(soft music) They don't see the dangers. I think a lot of the parents, Sam, that I talk to think that school now is a lot more like school was when they were in school than it is. And they don't see the danger partly because they don't explore it and they don't want to know because that would demand that you make a difference.

A different decision that you have to change. But I think that people don't recognize the danger that public education, that modern public education is doing to our children and thus to our future. - You know, part of the reason that they don't recognize it is because they don't recognize the damage that it's done to them.

- Absolutely. - And if they do recognize the damage that it's done to them then they have some reconciliation to make between them and their parents, between them and their children so far. Like there's so much damage to unpack and it's a difficult road. Like I understand that it's hard for people.

And they'd rather not look at it. A lot of people are just focused on where's my next meal coming from? - Moving ahead, not looking back. And if looking back is going to jeopardize my moving ahead, then for a lot of people, they don't feel like they have the freedom to do that.

- Yep, fair enough. - And so a lot of us who do, a lot of us who do think, wow, a system... If I am saying I don't think I'm capable of homeschooling my children, why would I send them to an institution that made me incapable of educating another human being?

And so we do come out and we do pursue this home centered education and we reclaim our own educations as we go. I mean, how did you learn to teach your children? - Well, I learned the wrong way, right? So, and I did it wrong. And I don't say that, look, I don't mean much by that.

I did a grammar curriculum that involved a lot of writing. And so I forced my firstborn to do all the writing. And then when the second one came along, I didn't force him to do all the writing because at that point I'd figured out it was a lot. - This is not the best thing.

- Once you go through it once, you're like, well, wait a minute, we don't have to do all of that stuff. Like, thanks, but no thanks. So, but then again, my firstborn has written and published a book and my second child has not. - There you go. - I don't know, maybe there's some math to do on that.

- Right. - So I guess I figured it out as I went along. I know a lot more now than I did before. I've become much more brash. I didn't realize how damaged I was by the system. I didn't realize, I thought that it was just the school where I was just wasn't that good, but other schools might be good.

Now I understand it's the system of schooling that is the hazard for our children. That's why I say just don't institutionalize healthy children like that's insane. And we should see it as insane. The only reason we don't see it as insane is because everybody does it. But everybody used to, I don't know, shave their heads.

- Right. - Like everybody used to sacrifice their children. Well, I guess we still do that. Everybody used to something, right? Just because it's popular doesn't mean that it's right. Everybody used to wear floods. - That was it. - That was the popular thing to do was to roll your pants up so your ankles showed.

- Yeah. - Now loafers with no socks is like the new thing. And there are a lot of people who adopt that. And there are still a lot of people who say, "No, that looks weird. "I'm not doing that." (laughing) So I think part of education, and for instance, I don't think education should have the modifier Christian.

It shouldn't need that. It's either truth or it's not truth. And if it's truth, then it's Christian. - Then it's Christian. Right, 'cause all truth is God's truth. - But education ought to be pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness. And as long as you're pursuing that, you're not gonna be distracted.

In fact, I would go so far as to say our schools and what they offer are only distraction. So why would we want our children in that? - Right, 'cause they're pursuing other things, not truth, beauty and goodness. - Right. - Yeah. - Exactly. - Not freedom. Well, let me ask you this.

I know that when we homeschooled, I learned at least as much as my children. And I'm not talking about just academically. I mean, there were lots of things that I had learned in my public school and in my private college. And I would have said I was a pretty smart girl.

- But there are a lot of things that I learned along the way of homeschooling about God, about his word, about his world, about myself, about my children, about the truths that he was trying to teach me. What did homeschooling teach you? - It taught me that I was enough.

It taught me to be a better parent. Oh, this is huge. When you send your child into an institution every day, you begin, it necessarily, it just happens, you begin to abdicate your responsibilities as a parent. And there's a chapter in my book about this, They're Your Kids, where I talk about everything becomes a learning opportunity.

And my goodness, if that isn't the joy of life. - Yes, yes. - It isn't teaching a child something. I don't know where you get your joy, but boy, that is your joy to me. So I distinctly remember teaching my child how to answer somebody who says, how are you today?

