The Biggest Threat to the Church Today

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome into the Think deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. I'm your co host, Joe Wilke, joined by Jack Wilke and Will Harib. And we're going to keep it nice and short on the promo end of things. We are now offering this video podcast on YouTube. And so make sure to like and subscribe as everybody that you ever watch a YouTube video from says, like and subscribe. But truly, please go on there and subscribe to our great review. [00:00:32] Speaker B: All those things. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Everything that might help us. Just go do it. [00:00:35] Speaker C: Click that notification bell. Smash that, like button. [00:00:38] Speaker B: That's right. [00:00:40] Speaker A: And do the little. With the. [00:00:42] Speaker C: We're not doing that part. No, no. [00:00:44] Speaker A: Okay. Well, anyway. Anyway, and if you have not liked our Facebook page, we have the thing to your podcast Facebook page, we have the focus press group. So they have to be joined to you at the folks press page. Um, Jack and Brad are on there. Will and I are on there just sparingly. But, um, yeah, you know, so connect with us on there, but make sure to like those pages. Make sure to subscribe to YouTube, uh, as you will be getting these if you are not members of our focus. Plus, they've been getting these for a long time. But now that we're offering the video portion to everybody, the deep end. However, the video deep end and the deep end is only provided to folks plus. So if you are interested, make sure to subscribe to that. Without further ado, though, we are going to get into an episode that is not a retread of one that we've done two years ago. Yeah, we're going to have some things that cross over. We don't honestly remember fully what was said. I'm sure you guys don't either. That's going to be a blanket, hey, if we repeat ourselves, okay, sorry. And move on, we're not going to do that again and again where I think we talked about it last time. We're just going to roll. And we have some more things that we want to share, some more things we want to say. We want to take a different approach to an episode on public schools versus homeschooling because this is something that we are very passionate about. Our passion doesn't ever really go away. And as a matter of fact, we probably get more passionate the more time goes on because we're starting to see so many problems in the public school. You cannot turn on the news almost any day and not see some scandal, something that's happening, a school shooting, a teacher doing horrible things with the students, you know, LGBTQ agenda. Being pushed right and left in schools, school walkouts, pride flags flying everywhere, banning kids for bringing in bibles. I mean, all of these things are happening over and over and over. We want to address that, but really we want to get into the responsibility of christian parents and we want to spend some time kind of debunking the well, I just can't homeschool myths. We hear a lot of these things as to why people can't homeschool. We are strong advocates for homeschooling. We do believe it is the duty of christian parents to take up their, the schooling of their kids, the education of their kids as much as possible. And so with that, will you put together the fantastic outline? Im going to let you kind of take it from here and lead us into this. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So the first thing that I wanted to do before we get into the responsibility of christian parents is just briefly, I want to ask each of you three, because this is something that we have been passionate about for a while. Even before we, you know, started this podcast or anything like that, all three of us were homeschooled. I want to ask each of you guys why youre so passionate about it. And I am going to go first here because what I really want the listeners here to understand, because I'm sure you're going to hear, we are coming from a place of passion. We are, we are going to probably get a little fired up in this episode. This is one of those things that, you know, to me is just, I think that's why I'm so passionate about it. It's one of the clearest common sense things when you consider, hmm, young people are leaving the church at astronomical rates. We've got worldly families, we've got apathetic christians, we've got, church is shrinking again, unfaithful young people. Hmm, let me think about why that might be. Maybe because of the amount of time that they are spending in a government school, like where are they spending 8 hours, eight to 10 hours of their day? Maybe at a place they're spending it in a place where that, that cares absolutely nothing about God and in fact, is fighting against God. That's so common sense to me. It would be the equivalent of, of your house repeatedly burning down, uh, because you're leaving the oven on and you're looking around going, hmm, I wonder why my house is burning down. Maybe because you're leaving the oven on every single day. And so I think again, to, to just to get into it. That's why I'm so passionate about it is because it's such a common sense thing. The other thing that I would say why I'm so passionate about it is because I feel as though this is something that as you study the old testament, as we're going to get to, even as you study the New Testament, there is such an emphasis on multigenerational faithfulness. There is such an emphasis on families passing the faith down, on families, again, raising their children up to know God, to worship God, to honor God, to recognize him as God. Public schools are actively working against that. Actively working against that. And just the blindfolds that christian parents can, can put on about this are like, oh, well, you know, it's really not that bad, or, oh, everybody does it. It's just, again, that's why I get so passionate about it is because I do feel as though it's such a beautiful, homeschooling is such a beautiful thing, such a blessing that you get to spend all that time with your kids. We're gonna get into all of it. But those are kind of the two bullet points I wanted to hit for why I'm so passionate about it. Again, just the common sense nature of why young people were leaving the church. But then also the, again, the other side of it. What would you guys have to add to what you're so passionate, why we're so passionate about this in the first place? [00:05:24] Speaker C: I think you look at it demographically. Homosexuals don't have children. Transgenders don't have children. Non christians essentially don't have children. I mean, you look at the birth replacement rate is, we're not even at replacement rate in America. And really most of the developed countries in the world are going below that number. And so you look to the future and there's not enough kids, you know, who still having kids as christians. And so you look at it like, do you know how bright our future could be if we just keep our own kids? The only chance they have, the only chance they have is by taking our kids from us and indoctrinating out them into their ideologies. And we keep doing it. I mean, I'm going to shoot straight right off the top here to the people who are kind of coming into it, considering, and this episode might be for you, fantastic. To most of the people who are, have been aware of this debate and know what they're talking about and then have chosen. Otherwise, I'm going to come across pretty grumpy here. I'm going to be curmudgeonly because it's kind of like what more do you need to see, honestly? Like, are we seriously still doing this? Because the other thing is you've got that. And then to Will's analogy, you've got somebody coming in and going, you can't say the house burned down because of the stove. I knew a guy who left a match on, you know, dropped a match, and. And his house burned down. And so the other 37 that burned down because of the stove. You can't say it was that, like, get out of the way, please. Honestly, you sit down. You're out of your depth. Do not try to enter this conversation, because we can see. We have eyes. I mean, I. I just don't get how on earth it's even a conversation anymore. And real quick, just before you have religious leaders coming in to shield people from this criticism because it's an uncomfortable topic. Well, we like uncomfortable here. That's what we do. [00:07:15] Speaker B: Real quick, just before Joe goes, to add to what Jack is saying, the fact that if you're plugged into any kind of news source at all, you have to acknowledge how bad it's getting. You know, whether. You know how it was when you were in school. That's one thing. How it was in the two thousands. That's one thing. How it was in the 2010, that's another thing. We're in the year 2024. It is progressively getting worse. And if you're one of those people, that's like, man, I just. I really don't think it's all that bad. Get your head out of the sand. Look up some news articles. Get on Twitter, whatever it is. You can see how bad it is. People are just choosing not to. Sorry, Joe, I cut in front of you there. [00:07:48] Speaker A: No, you're good. You're good. It's the same thing about COVID If that didn't change your perception of government, of overreach, of a lot of different things, if that didn't change it, I'm sorry. There's no hope for you if you have seriously come in contact with all these things. You watch the libs of TikTok videos. Um, you've seen the horrible statistics coming out of public school. You've seen your kids come home with the pornographic materials in their books, um, talking about their LGBTQ friends, and so. And so who's transitioning, and we're forced to use their pronouns. And you're still going. Well, not in my school. Not here. You can't be serious. You. You just can't be serious. Like, these things are happening, as we. We've said before Jack in rural Texas when he was there. This is taking place in Texas. This is taking place in Georgia. This is taking place in Tennessee. The Bible Bell Alabama. [00:08:36] Speaker B: Alabama. They were asking, you know, a high school or, hey, which pronouns do you prefer? Bible Bell Alabama. [00:08:42] Speaker C: Well, if you think this COVID, that in itself taught us so many things, of the teachers unions going to bat as hard as they could to keep kids out of the schools, knowing it was developmentally hurting the kids, and knowing that we