purpose of education in a slightly different way,

Christian speaking, than the rest of the world. Because if, if we're educating our kids to get into college, that's not the purpose that we should be educating them for, because college is just another place for our kids to be indoctrinated and led astray.

And if there, if, if there's a career that they need college for, that's great, but we should be possibly looking at education as preparing them for a, a real world job, not necessarily going to college.

And we shouldn't, this has kind of become a pet peeve of mine is we shouldn't make every child feel like they have to have a college education.

And then, and before I throw this back, I do want to mention as, because I know we're going to get into resources.

I watched Garrett's movie right before we came in to record. And I, a lot of the questions that we have been answering in this are answered in that movie and I highly recommend going and seeing it.

Yeah. And we should put a link, maybe Garrett, you can give me a link so I can just copy and paste it. So I don't have to go look it up, but definitely put that in the show notes for the, for the, for those that are listening.

So, yeah, I mean, you make a really good point, Eve, because I think that a big issue people don't realize is that the push for people to go to college is not so much about education, but making money.

Okay. There's a change. Maybe people may not realize, but the government took over the student loans and it's a moneymaker for them because unlike a loan at your bank, where something goes wrong, you get tough financial situations, you can go bankrupt.

You can't do that from the government. And so what you end up with is the fact that the government, they're in a position where they will make the money.

So students go to college, they can't, they're really not cut out for college, but now they're straddled with a whole lot of debt and they don't have an education either.

So there's a lot to this that I think is, I mean, that's why the price of colleges are just going astronomical.

So I think that we do have to ask the question, should my child go to college?

All right. My son, actually both my kids. So my son has a master's degree in occupational therapy and my daughter has a bachelor's degree in molecular biochemistry and neither one of them are using their degrees.

My son was started in high school, his own business, fixing phones, iPhones.

He did that as just some for side money through college. When he went to pay for his master's, he kind of ratcheted up his business and hired some people to work for him so he could pay for his schooling and do his schoolwork.

And now he has a business where he makes three times what I make. And so like, can

I fault him for not using his master's degree? No, he's doing very well for himself. He's learned a lot.

He's learning that when you run your own business, you never get a day off. And he's starting to realize maybe

I need to retire early somehow. And my daughter, she realized she doesn't like doing the repetitive stuff that you do as far as doing lab work and research in the molecular biochemistry field.

She got into something where they're somewhat in that field, but what ended up happening was because she was diligent, because she learned the skills,

I think Melissa, it might've been you that was mentioning it earlier, that learned the skills of knowing how to learn on her own to be someone that takes initiative.

She's been promoted at her company four times and she's only worked there like three years. They've made positions for her.

Why? Because she's a diligent worker. And that was a greater thing for her to learn than the molecular biochemistry degree that she has, because that's what's getting her ahead.

And so I agree with you very much. I think we need to ask, I mean, we shouldn't be trying to force our children to go to college just for a degree, because it may not be the right thing for them.

So, Keith, you have your hand up first here. Yeah. I have two short ideas.

For one, related to what Eve was saying about homeschooling the senior kids off to college, be throwing the wolves there.

It's not just colleges. As someone who spent 17 years in military, that's a good place to ruin some good kids there too.

The other thing is when it comes to homeschooling, I've often thought about going back to college to finish a degree, but I'm holding out for homeschool college personally.

When they invent that, I'll go back. Well, there are certain colleges that are geared toward homeschoolers.

I think it's Patrick Henry, I think is one. I'm trying to remember.

There's another, but I just don't remember the name. But there are colleges that they're geared more for homeschoolers.

But I want a homeschool degree. That's what I want. Yeah. Well, you can do that.

You go to homeschoolrockedmovie .com.

That's the first class in your growing education. Schoolhouse Rocked Movie.

Oh, sorry. I read it wrong. SchoolhouseRockedMovie .com. Then you follow the

Schoolhouse Rocked podcast. That's where you start. Then you go to Melissa's, the homeschool conference that she organizes.