- Yes. - Because she just looked at them and kind of whispered, fine. She was so shy. And I said, actually, when somebody asks you how you're doing, the proper way to answer them is to say, I'm fine, thank you, and how are you? - Yes. - Go ahead, try it right now.

And the woman was kind of like, well, that's not what I signed up for, but okay, we'll go with that. And my daughter said, I'm fine, thank you, how are you? And the woman played along. Well, I'm fine, thank you so much for asking. What a sweet young girl.

Like she totally played along. - Yes, yes. - The next day it happened again. And my daughter quick as a whip said, I'm fine, thank you, how are you? And the empowerment in her, just from that, and guess what, I'm the hero because I taught her that. - Absolutely, I love that story.

I love that story. We used to practice before birthday parties. Okay, birthday parties are fraught with peril when you were an outspoken child like I had. And so we practiced before birthday parties. Okay, if you open the present from your friend and you hate it, what will you say?

What do you say if you open a present you don't like? What do you say if you open the present and you already have one? What do you say if you open the present and you just unwrapped one just like it? And so we would practice the response. Well, what could you say?

How would that make your friend feel? How can you say something true but affirming to your friend? And that's what homeschooling allowed us to do. We practiced being kind people. - Well, you used the word allowed, but I would even say it encouraged you to do that, right? It encourages better parenting because you recognize then the responsibilities on you 24/7, like you're not handing your child off to somebody to learn whatever.

- And if you don't teach them, nobody will. - Which by the way, Lisa, I don't recommend Sunday school. I recommend to parents as of the age of three, I get it, if it's a baby and a toddler and they're just whatever and you really wanna sit in church, then fine.

But as of the age of three, your children can learn to sit with you in church. - Yeah, yes, and then they learn what worship is like and what congregational singing is and what responsive readings are and they know why people stand up when we read the scripture at this church.

- More than that, they recognize because they see it every day, mommy and daddy take this seriously, this must be important. There's a big transfer that happens when your child sits in church with you as opposed to you dropping them off for pizza or goldfish and veggie tails. - Yes.

- And by the way, if you're dropping your child off at Sunday school and you're not asking the Sunday school teacher, what did you cover today and drilling your child when you pick your child up, I started there, right? So I told you, like I did a dozen things wrong because I've learned so much since then that to do it again, I would do it differently.

But I used to pick my kids up and I'd say, well, what did you learn in Sunday school today? And we actually had, the church was pretty active and they had some nice things going on, but it was never really that great. And so when I started reading the Bible with my kids every day, I made them a deal because they really liked going and helping in the Sunday school at that point.

I said, okay, every other week you're in church with me. - There you go. - And they appreciated that. It was really interesting. It was like this negotiation, well, mom, last week I was in church with you, so this week I do get to go to the, or well, I did help out in church last week, so this week I guess I'll be with you in church.

But they liked that I was including them, like that I needed them or something. We don't value, I think we've forgotten how valuable we are to our children because of the culture has taught us that parents are superfluous or something along those lines. - Or that parents and children, yeah, that they have different interests and they don't belong together.

- And so when you are a part of your child's life in whatever, in all capacities, it extends to all facets, I guess. So, but if your child is really interested in astronomy, you ought to take an interest in astronomy. You're the adult. - Absolutely. - Like you're the one driving the relationship.

So don't expect them, because you're the one driving the relationship, don't expect them to become interested in politics because you're interested in politics. Although every child should have an interest in some of the politics that are happening because they ought to have a knowledge of current events. - Yes, absolutely.

- Like I was on the radio, so I had to read articles just to keep up with what was happening. - What's going on. - So I would print out the articles and I would have my children read me the article in the car while we were driving. - There you go.

- Which was a great education for them. They were forced to read big words and big sentences and stuff to me. And then I would explain it to them so that they felt involved. Like, you know. - With what you're doing. Yeah, they're a part of your life. - Right, these things are, this is the difference, right?

Because your children then become a part of your life, like you've just said, in a way that the school actually actively prevents from happening. - Yes, yes. They actually don't want parents to know the ins and outs of what we're talking about with your children every day. - Well, that, but what I'm saying is just the idea that your child spends that much time away from you prevents this kind of relationship from forming.

