79. Is Homeschooling the Future of Education? With Sam Sorbo

What if everything we’ve been told about education… is wrong?

In this episode of Joy of the Hang, Sharon sits down with actress, author, and education advocate Sam Sorbo for a candid and thought-provoking conversation about parenting, homeschooling, and the systems shaping our children’s futures.

From questioning traditional schooling to redefining what it means to truly educate, Sam shares why she believes parents—not institutions—should lead the learning journey. Together, we explore independence, critical thinking, and the courage to challenge the status quo.

This conversation isn’t about easy answers—it’s about asking better questions.

https://sorbostudios.com/sam-sorbo

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Joy of the Hang. Today we're diving into a topic that impacts every single one of us, education. Maybe not in the way you'd expect. My guest Sam Swarbo is a former Hollywood actress, writer, and producer who made a bold decision to step away from her career to homeschool her three children for over a decade. What started as a personal choice evolved into something much bigger. Today, Sam is an education freedom advocate and the founder of the There Your Kids Foundation, an organization dedicated to empowering parents, protecting educational freedom, and helping families take a more active role in their children's education. This conversation isn't about right or wrong, it's about asking better questions. What does it actually mean to educate a child? Who gets to decide? And how do we create create environments where kids and parents can truly thrive? Let's get into it. Welcome, Sam.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

I love that introduction. That was great. Who gets to decide is really the question of the hour these days.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah, exactly. It's so true. With so many big topics, I'm excited to actually talk about education and homeschooling because when I had my children, I didn't realize that was an option. You know what I mean? Like I'm from Maine, and you just everybody just went to either a public school or a private school. And homeschooling was just, it seems like it was just starting, and there were a few parents that did it, but it wasn't mainstream, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

No, and in fact, the people who were homeschooling were like the misfits. Like they were the kids who just couldn't couldn't go to school because they couldn't fit in and they they struggled so mightily with bullying or with whatever. And so yeah, even for me, when I first started to consider it, I was like, well, that's probably not gonna happen, you know. And even still till today, a lot of people feel disempowered to home educate. They feel like they can't. They they presuppose a lot of things to get to that point, but let's face it, we are taught in school that we can't homeschool. We're we're taught in school that we can't a lot of things, one of them being education, right? Because when you go to an institution for 13 years where they are tacitly telling you every single day, we are the experts, we know how this is done, we are doing this the right way, you're gonna, well, there's no way I can I can reproduce that. But here's the joy is now parents are waking up and saying, wait, I don't even know if I want to reproduce that because that that's not what I thought it was supposed to be. And that's wrong. There is some wrong there. You gave in the intro where this is not about right or wrong. It kind of is a little bit. There are some very wrong things that are happening to children in our schools. And there are parents who are waking up to that and saying, Well, that's that's wrong. It is wrong to teach a five-year-old about lubrication for same-sex attraction. It's wrong. You know, there are certain things, there there is an immutable truth in the world, and it doesn't matter if people wish to deny it, it still exists. It's wrong to torture puppies, it's wrong to expose young children to sexually charged material. But this is what they're doing in the schools. So when you come to that, and by the way, there are a lot of people who don't believe that's happening. They just they can't fathom it. It seems ridiculous to even imply that that would be happening. And yet, I can give you video upon video testimonies of this happening to children in school, by their parents, by the kids themselves, by the books that we see inside the classrooms, inside the schools, by libraries. Our public libraries are now the grounds for all kinds of misbehavior, let's say, negative behavior towards children. Um, and so so parents are very slow, sadly, to wake up to this, but some of them are, and they're saying there's there's gotta be something better than this. And when I started home educating my kids, my oldest went through second grade, and I was very disappointed with the academics in the second grade classroom. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. It was just not good. And I didn't feel like he was getting educated. I felt like he was getting busyworked to death and bored and annoyed, and he just it wasn't good for him. And I said to my husband, you know, I mean, I think I could fail at homeschooling him. In other words, we could just blow the academics and he would not be smart, but he'd still be a better person. Because education is as much or more about character than about the academics. And I slowly started to realize that at the time I wouldn't have been able to articulate articulate it that way, but I knew he'd be a better person because the other stuff that was happening in the schools was bad.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah. Well, let's talk though to the to the moms that live in a rural part of the country. It seems like a luxury to be able to homeschool your kids, right? A lot of us had to work two jobs to raise our kids. Like how, and you know, that's it almost becomes a babysitter, right? Put them in school, you can go to work. So talk to that woman who just doesn't feel like she has the flexibility to be able to stay home for her child.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yeah, so children require child care. And uh it's not like a babysitter, it actually becomes the babysitter. And now we have preschool care and after-school care and all kinds of ways that that parents sort of avoid the responsibility of their children for for whatever reason, right? So some of them may be working and some of them may not be, but those those are opportunities that are available to them. So for parents who just have this knee-jerk reaction of, well, I don't have time, ask yourself how much time does it take? Because you don't have an answer for that. And I do, and it's not very much time at all. For young kids, it's an hour a day. For a little bit older, it might go into two or three hours a day, total, tops. Tops. And so the the argument of, well, I just don't have time, really goes by the wayside. Do you have love for your child? Because if you can find childcare and devote an hour of your day to teaching your children things that matter, and I'm not even talking about academics, then then you have time, right? So it's really a matter of solving the nut of childcare more than it's the matter of solving the nut of academics. And the reason I say that is because children are born curious. Now, when they go to school, they're taught to shut that curiosity down. That's what sit down, be quiet, don't speak until the teacher calls on you. You have to raise your hand in order to ask a question. That's what all that messaging does, is it shuts down the curiosity of the child. It tells the child, sit down and shut up, stop questioning, stop thinking, don't do don't do and so that of course is anti-education. That's the opposite of education. And that's why we lose faith in our children wanting to learn, even, right? Because they stop wanting to learn because they're so frustrated by the system.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

