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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#130: Labeled “Mentally Handicapped” After 10 Days: This Mom Said No to Drugs and Built a School Instead
When the public school system tried to label her six-year-old son as “mentally handicapped” after just 10 days in first grade, Barbie Rivera knew something had to change. What began as a desperate attempt to protect her child from a broken system grew into a thriving micro-school and a mission to transform education for others.
In this episode of The Homeschool How To Podcast, Barbie shares her inspiring journey—from first-time homeschool mom to author and advocate for educational reform rooted in early 20th-century teaching methods.
🔎 What you'll hear in this episode:
- How Barbie started homeschooling after her son was nearly medicated and mislabeled
- The moment she began charging tuition to teach neighborhood kids as a single mom
- Why she believes word definitions are the key to all learning
- How modern schools skip fundamentals and overwhelm students too early
- The transformation of a struggling student from first-grade to third-grade reading level in just six weeks
- How a grateful parent is helping her launch her school
- Barbie’s passion for vintage textbooks and classical teaching techniques
- Her emphasis on mastery, deep understanding, and life skills over test scores
- How her children learned to become young entrepreneurs through tutoring
- Her upcoming curriculum based on time-tested educational methods
📚 Explore more:
Check out Barbie’s book, Enough is Enough: Exposing the Education System After Their Failed Attempt to Label and Drug My Son, available on Amazon.
Visit barbierivera.com for resources, vintage-style curriculum, and more on her educational philosophy.
🎧 Episode Chapters
00:00 – Homeschool Journey Introduction
07:43 – Escaping Labels and Medication
14:16 – Creating a Micro-School at Home
26:48 – The Power of Understanding Word Definitions
38:11 – Traditional Education vs. Meaningful Learning
47:52 – Rebuilding Education From Historical Methods
53:14 – Raising Independent Critical Thinkers
Check out The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide- Cheryl's eBook compiling everything she's learned from her interviews on The Homeschool How To Podcast.
👉 Enroll now for Excelsior Classes Fall 2025 — perfect for homeschoolers!
👉 15% off Tuttle Twins books with code Cheryl15
Instagram: TheHomeschoolHowToPodcast
Facebook: The Homeschool How To Podcast
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us today I have Barbie Rivera, a homeschool mom, an author and a school creator. So this is really exciting, hi Barbie, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So this is really exciting, hi Barbie, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So I was just telling you before this is my first podcast in my podcast studio, my official podcast studio that my husband built for me in my basement. So I'm hoping that this all works out and, like all the internet connection goes well. But he did a good job. I got to give the guy some credit, all right. I interview homeschoolers just to kind of hear about their experience, and I love that. Your experience went from homeschooling to being an author, to creating this school, which is what I see popping up more and more, and I love this, that we are like taking education into our own hands. Being that one room school house for the community, I love it. So what made you decide to homeschool in the first place and then kind of get into how many kids you have and what ages they were when you decided?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 2:So when I decided to homeschool, I was very pregnant with my fourth child. I was 28. My oldest son was six. So I had six, three, one and pregnant and my son, my oldest son, damon. He was the first. I think he was my parents' like 20th grandchild. You know huge family from my side but he was my then husband's first, first Cuban grandson in the family. So by the time he was six he was completely bilingual. He was super relaxed, like I credit Damon with why I had four. I wanted eight but he was just so easygoing, damon, clean up your toys. Okay, mom. Damon, it's time to go to bed. Okay, mom. Like never a fit, never a public tantrum, none of that.
Speaker 2:So, wrongly thinking that the school system first grade would be the first grade that I went to in 1970, where it was multiple recesses, no testing, easy curriculum, no homework, singing songs, pasting things you know it was school, but it was very fun. I thought that my son would have the same experience and I'm like this school is going to love him. So he had a fresh haircut, he had his Ninja Turtle Velcro shoes on, he had a lunchbox and he was ready to go, like so excited. And on the second Friday of school, like the 10th day of school, the teacher told me your son is mentally handicapped and he will most likely need psychotropic drugs for the rest of his life to learn. And I'm like whoa, we're not going anywhere. How did he learn Spanish? I don't know Spanish, I don't know two languages. How did he learn Spanish without drugs? So then you know, and on and on and on. But the pressure to have him labeled, have him first evaluated by experts and I'm like no experts going to touch my son and then labeled and then put on medication and then given a special program so he could learn, was immense. And I did something at the time that I regret, for I will regret like I did it yesterday.
Speaker 2:I kept my son in school because I was very pregnant, due that November, I had another in diaper, I had a toddler, and I'm like there's no way I could homeschool him. I would wreck him. Turns out, leaving him in school wrecked him. At the end of first grade, my beautiful boy told me I'm stupid, mom, I'm stupid, and I'm like that I still get. I could still cry over that moment because I'm like Damon, you're not stupid. But I saw him decline and I was being the good mom. I'm a single parent. I was being the good mom and I was helping him with his homework. Actually, I was force feeding him garbage being the good mom. And then every minute that I spent with him the hours of homework that a six-year-old got like I never my principal back in the 70s would have laughed in someone's face if they would have attempted to give a first grader homework. I don't think we got homework when I was growing up until fifth grade and it was writing spelling words five times each. It was not any labor, it was not me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't anything crazy and it was more just so that you could hold on to a concept that you had a responsibility to do without somebody standing over you. But that was fifth grade. So here's where my son is in first grade, expected to write book reports before he can read, given crazy math, like I'm like what do we do? Like, can we give him a win here? And he didn't have it. So he was convinced he was stupid. And every day that I kept him in school I saw him withdraw into himself more and more and more. And I'm like, finally, at the end, when he said Mom, I'm stupid, I'm like I'm going to homeschool you.