But yes, the same for the other stuff. The school is now, we're in charge. Your children don't belong to you. That's why the name of my book is they're your kids, not anyone else's, they're yours. - Yes. - But the school maintains, nope, they're ours and you can't have them back, basically.

Like the states are now getting involved in separating children from their parents if the parents don't affirm. - Terrible. - Are you kidding me? My children didn't get to decide what they were gonna have for dinner, much less their gender. - I mean, my children didn't decide what books to check out from the library till they were double digits, come on.

- Exactly. - I want, and I love what you're saying, that we are inviting our children into our lives because we're living our lives with our children. We know what, we have connections with one another and with the pieces of one another's lives that we necessarily miss when our children are away from us six or eight hours a day.

- Right. - That's awesome. - Right. - That is so awesome. - It's a deep dive. It's funny because we have children. I struggled to have children. I went through a lot and it was hard and I finally had my kids, right? - Blessings, yes. - And then I turned them over to the school, well, my oldest, right?

And that was hard for me. There's a reason it was hard for me 'cause I shouldn't have done it. - Right, right, right. - And boy, I'll tell you, like I said, I've said it several times, I did it wrong, right? So I did a year and a half of homeschooling and I loved it so much but I felt so insecure because I came to Christianity later in life.

I was not raised a Christian and I wanted my children to have that. - Yes. - So I put them in a little Christian school, a little classical Christian school. It was a hybrid model. So I was homeschooling two days a week and then they would go to class, well, maybe I homeschooled three days a week, they did two days in class, I can't remember.

And it was a disaster. Six weeks in and I go and interview the teacher just to make sure that, honestly, I was talking to her to make sure that I was holding up my end of the bargain because I was the good student. - Right, that you're matching up with what she's doing.

- Right, and she spent five minutes telling me how well-behaved my little boy was. And I knew how well-behaved he was. I raised him, he was a very well-behaved boy. He was the self-punisher. - Yes, yes, yes, yes. - And I just kept thinking, I wish I was hearing that he was misbehaving, that he was asking too many questions, that he was too excited to be there.

- But he always wanted to be hands-on or he always wanted to talk about it or he always asked why, sure. - That's what you want to hear about your children. And she was telling me that. And boy, I'll tell you the day that I dropped them off, the first day, I cried.

- Oh, absolutely. - Oh, absolutely. - That might have been the second hardest day. It's still not as hard as the debate day, but it was pretty hard. And so I took them out after six weeks. I was like, well, that was a failure. And then somebody at one of my speaking events came up to me and said, "Wasn't it beautiful that God allowed you to fail "in that way to show you that you are enough?" - Oh, wow.

- And that set me free. That was amazing. - Isn't that, that's a great way to look at it though. - That is a very freeing way to look at it. And then you were free to learn with your children and you were free to design this education that would really meet you where you were and meet your children where they were.

- So my daughter is, she's not inclined toward math, which is a hardship for me because I love math. - Oh, wow, yes. - And so her sophomore year, I finally said, "You know what? "I'm gonna stop pressuring you with the math." And I was tutoring her because I love math.

Why shouldn't I tutor her? But her brain works entirely differently than most people, I would say most people's brains. She has a very different brain and it's not a typical math brain, certainly. And so I decided to take the pressure off. I said, "You do one lesson a week if you want.

"If you don't do it, I'm not even gonna check. "I don't even care. "I'll give you the rest of the year." This was early on, so she had a year basically math-free. She went back to it and started teaching herself math. - That's beautiful. - And the reason is because I took the pressure off.

There's no way to coerce learning. Your child's learning has to be self-motivated. And if you are standing over them with your finger out, admonishing them to learn whatever it is, I won't say it will backfire, but it is not as effective as allowing their innate curiosity to drive the boat.

- Yes, yes. - Not beautiful, not freeing, not joyful. Yeah, I love that. I am looking down and am shocked. We have been talking about this for an hour. And I really, really wanted to talk about "Miracle in East Texas." I really want, so I wanna ask you about this movie, "Miracle in East Texas," because I think, especially now that all your new friends here on the Everyday Educator podcast audience will want to know what you've been up to, I want you to tell us about this story.

How did you even find out? 'Cause all the trailers say it is a tall tale, but an absolutely true story. So how did you find out about this story? - So the story came to us as a script already. - Okay. - And that's kind of the beauty of it.