This is how you get this degree, Keith. We could do this. What I will say though is part of the problem is too often the

HR department is what requires a degree. Because once I did depart the military,

I was looking for work. Nobody would touch me because the first question is what's your degree in? I'm like, wow,

I have a 17 -year military career. I've got military training that probably equates to at least a four -year degree.

You're going to hire me based on that? I got the certificates. What do you want to see?

Nobody would touch me because it didn't say bachelor of science on it. That's a funny thing because when

I worked at Bell Laboratories for years doing research and the

Bell Laboratories required you to have a master's degree in specific disciplines to get promoted.

There's a guy who I worked with who didn't even have a bachelor's degree. They really wanted to promote.

There were three of us they wanted to promote. Only one had a master's degree in a computer science field.

They had an issue. My friend, Chuck, who had no bachelor's degree at all, made a comment.

He was the one that was pushing for it, but he made the comment. He says, well, when guys with PhDs come to Andrew and I for advice, we have an earned

PhD. That was actually enough. They went against the company rule.

They gave us a promotion because they ended up realizing the argument.

That's the argument you're kind of making is that the fact is that you gain more from experience.

Now, Bell Laboratories did have a clause. If you didn't have a bachelor's degree, but you had six years experience, you could get to the level where Chuck was at.

I think there's a lot of wisdom to that. Spencer, you had your hand up next. Yeah, I just want to touch back quickly on the socialization thing that you'd mentioned before I highlight the college point.

That's largely an unfounded fear in modern homeschooling. Any city you live in, just jump on Facebook and search homeschool co -ops.

You'll probably find a dozen or more, not to mention if you're in church, they're getting socialized, sports they can get involved in.

The thing about raising kids, if you have multiple kids, you'll know that you can raise them all the same way and they're going to develop completely different personalities.

We have four kids, four completely different personalities. If your kid's a weird homeschooler, it's probably because your kid's weird and he would have been weird in public school anyways.

That's the way God designed him. It's not homeschool's fault. I think the point that you've made about not training our kids simply for the rat race of high school, college, career, till you die mentality is something that you need to come to grips with.

There are going to be people that fall through the gaps and the people like Keith, right? Who, well,

I wanted this career and I couldn't get it because I didn't have the degree. There's going to be bumps along the way and some people are going to have to take those bumps for the betterment of others.

But again, in 2023, a lot of that stuff is being ironed out. I know Garrett said he got his whole degree online at home.

I go to seminary online. Distance education is alive and thriving in 2023 and you can be training your kids for that path if college is something they want.

But I think for a lot of us, the point of homeschooling is to take our kids out of this system where...

Because I was a recruiter in the Air Force for a few years and it's amazing to go to these high schools and talk to kids and we would do college career fairs and you would just hear one school after another get up and tell the kids just how easy they were going to make it for them to get in crippling debt for the rest of their life.

And then you would get up and talk to them and like, yeah, we'll give you a job, pay some money, pay for your college. But it's so ingrained from a young age, you go to high school, go to college, get your career and that's life.

But then when you sit down and talk to the kids and you're like, does anybody have a brother who's 28? Oh, I got one.

Is he well -established in the career of his choice progressing in this career path that he's chosen?

And they're like, no, he lives at home. You're like, they all live at home, but they're all $30 ,000 in debt or more.

So I think that's part of that mentality that you just have to break away from. And there's just so many resources today that you don't have to be fearful that somehow your kid's going to be left behind with this homeschool.

And then even the idea that you would keep them home and shelter them and train them up in the way they should go. And then just, well, you're in college now and just toss them into the deep end,

I think is a unwise way to go about your parenting. You don't stop being a parent because the kid turns 18 that continues for the rest of their life.

Do you have anything, honey? All right, Melissa. I'm glad Eve brought that up, though I don't quite agree with her that I think even our conversation doesn't seem to kind of push college.

Because I think if you're against homeschool, well, actually, I can't say that. I correct.