had data from all over the world that it was not dangerous for kids and teachers to be in the schools, and that they were actively, two years into it, trying to keep from going back to school and trying to make it virtual learning, knowing it would damage the kids learning. And it has. We're seeing the consequences of that. These are the people we're going to bat for, Jeff. [00:09:12] Speaker A: Right? So why are we passionate about it? Because we love kids and we love the Bible. And that's more than public school can say. Evan. [00:09:17] Speaker C: And we're invested in the future. [00:09:19] Speaker A: We're invested in what's coming. That's what this podcast is all about. Will and I started the gym podcast. That's what we're about here is let's think about the future. Let's think about where the church is going, who's going to step up and lead. And if you keep sending your kids to government schools, you keep sending them to Satan. And literally there are Satanists. The Tennessee, there's another one, you know, Memphis, Tennessee, they got their Satan club in there. You keep sending them there, they keep coming back. Non Christians. We go, what happened? Enough. Get your head out of the sand. The reason we're doing this, the reason we're having this episode now, it is April. It's coming out in April. Your kids may end, you know, their public school year in May. We implore you, implore you, please listen to the rest of this episode. Make seriously make different plans for coming up in August when you go to get back to school. August, September. If we can just change one person's mind to say, you know what, we've been thinking about it. We're praying for you. We're pulling for you. We are here to be a resource to help you. We've got moms and a lot of different resources to help in that area. So I'm starting off the bat with that. We will come back around at the end. But will, I do want you, unless you got something else to say, I want you to get us into the outline as we start with the scriptural reasons for this, because this goes all the way back to deuteronomy. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Let's talk about, yeah, so let's talk about the responsibility of christian parents here for just a second, because that to me is what lies at the heart of this discussion is what level of responsibility do christian parents have for the education of their kids? And you could argue, you know, secularly, the secular education, but then also the spiritual education of their kids. Is it just a got to get them to Bible class and make sure that they, they attend worship? Is that all it is? You look at deuteronomy, chapter six, and everybody always goes to the Shema, you know, and the, I'm going to read here in just a second, verses four through nine, but I do want to. Or verses four through seven, but I do want to emphasize once again, I think I started with it this all throughout the Old Testament. It's all throughout the book of Deuteronomy. It's all throughout the stories of the Israelites. God was emphasizing, pass it on. Multi generational faithfulness. Don't let the next generation forget what I did for you. How do you do that? You teach them diligently. That's the key. [00:11:25] Speaker A: You. [00:11:25] Speaker B: Deuteronomy six five. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. But that's not the end of it. He didn't stop there. These words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, shall talk with them. When you sit in your house, when you walk, by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up, everybody always wants to run to, can you bind this? You can't bind it. You know, people want to send their kids public school. That's their decision. You can decide to homeschool. We're going to get to a question in just a second that might address that, um, that very thing. But before we do that, as you listen to deuteronomy six that I just read, or as you read it yourself, what makes what I just read in deuteronomy six, teaching your children diligently, talking of them when you, when you're sitting, when you're walking, when you're laying down, when you, when you lay down to go to sleep, when you rise up, what makes your job as a parent easier? Sending them to public school and doing that, or homeschooling your children and doing that? Which, which one of those is are you better able to fulfill deuteronomy six? It is an absolute no brainer. When you give your kids up. I've got it on here in the outline. Later on, when you give your kids up, or we say 8 hours a day, when you include the travel time to and from when you include the extracurricular activities that 80% of kids do at school, it's 1011 hours a day. [00:12:38] Speaker A: And the homework you're giving your. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and homework. When you're giving your kids up for that many hours, how difficult is it to fulfill deuteronomy six? And so that would be the first question I would ask in this discussion, is which is easier to fulfill deuteronomy six? Sending your kids off for 10 hours a day to a government school or keeping them at home with you and educating them secularly and also spiritually? The answer is so obvious. Like, it's. It's all. It's basically a rhetorical question because everybody listening knows the answer. [00:13:04] Speaker A: I think that's it. I want to get to your second question because that's what I'm fired up for. Is it okay if I just jump into this? [00:13:10] Speaker B: Go for it? [00:13:11] Speaker A: Because this people aren't going to like this, but I think we all maybe fall into. I. I know where you fall. We'll see where Jack falls on this. Is sending kids to public school a violation of. The shaman of deuteronomy six? Is sending kids to public school, the government schools a violation of this passage right here. And, Jack, I'm actually going to start with you on this one. What are your thoughts? [00:13:35] Speaker C: I think it can be. I mean, I think you're talking about here of, like, a generality of education done by somebody else in general of farming it out or however you want to look at that versus the. It's gotten really bad. Like, there was a time where it might have been. Okay, where it's not. Spoiler alert. I wrote a book on education ten years ago. Failure. It's 50% off and focuspress store right now because of this episode. So go check that out. But in that I went to look from the beginning, you got signers of the Declaration of Independence. We're saying this is because kids have to realize they don't belong to their parents, they don't belong to their families. They belong to the nation, and we need them to believe what everybody else does. We're going to have a problem. We're talking over 200 years old. These quotes are. And this was long. It was the one room schoolhouse. This is long before America secularized. This was long before transgender teachers or any of that stuff. They were saying, we're going to have a problem if everybody believes what their own parents believe. We need everybody on the same page here. And so from that point of view, if you look at this thing as inherently designed to teach kids to believe what the educators and what the government want them to believe rather than their parents, it's pretty hard to draw another conclusion. And again, you might say, well, that's. That's a bit of a leap. Go read the quotes. [00:14:51] Speaker A: I. [00:14:51] Speaker C: Go read the quotes. Benjamin Rush was one of them. You can go a little bit further down the road to Horace Mann. The guy that wasn't John Dewey. [00:15:01] Speaker B: Another one. [00:15:01] Speaker C: John Dewey. The two worst ones were Horace Mann and John Dewey. Now, Horace Mann came first in the 1840s. He's the one that brought, you know, compulsory schooling laws and essentially the system we have now. He was the godfather of it. And he said, we have to look at these kids that the parents are sending us as hostages for our cause. [00:15:20] Speaker A: That's great. [00:15:21] Speaker B: I get that. [00:15:22] Speaker C: This was almost 200 years ago. So this whole. Yeah, we're going to talk about how bad it's gotten, for sure, but this is the design of the system. So you want to bring that back? Well, to bring that back to deuteronomy six. I mean, like, if God tells you it's your job, and somebody else goes, no, no, no, you're going to give me your kids as hostages so I can teach them what I think. [00:15:42] Speaker B: I don't. [00:15:42] Speaker C: I don't see a way around that. Go ahead, Joe. Right. [00:15:45] Speaker A: There's a great book by Paul David Tripp, parenting nine principles for something. Something just parenting. It's got a wooden horse on the front. One of the things he makes, a strong case that he makes in the book is basically, your kids are not your kids. You are ambassadors. You are, you know, God has given you the kids to return back to him one day. That's the whole point, is you're just stewards of his kids. That's a really important thought in this, because where this is coming from is, well, they're my kids to kind of push them into their own things so they can have their own kids. No, no, no. Your sole goal as a parent is to take them from God. He blesses you with them and to then give them back to God one day. And if you recognize that that was your goal as a parent, is to take what is from God and give it back to God, how would that change your view? Your goal is not to get them to play in the NFL. Your goal is not to get them to be a successful architect. Your goal is not to get them to do anything, but to return back to God and hopefully to have their. Their kids and their kids and their kids and their kids turn back to God. Own. If we saw that as the goal of parenting, and we. We speak a big game. We talk a big game. Let's be honest. Nobody actually believes that, because if they did, public school would never enter their mind. The idea of sending your kids away to anybody else, I don't even care if it's a Christian. Oh, I know the teachers in my school. They're Christians. No, this is for you to return your kids back to God. That's not to say that we can't get help along the way, but the idea of taking the majority of your time and handing it over to somebody else to teach your kids, you are violating, in my opinion, deuteronomy six. Yes, I am at the point where I think you are violating what God has intended, which is I want you and I want your kids in the next generations to love