So if you don't do that to them, then you will have a child who is eager to learn. And then what you do is you supply them with information and books and interesting documentaries, for instance, things that they are interested in, that they want to learn, and they develop a joy of learning. And they desire to learn throughout the rest of their lives, if you can just stoke that curiosity and keep it going, which they are born with. So, but as a culture, we've lost faith that our children will desire to learn. Because let's face it, you and I went to school. I hated learning, I hated school, it was awful. I remember graduating and basically, you know, going, if I never have to crack open a book again, I will die happy because I hated it so much. Because they make it tedious, and I would argue on purpose, although not all of them, and there are some great teachers in the in the schools that don't seek to harm children. It's true, not every teacher seeks to destroy a child's innocence or or their confidence or whatever, but there are some out there who do. And so that's why I advocate for parents to never entrust a stranger with your child. I don't care how many accolades the government has given them. I don't know why you would ever trust them with your child.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Yeah, you make a lot of good points, but I think too, a lot of parents are probably nervous that they don't have the skill or the knowledge, right, to be able to teach them properly. It's not a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Yeah, well then you have to ask yourself what what is important for your child to learn.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

And that's that's the point where I got to in second grade. I'm like, you know what? It's important for him to know math, but uh honestly, it's more important for him to be a good person. It's important it's more important for him to be likable and to enjoy other people and to have them enjoy him. That's actually more important. We we all know this intrinsically. We won't admit it because we all went to school where we learned that the grades were the most important thing and money was the highest value. But those are lies. Those are lies that are in the system that are baked in and that that we we then sort of accept as truths, even though when push comes to shove, we will say, Well, no, I mean the most important thing in life is relationship. Love is very important. It's important to have love in your life. And if you don't have love, what do you have? What it what else is there that is has any importance after that, right? So then you really have to just sort of take a step back and go, okay, so what is the most important thing that my child learned? Your children want to be you. Children want to be adults, and you're the adult that God has put in front of them, right? And so they want to be you. So the idea is show them how to be you. Who knows better how to be you than you? And it's really like it's not even like I wish I could make it more complicated because then I'd be earning a ton of money doing this. It's just not more complicated than that. And then the academics, when the child retains his or her curiosity, the academics will come naturally, naturally, because they want to learn. And they will want to learn the things that they're interested in. And they might not be interested in the Pythagorean theorem. I would have been because I love math. Maybe they won't be. Maybe maybe their skills are in uh creative design, and so they're going to be designing the new Apple, whatever, right? Steve Jobs did not graduate college, he dropped out, and then he started taking the classes that actually held interest for him, and he took a calligraphy class, and that's how he developed the idea for a computer that could do calligraphy type design as opposed to the very staid and boxy IBM computers that were only doing like if you remember the CRT, the cathode ray tubes with the green letters that were flashing. Like that's all the IBMs could do. And he designed the computer, the Macintosh, that could do the creative stuff because he was creative and he thought, well, this is something that could help people. And so that's what you want for your child is to give them the opportunity to do something that will help people because they've been raised to be helpful to others, and they won't get any of that in school.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, and I love listening to you because I have two children, and my son could have definitely benefited from homeschooling. My daughter loves to learn, she loves to be at school, and she graduated from Harvard, and I think she's gonna forever be a student. Now she's going for her master's. Well, anyway. The kids are so different, though, is my point. And my son definitely struggled, and he has um he's a little bit on the spectrum, and I think he just would have benefited from not being told to sit still, but to be able to be in motion and move and and do what came naturally to him. And you know, their learning style is very different, right? Just every child is so different. But I understood when the teachers brought us in, and of course, wanted wanted to medicate him for having ADHD, uh, which we did not, but you know, I understood that they're trying to teach to classrooms of 25 and 30 people, right? And they have to teach to the masses, not to the individual.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Well, uh more important than teaching the material is classroom management. That's why they're willing to medicate your child so that the other children can learn. Exactly. It's really the sacrifice of the individual for for the community, right? And uh it's a very dangerous construct, frankly. We only accept it because we were steeped in it, we grew up in it. We can't see we don't sense the cage because we grew up and were taught to love the bars. But we're in a cage right now. We're in an education cage. Actually, I call it a school cage because it's not even education. When the first thing that a child learns in school is to sit down and shut up and not ask questions because this is a deterrent, raising your hand, that is anti-education. So it's not a system of education. And in fact, I would argue you can't call it a system of education because they hide the Bible. And not from a religious point of view, but from a purely secular point of view, the Bible is the most important text in history in the Western world. Period. Full stop. So you're hiding the most important text that is the basis for all of our foundational texts, you're hiding that from children. What? That you're not interested in their education, you're interested in deceit. And that's what we have. We have a system of deceit.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

You're very passionate about this. I love this. This is a great conversation. No, I mean it. So, what did you believe about education before you started homeschooling and how did that evolve once you were in it?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