Speaker 2:I don't know anything about homeschooling, nothing. But I know that under my care, my son was electrified, confident and ready to go to school. He was ready for the learning experience and it was the professionals. I don't want to knock professional teachers as an in-mass thing or a general, but it was the professionals. I don't want to knock professional teachers as an in mass thing or a general, but it was the professionals that ruined them. So I'm like you're not going to get ahold of my other three period. I have no idea what I'm going to do for high school. I have no idea what I'm going to do next week, but I know that I'm going to take my son and I'm going to get him to read and write, because people used to do, used to have 16 year olds running one room school houses 100 years ago. So it can't be that difficult. And if my son was special needs, he's my responsibility Anyway. Anyway, that's how I got started on homeschooling.
Speaker 2:The word micro school didn't exist when I started. This was 1991. But essentially that's what I did. I had other friends like what are you going to do about school? I'm like I'm taking Damon out. They're like will you take my son? And so I took two types. I took two grades with very weak skills and I took kindergarten because my daughter was four. She turned five in January, but she was four and my daughter was really was like four, going on 25. And you know she loved coloring. She loved she would practice, play school with her dolls and stuff like this. So she was really ready. So I only took second graders and kindergartners, even though I had friends, my son's, in the fifth grade. Could you please take them? I'm like nope, I'm going to do second grade in kindergarten. I'm going to figure it out because I don't know what I'm doing, but this is the path I'm going to take and that's how I started.
Speaker 1:That's amazing that other people were like back in the 90s especially. We have more trust in you than we do in the school system in the 90s too. You know wow. So from there, how did it go?
Speaker 2:my parents freaked out. They were like they're gonna be eating paint. I'm like a. I'm an artist, right, that's really what I wanted to do was explore, expand my horizons and my techniques as an artist. But I find and nowadays you can't say what I'm about to say I found being a mother even though single mom was it had its challenges, never with the kids, it was more with finance and logistics. But being a single mom and being an educator is probably the most creative thing I could have ever done. And I still paint, I still find time. But that was a creation and a half and I loved it, loved it.
Speaker 1:So okay. So that just jumps to the question then, how did you do it as a single mom? Because a lot of people ask me that Like, oh, I'd love to homeschool, but I'm a single mom, I work, I can't do it.
Speaker 2:I turned it into my career. So let's say that you and I were neighbors and you had a five-year-old and I'm like, look, I have a five-year-old, I'm going to homeschool, I'm going to charge you whatever the rate would be. And I charged a material fee which was like $400 a year. But that's how I got the games, the desk for your child. I set aside money for toilet paper, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I had the tuition. When I started was like 400 a month, which now it's probably would be like, I think, a homeschooler could charge a thousand dollars a month, depending on what they provided. And you get five or six of those kids and you're good, and you charge a material fee and you have the kids bring a roll of paper towels once a month, a pack of toilet paper once a month, so that you're not out any of those costs. And that's how I did it. It wasn't yeah, it's not Lamborghini money, but I'm on my own, I'm not depending on anybody else and I'm working from home and, more importantly, I'm with my kids and they loved it.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to tell you, having my four, surrounded by, I think, at the height, before I transitioned into a private school. I had 22 kids coming to my house and my house was peace. It was peaceful when I had more than my foreign. My four really didn't get on each other's nerves and fight. But when there were other kids in the house, man, they were on their best behavior, like educationally. They wanted to show that they weren't like. They could spell also, they could read also, they could write also. It was, it was. So what?
Speaker 1:state are you in or where are you going? I'm in Miami, florida, ok. So in New York, I know that there's rules around. Oh, you can only have you know six kids to one adult. Was that anything that you ran into?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. To be honest with you, when I first started I probably wasn't even legal, because I think we could have six or seven kids in the house, but I didn't count my four, and then you could only homeschool your children. You couldn't homeschool others. So again, I'm telling you this like this is how I did it, and things have changed since then. So if I were to homeschool your child, you would withdraw your child into homeschooling and then you would hire me and then I would keep all the requirements. I would keep the binders, I would keep the copies, the lesson plans, the daily diary. I did all of that. And then once a year in Florida you had there was like almost like a lottery system Somebody might come to your house and look at what you're doing, which I had in my homeschooling.
Speaker 2:I think I homeschooled 10 to 12 years before I moved into the private school. I homeschooled 10 to 12 years before I moved into the private school. I had three people visit me from the homeschool education board and they were three teachers that quit their jobs but they wanted to stay in education and when they came to my house they were like, oh my gosh, I wish you were hiring, because this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to have a classroom that I could decorate the way I wanted to. I wanted to have old school handwriting, old school math, old school grammar just the reading, writing and the math.
Speaker 2:And I kept copies of everything. So there was no question. Like my, my paperwork on it was flawless, honestly. So I could flip in a book and tell you exactly what we did January 10th at 11 o'clock or at 12 o'clock, even if it was like we baked home homemade muffins and everybody brought ingredients and that's what we did. Or for Earth Day, we adopted a whale. We fundraised and we adopted a whale. You know, whatever it was, but the people that would come check out my homeschool, they loved it because it looked like a cute little. I converted a little room into the classroom.
Speaker 1:Oh, this is so cool. So you had them five days a week, kind of the same school schedule same school schedule two weeks off at Christmas.
Speaker 2:the whole thing so fast forward.
Speaker 1:How are all the kids doing today, Even the ones that you taught in your school?
Speaker 2:Well, for the most part. They're doing well. My children and I just did an interview earlier today and the gentleman was asking me I go now. The next thing I'm going to say I almost can't say in a group of people, because I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you're working really hard, you're working really hard, you're working really hard and you don't see the effect of what you're doing and then you stand back and years have gone by and you're like that was actually really good, as lumpy as I thought it was and as a disaster as I thought it could be. It actually was really good.