me, to want me to have that relationship with me and to bow down and submit to me. We are losing generations because we're passing to other people who have no concept of what it means to submit to God. Well, duh. And the whole point of public education is, to Jack's point, the system's broken from the beginning. Somebody will always be pushing an agenda. [00:17:48] Speaker C: Go. [00:17:48] Speaker A: Well, they're pushing the agenda I want. Yeah, maybe not in the way I want. You can't shield them from the kids going down the hallway, showing them pornography, even if it's in a good setting where you know the teachers and you're on the same agenda. Great. What do you do about the kids? What do you do about the shooters that decide to come in and shoot the school? What do you do then? There are still threats that you cannot possibly mitigate as a parent, regardless of how much you check the curriculum and everything else. You are farming out what God gave to you and to you alone. So, yeah, I'm. I'm. Is sending kids a pope school violation? In my opinion? Yes, it is. [00:18:20] Speaker B: Will not much disagreement, I would say it's virtually impossible to do everything I just read in there, in deuteronomy six of. Teach them diligently because. Because it doesn't just say teach them. There isn't an adj. An adverb that is added there. Teach them diligently. This is to be a never ending task. This is to be Joe, you just, as you put it, your life's mission. This is to be exactly what you are supposed to. The number one thing you, you know, I. The number one thing you are supposed to do for your kill for your children and with your children is to return them back to God, to disciple them into the faith and, you know, teach them diligently. When you. When you're walking, when you're sitting, when you're. If you send them to public school, you just don't have time to do that. You. You simply don't. The mountain is. Is too high to climb. I've got on here, like, you just look at the simple math of it. When you've got. When you're sending them away for, again, eight to 10 hours a day of your, you know, out of the 16 non sleeping hours, you know, on average, people are sleeping 8 hours, 16 hours with your kids, they're gone for eight to ten of them. That's 50% to 65% of their day. Extrapolate that over a lifetime or not a lifetime, but I should say their schooling lifetime. So twelve years or so, how many hours are you losing with them? How many hours are you telling God that, yeah, these hours, I'm not really going to worry about doing whatever what you told me there in deuteronomy six. Disciple them, teach them diligently. I'm kind of going to let somebody else supervise them for, again, the majority of the day. That's not even to mention the. The extracurricular things, the homework, as you guys brought up. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's virtually impossible to fulfill deuteronomy six while sending your children to public school. And, man, if people who disagree with us on this made it this far in the episode, that is going to just absolutely trigger a ton of them. Um, so you're saying it's a sin. So you're saying that there's no way my child can stay faithful by sin by going to public school? My wife went to public school. She's a faithful Christian. Um, a lot of people went to public school that are faithful, that are fair, that are, uh, that are faithful christians. Right now, what we're saying, what we're arguing is you as a parent are basically giving up your responsibility to somebody else, which is wrong, first of all. But then, secondly, the obstacles that your child, if you. If you think about your child, is on a path to faithfulness from the time that they're born, if you place public school on that path with faithfulness being the end goal destination, you just gave them a ton more obstacles to get, get past. You just did. By sitting in public school, you planted, you personally as their parent planted obstacle after obstacle after obstacle in their way on their journey to faithfulness. That is where, to me, yes, there is culpability on parents for saying, yeah, I know that this is a huge risk. Yeah, I know. My kid is, again, statistically speaking, very likely to fall away, very likely to get into drugs, alcohol, sexual activity, pornography. [00:21:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I know all that. [00:21:11] Speaker B: I'm going to do it anyway. That's, there's got to be some culpability there. There's got to be some acknowledgement of, yeah, there's a bit of a violation deuteronomy six going on here. [00:21:20] Speaker C: I'm going to. [00:21:20] Speaker A: Well, are you? [00:21:21] Speaker C: Well, I'm going to say, yeah, they're, there's always going to be, there's going to be a couple exceptions, people who just literally can't. And so what are you saying about them? We're going to get to those exceptions. They're not as broad as I think some people think they are. [00:21:32] Speaker B: There are, doesn't apply to most. [00:21:34] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly it. But there are some literal ones. If you literally can't do otherwise, then, no, then that's, that's not what applies. But it's a really sad thing and that I've been around long enough to see people who made all of these arguments and no, I know what I'm doing. I'm keeping an eye on the curriculum my kids are having. And, you know, we, we have talks when they come home from school. It didn't, it's not going well. I mean, I'm seeing all the things that, and again, my book's ten years old. We've been talking about this at Focus Press from the beginning. I mean, 1015 years. And people back then were mad about it. People are still mad about it. Well, at some point we're going to do something about it. And so I told will I was going to throw a little, a little bit of a wrench into the outline bit here and I guess there's a pretty natural spot for it. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Oh, boy, here we go. [00:22:23] Speaker C: I want to, just, so you go back to the sixties, fifties and sixties. All the court decisions were handed down, separation of church and state kind of stuff. Can't have a Bible reading class, can't say prayer in schools, the ten commandments taken down from the walls, you know, just things like that started disappearing. And so if you took a parent from that who went through that and was like, well, this is fine, they can pray at home or whatever else, and then drop them into today. What would they. Would they. And you offer them the options that you don't have to send them to school. What would they say? Well, what I want to ask is, how many other things can we add to the list? Because at this point, evolution. Yeah. It's everywhere. Lgbt curriculums, pretty much everywhere. Again, as we mentioned. Well, that's not my school. All throughout the Bible belt, we talked to the kids. It's in there. Uh, school violence in your district, whether there's a shooting, there's a kid that gets beaten up. One of these things where there's a school fight and a kid ends up paralyzed. If that happened in your. In your district, would that be the point at which you go, critical race theory. Critical race theory. Your kid comes home telling him, mom, dad, we're oppressors. We're evil white people, you know, because, I mean, just the stuff that these books, the kendi and all those people teach. Okay, would that be enough? Forbidden of Bible reading whatsoever. You know, a kid brings a bible in his backpack, or he's got it on his phone, so you can't read that here. Happen with your kid. Would that be enough? Okay, homosexuals in the locker room. You know, your kid is football player. They. They all shower together while two of the kids come out as gay, transgender people in the locker room. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Your. [00:24:04] Speaker C: Your daughter's volleyball team suddenly has a boy walking around in. In there. Is that the point at which you pull them out? Generally? I want to know, because we've come so far from the fifties to where we are today, a trans teacher. Your kid walks in and one day misses Smith is Mister Smith, or Mister Smith is Misses Smith. Now, is that the point where you go, man, I don't know. That's too far. Because what I want to ask these people who push back on us is, is there an even hypothetical line that if it happened in your school, you go, okay, that's the point at which now I'm willing to draw the line. I want to know because I'm genuinely at the point where I think some people just don't have one. It's. I mean, they could have, again, drag queen story. They could have anything happen in the school. Literally anything happen in the school. And people would say, you can't say that christians should get their kids out of school. Like, how far does it have to go before we stop being the bad guys for saying this? And it's just common sense that that's kind of where I want to go. That's a convicted pedophile teacher. Because the funny thing is a lot of times with these trans teachers, it's about six months difference. [00:25:11] Speaker A: You know how many sexual scandals are coming out of the. Even women teachers sleeping with their students. We're talking sleeping with 30, 40 different students. Like this is happening consistently. [00:25:23] Speaker B: Well, you didn't even bring up the. The peer pressure and worldliness. Like the worldliness that your kid gets hit with. Like how, what about this? If you, if you were guaranteed that your kid was going to get into all the things I mentioned, drugs, alcohol and sex, would you, would you pull them out again? Most parents know there's a pretty good chance. Doesn't matter to him. [00:25:39] Speaker A: So if you think we're kid was. [00:25:40] Speaker C: Going to pornography, is that correct? [00:25:42] Speaker A: If he was going to be tempted to vape, if he was going to be tempted to. To smoke weed, if he was going to be tempted to take a sip of whatever's in the bottle, if he's going to be tempted to abuse Xanax or whatever it may be. Well, guess what? Everything that Jack just mentioned and everything we've mentioned, every single one of those is happening in the public school today. And to your point, Jack, there is no line. And reframe the discussion. Okay, so you send your kid to a tutor, an atheist tutor who's going to show them indoctrination videos all day, and he's going to be surrounded by the worst of the worst kids