There's a lot of homeschoolers that, yeah, that is their goal. And I think we're going to find that even more as it becomes more even secularized.

It's not a Christian thing anymore. And so that's something that I push back on.

I do have, I am part of a co -op. And we do have at the end of the co -op every year, well, not every year, but on a regular basis, helping high schoolers.

And it is a lot about getting the transcript and getting those credits and all those things.

And I want to see that change because I am of the mind that I think biblically, when we look at the

Bible, and if I'm going to have a biblical worldview in regards to education, something that needs to breathe back into light is the idea of vocation.

I think that's something that's largely missing from the Christian community, homeschooling community, even churches in general.

The idea, like Garrett said, that if we are seeking first the kingdom of God, He will supply all that we need.

He will take care of our finances. He will provide shelter.

He will provide clothing, and He will provide a job. And so here's one of the things that I had to wrestle with when

I thought about this, when I came to this idea. Do I want my kids to go to college? Is that my main goal?

Is that what I'm going towards? Or am I going to be satisfied if my child decides that they want to work at Burger King for the rest of their life, but pursue the kingdom of God?

And that's what changed my whole homeschooling experience. I went from no more about schooling and more about biblical worldview and training my kids up to seek out the kingdom of God.

And know that at the end of the day, when Christ returns, He's not going to say, well, how well did you do at your academics?

Or you were really, really good at computer programming. You got your own business and are making all this money.

And in the end, it's going to be, did you follow me?

Did you believe in me? And did you do what I told you to in making disciples and teaching them all that I have commanded them to do?

You bring up a really good point because I remember when I went to college and that was back in the

Stone Age. But the thing was, I remember one of my friends, her dad was a truck driver.

Another one of my friends, her dad was a doctor. And they both knew how much their dads made.

Here was the interesting thing. We calculated that the guy who drove the truck made more money than the doctor once you start weighing in how much he has to pay in bills for college, when he paid that whole education.

And I remember calculating it out. And I think the breakeven point was when the doctor hits 52.

That's when the doctor starts making more than the truck driver, because the truck driver started driving right in high school.

So, he had years of making money without debt, where the doctor was just in debt for years paying it off.

And the reason we looked into it was because our friend whose dad was the doctor said he had just finished paying off his debt when he started paying for his kids to go to college.

And so, in one sense, he really still wasn't because now he's paying for that debt, where the other father didn't have that.

So, it's a thing where that's something people don't think through. So, what

I'm going to do is, Rebecca, I'm going to have you go first, because I know some things that I want

Aaron to speak to. And I want to make sure that, because that's going to be a transition point.

So, I'm going to have you go next. I was just going to say, this is very odd, but my oldest daughter, out of the four kids,

I just had one daughter that went to college. She was determined to be a teacher, but college, believe it or not, straightened her out.

I know that. But she is saddled. She loves being a teacher.

She's using her degree. Her husband is not using his degree. But yes, like everyone's been saying, they are saddled with student debt for quite a long time.

And my sons who were just, my one son was interested in driving big trucks.

And guess what? That's what he does. He works for the state driving big trucks. And my other son was only 21 and just started a job somewhere as being, actually, they're asking him to actually run one of the stores himself.

No college education, but just, I think, just the time it was invested in him with the homeschooling.

So, if anybody's out there listening and they're worried about colleges or their kids or what their future is going to be, or if they're shortchanging with homeschooling, again, if you're investing in the children themselves,

God first, of course. And we should be investing in our kids, no matter whether they're in public,

Christian or homeschool. We still need to be just as diligently teaching them the fear of the

Lord. But I just want to encourage anybody out there that don't worry, as Melissa was just saying,

God, he's got his plans for his provision. And it does work out.

We just have to trust God with our children and do to the best of our abilities, raise them in a

God -honoring way. True. Aaron, so what I'm going to ask for you, and I'm going to step away for a moment with whatever you wanted to say, but then you and I had a discussion in the car.