Speaker 2:And the thing that I can't I don't really say in public, because not many people share this, sadly my children they're my son's 40. The one that I did this for is 40. Now he's about to turn 41. Him and his brothers and his sister. No interest in drugs, never. No interest in alcohol never. I've never had a dad complain about the way my boys treated their daughters Like it just isn't that way and it's not like they were homeschooled into being nerds.
Speaker 2:My kids were super, super social. They were making movies, they were writing scripts. They were a hurricane would hit, they would go out with their gloves and like knock on a door, 60 bucks, I'll clean this up and come back $600 later like sweaty mosquito bitten. But that was their thing, like they knew. First of all, they knew that I'm on my own, so I couldn't buy the 10 speeds bikes that they wanted or the guitars or the skateboards or all of this. I could help, but they were totally brought up in a system where there's an exchange.
Speaker 2:You want somebody to spend the night? Well, your room has to be cleaned by four o'clock. That's a simple request. Room's not clean by four o'clock. Friend's not sleeping over Simple. You want a new skateboard. It costs $180 with the fancy wheels and the this and the that I can help with. Probably $40 of that.
Speaker 2:What are you going to do? Training's not an option and they weren't whiners so they would. Okay, I'm going to tutor. I'm going to do this. My one son. I'll tell you this story. This is funny.
Speaker 2:So all of my kids, as they grew up, they made money as a private tutor and my daughter was 12 when she started. She was charging $10 an hour to four and five-year-olds Did amazing, taught them to read, taught them math, like really did a great job and then when she was like a teenager, it was like 25 an hour. My youngest son is like mom, I have no patience with children. Like fine, he was like 15 himself. He goes, but I need a job, I want a job, I go. Well, what are you good at? He's like I'm good at juggling. I'm like, okay, well, there's your job.
Speaker 2:Put out a flyer in the school charge $5 an hour. Eight week course, two days after school and let's see what you get he was making. I think he got he was making $50 an hour at 15. So he's making a hundred dollars a week for two hours time. And then he did that To teach students to juggle yeah, after school, but the parents for $5, are you kidding me? To leave the child an extra hour. And the kids were actually manipulating things and it wasn't something the parents had to get involved with. It's not like catch, where you have to go out and do it. The kid could do it by himself and he's like this improves focus and it improves your reflexes, all of these things. And he did it for eight weeks and he made I don't know $400 or whatever it was, and he was happy and he went from that to tutoring drums for $15 an hour and he's a teenager and he, like this, one mom was like, wow, my son, after four lessons with Michael, I hear his drumming. It's really coming along.
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Speaker 2:And I let them do it. You know that was I, was not the meddling person. I'm like if you're going to do this, you show up on time, you're professional, you're this, you're that, all of those things. So that's kind of like how they were raised and homeschooled was, with the, the goal of independence and thinking for themselves. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:Which we don't see from the kids graduating independence and thinking for themselves. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:Which we don't see from the kids graduating today and not even when I graduated 23 years ago yeah, it was I don't know what I want to do with my life. I don't even know what I like, what interests I have, because someone has dictated my every move since I was three, right. I didn't have time to explore other things that I might like. I know I don't like the things they're teaching me in school, but that's because they taught in the most boring way possible, right? So you didn't have a teaching background.
Speaker 2:You were in art no. I graduated high school and that was it.
Speaker 1:That's so amazing. What I mean? I guess, just your artistic ability to learn about these subjects. How were you doing, especially back in the nineties, the harder math as the curriculum got harder through the years, the biology or whatever, or did you even need that stuff?
Speaker 2:Is it Well, okay? So, some of it. Yes, because by the time my kids were getting older, I ran into this wonderful woman. Her daughter was 10. It was Christmas break. Her daughter was 10, couldn't read, tested out first grade level. The psychologist, this lady. She says I've spent thousands on the best psychologist, best psychiatrist, and they all want to drug her. And she goes Barbie, I have to tell you, normally I do everything that the doctor says. And on this one I'm like will those drugs make my daughter read? And they're like no, but it'll make her stop fighting, she'll be complacent with her condition. And this mother, she says I don't want her complacent, she should be angry that she's 10 and can't read. So it was like I say it was Christmas time and I'm like, okay, so here's what. And the mom was like I do flashcards with her on the way to the grocery store and we go to the movies. I have this, I have that. I'm like okay, we're going to take a timeout right now. Here's what I can offer you One.
Speaker 2:Your daughter is not doing like while she's 10 and they're giving her fourth grade level work. She missed something earlier. My guess is it's in kindergarten, because I bet if I ask her, quiz her on the alphabet. She doesn't know the sounds of the letters, which is basic to reading. That's called phonics, right? I guarantee you. She doesn't know the concepts and the definitions of the words of math.
Speaker 2:Now my son is 17. He's going to be her teacher and this woman's like, oh my God, I go, he's really good, he's really good. And so I had Tamara meet Damon, who had a chain around his neck, the hat on backwards. You know he's a little kid, 15, 16, 17 years old, and he goes. Yeah, I can work with Natalie and I'm like he helps me, homeschool him, and my older daughter helped me. They each have a little group and then they study afterwards. Six weeks he had this girl to a third grade level in everything, as verified by standardized test scores.
Speaker 2:And after the first day and I'm like we're not going to do homework, you're not going to do flashcards, you're not allowed to quiz your daughter If she wants to tell you what's happening here and, believe me, you could sit on the sofa if you want, all day long. I have nothing to hide. I'm not saying it for that reason I go, but your daughter's been overwhelmed with education and so many people coming at her. We need to let her be and if she wants a book, you drop everything and you go to Barnes and Noble and you get a book Like you. Don't make it a problem, don't say, oh my gosh. I wish you would have told me that yesterday when we were at like no issues, because when she turns around she's going to turn around fast. This girl's bright, I can see it. Six weeks she's at a third grade reading level, third grade math level, third grade grammar level. Eight weeks the mom is now spending $40 a week at Barnes Noble and is like I don't care, I don't. She's like she's read the paper.