you could even imagine in a daycare setting. You know, this daycare, to be honest with you, your kid's not really learning a ton. It's actually pretty low on the, you know, it's not really great. The kids are hoodlums. Again, atheist, transgender teacher. Okay, if that was in a daycare setting, if that was in a, hey, drop them off at an after school activity and you knew they were going to sit there and watch indoctrination videos, would you be okay with doing it? Would you be fine? Because if it was outside of a classroom setting, every single one of those things would turn our stomach and go, absolutely not. Because we have choice, right? We have choice to say, I'm not going to that daycare. Why in the world will we do the same thing with school and go, well, my hands are tight. What am I going to do? For the majority people, the hand isn't tied. They just won't do it. [00:26:58] Speaker B: They crossed the line a long time ago, I think is Jack's point. But for most people. Yeah, I love the way you put that, Jack. The another question that I would ask, you know, and that I have asked before is give me the list of the pros for public school. Seriously, give me the list of the pros. I can give you a long list of pros for, for the, for the, for the other side, for homeschooling. I can give you that list. Give me the list. The pros list for public school. Let me tell you what people are going to say. First of all, they're going to say, they're going to give the, the socialization pro. Ridiculous on his face. We'll get to it later. Well, they're going to be socialized really well, that's ridiculous. The next thing that they're going to say is, man, they get a really good chance to play sports. Think about what you think about that. Think about saying that out loud in light of everything that we just said comes along with the public school. Think about saying that out loud, like, well, they get to, they. You're going to get to play and be really good at sports in light of everything we said about what your number one job is as a parent. Well, you know, my wife will get to work, and so we'll get to make a little bit more money. Again, say that one out loud, like, what are the pros? It's free. Babysitting is the pros. And here's the other thing that I'm going to say here for what are the pros to public school? I do sit. I do see a little bit specifically, obviously, with the parents that were public school themselves. It's almost as if they want to kind of live vicariously through their children through the public school. Like, they were really popular in public school and they had a really good public school experience. And maybe that was the, the glory days for them. They were the star of the team, or they were really big into theater. They made really good grades, made honors or to debate club, whatever. And so they, they want their child to be cool as well, and they want their child to be popular and to fit in and to, to be the star football player again, to be the star in the theater, be the best person, the debate club. And so, you know, they don't, they, they almost want to live vicariously through their children in the public school. I see a lot of that that's a little bit tough to grasp, a little bit not very tangible. I see a lot of that. I think that that is, once again, Pete, nobody would probably ever say that. I think in people's mind, that's also a pro for public school as well is that again, they get to live vicariously through their kids popularity, through them being a star player or whatever. Go ahead. [00:29:04] Speaker A: And they don't want to deprive their kids from quintessential kid experiences. This is where we get prom. This is where we get homecoming. This is where we get a lot of those things is I don't want to deprive my kid of the experiences. And, yeah, there's some bad experiences. I got bullied a little bit in school, but that may be tough. You know, that may be a little bit tougher. Like, no, this again, we're completely removed from where we were 30, 40 years ago, 20 years ago when you were in school. It's so much worse now. It's cyberbullying. We don't even think about that. The tech addiction, the screen addiction that develops. But think about cyberbullying. There's a time where you'd get away from your bully at school. You never get away from them. They find you on Snapchat, they find you on TikTok, they find you wherever you are, and they bully you mercilessly. And we're not talking about sexting. Sexting is way up with kids in the public school. And once that gets passed around, their lives are ruined. Suicide rates are way up. I mean, it is as bad as you a picture as you could possibly paint about the post. There's not one good thing. [00:29:59] Speaker B: I want to challenge people who's listening and to Jack's point as well, again, and if you've made it this far and you still vehemently disagree with us, I would like to know what is your biggest pro for the public school? Just like Jack's asking, what's the line that it would take for you? I do truly want to know what is the biggest item on the number one item on the pros for public school? Because I truly, again, free babysitting is about all I can come up with. You get to. You get to have two people that work more income, convenience. Yeah. So again, I want to challenge anybody who's listening to come up with that. [00:30:28] Speaker C: I want to step outside of this for a minute, because I know something that we can do is we're in a mindset where, like, this, to us, is just so plain as day. But for other people like you, just sending kids to school is what you do like, it's not something you question. It's not. And thankfully, again, the growing numbers of homeschool and private school is making that to where people do have to consider it. Is this something we want to do? But for a lot of people it's, it's not even a consideration. It's just something that you do. And I think John Taylor Gato had the best quote on this and he's got really good stuff on education and the design of it. And that Horace man, John Dewey we brought up earlier, he's got great stuff on them. But he just said this idea of sending your child to a stranger who might not hold any values that you hold and saying, yeah, please work on my child's brain for 8 hours a day. He said, if you just introduce that to people and they never heard it before, they would think you're outside your mind. And so again, like we're coming from this of thinking about it that way, but if somebody hasn't, you've got to frame it that way. You've got a frame of I'm going to let somebody, I don't know who might believe the exact opposite of what I believe. And, and we've got this myth of neutrality thing of, well, we'll do church stuff separately. We'll do Devos at home. That's, you know, I mentioned earlier people that I've known that, well, we do Bible time at home, you know, and so we don't need them to be taught that in school. I'm sorry. Christ is lord of all of life. Christ is lord over the math student that you are. Christ is lord over the english student you are. And the literature, the takeaways that you have. Science, I mean, obviously is one of the most clear ones with the evolution and design and humanity and the purpose that we're here is found in those things. And so we just bought into this neutrality thing. And it's the same thing with tolerance, with, you know, sexual depravity in the culture. Just tolerate, tolerate, tolerate. You know, like just neutrality. Neutrality. That was a trick. We fell for it there. They didn't want neutrality. They wanted us to sit down for a minute so they could get the upper hand. And they did. And so parents who think, well, we don't need religion in schools, you've got religion in schools. It's full of religion, just not the one that you hold. And they're teaching your kid the opposite. [00:32:32] Speaker B: I want to, I want to add another kind of analogy to tie into what you just said there about sending your kid to a stranger. Go back to deuteronomy. God commands that teach children diligently. And the Israelites say, you know what? What we're going to do is we're actually going to send our children for 10 hours a day to the Canaanites. We're going to send them to Jericho and, you know, for 10 hours a day and let them teach them, you know, a lot of stuff about life, about education, about living. We're going to send them to AI, we're going to send them to the Moabites. We're going to send them to, are you kidding me? They'd be out of their mind. [00:33:02] Speaker A: But don't worry, we'll talk about God when they get home. Right? [00:33:05] Speaker B: Right. We'll debrief when they get home. [00:33:07] Speaker A: God, they promise they're not going to. [00:33:08] Speaker C: Have like a bail sacrifice at school. I mean, so it's probably fine we do that. [00:33:12] Speaker B: Right? That, that to me is exactly what we're, what we're talking about here. God gives them a strict command. Teach your children. Don't let them forget what we do in Christianity today in first century Christianized America today is we're the Israelites sending their kids to the Canaanites. We're the Israelites sending their kids to Jericho for their education. I love Vody Baucom's quote. You know, you can't continue to send your children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans. And yet again, we're just utterly shocked. I just, man, my kid's not faithful. I don't know what I did. [00:33:46] Speaker C: Hmm. [00:33:46] Speaker B: Let me think about it for a second. And again, this is where the, the passion is coming out because it's so, it's such common sense for us. I'm going to let one of you guys just rapid fire the numerous problems in public school because we've hit on all of them. But I want to give everybody kind of a nice, succinct list. Joe, if you want to take that, just, yeah, I could have put three or four more on there. These are kind of the five that I thought were most, most important to bring up. Go for it. [00:34:08] Speaker A: First, poor education. We rank very low in the world. Actually, we're not even close to the top five, even though we are very much the top five in spending per student. So we need to spend more when you spend more. No, you don't. We spend about 15, $16,000 per kid per year. It's an absorbent, ridiculous amount, exorbitant amount. Poor education. We just don't have. It's not good if you think you're getting a good education. [00:34:30] Speaker C: Well, I want to, I