So, I've now revealed who is in the car. But you did something really intriguing with your kids and you have a view of education with your daughter.

Can I spill the beans? Well, I do want to get to that, but I want to lay a foundation here.

That's what I want to do. But I just want to whet Bill's appetite. So, your daughter is the youngest person in history to take a college class.

Not in history, no. Let me finish at Bob Jones, right? As far as we know, yeah, she's the youngest student to -

To take - 11 years old. She completed college class with a 4 .0.

Correct. So, your kids have are 14 and 15.

Was that right? Did I get it right this time? No, she's 13 and he's 16. 13, 16.

And they're both done with high school? Correct. They both graduated. Both graduated high school.

Okay. 13 years old, graduated high school. So, you know, I was sharing this with my wife.

Oh, the kids must be really smart. And I said, no, Aaron has a different view of how to train children.

And so, if you could, whatever you wanted to say, but then what

I'd like you to do is transition into what you did, what your view is with your family, because I think that might be helpful for folks to realize, especially for people who are just getting started, this might be a good thing for grandparents like me.

I plan on having, I do plan on having my daughter and son -in -law reach out to you to talk a little bit more, because I think it would be really helpful for folks.

Yeah. So, this might sound strange to some of you. So, I want to put this out there.

It's not about credentialing, but I just, so everyone understands, second only to my study of God and understanding him from his word and so on and so forth, homeschooling has actually been the number two thing that I have dedicated my life, education in general, but homeschooling as a specific application,

I dedicated my life to study more so than anything else I have in my life. In fact, I can say that I've been actively studying homeschooling since, for almost four decades.

For those of you who know me, you might be thinking that's not possible. You're not old enough, but my mom homeschooled me, and I'm not saying this is because I was homeschooled, but my mom, what my mom actually did is, as part of our homeschooling, she taught us about homeschooling.

I was seven at the oldest. I probably started a little bit earlier than that, but I remember at least being seven and reading books that were written about homeschooling that were for adults, you know, who are going to homeschool their kids.

And I was reading, I was studying this, she taught, she, every year that I was homeschooled and beyond, she was made it a big point for my sister and I to understand education, what it really is beyond what our society says.

And so I was studying homeschooling, actively studying it as a child who was, you know, would have been comparatively, you know, lower elementary.

And so I speak widely on this. I talk quite frequently about it.

I work with individuals, I coach, I train in this particular thing, because I'm very passionate about it. And really what this boils down to,

I think it goes back to something that was been said a couple times in various ways, and I alluded to it as well, is the fact that we just kind of accept things that they're handed to us the way they are, without any historical or cultural context.

So, you know, kids go to school, you're this old, you're in first grade, you're this old, you're in sixth grade. But as was alluded to earlier, you know,

Dewey, the guy, the same guy who came up with the Dewey Decimal System, basically kind of, it was a big part in the whole grade system being implemented.

The educational system that we have in the world today, really, as Garrett said, it began in the early 1900s.

It was a glorified daycare system. They said, well, you know, we just got to get these kids out of the sweatshops, and oh no, now they're running the streets, so let's do something else with them.

For thousands and thousands of years, this is not how people were educated. And the fact, the reality is, as again, was said, that for thousands of years, there was no such thing as adolescence.

But the problem is, we don't know our history, no one's teaching it to us, we don't know what education is, we don't know the best forms of education, how people have been thriving in education.

I mean, I was just watching a documentary recently, we still have no idea how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids.

And the reality is, is that we, with all of our modern technology, could not build the pyramids. That should give us pause and give us a slow down and go, so what, the educational system that we've had in the past 100 years or so, is really the dominant form of education?

No, it's not. Dewey, part of his motivation was actually, the modern education system is based off of evolutionary theory, that you have to learn a certain thing at a certain age, and all this other kind of stuff, it's absolutely ridiculous.