Speaker 1:Why didn't I have to say that? Just because I know listeners are asking why didn't she just go to the library?
Speaker 2:Well, because the girl wanted her own library. I mean, they do that, but they had money, it wasn't an issue. The girl wanted her own library. And then I got this girl crazy, hooked on Harry Potter Again. Harry Potter's a wonderful book and just because it's about a kid doesn't mean kids can read it, because there's some words in there, so we would define things and this, that and the other. Anyway, the girl ended up graduating high school with a 3.6 grade point average, which is something the experts say would never, ever happen.
Speaker 2:And this woman, let's say, six weeks, she was at a like going to Barnes and Noble At eight weeks. This lady comes to my house. She goes you can't keep this to yourself anymore and she had just received an inheritance. She goes. I'm not giving you the money, I'm not making a donation, but we're going to get you out of the house and we're going to get you into this location. And it was about $125,000, which we paid back, took us years, but she goes. We need, we need to open a school. You have the brilliance on the delivery. Let me run the money and let's do this. And we did it.
Speaker 1:She retired two years ago and that was like a miracle, yeah yeah, I mean that's amazing that somebody just could see what, what happened in their own child, and it was like we need this to happen to other kids. I mean that is the beauty of humankind, right there.
Speaker 2:No, and she was like and the thing that was really really nice about her is she recognized what was happening. She goes every expert wants to drug my child or say she's just low IQ and she'll never make it. And you and your 17 year old rapper son handled it and he's he only did one year of actual school he's been. He only went to public school one year and the rest of it was you and it's like she's like this is phenomenal Barbie. Rest of it was you and it's like she's like this is phenomenal Barbie, like other people want this, and I'm like good, well, what was it that?
Speaker 1:you and your son were doing with these kids or with her. That really turned it around.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I don't have the book with me. When my son started diving and it was he needs a drug. He needs a drug First of all, he didn't need a drug. He wasn't even diving when they said that he needed to be drug, drug, he needs a drug First of all. He didn't need a drug. He wasn't even diving when they said that he needed to be drugged. He couldn't write a book report. He was expected to write a book report before he could read. And I'm like okay, but let's take a look at this. He also can't drive a car. So are we going to put something into the Department of Motor Vehicles that my son can't drive a car? I mean, he is six, so we should be super concerned about this. Like, I'm like what is everybody losing their mind on? He's going to be able to read. He's done everything else. He's going to get this.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, I started looking around at alternative education, which would be the best way to describe it. There was no internet, there was no this, but I found a group of homeschoolers out of California and they were using this book called Learning how to Learn. Now, learning how to Learn is based on the study methods of L Ron Hubbard, whatever. But I got the book and the first sentence of the first page you can learn anything you want to learn and I'm like thank you. And then I look through the book and it tells you how to learn and there is an actual scientific method to it.
Speaker 2:If you are studying about tractors, you better have a tractor. That's pretty simple. If you're going to do fractions, cut a muffin in half Pretty simple. If you want to understand it, you need to have the thing. If you are skipping gradients, which the public school does horribly addition one day, fractions the next day, decimals the next day you have no mastery. You're going to confuse the child, you're going to confuse the adult.
Speaker 2:But the most important thing was knowing the definitions of words. So that's what I went in on and every confusion that my son had, or any of my children ever had in any subject, I traced it back to a word they could not define. And I'm not going to embarrass anybody here, but like I've been doing this for 30 something years and I get fifth graders and the mom comes in and it's like, oh, they're really behind in math and fractions just killed them. I'm like, okay, so I have a crazy question to ask what's the definition of the word fraction? And in 30 years I'm not asking you, not asking you no one's been able to give me the proper definition.
Speaker 2:And when you go, I go look, there's only about 12, 13 definitions of the subject of fractions. And if you know them all and you can demonstrate them, you are going to know fractions till you're 99 years old. And that's what we're going for is mastery, that you can use it for what you need it for, not just to pass a test, but you can actually incorporate it into your life as a gain and a tool and a win. They do it. And that's the difference with me and most other people, because I, first of all, I assume the child is not mentally disabled and I'm talking there are children with disabilities. I'm not talking to that crowd, I'm talking about the regular Jim or Jane who gets confused at school, who's getting labeled and medicated, and the label and medication solves nothing. The confusion at school can be solved.
Speaker 1:And that's such a huge thing, and I, that is the one thing that I do with my son. I mean it might not be regular book work every day and this, and that I try to redo them as much as I can, but there are days, or even a week that goes by, that I'm like, oh my God, we haven't picked up a book. But I do try to say, because I realized that for myself, that I hated school because they didn't put it in any context and they didn't explain the basics, like, why am I learning about the Aztecs, incas and Mayans when I have no idea what time period that was, or even say it was? See, I don't even know what time period is right now. I'm going to say, like I don't know 500, right, just say that I don't know what 500 means in relation to me, because right now it's 2025. But I don't know was how many years have humans been recorded? You know, on earth, where does that leave me? Where on the map are they? Where? What else was going on in the world when they were having their civilizations? You know? So, none of it made any sense. So I didn't care about the Aztecs and Mayans. But if you put it in a context where, like, you're learning about other things, what else is going on in the world? I don't know that.
Speaker 1:The Tuttle Twins I love them because they do this beautifully. As you're reading their history books. It talks about the Silk Road and you know like going their history books. It talks about the silk road and you know, like going, yeah, like we have to teach you about what trade looked like you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, so that you can understand when we talk about us history, you know where it came from, this idea of trade. And um, I, just to me, I'm so excited to learn. I hope it's like passing off on my son, but so I do try to say to my son all the time like okay, do, okay, do you? Do? You know what that word means? Do you know what that is in relation to what we're even talking about? So I find that hopefully that's doing more for him than like okay, let's load the code every day.