want to go to the finance thing real quick. You can say that much is given, you know, per kid. But then there's always, well, teachers are paid so little, and all that we can. All that money just ends up going to create more bureaucratic jobs, administration bloat and all that, which tells you, again, this is a system in which people are enriching themselves. It's not about the kids. That in itself, how much we spend and how little we get out of it, tells you this is not about the kids. It's about people found a way to get rich off of it. And you might say, I'm a teacher. I'm not getting rid of it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this system that even if we passed a billion more dollars, it wouldn't go to making the kids learn better. [00:35:05] Speaker B: It's just. [00:35:06] Speaker C: That's not the point. [00:35:08] Speaker A: I think it's. They get $81 billion. Is it 81 billion per year in funding? I was just reading the statistics. It's a lot of money, and unfortunately, the teachers aren't getting paid that much. I got a buddy who's a teacher. When you get into administration, they got an administrator who never talks to anybody who makes $250,000 a year, and teachers who make peanuts. The whole system is broken just from that point of view. So even if you wanted to say, you know, that system that's broken, the education stinks. [00:35:34] Speaker C: Which my point is, it's just. It's not about the kids. It's not right. [00:35:37] Speaker A: It's bureaucratic. The second is the feeding of screen addiction and the subsequent decline of critical thinking. I think those actually could be broken up. But the screen addiction, they now have iPads. They now have chromebooks. They now have things that they're handing. [00:35:50] Speaker B: Kids, that their eyes are in front of a screen all day. [00:35:53] Speaker A: All day. Like, that's really, really detrimental. We know. I mean, our jobs are tech jobs. Will. Yours isn't as much. Jack to not. Jack and I, if we're not looking at a screen, basically, we're not working. Um. It's really, really bad. You've got to get away from it. Well, kids get sucked into this so easy. They're getting addicted, but they also are lacking critical thinking skills. They don't know why they can't think their way out of a wet paper bag in a lot of situations. And that. I know that sounds really, really mean, but we are looking at it as it stands. Like, go talk to the average young kid and ask them a critical thinking question and see how it goes. Third, the government controlled curriculum. Well, not at my school. Yes, at your school. Federal mandates have these things passed down, even state mandates. Even in the most conservative states, there's. [00:36:32] Speaker B: A schools are going to teach what they're told to teach, correct? [00:36:35] Speaker A: Correct. Because they have to. Fourth is the significantly ramped up LGBTQ movement. Just again, go on libs of TikTok on Twitter. We're not on TikTok, but if you are on tick tock, look up. I'm assuming since it's libs of TikTok, they're on TikTok, but yeah, look that up. It is unbelievable how much the LGBTQ, especially trans. We're seeing a lot of trans. One in six, just about Gen Z are now identifying as LGBTQ one in six. And that number is rising. There's some people that have it as one at four. One in 425 percent. So that's your kids classmates? Yeah. Where do you think they're getting that from? Where do you think they're getting that from? From Nickelodeon? No, uh, they're getting it from the public schools. Will, anything else before we wrap on. [00:37:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just going to say I don't get on x a ton, but when I do, I follow loads of tick tock. And, man, it seems like every other day they're posting a picture of a public school classroom where the teacher has decorated all about pride, all about transgenderism, all about, you know, CRT or whatever it is. I mean, again, this is not just, man, once a. Once a month or so, they'll post a picture of a public school teacher. No, there's like every other day that they're posting this stuff where teachers are literally evangelizing to these kids. Like, they view it as their personal mission to make sure all of these kids at least approve of it or turn into, you know, avid supporters of this. [00:37:50] Speaker A: It's a religion. It's a religion. And they are pushing their religion. They are evangelists for their religion. The last of the numerous problems, again, with public school is the peer pressure and the negative worldly influence. Okay, let's say, you know, every teacher. Teachers are great, okay? You know the curriculum. You are down the line. You've seen the curriculum. You approve of everything. Do you walk through the halls with your son, with your daughter and get to see the things that they see? We got him in a good school. We got him in this. We got him in that. You have no concept of how bad peer pressure is these days, especially with all the screens. You have no idea how bad the negative influence has gotten. You got past a joint one time or whatever, and, you know, in gym class, and you think that's the same as what these kids are having to deal with day in and day out again, with the online bullying, with the. The peer pressure of everything that goes on nowadays and the peer pressure to become trans, the peer pressure to become whatever it may be, or to at least affirm their trans classmates, since there's probably, statistically speaking, five or six classmates in every class that now identify as that. So now they're being pushed, and not from their other kids, from the teachers themselves, to affirm this, to say, you know, to change the pronouns, to change their names. You can't call them by that. That's a hate crime. Now they're getting coerced by the schools to go along with this madness. The kid is being pressured, and they have to stand up to their friends. They got to stand up to their enemies. They got to stand up to the school teachers, to the school board administrators, everybody, just to not call the kid by his preferred pronouns. You didn't have to deal with that when you were in school. If you are a parent listening to this, talk to your kid and see what their lived experiences, see if they've had to deal with any of these things. Evan? [00:39:27] Speaker B: Well, I would say just to real quick go back to the peer pressure and the negative worldly influence. You think about all the sexual stuff that goes on in schools. You think about the. Like you said, joe, what kids are passing in the hallway, what they're seeing, because just think about the logic of putting hundreds of hormone fueled teenagers together in a relatively unsupervised environment for 8 hours a day, five days a week. Like, just think about that for just a second, and you're going to tell me, yeah, no, I think things are mostly fine. Even if your kid's not the one doing it, you don't think he's. He or she is around it is seeing it and kind of maybe thinks it's normal. It's just kind of what kids do. Hormone fueled teenagers again, hundreds of them together in the same place for. For 8 hours a day, five days a week. They're going to see that stuff, they're going to observe that stuff. That's going to. To have an impact on them. You wouldn't let. You wouldn't hopefully let them watch it on tv or whatever it is happens every day. And so, you know, that would be all I would say on that is, like you said, you know, you can have everything else nailed down. Nobody transit. [00:40:28] Speaker A: You're. [00:40:28] Speaker B: You know, teaching your kids, you know, the curriculum, whatever. [00:40:31] Speaker C: You. [00:40:31] Speaker B: You can't have much monitoring over who they're hanging out with, what they're doing, when they're hanging out with those people, what they're seeing, all those things. And that, to me, has always been, for me personally, the biggest reason why I would never in a million years send my child to public school is simply because I don't know what they're, what they're doing with what they're doing with who, who they're, you know, learning from all those things. [00:40:53] Speaker A: You shelter your kids too much. You shelter. [00:40:55] Speaker C: Let's save that one for a minute. Let's save that for a minute, because I think that's coming. But so with the peer pressure thing, and again, though, our town, it's different where we are. Where I'm in a textbook, one of those. It's a town of 15,000 in Tennessee, right in the buckle of the Bible belt. I was in a town of 25,000 in Texas. That's my experience, so I don't want to hear about it. You know, oh, that's Oregon, that's Montana, or that's Massachusetts or any of that. It's right where you say the good schools are. There was a Facebook group post in Texas about, hey, they asked my fourth grader for his pronouns, and I think that's kind of weird. And the guy said, I'm not trying to be judgmental, but does that seem like a little young to do that? I tell you, the comments were 90% to ten, probably 95 to five. Honestly, I remember one guy getting in there, commenting back at people to help this guy out, saying, yeah, no, that's. They don't need to be asking kids pronouns at all, much less fourth graders. And. And so this was, again, this town. This is the parents of the people you're sending your kids to school with here in Tennessee. Same thing somebody posted about the high school is having their kids read a heavily sexual book and said, I. I don't think this should be required reading. In fact, I think the parents should be informed first that this is what's in there. My kid told me what they're having to read again. Probably a little more balanced, more like 90, ten this time, because it was not just one person, there was two or three, but almost overwhelmingly, oh, you judge mental christians. Their kids grow up, they're going to see stuff. They need to. They need to get around to it at some point. So why do you have a problem and you shouldn't be telling everybody else? What the books in our school are, these are the parents. So this is the second generation at least of people who don't share your values at all and their kids are surrounding your kid in school and your kids having to bear up against that. I mean, the Bible talks about righteous lot in Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham does the 50 40 30 2010, you know, the only guy left his lot and how hard it was. It tormented his soul to be the