So in these almost four decades, one of the things I've been working on,

I've had the opportunity to research it and doing my master's work, and actually to put it and implement it with my children, is what

I call, it's an educational philosophy, it's a methodology, it's not a style per se.

A public school teacher could use it, a Christian school teacher could use it, and obviously homeschoolers could use it, it works in any educational setting, is the philosophy is called expectational education.

Laura Ingalls Wilder was 14 years old, and she was certified as a school teacher.

We have the whole Jewish tradition of a person being recognized as an adult between 12 and 13 years old.

As far as we know, the mother of Christ was 14 years old, approximately when she was betrothed, and she had

Jesus. For thousands of years, children have been starting, what we consider children, adolescents, teenagers, have been starting families, running businesses.

Ladies and gentlemen, listen to what I'm saying, they have been running countries for thousands of years, and they've done it well, oftentimes, not every time,

I mean the exceptions, but they've done it well. We've had prodigies, we have all these things. Also, if you study genius, people don't understand genius, most of us just assume this person's really smart, they're really cool, they must be smarter than I am.

The reality is, normally that's not the case. There are savants, there are people who are gifted, and honestly, science can't quantify their gifting, but the vast majority of people who fall into the category of geniuses really are no different than anybody else from a fundamental physiological standpoint.

The one thing that is true of all geniuses is the fact that genius is expected.

Every genius either expected genius from themselves, or they had somebody else in their lives that expected it from them.

Expectational education is based off of the concept of two primary beliefs, is that number one, children,

I don't call them children. My children, when they hit the age of 13, we had an adulthood ceremony for them.

We transitioned them out of childhood into young adulthood. When I interact with teenagers,

I'm functioning with them as if they're adults, whether they act like it or not. That's how I respect them, and I function with them like that.

These young people are capable way more than we realize they are.

In fact, everyone who nods their head and says, oh, yeah, obviously, children are far more capable. No, no, no, no. They are more capable than even those of us who recognize they're more capable than we think they are.

They're even more capable than that. It's about having that expectation for them that is going to push them to really do their best for God's honor and glory.

That's the key. That's the second component is the fact that, as Eve really beautifully said, we shouldn't be pushing them to college for all the reasons that the world does.

Christian families, listen to me. Education is really about one thing, and it's about sharpening a tool.

Our children have been called to glorify God, whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, to all to the glory of God.

Our personalities and our proclivities and our education and all of that needs to be focused in glorifying

God. I tell my children, your education is not about a job. It's not about money.

It's not about a lifestyle. It's not about an experience. It's about you being a tool that is sharp, that can be used by God in various areas.

The reality is, yes, there's nothing wrong with being a burger flipper. That's totally great.

If God calls my children to that, fantastic. Let's be completely honest. If somebody has a

PhD, I think most of us understand what it takes to get a PhD, even if we don't have it.

That person is going to be a far better burger flipper than the guy who didn't even graduate from high school. He has skills.

He has understanding. He has a work ethic that those other people don't have. Again, I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but these are just general principles we're talking about here.

It's about really having an opportunity. If God wants me to be a burger flipper or he wants me teaching in a university, because I am equipped,

I'm sharpened to be a tool that God can use like a scalpel instead of a bludgeon, then

I can do those things. Education is just about that for my children. Because of that, when we started homeschooling, my kids,

I'll spare you, invite me to do your homeschooling conference or whatever else. We'll tell the stories.

It's really a very exciting thing. I like to give hope to homeschoolers that if we want our children to do best to the honor and glory of God, there is a way to do it.

The world doesn't tell us how to do it, but there are ways. I'd love to equip you to be able to help your children excel to the degree that God created them to excel for his honor and glory.

But so my children, I love them. Obviously, they're amazing.

I don't think they're any more special than your kids. To the degree that I don't believe they have some innate ability that your kids don't have.

My daughter was 11 years old when she took her first university course.

Up until recently, both children had a 4 .0. My son still has a 4 .0.

My daughter struggled. She made some poor choices in how she was preparing for history class and dug herself into a little bit of a hole.