Speaker 2:That's exactly the way to go, because if it doesn't impact their life today, it's useless. It's game show information. And you don't want game show information. You want something that they can think with.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you, like one of the things, one of the many flaws that I found in public school with my son Damon is they were trying to teach him grammar in the first grade and punctuation, like please, let's not go there. Period, question mark, that's it, let's just keep it simple. But yet they had quotation marks, commas, semicolons, and I'm like it's too much. Like why aren't we teaching him about life insurance and health care, like he has? It's too much. So with my youngest son my youngest son, him and my other son they created a homeschool newspaper with four boys and the whole newspaper was making fun of my oldest son, damon. Like it was ridiculous and they charged. I mean it was like I'll tell you and I write about this in my book One of the best. They sold it for a quarter and parents that would drop off their kids. You know who's not going to buy a newspaper from a group of 10 year olds? Who's not going to do that. So their number one bestselling issue was when Michael learned how to spell the word diarrhea. The issue was coming and he had.
Speaker 2:They had all this like little promotion and he would write these silly, silly, silly stories. So when he was nine, I taught him what quotation marks were, how to use quotation marks. It was the perfect time for him because he was writing and you would have thought I gave him the best Lego set because he was like this is going to make my story so much better. And again they were all making fun of Damon. There was a knock at the door, diarrhea was there and it wanted a hug. It was like silliness, they're boys, they're boys. But he had use for the quotation marks. Where Damon was getting quotation marks, semicolons, this, that and the other. When he was six he had no use for any of it. He was told he was a failure, would never learn it and there was no context to it. Who cares at that age? Who cares?
Speaker 1:And you're so right. And you know, I've realized trying to teach my son how to read, because he's six right now, He'll be seven in a few days and it's been like I talk about on the podcast. It's been like this thing with me where I'm back and forth like I should be doing more, but then there's also Finland, who doesn't even formally teach anything until age seven. So you know, let it be, It'll happen. As long as you're exposing him to the stuff, it's fine. But it's funny because I would never realize this if he were in school. But as the homeschool parent I'm like well, all right, so I could, I could have him open a book and, depending on what text or what font they used in that book is going to determine if he can read it or not. Because if they're learning it, it's going to be on this type of font the minute that they change the font and it doesn't have to be into cursive, it's just okay. This G is the circle with the J under it. Well, this G is a whole squiggly thing and to him that's a big deal. And I've had him looked at for dyslexia and this and all that and it's like no, he's not, he's just, he's a literal kid and he's like that wasn't the G that you told me about yesterday. So, yes, I mean, that's not a G.
Speaker 1:And then also going from capital to lowercase, because, yeah, they might be able to. Like I noticed when he spells things out he was doing his birthday list. He's like three capital letters and then a couple lowercase and a couple more capitals. And you know I'll get there with him, I'll try to tell him like, well, you know we would use all lowercase in this situation. But it's fine, Do what you're comfortable with right now, as long as you're hearing it. But yeah, they, it's so much for them. They're not just learning how to read, they're learning, when it's like capital letter, to start it out, to start the word, and then switching to lowercase. So you're learning two alphabets, essentially.
Speaker 1:And then, yeah, and it's so hard because he says to me today the reading program was saying spell R, he goes. Well, mom, I put an R and it told me I was wrong. So this thing is not right. And I was like did you just put the letter R? He goes. Yeah, I go. Well, you got to spell the word R. He's like that makes no sense to me, so I go, all right. Well, when you're talking about R, like are you going to the store, you have to put A-R-E. He's like all right, whatever. So then the next one he goes mom, it's asking me to spell I, what should I put? I go, that's the letter.
Speaker 2:I, that's right. He's like y'all are crazy. That's the. Now I'm 61. My kids are all grown. Everybody's fantastic.
Speaker 2:I have this little private school that I really need to move into a location AME real estate land is way outside of my budget. However, I'm like the kids that are coming into my school are years behind where they should be, and I'm talking they're coming from local, the best private local public charter. It's all a disaster. I turned away three 16-year-olds last summer who could not do 100. Take away 71.
Speaker 2:They couldn't do that because they were given special accommodations. They were given calculators in kindergarten, so they don't have to think the next thing that's given as a special accommodation, which my son would have had if it existed and if I would have allowed it, I wouldn't have allowed. It is called a reading pen and they have a fancy name for it. You can look it up, you can Google it and it's a pen that's shaped like a cigar, with an owl or a fox head. They're cute and you put it over the text and it reads to you. So now kids don't need to learn alphabet and they can use these during tests and I'm like why are, what are we even doing? Like what, what?
Speaker 1:what's the point now? I've got I've got some theories, barbie, but I'm a conspiracy theorist, yes yes, no, but I'm just like, what's the point?
Speaker 2:like at that, honestly, my basset hound has more of a grip. I'm like, yeah, what are we?
Speaker 1:doing. I think they they do want to dumb down, yes, well at least, and they want the worker be they've always have kind of that's how their education system started. We want the worker be smart enough to do the job, not smart enough to take over a business or compete with the, you know, the big businesses. But yeah, it's really scary and I think parents, they make us so busy to not even realize it, because if more parents realized it they would do something about it.
Speaker 2:I mean, and you also have the economic sense, because it used to be that the man's income not trying to offend anybody, but the man's income could afford the woman to stay at home right, and now, with both parents stressed out, the kids are raised by the state, so it's a lose-lose.