last man standing. You're going to send your, your twelve year old to that? Yep. [00:43:03] Speaker B: Man, that's perfectly put. [00:43:05] Speaker A: Again, if you have, if you're at this point, we want to transition where it's a little more on the helpful end. Yes. We're taking a baseball bat to it. I think we really should kind of, I don't know how we're going to do this, how we're going to push this one. I would love to push this to like if your kids in the public school listen to the end of it, we really want like actual debate on this. [00:43:24] Speaker B: If there is any way, listen to the beginning too. But yeah, most of what we run. [00:43:28] Speaker A: Into with any of the debate is you just don't understand how hard it is. Whatever else. We'll get to kind of the homeschool myths here. Before we get to that, though, what is your thought? What are your thoughts, fellas, on private schools? What do you think about christian schools? What do you think about private schools? Because as an alternative to this, because there's a lot of parents that go, okay, I don't have the ability to homeschool, but, you know, maybe they would look into private or christian schools. What are your thoughts on those? [00:43:57] Speaker B: So I'll go first, Jack, and then I'll let you. I'll go be brief and then you can go. My, um, I have several thoughts. First of all, I think that if you had to choose between the two, obviously I think private school is, is much better than public school. I think that's pretty obvious. But my other take on it is I don't think most people, I don't think that's a choice that most people have to make because if you have the resources to private school, guess what? You probably also have the resources for homeschooling. Like private school is typically rather on this, rather on the expensive and far more expensive than homeschooling. And so again, what would be the argument for private school over homeschool if money is obviously not the issue? And I know some people might teach at the school so they get a discount or whatever it is. I get that. But I would say again, if you have to make the choice, private school is better, but I think, I don't think most people have to make that choice. I think it's simply because think about all the things that we just covered that you still, you're still going to have to deal with. You're still going to have to deal with the peer pressure, the negative worldly influence. You're still going to have to deal with, you know, kind of the, all the teenagers being together, like, there, there are still a lot of things, again, it's, granted, it's not as bad as what you'd have to do with a public school, but I still think, again, you're still giving up, giving them up for eight to 10 hours a day. You're still kind of giving that your responsibility to disciple them away to somebody else that doesn't go away with private school. That's almost exactly the same as it would be with public school. And so, yeah, again, to use my analogy of the obstacle, if you're for your child's journey to faithfulness, the obstacles that are placed in front of them for private school, sure. That they're less than they are for public school, they're still a whole lot more than they would be if you chose to homeschool them. And again, if you have the money to pay to send them to private school, then you probably also have the money for maybe a little bit less income, but then also to spend the money to homeschool. That's just, that would be the way that I would answer that. Jack, how about you? I said I'd be brief. I apologize. That was not brief. What would you say, Jack? [00:45:49] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's case by case, I actually knew had friends growing up that went to private school, and homeschooling wasn't an option because it was a single parent situation. And so, you know, work, he couldn't, the dad couldn't homeschool him, but the private school and they later on went to public school. It was night and day. I mean, just like what they were hit with when they got out of that private school and just were not ready for the worldliness that they ended up going through. And so, yeah, I certainly think private is preferable in that sense. And so, in any case, I still think you really need to know your teachers. You know, just, oh, it's a private christian school, and so I'm sure they're good. The, the more hands on you can be. And that's one of the advantages of a private school. A lot of times it's smaller and so you can be more involved, more hands on with what's going on. If that's the option, you have to go with again in depending on what the situation is. But, yeah, that's about all I had to say. [00:46:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I still don't like the idea of somebody else teach my kids. To your point. Well, uh, little what you were saying, like, I still think it's my, my responsibility. I still don't want to hand that to somebody else. I don't care if I agree. I, to be honest with you, and as much as I love you guys, I wouldn't send my kids to you guys to, to homeschool my kids, like, unless it was dire circumstances type of thing, because I want control over that. Even though I know we agree on those things, they're still my kids. I still have to be responsible and answer to God for them one day. [00:47:09] Speaker B: So if those kids will not be enrolling in the think deeper private school. [00:47:13] Speaker A: Probably not. Probably not. But yeah. Well, okay. [00:47:16] Speaker C: This side quick spin off question. Should churches be starting private schools, homeschool, hybrid private schools to help families with this? [00:47:27] Speaker A: But see, I actually would, and that's the second part of my comment is to the best of your ability, I think you should homeschool if that's possibility. But let's be honest, there's a lot of people that can't. To your point, there's a lot of single. [00:47:41] Speaker B: I wouldn't say there's. Okay. [00:47:42] Speaker A: Not a lot. Not a lot. [00:47:44] Speaker C: Not as many as claim. [00:47:46] Speaker A: Not as many as claimed. But there are people out there that. Yes. The single parent household strapped, whatever it may be, strapped for cash. Yeah. I would say that is the best option of having your church because at all possible start another school or whatever else to help the kids. Yeah, I would say that's a very nice thing to help the kids. I still wouldn't say it's ideal, but it's better than, certainly better than public school. [00:48:13] Speaker B: I would agree, because I think step one would be let's get him out of the public school. That's step one. And I think what you just described, Jack with the church is helping with that. Some kind of private homeschool hybrid, whatever it is, would accomplish step one. And so again, better than nothing. Not the ideal. I want to come back around to in just a second. What kind of. Joe, I mean to correct you, but the whole, like, I feel like when we say, well, not everybody can homeschool the people that want to excuse themselves from homeschooling always group themselves in. Yeah, that's us. [00:48:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. [00:48:40] Speaker B: I'm one of those people that can't. I don't think so. And so I want to come back around to that, but let's get to these, because we don't have a lot of time left. [00:48:47] Speaker C: Well, on the. Just briefly on the church is doing it. How much do we spend on lectureships? What if we took that money and put it in, like, bang for your buck? If we educated our own kids in the, in the faith, you know, and provided some kind of localized education? Just think on that for a little bit. Not, not you guys, but anybody else out there. Let's. Let's stop throwing it down the garbage and. And actually get something out of this. [00:49:10] Speaker A: We have preachers making six figures because they're everybody else's spirituality. I know we're, you know, just get on a, on a soapbox here. [00:49:16] Speaker C: I didn't want to go too far down this rabbit hole. I just want to throw that idea out there. But I'm not disagreeing with you. [00:49:20] Speaker A: But, but you look at church budgets. I do think to your point, there are some bigger churches that absolutely would have it in their budgets, and probably some teachers that go to that school or go to that church that could be part of that school. That could very much help. I mean, once you get into the big congregations, like, okay, how about we take you away from this? We've got hundreds of thousands of dollars going into all sorts of programs. Let's cut down half of those and take that money and put it toward that. Yeah, I'm all for it. And even if it was a small congregation, see, if you have a mom, an older woman who maybe is, as I think of my mom, I mean, she's taught a bunch of, could she step in and help and be, provide her spiritual service, so to speak, by helping the ten kids at church and maybe doing some tutoring, things like that in a homeschool type setting? Yeah, I think that's very possible. So things are doable, but churches and elders need to. [00:50:08] Speaker C: I didn't. I. Sorry, I cut in with that. I didn't want it to turn into a five year old. [00:50:15] Speaker B: No, no, you're good. So let's get into the myths. When people say, well, I came homeschool because of XYZ, we kind of already covered the first one where they say, well, you know what? Our schools aren't really that bad. Hopefully we've made the point very clear. Yes, they are they are that bad, even if you don't want to admit it. And so, again, doesn't matter really, where you are. They are that bad. I love Jet. And again, I would, I would refer you back to Jack's point of, like, what, what line is it that if they cross it, you'll pull them out? Ask yourself that. So let's move on to the next one. Socialization. Man, I really. I just really want my kids socialize. You know, homeschool kids. [00:50:44] Speaker C: They're, they're pretty weird. [00:50:46] Speaker B: Uh, they're pretty awkward. And they just. I don't know that I really want that for my kid. I would just much rather my kid be, be socialized and, you know, be socially acceptable. And that's just so much better accomplished with public school guys. What are your, you know, with that being a reason that people throw out there for not homeschooling, what would your response be? We'll start with, uh. We'll start with Jack. [00:51:06] Speaker