So I was always an academic. I went to went through high school, I went to Duke University, I studied biomedical engineering. I was going to go into medicine. And then I figured out that uh I could I I started modeling and I became very successful very quickly. And I figured out that I could pursue modeling and earn a lot of money and travel the world and learn foreign languages and do literally everything else that I want to do, or I could become a doctor, put the blinders on, go into severe debt, and do that one thing. And so I I had to put it in a balance and I went, well, I kind of want to do everything else and become wealthy because I was taught that it's all about the money. That's what we're taught in school. Success equals money. And as long as you can get the money, you're you're you're golden, like you're in. Like you will be happy if you make a lot of money. So I went and made a lot of money, and then wasn't really happy. I wasn't like depressed or anything, but I was like, this doesn't make me happy. I literally don't even know how much money I have in the bank. I know I have enough, like for a long time, but this isn't making me happy. What's that about? And so I began to see the chinks in the system that had raised me, basically, because I went to public school all the way through. And I and that's what brought me to this sort of suspicion about school. And then when my son was they were basically failing to educate him. They they just weren't getting enough into him. He was a curious young boy, and they weren't feeding his curiosity, they were just making him sit there and do busy work and tedious work and you know ridiculous things. I was like, well, this isn't this isn't education, not the way that I thought of education, because my last year in college, I took the hardest courses I'd ever taken. I got the best grades I'd ever had because I there was no pressure, because I'd already made money. So the pressure was off. And so that's when I realized that there it's a bit of a scam. And in fact, I never tested well until I'd already gone out into the world and made a bunch of money. And then and then I tested like nothing because it was so easy, because there was no more pressure. The anxiety that we put children under in our schools is debilitating. I can testify to that. I remember sitting for an orgo, uh, organic chemistry test, sitting for basically half an hour, unable to fill in my name. I was just like a deer caught in the headlights. And the the kid that I studied with who I tutored, he got an A plus on the test and I got a C minus. And he's like, How did you how did you not do as well as I did? You actually taught me this stuff. And I'm like, Well, I uh I didn't put my name down for about 30 minutes. So I know firsthand, you know, some of the frailties of the system, and there are more, and people can can point to their own. I know so many people who say that they can't do math because they don't have a math brain. Hello, there is no such thing as a math brain. That's like saying I don't speak French because I don't have a French brain. That's not a thing. You don't do math well because you had a bad teacher. Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

And I'm sorry, teachers, but I've seen it already. So I tutored a girl in calculus. She came to me with uh with an F. She said her professor promised her that if she could get a D minus on the final exam, he would pass her so she wouldn't have to repeat the course. And I tutored her for, I don't know, four, four or five weeks, and she got a B plus on the exam. And he said he'd never seen anybody improve so dramatically. Well, no, not if you're just you know pronouncing death sentences over them and saying if you can get a D minus. How dare he? He was a very bad teacher.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Yeah, that's condescending. So you let me, I'm gonna take you back to your son's second grade. So you decide he's not getting the education you want him to have. So you and your husband, I'm sure, had a discussion and both were on the same page about taking him out, and you're like, or maybe you didn't, maybe you said, Listen, Kevin, I'm taking my kid out of school. You know what?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