Speaker 1:Thinking about homeschooling but don't know where to start. Well, I've interviewed a few people on the topic Actually, 120 interviews at this point with homeschooling families from across the country and the world and what I've done is I've packed everything I've learned into an ebook called the Homeschool how to Complete Starter Guide. From navigating your state's laws to finding your homeschooling style, from working while homeschooling to supporting kids with special needs, this guide covers it all, with real stories from real families who've walked this path. I've taken the best insights, the best resources and put them all into this guide. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident. Get your copy of the Homeschool how To Complete Starter Guide today and discover that homeschooling isn't just about education. It's about getting what you want out of each day, not what somebody else wants out of you.
Speaker 2:You can grab the link to this ebook in the show's description or head on over to the homeschoolhowtocom so anyway, going back to my, the thing that keeps me up at night is no longer my children or whatever it's. What am I going to do about this next generation? Because it's only going to get worse. The politicians aren't going to handle it.
Speaker 1:I don't care who you voted for, they're not going to hear I agree with you, a thousand percent, agree with you.
Speaker 2:The educators aren't going to handle it. The college graduates aren't going to handle it. They're going to make it worse with AI.
Speaker 1:We're all indoctrinated by the same system.
Speaker 2:So we need to step outside and to me, that's my. I feel very passionate about what I do because I'm not part of any system. I'm not a college grudge, I'm just a mom trying to make my son okay. I'm trying to save him from the people that are supposed to love and support him. My son would have thrived with my first grade teacher in that system. He would have been the star. I was the star, as were most of the kids in the room.
Speaker 2:It was an easy, easy, lovely day. So anyway, I look back at like okay, so statistics, and the earliest statistic I could find was like 1910, 1913, america was number one educationally in the world and there was a quote in a book called the Trojan Horse of Education I'm probably butchering that, I source it in my book that the American public school system 97% of the students were literate and we were so strong on our reading that we could eliminate worldwide illiteracy. Right Now we have 54% of Americans read at or below a sixth grade level, so over half are illiterate. So that's like to me. Our country is being run by middle schoolers Like you. Don't leave a 12 year old home alone.
Speaker 1:What do you think that even means? So at a sixth grade level, and you?
Speaker 2:can read at sixth grade though right.
Speaker 1:So is it just that, like there are bigger words that they're not understanding? So because, yeah, I believe that, I believe that I I read books today and I'm like I don't know what that means, so I'll google it. Yeah, but you all right but see, you're googling it.
Speaker 2:You recognize, you don't know, people that are illiterate, know that they're having a struggle. But with that comes that victimhood mentality of look what you did to me and the government's supposed to do this, and the government's supposed to do that, and the police hate me and I'm like, where is that in any definition? You know, my son once told me he goes what if I get pulled over by the police? I'm like, well, don't do anything to get pulled over by the police. He goes what if I do? I'm like, well, then act like a normal person and you treat them with respect and you're going to be fine. I guarantee it, guarantee it. Anyway. So, going back to 1910, over COVID, I started purchasing books. This is Word Master mastery from 1913. This is how they used to teach reading. Now, the font, as you said, this is the wrong font. This is the wrong font because it has that squiggly a.
Speaker 2:I used to know the name for that, like you know, whatever, yeah it's like a cane with a yes, I want to take this and I want to put it into a format that a child can easily do. And the other thing is it's like here's a math book from 1883. And it says in here first of all, they didn't give textbooks. They didn't like to give textbooks to first, second or third graders because they didn't want to overwhelm them with concepts and ideas. They wanted to foster the learning, not crush it. How's that? My son was crushed, so this is fostering right. And it goes in here and it says I'm paraphrasing the biggest waste in arithmetic is half learning and then fully forgetting. The only standard is mastery. And I'm like thank you, thank you. 1910, 1913 mathematics. And I have. Where did you find that book? Ebay, bookshops, and I just have my searches. So I have about 500 of them Spelling, reading manners, and some of it is old.
Speaker 2:But this does not go out of date. This is just regular English. It doesn't go out of date. What they've done to phonics, it's not phonics. Go to Barnes and Noble. It says phonics, it's not phonics, it's nothing like it used to be. And you go and it says phonics, it's not phonics, it's, it's not, it's nothing like it used to be and you go and it says third grade, it's not third grade, it's not, it's some.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so elevated and I just uh, go ahead, I just put together an ebook to compiling like everything I've learned over my podcast episodes so far, and I did put a graph that I made in there about education over the years and how it used to be, just to give people, because we think that it's always been in this school building, right, like you.
Speaker 1:Nobody ever tells you to question it, so you just do it, but you know how it was learning in your community, always, always learning like what you had to do to survive. And then you know, slowly, very slowly, you know we went to the one room school houses and you know 17, 18, 1800s really, and that that was the community. The community put a teacher in place, right, like they were, like we want this person and their values teaching our kids. And it wasn't for all day, you know, it was for a few hours and there was lots of time to play and, like you said, they didn't all get school books to bring home. And then it was the Rockefellers and you know the Horace man and John Dewey really implementing this. We could actually make some money off of this If we put our people on the school boards, invested our millions of dollars and then churn out. You know, we say what they are actually getting taught.
Speaker 2:So we're turning it over and they wanted workers. They didn't want thinkers. And you look at the so tell me about Go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I was going to say tell me about your book, because I know that you wrote one. Is it compiling this information?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's called. Enough is enough, exposing the education system after their failed attempt to label and drug my son. The book is super simple. Love it, yes, and it's very personal. And the reviews on amazon I'm 100 because I I write the way I talk.
Speaker 2:So this is not some important person's rumbling which in I'll read one thing out of the note to reader and it says here some of my viewpoints may be frowned upon by modern experts who spent years in universities, hold multiple certificates and have sadly become the authorities on education who are determining that a large population of children are unable to learn. I'm not speaking to these or any experts. I am certain that my grammar will not pass the scrutiny of an English professor. I'm telling a story, not trying to earn a PhD. Finally, I don't use big words because I don't know any. I'm sharing a story. So that's what it is. Oh, I love it, yeah, and it talks about it has. That's me and my family. That's what it is. Oh, I love it, yeah, and it talks about it has. That's me and my family. That's me down there.