We heard about the script. We know the writer. He's a brilliant writer. He wrote the movie for Paul Newman and Robert Redford. - Oh, wow, wow. I can see them in those roles. - Yeah, yeah, really. They could never get the time right to do the movie together. So it then went on a shelf and we know him, and so he brought it out.

He said, "What about this?" And Kevin and I just fell in love with it, not realizing the magnitude of the story. And that's what's so beautiful about it is once we had done the movie, I started learning all the other parts of the story that weren't contained in the movie.

The movie itself is the nut of the story, but there was a lot that obviously couldn't be part of the movie 'cause you can only tell-- - So much. - An hour and a half, right? - Yeah. - So the story is of the East Texas oil strike, which was the largest oil strike in the history of the world.

This is big, big news, right? But it was discovered by these two scoundrels who weren't real oil men. - And so they kind of discovered it by accident. - They discovered it by accident. And by the time they discovered it, they had oversold the well because that was what they did was they got people to invest in their oil drilling and then they would oversell it because they would never strike oil.

It wasn't that easy to do. And so they never believed that they were gonna strike oil. - One of the funniest lines I saw was where one of the characters is saying, "We sold 500% of this. "You can only sell 100. "You can only ever have 100% of a thing." That was hilarious to me.

- Right, and they had done it before. They oversold the well. Then they would just say, "Well, it's dry. "Thanks for your investment, but there's no return. "Bye bye now." And then they'd move on. But they ended up here in Texas and they struck oil. So then they had to figure out because if they declared, if they brought the oil in, all of the investors were gonna come for the percentage that they owned, which would equal 500% of the well or five times the well, which, you know.

And so the true story is there's a guy named, there was a guy named Hunt at the time who became, he came in and he bought up all the shares. Now, that was a very risky play. He was a gambler of sorts. He had been involved in oil. He was no longer in oil, but he knew the business and he took a gamble and he went and he made a deal with every one of the investors.

- Wow. - And gave them basically, not pennies on the dollar because they all became very wealthy in the end, but he gave them 1/5 of what they thought that they had invested. He gave them, sorry, he bought up the shares that he could because some people just wanted to see their money back and for the rest, he made them investors, but at only 1/5 of what they thought that they had bought.

- Right, right. - Or something, he worked the deal. In any case, he just worked a deal with everybody and brought the oil in. And if you fast forward 10 years, that is the oil that helped us win World War II. - That is so amazing. - That is why the German tanks ran out of gas before the Allied troops tanks ran out of gas.

- Man, that is an inspiring story. No, I never heard that. - Because the oil was shipped through the Gulf of Mexico. There were German U-boats in the Gulf of Mexico and they torpedoed 72 out of 73 tankers. Think about that, that's a lot of tankers that got torpedoed by the Germans because the Germans knew the value of that oil.

So then we built a pipeline. In less than 14 months, we built a pipeline from Texas to the East Coast and that's how we ended up getting our oil over there and that's why Winston Churchill even agreed that the Allies "floated to victory "on a sea of East Texas oil." So that's the importance of that oil field and the significance of that story, the fact that God...

Oh, and the miracle was not the discovery of the oil. The miracle was the redemptive story that we tell in the movie. I don't want to spoil the entire movie. - No, don't spoil it, yeah. - Because people should see it. But the joy of all of that is that when I discovered all that, I'm like, well, this should be a homeschool curriculum.

So I made a homeschool curriculum based on the movie. So you can watch the movie with your kids and then have an economics lesson, a history lesson, a little bit of math. It's a whole curriculum. It's very short. It's not a big deal, but it's a lot of fun to do.

And you start to realize this was supposed to be... I'm using it as basically part of a homeschool starter kit that I'm offering for families because I want them to understand that as parents, they have a great deal of value. Their life experience and their knowledge is not to be diminished just because they don't have a college degree or because they never got the gold star in math class.

They have a lot of value to bring to their children. And one of the ways that they can be shown their value is by watching the movie with their kids and then just doing the curriculum with their kids. And in that way, they can see how much they really do have that they can share with their kids as a home educator.