So I considered the private school. Okay. But the tuition was exorbitant and it just seemed ridiculous. It was, I don't remember what it was, thirty thousand dollars a year for second grade, third grade, or maybe more. I honestly don't remember, but it just seemed like ridiculous. And I was e I was eager to try homeschooling. I was missed my my children when they were away from me, and I just loved being around them. And so I just I said to him, I just want to try this. I just want to try it till Christmas. This began, I began thinking about it late in the year, about maybe about this time, what are we, April, maybe May, you know, as the school year came to an end, I got very frustrated with the way the the teachers were treating him and me, frankly. I remember we had to go away on uh my husband was working and so we went with him. So the deal is you go to the school and you say, I'm gonna be gone for ten days or two weeks or whatever it is. So if you give me the work to do, I will do the work, and then you can count the child as present, even though he's not there, if I bring the work back. It's it's a financial transaction. They are not interested in the academic pro progress of the student. They just need to be able to check off the box that he did schoolwork, and the schoolwork they gave me, I remember distinctly because I put it down in front of him the first day and he goes, Oh, mommy, teacher says we don't have to do this. We don't have to do this, mommy. We don't have to do this. I was like, Well, she gave it to me for you to do. But mommy, in class, she says we don't have to do this. So she literally gave me the busy work that she didn't require the students to do, and I was the substitute teacher. Thank you very much. So I was getting quite frustrated with sort of and and by the way, nothing against her personally. She probably did it completely unthinking. But my son is clever. He's like, no, this is the stuff we don't do. The stuff that we do do is bad enough, but not this stuff. And so I just I was just sort of fed up. So I started talking to my kids about homeschooling. I started talking to him. Like I would pick him up from school and I would say, Do you have homework today? And he'd say yes. And I'd say, Well, that's too bad. If you were homeschooled, you wouldn't have homework. So by the time I was actually considering it for real, he was like, Are we gonna homeschool? Can we can we do that? I want to try that. Because then I won't have homework. So there are ways to work with your children to convince them of decisions that you've already made or are in the process of making. And you know, I talked to my husband, I said, I just want to try this till Christmas. And he's like, you know what? Give it a shot. Like, let's what's the what's the worst that can happen? He's not gonna fall behind in second grade. Come on, people. You know, they they put the fear in us. Well, your child's gonna be weird, he's gonna be a misfit, he's gonna be stupid, he's not gonna be able to graduate. That's the biggest lie out there is when parents call and they say, I'm gonna pull my my child, then he won't graduate. Do you know how you graduate a child? You literally go online, download a diploma, and issue it. You call it whatever you want, and you issue a diploma. Like it's just not that hard. And yeah, okay, then the college calls and asks. But they they rely, they're not even relying on SAT scores anymore. The gig is up, or what is it? The jig. The jig is up. Like it's done. They are finished, they aren't requiring SAT, and now they're not requiring SATs, and they're finding that they're letting in a bunch of kids who can't do remedial college courses, and that's at Harvard, like it's just ridiculous. So I want to encourage parents because the world is not waiting for the schools to catch up with the job market, and the schools are not interested in catching up with the job market. So, if your primary concern is that your child be able to get a job, the last place they should be is in school.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