She just finished with a B, so I'm still really proud of her because I did a whole lot worse in history when

I was in college than she did. They've completed half of their freshman year of college as part of their dual credit studies in high school and will be working more toward a higher load and more of a full -time studies in homeschooling moving forward.

Again, my daughter's 13 now and my son is 16. I just graduated. So this whole concept is a paradigm shift.

Scott Anuel works for the G3 Men Ministries. He came onto my show.

He and his wife and I talked about homeschooling. They've written extensively on it. Scott and his wife did the manhood ceremonies and the womanhood ceremonies for their children.

This is not just a question about education. If we are Christian parents, this is a question

I think we've all hit on this to a degree. We are helping to be a formative influence in our children's lives so that they would know

God and they will glorify him. This is not just a sliver called education. This is a bigger picture.

I'll call it a systemic parenting mode that needs to be in place because that same failure that we have for our children where we don't allow them to excel and to rise up to their expectations and academics,

I see it time and time and time again with the spiritual expectations.

We make excuses for our child because, well, they're two. We make excuses for our child because, well, they're a teenager.

We have low expectations for who God created our children to be and what they are capable to be for him.

So this concept of expectational education really is a biblical systemic approach to our parenting that really just desires for our kids to glorify

God to the greatest extent that they can to do their best in all things. There's a million other things that could be said.

Again, I travel and I speak extensively on this topic because I really am passionate about it, not just the education, the academics, but for us parents to really recognize the fact that our children were created by God to be and to do so much more than we realize.

I'm not talking about in the future. I'm talking about now. Now, our children could, by God's grace, most of our children could go into the public school system and be a missionary that God could use to turn the public school system upside down.

They could be, but they're not because we parents aren't expecting them to be.

We're not parenting them to that end academically, but even more importantly, spiritually, because we've bought into this concept that the secularized

American church tells us. Not even secularized. I just want to be fair. People in my church, their minds have been turned off.

They do education. They do this cultural philosophy about the expectations of things that kids can do and blah, blah, blah, because everyone else does it and we haven't thought about it.

We haven't researched it. We haven't studied it. We haven't gone to the scriptures and say, you know what?

This idea of American education doesn't fit with what I'm seeing here in the Bible. It starts with us being intentional.

It starts with us researching and studying. It starts with us dealing with our hearts that we're lazy parents, that we haven't really dedicated the time to get

God's vision of our children. We're so blinded by our own vision for our kids.

Now you say, wow, Aaron, you started off inspirational and now you're just stepping on toes. I'm stepping on my own toes too.

I really am. I don't do this well. We wouldn't have enough time to talk about all the ways that the

Brewster family is failing. This is not something that we do. This is something that God does, but God wants to use us parents to be this massive influence in our kids' lives.

When we get on God's page for how this is to be done and we find a way of unlocking our children so that we can expect greatness from them,

God's greatness from them, high biblical expectations from them, and the children get on board and do that for themselves, an 11 -year -old getting a 4 .0

in a college class, it seems cool, but it pales in comparison to all of the other things, spiritually speaking, that the child is able to do for the honor and glory of God.

I know that's quite a lot. I think it's helpful.

I want to get to, because we're approaching the three -hour mark. This is the first time we've ever done one this long, but I think we may have bit off more than we could chew.

Maybe we should have done just public school in one. Just put it on two parts. That's all you have to do. No, because I think a lot of this, and it may be worth doing one just on each of those down the road, but let's talk some resources.

I know at least four of the podcasts represented here have resources for families, for parents, for homeschooling.

Garrett, I'm going to save you for last, because that is the express purpose of your show.

I was going to start with Rebecca, and she turned around. I'll start with you, Melissa. You have some resources or ideas, whether you provide them or others.

Where could people go if they want to get involved in homeschooling? What are some things you could suggest? The first thing

I would say is for research, you can go to HSLDA.

It's a good resource with law, so you can get an understanding with your state, what you're able to do, what is legal, what's not legal, what kind of records you need.