And so that was my idea was to help parents recognize how easy homeschooling is and how rewarding it can be. - That is awesome. I love it that you found a story that was worth telling. This is definitely a story worth telling, but then you're using it as a vehicle to start amazing conversations with your students about things that you've experienced together.

You've experienced this movie together. Now let's mine it for all it's worth. Let's talk about all these different lessons. And you're right, when we do that with our children, we see that we do have the quote unquote credentials to be teachers of our children because we have thoughts and we can communicate and we can wrestle down the ideas together.

That's very empowering. There's something so special about a good story too. Why do you think stories are so powerful? - Oh, I don't even ask why. I just know that they are. Jesus was a storyteller. The why is because we were created really to seek out the story. What's funny is people are under the misapprehension, let's say, because they went to school, that science is anti-religion.

Science is religion affirming. And why do I say that? Because the only reason that science exists is because of man's innate desire to understand the world around him. That's the creation of the scientific mind, is this desire to understand the world around him. Well, who put that desire there?

God. And what is man trying to understand? God, because God created everything. And so science is actually the act of seeking God. - Yes, you're right. You are absolutely right. That is why we ask the questions and that is why science exists, because we have questions and we have curiosity and we are seeking the answers that, you know what, the cool thing is God really wants to reveal himself to us through his world.

So it's not like he's hiding the answers. He wants us to know. I do think there are mysteries that God reserves for himself, but by and large, I think he loves to talk to us about the mysteries of the world. - Yes, and that's why so many scientists, the deeper that they go into their field of study, the more devoutly religious they become.

- Yes, yes, that is so true. That is really true. - Because the world tells you something else, right? - Absolutely, and we just believe it because that's what we've always heard and that's what we've always thought. So what is it? I love the fact that you have this guide, this free discussion guide.

People can download this discussion guide and we're gonna put a link to that guide in our podcast show notes so people will have access to that. What do you hope that families will learn from using this guide? I think that you pointed to a couple of things already, but I wanna give you the chance to say what is it that you hope families will learn by using this guide and watching this movie together?

- So for the curriculum for the movie, my main point was that they learn that they can educate their children. It's really that simple. That's my entire mission is to emancipate parents from the enslavement that our schools have forced on them. They are slaves to the system. Any parent who says to you, "I couldn't homeschool my kids," on a level is beholden to the school.

- Yes, yes. - And whether it's economic slavery or just enslavement in the mind, it doesn't really matter. Like it matters and the solution obviously needs to address the cause, but yeah. So my plan is to get as many children out of school because when you set them free, then they love freedom and they will try to preserve it.

And that's what we need these days because we are slowly being enslaved by the entire system. I don't know how to put it any less bluntly than that, frankly. And the only way we're gonna get out of this with freedom is for freedom-loving young people to be willing to fight for it.

- Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. And that's kind of a grave note as we draw to the end of our podcast, that's kind of a grave note to end on. But I think that it is true and I can tell that it is a cause that really resonates with you.

It is something that's very personal to you that you feel very deeply about. That's very cool. - Yeah, well, it's been the greatest blessing in my life. The Bible tells us that children are a gift of God and the gift is given to you to open. Don't think that you can give somebody else your gift and then that the gift will bless you, right?

- Yeah. - So that's my mission and well, not all of my books. I mean, I wrote "Words for Warriors" because I'm tired of people taking our language and perverting it. I think words have power. God spoke existence into being. So words have power. There's a reason that the Bible said that God spoke.

He didn't draw it on a piece of paper and then it came into being, he spoke it into being. Our words have great power and that is why there's a war on words. And so I wrote "Words for Warriors" for people to understand our language and understand the words that have been obfuscated and perverted.

- Frankly, the idea that we've now got a Supreme Court Justice who cannot identify what a woman is. - Yes, insane, insane. - So and "Words for Warriors" I had a lot of fun with. I'm pretty sarcastic in the book and in fact, even one of the definitions I wrote, duh, at the end of it.

- You know what? I think that I would love to be face-to-face with you. If I was gonna write a long book, I would write, I write in the margins of all my books, comments like that, oh, really, please, and duh, I actually do, so that's very fun. - In fact, I recorded it so it's audio as well.