So, talk to the mom or the dad who wants to give this a shot. What's the procedure for starting homeschooling? Do they have to apply to the state? Is there some form? Are there forms that need to be filled out? How do you go about it?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, what are what are the rules and how do I how do I abide by the rules? I mean, it's all it's all our own schooling that's just feeding our fears. Have you noticed that? This is why I really don't want children in school because school indwells us with all of these like restrictions and fears, and follow the teacher and don't break the rules and you know move at the sound of a bell and all that. Every state is somewhat different, but it is legal to homeschool in every state. There is an organization called Homeschool Legal Defense Association, H S L D A, that is a nonprofit that you can go on there and find out what the procedure is in your state. For instance, in California, you file a personal school affidavit. There are other ways to do it, by the way. California has a couple of different uh ways to go about it, but the way That I did it was I filed my own school. I was the principal. My husband was the gym teacher. Uh, he was the vice principal. Like, you know. Um, and you just you file with the state, and then you keep in California, you have to keep attendance records. Um, and that is the only thing that they legally may ask you for. You do not have to pass any exams at the end of the year, you do not have to show any test results, you do not have to tell them what classes your children are taking. Unless they've changed since I've been there. That is, and and I think I would have heard it of it, that's their standard. In Florida, you simply file with your state, the governments, you've you file a paper that's available online, and then at the end of the year you do an assessment or an exam. Now, a lot of people opt, a lot of parents opt for the exams. I don't believe in exams. I was a terrible test taker, and so I I don't believe in putting children through that, frankly. But some children love it. And so if you have a child that loves taking the exam, then then by all means, right? But the other opportunity that you have in the state of Florida is to do an assessment, which means you hire somebody, typically somebody who is homeschool friendly, who will basically interview your child. And the one metric uh rubric that she's looking for is has your child learned something in this past year? Once she ascertains that your child has learned something, she's probably going to be fairly thorough. What did you learn here? What did you learn there? How did you, you know, what project were you working on then? And how was that? And she just has a conversation with the child, and then she turns into the state. Yes, this child is on track and doing well. Period. End of statement. So they're they're different in different states. I think Minnesota requires testing, actual testing. I think New York requires something. I can't remember. The different states have different things, but it's all available on HSLDA. I think it's HSLDA.org is probably their website. And you can find all of this information, by the way, at samsorbo.com, because of course I'm a huge advocate for this, so I have a lot of resources at my website to help you get started, including my most recent book, which is right here, Parents Guide to Homeschooling. And this is for the parents, it's the guide to get you started to think about the education of your child as opposed to schooling your child. Because they're two different things. Schooling is anti-education, and home education is pro-education. And let's face it, we all want our kids to be well, I hope we all want our kids to be smarter than we are.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