You threw that out there. This is a homeschooling law defense group.

The Homeschooling Law Defense, HSLDA. It's an association.

Any homeschoolers, it's HSLDA .org.

Anyone's going to start into homeschooling or is homeschooling, you need to go there, because that is going to be essential in anything legal.

One of the things that they'll tell you is, okay, if the police come to your door wanting your children, you call them first and let their lawyers talk to the police.

There's things like that, because you don't want to end up in the nightmare of trying to get your children back.

I'm glad you brought that up, because I didn't think of that. That's an absolute must, so continue. Yes.

That's where I would start with that. Good resources is educating yourself.

There's so much education resources out there. Co -ops, if you are in my area, which is

South Jersey, we are probably one of the larger, not the larger, but one of the, probably actually the largest

Christian co -op. The co -op is called LEARN, which is

Liberty Education, oh, I even forgot my own acronym, and Resource Network.

Liberty Education and Resource Network LEARN. It's held at Faith OPC in Elmer.

It's Christian -based, meaning we allow anybody who's to come in, but we vet our teachers.

We make sure that they are Protestant and hold to our statement of faith, or at least to agree with the statement of faith.

There's that. There's also associations down in South Jersey, which is

Gloucester County Christian Association, Homeschooling Association, so that's

GCCHSA. That's a long thing. I was part of that too for several years.

Every area has these associations, and we just need to go online to find them, if you don't know ones.

I mean, I forget who suggested Facebook, but that's a resource. Yes, Facebook is a resource as well.

I do also have started putting it, just haven't this year, but I help another lady set up homeschool conferences in this area, in the

Southern Jersey area, but it's specifically Christian -oriented, and I think that's a really big thing because we used to have what was known as CHOP.

I don't know what the acronym means for that, sorry, because they've kind of not done their conference, which was really huge in Pennsylvania and New Jersey area, but since COVID, they kind of went under, so now it's a matter of individual churches are taking more initiative to hold conferences, and so me and another lady have been working to bring that back.

Yeah, but if there's, again, the resources, I would say with Garrett Hampton's podcast is very helpful, a great, great resource.

Even Brewster's, I would suggest that because the Celebration of God and their family, oh,

I shoot that to my friends all the time. So, yeah. All right,

Rebecca? I'd just like to mention, too, I'm in upstate

New York, and if anyone is interested in homeschooling, they can contact Leah Loving Education at Home.

That is a statewide Christian organization, too, and so there's a lot of resources and help with that for homeschooling, but resources, yes, as I had mentioned in the beginning of this, the episode here was that I have a website called loveandtruthbooks .com,

and I have a PDF version, free e -books for anyone who'd like, and they are, because my, again,

I strongly believe that we need to get there first with the truth, God's, you know, set that foundation, biblical truth.

It's easier to instill to begin with than to have to undo what our kids have been taught, so I have books there, and I have, let me see,

I'm trying to think here, I have four or five out now, and they are, again, they are on God's Design for Marriage.

I have some on race, trying to combat critical race theory, teaches our children how to, you know,

God's way of looking at others. I have some on gender, which celebrate God's permanently fixed,

His design for permanently fixed gender. I have one on Israel, so, and there's going to be more coming, but that's what

I've got so far. All right, I should actually just see,

Eve, I don't know if you, I don't know if you or Keith have anything, I know, I don't want to skip you, but do you have any last thing you guys want to say?

No, well, I don't really have any homeschooling resources at my fingertips. I do, would recommend that you check out the attractions at the

Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum. I do know that they have, especially if you live in an area where you can get to them, they have started adding academic, like science programs that they do for elementary and high school students.

And I, I believe they are offering like science high school labs for high school students who are homeschooled and don't have access to labs to do like the actual scientific labs.

And then I believe they have like academic camps as well in the summer that you can send homeschooling children to.

So that is one resource that is local. And their broader organization, Answers in Genesis, has homeschool curriculum.