C: The people who disagree with us would probably listen to this and say, yeah, this is proof. Homeschool kids aren't very well spoken, so who knows? But, uh, no, I think it's. Brad had people come into the coffee shop a month ago, literally acting like cats, licking their paws, licking each other kind of thing. I'm okay with my kids mission out, missing out on that socialism, their socialization. I'm. I'm good with them not being socialized around insane people with, I mean, mental health diagnoses as long as your left arm. I mean, like, it's not good out there. And you can get your kids around adults. You can get around a wide range of ages. It's okay. I mean, this, this is one of those things that was like a trope in the eighties when homeschooling was first coming on the scene. We've got enough data now to really not worry about it. You're going to find weird kids everywhere. You're going to find high functioning kids everywhere. [00:51:57] Speaker B: Of all the excuses out there, this is probably the most ridiculous. Go ahead, Joe. [00:52:00] Speaker A: Spend five minutes in a room with the average public schooler. You will be saying this. Come on. I mean, most public school kids, we think, name another time in life where they will be surrounded by 30 of their same peer group, other than maybe college, right? Which is also disaster. But 30 of their own peer group, that is, you know, basically messing around the entire time. That doesn't happen in any other aspect of life. When they get out there working with the young, they're working with the old, and the church. It's young, old, everybody of differing. Like, this is so tailor made for really a disaster. Like, why would we think that's socializing to be around 30 other kids your age or 29 other kids your age, whatever it is, that's big class. But that's just stupid. I don't know. I don't put much of this one. [00:52:46] Speaker B: I would also say I would so much rather my child be the most socially awkward creature on the planet, but still have a better chance at going to heaven than for them to be the most socially well adjusted kid on the planet, but have a less likely chance of going to heaven. And I phrase it that way because, obviously, just because your home school does not guarantee you go to heaven, it's just because your public school does not guarantee. Guarantee that you won't. But the way I continue to structure, the way I continue to lay it out, your obstacles are greater if you choose to go to public school. And so, yeah, I would rather my kid be incredibly socially awkward, but have a higher likelihood of going to heaven than very well adjusted socially and have a lower likelihood. So that's all I'll say on that one. Um, let's get in the next one. [00:53:27] Speaker C: Can't afford it. You start. This one will. [00:53:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:53:30] Speaker B: So the we just can't afford it side, uh, this is probably, I would say, the. The most commonly thrown out there. Well, you know, we just man homes when we just really can't afford it. And there's two elements of that. First of all being because the. The wife would most likely have to stay home. We live in a society where usually it's. It's your dual income. Husband and wife are both working, so the wife will have to come home, so you'll lose some income there. But then also, people will talk about the money that it takes to homeschool, because, you know, you gotta buy your curriculum, gotta, you know, maybe buy various things, supplies and things like that. And so, man, it's just, it'd be too expensive to homeschool. There's two sides of this that I. That I kind of want to hit the first side, and this is where I'm going to turn it over to Joe because he had a lot of good thoughts that we were kind of talking about off air that I don't want to necessarily take from him because he, again, had some good thoughts. But this is where I would like to kind of call out the. The dads, the fathers, the husbands that are listening to this, because I think this excuse offered up on the male side of things is a pretty, pretty weak and ridiculous one, because I think a lot of men kind of like having, you know, it's nice having that extra income. You know, you're, you're, you're disincentivized to homeschool because your, your wife is going to have to come home. You may, you're really. Maybe you're going to have to work a little harder. Maybe this is something that you're just, man. It's just, man. I would just so much rather it be very convenient and comfortable. My wife can work her $40,000 a year job. I'll work my $90,000 a year job, will have a very nice lifestyle. My kids can go to public school. I blame the dads in a lot of instances, because that is, they're going to be the ones that make that decision, and typically, they're the ones giving the okay for, you know, this excuse to be thrown out there. Well, I really don't think we can afford it, so we're just not going to, um. Joe, what, what thoughts would you have to add to this excuse? [00:55:16] Speaker A: Well, you throw out the 90, 40. You know, he's making 90. There's a lot of times the dad's making 30, 35. Man, he feels like he's doing good work. He's valued his job. He likes his role. But, you know, we just can't afford the kids at 40 a year. So my wife has to work. No, no, you go find another job and you do whatever it takes. And if that's not the case, you move across the country. So you can afford at $40,000 a year. There needs to be an internal part. This is where, you know, our hobby horse is masculinity and femininity. Right. And getting those right for a reason, because this matters. This is where these two things come together and meet. A man needs to provide for his family, and no, I'm going to step up. And I don't need to split the bills with my wife, quote unquote, you know, my wife is going to. Well, she just kind of helps get us over the top. We're close. I would claw my way through anything. I would. I would take on five jobs and work 50 hours a day if I had to, to make sure my kids were home with their mother, learning things that they were supposed to learn. Right. Growing up in the nurture and admonition of the word of the Lord, that takes sacrifice. That takes maybe working insanely hard. That takes maybe moving across the country to somewhere cheaper. That takes a man stepping up saying, I love this job. I feel fulfilled in this job, but I don't make enough where my wife gets to stay home. If we really believed in wives staying home, being keepers at home, which is biblical, then we would see that this opens the door to so much more. But there's so many guys look at and go. Takes a little bit of that pressure off my plate to know we got her income coming in. Step up, do what you can. Showing them. I'm doing a. Never mind. For those that are listening, it's not going to make much sense. But for the video podcast, I hate Zoom, but I'm telling you, we as men need to step up and recognize having our wives work outside the home is one of the most detrimental things that could have happened. Women going back in the workforce, one of the most detrimental things that could have happened. It hurt the home, it hurt the vibrancy of the home, it hurt the, you know, just the life force of a house, of the home, of her creating this experience and being a keeper at home. We talked about in the last episode, that's where this one kind of comes together, is a man needs to step up and make sure that his life. [00:57:25] Speaker B: Does not have to work and do whatever it takes. Jack, I don't know if you have any thoughts on this one or if you want to get in the next one, but I've always loved Joe making that point, the do whatever it takes thing. If you've got to move and live in the middle of Nebraska, if you've got to go pick up two, three, four, and five and six side jobs, side hustles to make sure that it happens, you do it. Because again, what that your child's path to faithfulness, I'll say it over and over again, remove the obstacles, do what you can. And as far as the, the spending on the curriculum, I don't have exact numbers on how much it costs to homeschool. I know it's less than private school. And even if it was, say, $5,000 a year, which is all on the high end, from what I know, for most curriculums for homeschooling, it's 90. That's $96 a week. Can you figure out a way to save on groceries or eating out for $96 a week? I think most people probably can. And so that would be the other thing that I would say for this excuse of that we just can't afford it. Whatever it takes. If you never eat out at all, if you never go eat chick fil a ever again. Can you do it? I think most people probably can, Jack. [00:58:23] Speaker C: Well, this isn't just briefly on this. This isn't a, this doesn't apply to everybody, but it applies to a lot of people. People are saying, oh, we couldn't do that. Youth travel, sports are tens of thousands of dollars a year thing these days, and people just do it without a second thought. You know, sign them up for camp, sign them up for tournament team, sign up for training, you know, stuff like that. Like, you find a way to do what matters to you. [00:58:45] Speaker B: And I was just going to say, you know, we talked about when I cut in front of Joe earlier about not everybody can homeschool. I think single parents, that's probably pretty, pretty big instance of maybe you can't. Other than that, I'm going to be honest, guys, I'm having a hard time coming up with, with other people who, who cannot. Like, honestly, if you've got two able bodied husband, husband and wife, able bodied adults, I think you can homeschool almost 100% of the time. So that would just, it takes the. [00:59:11] Speaker C: Belief, it takes the belief that this is what hangs in the balance. If, you know, with this, of, not that this is the silver bullet that's going to get my kids into heaven, but, man, my odds are so much better if I'm the one teaching them how to think versus somebody else. [00:59:24] Speaker A: And so speaking of belief, real fast, it does take faith to say God will come through for me. I wanted, I want my kids, and I've seen amazing things happen in lives of homeschoolers who take the leap. The woman quits, um, you know, quits your job. It does take faith in God to say, I believe we're doing what he was, you know, what his will is in our life, and we have trust that it will come through. I'm going to work my hardest and amazing things happen. So, yes, there is a faith element to this. [00:59:48] Speaker C: Yep. [00:59:49] Speaker A: Sorry. Go for it. [00:59:50] Speaker C: We've got a few more on the list here. Um, yeah, of, well, I don't get along with my kids. I'd kill my kids. Bad, bad excuse. That's, that proves you need to spend more time with them, both mom and dad. Um, uh, sports. That's really, again, not a thing that's a hindrance anymore. A lot of states have laws that let kids do it, and even if they don't, it's not worth it. Your kids not, not gonna be Tom Brady. 