People have told me how much they love listening to it in their car. It's a good bathroom book 'cause it's like, it's just one word with the definition after the other but the definitions get pretty, some of the definitions get pretty gnarly and pretty hilarious, frankly. - A little snarky there.

- A lot of great notes in there so that was a little bit of a sidestep from my mission which is the education of children but in fact, it starts with the education of the parent. - That's absolutely true. - I don't have any effect on the child unless I can affect the parent and so that's my goal.

I have Teach From Love which is a school year devotional which trains your children in virtues and that's really what we want. We wanna be able to have virtuous children but there's only, there are two ways of getting there, right? So the phrase is that things are caught, not taught but in fact, it's both and yes, they are caught, right?

Your children will model your behavior, they will do what they see you doing. - They're imitators. - But we also owe it to them to teach them and so that's what this book offers and at the same time, I wrote the book, it's a devotional so you've got a little story, you've got a Bible verse, you've got a little summary and then it's always followed by two open-ended questions because the learning happens in the discussion.

That's why Classical Conversations has the conversations in its name because it's in the discussion that it gets cemented and learned not just by the storytelling, right? And so there's that one and then there's the playbook for home learning which is just trying to get parents to think about what they really mean when they say education 'cause they don't necessarily know because they went to school.

- Right, right. - And so they know what they mean by school but do they know what they mean by the word education because the two are not synonymous, not anymore, not ever really. - And sometimes people know that they don't want to replicate what they had but they don't really know how to start thinking of it in a different way.

And so you're right. If we really want to affect the children, we engage the parents and we give them the help and the support and some illumination of what education at home could mean to their family and to their children. - Yes, and so that became a 15 video series.

- Wow, that's cool. - Yeah, so it's like a whole course. But it's fast, it's seven hours or whatever. And then the book is basically just a notebook that goes with it. And people seem to really love it so I'm very happy about that. - That's so good. - Because I can't tell you how it warms my heart to have people walk up to me and say, "I heard you speak three years ago "and we pulled our daughter out of school because of you "and we can't thank you enough." Like it's been the greatest thing for our family, that kind of stuff.

- Man, did you ever think that you would have this kind of influence? When you were a young woman starting your own career, did you ever have an idea that you would affect so many families? - No. - Isn't that amazing? Because God had that idea. He knew always, Sam, that you were gonna do this.

- That was God's plan. It wasn't my plan, but I'm very happy. I started stepping out in faith about 15 years ago. Oh no, I suppose it's longer than that. Yeah, I suppose it's longer than that. But I guess I really sort of thought about it and said, "Okay, you know what, if I hear it from three people, "then I'm gonna trust it," that kind of thing.

And I started hearing things. And I think if you just open yourself up, I think if you pray and you seek God's face, He will shine His face upon you. - That is lovely. And that's the perfect place for us to draw this conversation to a close. I have loved our time together.

I feel like our listeners have loved getting to know you and your story. Sam, I really appreciate you sharing your heart with us today. - I so appreciate being here. Thank you so much. This will save me on my therapy bills. - Yes, absolutely. We've saved everyone a therapy week.

That's awesome. I do wanna let our listeners know that "Miracle in East Texas" is now streaming and you can engage this with your family. You can use the discussion guide that Sam mentioned. You can dive deeper into the themes and the colorful characters of "Miracle in East Texas." You can have some really thought-provoking conversations with your kids.

You can download the free discussion guide. And it's a really long link name. So, listeners, the link is posted in the show notes. So this is a perfect Friday night thing to do with your family this week. Stream "Miracle in East Texas." Download the discussion guide and have at it.

Go and build some great conversations with your family. Sam, thank you again. This has been great. - Just before we jump off, because it is audio, I will tell people they can go to sorbostudios.com. That's sorbostudios.com. And sign up for our newsletter. - Oh, that's perfect. - It's the best way for us to stay in touch with people.

You can find out what other Christian movies are coming down the pike. And then you can find all the information about homeschooling and the movies at that site. So there you go. - That is super, and that, oh, that is super. Thank you, that's way shorter. I think I could even remember that without writing it down, sorbostudios.com.

That's awesome. All right, thank you, Sam. And thank you, listeners. And I will see you guys next week, okay? (gentle music) (music fades)