So that's actually a good resource as well. And then, I mean, if you have homeschoolers that enjoy watching movies and stuff,

I do recommend the book that I have on, that I have written. It's really just a workbook that is dealing with some of the ways that you can apply a

Christian worldview to secular entertainment, and teach yourself how to think critically about the entertainment that you indulge in.

Yeah, there you go. Okay. Well, if Keith doesn't have anything, we'll go to Aaron, and then we'll finish up with Garrett.

Yeah, my podcast really hasn't dealt a lot with homeschooling, because I didn't want that to be the main focus.

We have that one educational series I encourage you to try out or check out. But really, everything that they've said is fantastic.

Bob Jones University has a homeschooling curriculum. We've used a lot of different curriculum with my kids, and they really enjoyed, and I love the quality of the

Bob Jones BJU Press curriculum. But I would encourage you to check out Scott Anuel, Scott and Becky Anuel, G Threeman, and all of the stuff that they've written.

I really love that. They're more from the philosophy side of things, their conversation.

They give good advice on different curriculum, how to approach things. They're a little more classical, and we haven't done as much of the classical side of things.

But the philosophy, the biblical philosophy of education is so fantastic from what they're doing.

So I definitely encourage you to check that out. And then we'll end with Garrett.

You probably have the most resources for us. Well, thank you. Well, yeah, this is, like I said, this is our ministry, and it's all we do.

We love homeschooling families, but what we love more is family discipleship. And so I will tell you that everything we do is going to point your family and your kids to Christ, to their

Creator. And like Aaron said, this is all about giving glory to God. And so we're really, really careful that we screen the speakers that come on our podcast and things like that to ensure that they're going to be giving a sound biblical worldview and a true gospel presentation.

I'm going to make it really easy for everybody. Whether you're considering homeschooling for the first time, or you're a homeschooler who's experienced and just needs an encouragement, if you just go to our website, schoolhouserocked .com,

we have resources literally that will take you from start to finish. The two most important ones, aside from the podcast, which is every week we just pour into you and teach you to disciple your kids for the glory of God, we have the free homeschool survival kit that is a 72 -page ebook that will literally give you step one, do this.

Step two, do this. And a lot of the other speakers on the podcast tonight have mentioned some of those.

And so if you've forgotten or you didn't take good notes, get the free homeschool survival kit.

You can find it on our website at schoolhouserocked .com, and it will remind you of all of those.

And then I did want to mention, every parent really does need to watch the movie

Schoolhouse Rocked, The Homeschool Revolution. It's free to stream at schoolhouserockedmovie .com,

and it will explain to you not only why and how you can do it, but really it dives deeply into Melissa's, the why of homeschooling and the why of education.

And spoiler alert, it's all about Jesus. It's all about discipleship.

But I can tell you, not because I directed it, not because my family made it, but because we watched

God work such amazing miracles through the production of this movie. It is a super, super powerful resource.

You'll want to watch it, and then you'll want to share it with your friends. I promise you that your heart will be moved.

And Garrett, let me just brag for you a little bit. I got to see the before the finished work, right?

But you have a background in movie production. Not necessarily

Christian. Everyone thinks, oh, Christian, it's corny. You have a professional background in this.

You added this to the film that you did. So the quality was very good.

It's what's unexpected from a lot of what people expect when they talk about Christian films.

This was done with high quality because you are a professional in the field for many years before you decided to devote yourself to this.

And so I just mentioned that for folks. So folks,

I hope that this has been helpful for you. I hope that maybe it has given you some tools and ideas about homeschooling versus public school versus private school.

We didn't all agree on everything, but I hope that this was really helpful to you.

I hope it's something that really gave you some value. And we hope to see you next month when we'll pick another topic for us to discuss.

It might not be this long. This has been the longest one we've done, but we're grateful. I hope it was very helpful for you.

I hope that this will encourage you in your faith in Jesus Christ with your family, and we'll see you next time.