99. 99. 99.999,999%. Sure. Feeling incompetent, though. That is a real one. You know, I'm not smart enough to do it, so why don't somebody get us into that one? [01:00:24] Speaker A: Sure. So, first off, there's a lot of different resources out there. YouTube videos. Khan Academy. Ron Paul has his own curriculum. There's a lot of curriculums that, you know, to speak to that end of. You don't have to do it all. You don't have to have a PhD to teach your kids because I can guarantee you, the people, the. The transgender teachers that are in the public school probably aren't coming with a PhD and probably aren't coming from, you know, a ton of brain power up top. That sounds really, really mean to say, but if we think that that is, and there's statistics to prove this. So, yes, I may sound like a jerk, but there's this proof you like across the board, IQ wise. I wouldn't worry about the IQ. It's about am I prepared? Can I do it? Am I smart enough to be able to teach my kid K through twelve? There's help along the way. You don't have to come up with all the curriculum. You don't have to do everything. There are books to help. There are videos to help. There are tutors to help. There are, you know, people that you can contact and say, what's the best for this or that. It takes curiosity and it takes ingenuity to say, how are we going to get it done? I know that maybe I. I don't know calculus, but I know that if I get this tutor, you know, if possible, my kid hits that age or if I can talk to so and so who is at church that's really good at calculus and I get them this book, I think my kid can learn calculus or if I can let him watch some videos to learn this. It doesn't all fall on your shoulders. And you don't have to know everything from a to z. It's the same thing in, you don't have to be a PhD in the Bible to teach your kid Bible. It's not about being smart enough. It's about you having a heart for this saying, I want you to learn how to learn. I want you to know how to learn and to love learning. And I think if you instill that in your kids and critical thinking, which a lot of parents they do have, they don't think they're smart enough on the other end, but they have critical thinking, man, your kid is already way ahead of the field if he has those things mastered. So that's what I'd say. [01:02:08] Speaker C: Evan, again, we're not starting fresh here. We've got 30 years of data. It works out. I mean, there. There's been a lot of people who were not, you know, the. The highest end of the IQ curve or anything like that that wrote, you know, raised up kids. And just, again, by and large, homeschoolers are higher achieving just because of one on one teacher ratio or one on four, eight kids. If you have a teacher ratio is better than one on 20, things like that. So it works out. We had one other. Real quickly. You're sheltering your kids. Somebody tackle that one before we get to our final here. [01:02:42] Speaker B: Jack. Throwing it on us. Not wanting to go first on these. No. So that's. That's one that I know my parents faced a good bit of me. Don't you. Don't you think you're sheltering your kids too much? Again, I would go back to basically exactly the same thing that. That we said for the socialization point. Like, yep, I am perfectly fine for you to call me a helicopter parent, for you to tell me that I'm sheltering my kid if it means they're not getting books read to them by drag queens, if it means that they're not getting pornography passed to them on cell phones, if it means that they're not scrolling tick tock for hours a day while I can't monitor them at public school. I'm totally fine with them being sheltered if it means I'm not watching. Not letting them watch two kids make out against lockers in the high school hallway. Like, I'm fine with that label. I'm fine with that. That shelter, that socialization or that sheltering label, that helicopter parent label. Because again, at the end of the day, I do think there is a tough balance that has to be struck with homeschooling of how much do you expose? Because you don't want to just release them into the world and, all right, go now, go to college, and now go do this when you haven't exposed them to anything yet. So that's a different discussion for another day. But as far as the. You shelter your kids too much thing, I tend to lean more on the side of sheltering than, let's just expose them to everything. And I think there's. There's, you know, reason. Very reasonable biblical backing for that. Again, the Israelites were to teach their children about how to love and serve God. I think if we do the same, the sheltering versus exposure discussion kind of works itself out. But we have to start with. With that as the foundation of loving and, and serving God with everything that we have. The rest will work itself out. [01:04:20] Speaker A: Joe, homeschooling lets you do it on your timeline when you are ready. I want my kids to know about these things. Absolutely. But I don't want them knowing about it at four, at six, at ten years old. You know, it's the same concept of I don't want my kid to be to know calculus at four, like when he's ready, all in good time. I don't need to expose him to those things yet. Well, it works with morality. It works with all these things. So it just gives you so much more control in homeschooling of, like, it's not about sheltering your kid friendly. It's about doing it on your timeline and in your way, where instead of getting it seen from a positive perspective, you get to really pull back the curtain and go, this is what's actually going on and this is what the Bible has to say about it. Yes. If that's me sheltering my kid, ten out of ten every time, I will do that. Thank you. [01:05:04] Speaker C: Yeah. My little girl is almost six. I do not, I'm so thankful she's not in a situation where she's going to ask me, daddy, you know, so and so wants to be called she now. And what are pronouns all about? You know, why, why do we get to pick our pronouns? But she's going to find that out eventually. We're going to have that conversation eventually. She's going to know how to answer that. And she, she's being taught what a boy is and what a girl is. She doesn't need confusion thrown into that. And so, yeah, of course, you know, she's going to come to it, as Joe's saying, all in good time. And I need to be the one to decide that timeline because that's why they're trying to get to them at five and six years old. [01:05:39] Speaker B: As far as closing comments go, because we've gone long on this one. Again, we come from a place of passion. We've come from a place of, you can tell, we've had the discussions, we've heard the excuses. We've, we've, you know, seen the problems with public school as we kind of close here. This is just something that, you know, I don't have a nice tidy, you know, way to wrap this episode up with a bow on it because I think we've laid the case out pretty clearly I think we've laid the case out pretty clearly of just how truly awful the public school system is how they don't. There, again, I don't think there are any pros that would lead you to think that that's a better option while at the same time essentially laying out how the, the problems with public school far outweigh the potential obstacles you might face with homeschooling the, the, again, maybe the affordability of it or the, you know, the socialization side of all these things. And so I would just, once again, as we started the episode with, I would implore all of our listeners who, if you're still listening and you're, you know, not agreeing on the fence, maybe appeal to the common sense side of your brain, what is going to give your child a higher likelihood of staying faithful? What is going to give, what is going to give you as a parent, the better, a better chance at carrying out, again your deuteronomy six duty. The answer is not found in public school. The answer is not found in sending them away for 10 hours a day in public school. Government filled curriculum, all the things we said. The answer is founded you doing whatever it takes, whatever you can do to make sure that you are teaching your children diligently. When you rise, when you're sitting, when you're walking, when you're late, when you're, when you lay down, don't give up your God given responsibility as a parent to let somebody else take your child for 10 hours a day. Fill them, fill their mind with whatever they want to fill it with. Don't do it. Just don't do it again. I can't lay the case out any more than we already have. Appeal to the common sense side of your brain. Don't. Don't be the person who's, who continues to turn the oven on, leave it on, and then wonder why their house is burning down. We have decades and generations of christian parents who have done that very thing. Man, I wonder why my kids not faithful. Maybe because you gave, you willingly, gave up your God given responsibility to disciple them into the faith, and you let somebody else take their countless hours a day and teach them whatever they want to teach them. Don't make that choice. Guys, anything to add as we wrap up? [01:08:03] Speaker A: It's a great wrap up. [01:08:06] Speaker B: All right, well, um, I want to encourage, uh, everybody who's listening. We'll, we'll stop right there. I want to encourage everybody who's listening. Let us know your feedback, your thoughts. Again, any questions you have, specifically, our focus. Plus subscribers. Hoping for some good comments on this one. Hoping for some good questions. I'm sure there, there will be a lot of people that have questions about it. Any feedback? You have hit us up on Facebook, obviously, on Patreon, on YouTube now that these videos are going out. But if that is all that we have. Guys, anything else? All right. Thank you very much for listening to this episode, very passion fueled episode of the thing, deeper podcast. We will be back next week. As always, we thank you for listening.