Speaker 2:So I talk about my experiences growing up and then what happened with Damon. I show photographs, like there's one here, if I can find it real quick. I just that picture got a boy drugged for years. He was five. That's Spider-Man versus Octopus man and the psychologist found his drawings immature in nature. He was five. So I write about it, I change names and all of this, but I'm like I'm not shocked that a five-year-old draws that way. I'm shocked that a person with a PhD thinks that a five-year-old shouldn't draw that way. I'm like that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:The people in the drug industry are influencing what the doctors are learning.
Speaker 2:Oh, they're in bed together. They're in bed together, yes. So anyway, that's what this is, and it's three parts. The first part is introducing me and we're a baseball family. There's my mom, and so I talk about how she met my dad, how important education was my. You know some little stories, and then I go into the takedown of American education. That goes into exactly what you were just talking about the Rockefellers and then how a person gets labeled, what you find on the labels, what the I go. This is the solution and my solution.
Speaker 2:I wrote this because all right, so let's just say this is one of those crazy scenarios whatever I win the lottery for 50 million, 50 million I'm not going to go get a Lamborghini. I'm not going to do that. I might get another dog, but I'm going to turn this. I'm going to start a publishing company, I'm going to buy a building for my school and I'm going to turn this. I'm going to start a publishing company, I'm going to buy a building for my school and I'm going to make it so that you can homeschool your child, because the philosophy back here is flawless.
Speaker 2:Back here it said something. I read something in one of the books. It's like the materials are the most important part the materials. If done correctly and at a slow enough gradient, mastery in mind, the child can make progress with minimal teacher interference. That's what it was teacher interference. So let's say that I redo this book to where the font is correct and the illustrations are fine and it's something you you can PDF, print out, whatever. And then there's a guide for you do step one, do step two, now play candy land, now go for a walk, like there's a guide. But if I do this right, even if you don't use the guide, even if you are a lazy homeschooler and you just give the child the packet, they're going to be able to get through it themselves.
Speaker 1:What book is that just for the people listening, and I'm going to put a link to it in the show's description as well as your book's link. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, anyway, that's what I want to do with the rest of my life. My daughter will take my school. We want to move it to a location in Miami. You're talking millions of dollars. I want to start a publishing company no idea on that, and I want to be stuck in a room with my 500 books and start churning out stuff.
Speaker 2:I think I'll need about two other people, somebody techie, because I'm not techie, but who can say good, this is the format it's going to be, we're going to stick it up on this website, we're going to charge. I want it to be super affordable, very doable, and I want to. I feel that we could bring America back to be number one in the world again, because I want to solve it, and we are not going to solve it with drugs, we're not going to solve it with psychedelics, we're not going to solve it with brain stimulation and all of these things, by the way, are coming or they're already FDA approved for children. I'm not even kidding you. Sickening, how far away, how far off the mark to give, to give a six, to give a boy a calculator when he's five because he struggles with numbers, and now he's 16 and he can't do a hundred, takeaway 71. We just destroyed that man Right.
Speaker 1:And you know it's like, okay, yes, we all do have cell phones in our pockets and yada, yada, yada. But we have to think to the reality of all this technology could be taken away. All it takes is, you know, a hurricane or some sort of mass event that you cannot access, or even just the lights to go out. You know, electricity goes out for three to four months. Right, we're at a point right now that if electricity went out, it could be another country doing that to us. I mean, my husband works in all that stuff. He was like Cheryl. You'd be surprised how little it would take. They could knock out all of the power in the greater New York region with one button. And it's scary, you know. So you never know what could happen, whether it be a mess, like a natural disaster or unnatural disaster that our government wants to put on us, or just from another country. Something could happen where we don't have access. So think about it.
Speaker 1:Now we have our grocery stores. You can't even open the doors without like a magnetic strip, and you know that's it's not a key anymore, right? You can't even use the registers without electricity because we don't nobody has cash on them anymore, right, all of that is electronic. So how are you get? You're not getting anything because all of it's going to be broken and looted anyways. So we've got to prepare ourselves for it, even if it's not in our lifetime. We owe it to our kids to teach them the basics how to find food, water, shelter, protect themselves.
Speaker 1:And the basics of math and stuff like that, which is shelter, Cause, yeah, you need to know some math If you're going to build yourself a shelter. It just goes back to the basics. We don't know what our kids and their kids and their kids are going to need in the future and we're we're pretty stupid if we don't think anyone will need it ever again.
Speaker 2:Right. And if we're so dependent on electronics we're lost as humanity because somebody has to think. And that again when I go back to these old books, even the word problems make sense. And of course, james got a brand new metal car toy for two cents. I'm like, all right, that doesn't exist anymore. But there's ways around that. You can say Mr Mouse bought a blueberry for two cents. You can adjust it so you keep it in the range of money that they're trying to teach. But the bottom line is we need to be able to think and we need to have judgment. And you know it's like I'm anti public school. Never once have I thought to burn a building down, never once. And we're in society now like, oh, I'm so mad I'm gonna go light up a bridge on fire. Like what, what is that? Where does that even make sense?
Speaker 1:A Tesla car? Yeah, like yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't care who you voted for, you can't do that.
Speaker 1:The world's gone crazy for sure. I mean, I think it's always been crazy, because I was reading a book to my son yesterday called the Buffalo Are Back, and it's talking all about how the Native Americans lived on this land prior to the settlers coming in and they lived with the buffalo. They would burn the forests but that actually helped everything get rid of the dead trees. It made the soil better. And then the buffalo roaming 75 million buffalo would roam on North American soil and it was good for the soil because their hooves would put you know little holes into the soil. The rainwater would go down, nourish it. It was their manure. Everything worked in like the symbiotic system.
Speaker 1:And then the settlers come in and you know obviously what they did to the Native Americans and they tried to starve them and one of the ways would be to just shoot the buffalo or run them off of cliffs. So this is a children's book but it's like, stuck with me, they would run. It said that the government would tell people to run the herds of buffalo off the cliffs just to starve the Indians. And then obviously all of the terrible impacts that had on the future, because now the soil was going bad and this and that. But I sat there and I thought are we supposed to think that that government is somehow now like a government of fairy princes and princesses? They're all just wonderful people. Now that did something that horrible. Come on Right.
Speaker 2:It's always been, they've always been corrupt well, yes, and, and I think you're, you're gonna have that anywhere like there's not one profession where there's not the evil part of it. You know teachers abusing children. I'm of the like, I'm unfair because I'm like, if you don't use a turn signal, I think you should do hard time. You know I'm not fair that way, but and I'm joking, but you recognize it, I recognize it. But the important thing is is that the kids recognize it. And when you homeschool or educate for them to think for themselves. And what would you do in this situation? Like we did this.
Speaker 2:You know Thanksgiving, we do the Mayflower and I actually have ancestry that goes back to the Mayflower, so that's always exciting because I can show pictures. This is John Howland, who fell off. He got a wave hit him and he climbed back on, which is crazy, crazy. So anyway, I had the kids and it was, I don't know, 11 kids from seven to nine, and we were doing the Mayflower and we had the definitions of words. I think a skiff was the little boat that went from the Mayflower to the shore, because Mayflower, there was no dock or anything. Made flash cards, put them all on the table. Everybody took one one. We got model magic clay. They all had to make their thing and we made this whole community and they painted it. You can imagine what it looked like, cause I am like this is your task, but they had this scene and it had all the words that, under a traditional setting, would just be a vocabulary sheet to be studied to pass a traditional setting would just be a vocabulary sheet to be studied to pass, to forget. These kids today remember that project we did. It took up the entire dining room table for three days, so that was the sacrifice of my dining room table, or of the dining room table and clay paint.
Speaker 2:But they had all of these things and when the kids would? You know, we did it with landforms. Oh, I get a volcano, I have the peninsula. And then they would make it and we put it on foam board and we had a huge map and they would put, as we learned, stuff, they would put it on there, they would make an Eiffel Tower Again. You can imagine what it looked like, but it was their hands, their time, their paint to go on this map, to forever be known where it was and a little bit of data about it.
Speaker 2:I wasn't trying to make an expert in France, but they should know that France exists. Somebody had to make the flag, somebody did the Eiffel Tower, somebody else did the river, whatever it was, but they were all included, and that was the creativity of education, of homeschooling, and that's what was the magic of it. And then things would happen. You'd find an abandoned duckling. Okay, guys, we need to find out how do we handle this duckling. Everybody take turns taking it home, and then we have a duck in the yard or whatever, because you also have to be prepared for when things change, and I am in Miami, so there would be hurricanes and we would have no power for a few days you know, yeah, I love that Barbie.
Speaker 1:Where can people find you if they want to purchase your book or just Barbie? Where can people find you if they want to purchase?
Speaker 2:your book or just, you know, follow you anywhere. Okay, so I don't have a huge social media presence yet, because I don't know how to do it. I do have a Facebook. It is overwhelming, I'm telling you. I'm like, oh my gosh, enough is enough. You can find it on Amazon and then you can go to barbieriveracom. I do a blog about my school, about what I'm doing. It's not super consistent, but I do send something out at least once a month. I'm trying to get to once a week, but I haven't gotten there yet. But that's where you can find me.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I'm going to put the link to the blog, the website and to your book in the show's description. And then what was that book that you showed earlier? That from the? It said like an elementary on the front arithmetic thicklins.
Speaker 2:Wait, where are?
Speaker 1:we okay.
Speaker 2:So, like I say, I love that ebay and you can save vintage arithmetic textbooks and a whole bunch of these will come up and some of them are fantastic, like.
Speaker 2:This is an old reading workbook. Now imagine it is because what your son needs is with, like the capital letters, like. First of all, they don't even teach handwriting and to me handwriting is the first discipline of school the first. So if it's done properly, I'm going to tell you're going to spend a good year on uppercase and lowercase, even with this. This week, in fact, I had my summer school. Students are from Arizona, my teacher handles them and I just happened to be in the school and they were like uppercase, lowercase. I'm like guys, you know what that means. They're like no, I'm like.
Speaker 2:So I showed them an old printing press and I took a book like this I go pretend this is a suitcase because the old printing presses they had to put tiles of the alphabet and spell everything out and then they would press it down. So in the case, they kept the capital letters in the top of the case and the lower letters in the bottom. So what was at top is called uppercase and what was in the bottom was lowercase. And this little boy's like boom, yes, that's why it's called uppercase. I didn't know that. Yes, it was stored in the uppercase of the alphabet of the compartments and the lowercase were stored in the lower and they were like wow, yeah. And I was telling them like manners, I go. Manners come from the Spanish word mano, which is hand, how you handle people. If you handle people well, they want to be around you. If you don't, and you're a little brat, nobody wants to be around you. That's basically manners.
Speaker 1:That's what I tell my son all the time I go. Listen, you don't need to like, change yourself to make people like you, but if people like you, but if people like you, life's a lot easier. Yes, exactly, yes, true, barbie, thank you so much for joining me today. I love this conversation.
Speaker 2:I love this.
Speaker 1:Maybe we can chat again and you can really get into doing your school, because we really didn't get into, like, how you ran the micro school, so I would love to have you back sometime. Thank you so much for joining me Anytime.
Speaker 2:Anytime, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.