And I think we need to tell our listeners. We need to tell our listeners that all three of your children have graduated. So you did a great job. You've launched them.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Yes. Right? And uh they're all successful in their own respects, and none of them went to college. They all decided on their own that college was not going to get them where they needed to be. Now, I do have one who may eventually decide, you know what, I do want a degree because I want to work in this particular field or whatever. But you know, we have a lot of assumptions about what college provides. And a lot of those assumptions are actually unfounded. For instance, you have to go to college, you have to graduate college to go to law school. No, you don't. You have to pass the LSATs. But they're actually programs for kids in high school to get them to the place where they can go straight into law school. So you don't have to graduate college to go to law school. Same thing with medical school. I'm just giving this as an example. Let's let's stop making these just tremendous assumptions because that's just the way it's always been done. Because at this point we have to admit it's a bit of a pyramid scheme. Because college prep and career readiness is the mantra that's in all of our schools, college prep and career readiness. Now that is the assumption that every child should go to college, and we know that that's false because if you like plumbing and you're good with your hands, you can have a six or seven figure year job as a plumber, never having set foot in higher education. So we have to step away from these assumptions that college is going to be the best place for our child, especially now with everything that's happening on college campuses.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Oh, don't get me started. So I have a question about socialization. What did you do? Did your children feel like they missed out on being part of a team? Or how did you get them? Did you do neighborhood sports or theater or how how had they find their own?

SPEAKER_00 26:20

Let's start by asking the question: what is socialization, right? That's that's an important question. What is socialization? It's the ability of your child to make friends and keep friends. It's the knowledge that your child will have from learning how to give and to forgive, right? And somehow we think that if we stick a child in a vat of children, they will be socialized. Why? Why do we think that? Because we all went to school and that's where we made our friends. But what if we didn't make friends? I was a bit of a pl pariah myself. I had a very small core group of friends, and that was it. That's all I wanted, that's all I needed. That right? My husband went to school and he was like the super jock. Everybody loved him, the druggies loved him, the cheerleaders loved him, like the whole gamut, right? But that was just his character. Not every child goes to school and makes friends with everybody. Like it's it's pie in the sky. It's a lie that we've been sold because we haven't bothered to question it. And in fact, now that I've said that, let's talk about that. Why don't we question? Why? Why do we just accept, oh, well, your kids get socialized in school, so what are you gonna do for them if you don't put them in school? That's just a lie, but nobody questions it because we went to school and in school we were trained not to question.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

Yeah, because this is a barrier to entry.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

And we just went through a whole period of not questioning called COVID. And how'd that work out for you?

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

So teach your children to question, teach them to question you, not disrespectfully, respectfully to question you. And the first time they win an argument, praise them, don't let them win. But the first time that they actually form a cogent argument that's cohesive, that makes sense, and they win, my goodness, that's a day of celebration, right? Yeah, you want your children to be smarter than you.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

I love that because that's my daughter was always that way. She's was always, I said, you know, sometimes that can be difficult to parent a child like that, but I love that she's so inquisitive and so she's right a lot, you know, and I love that she can teach me things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Absolutely. I mean, I I have the same relationship with my kids. They're constantly teaching me things now. I mean, some of it's just because I'm older, so I don't understand what the shorthand form of these phrases are or whatever. But the socialization is you give your child an opportunity to meet people, you put them in social situations, not just with kids their own age, please, with adults, and you train them to behave properly. The first day, the first time I taught my child to hold the door open for somebody, because there's a proper way and an improper way. You don't walk through the door and then stand in the doorway and have them squeeze past you. That's not the right way to hold the door open. You walk through the door if it's a push, you go around the outside of it and you hold it back as you allow them to walk through. And the first day your child does that, and the person turns and says, My goodness, what a brave young man or what a you know, what a what a kind young man you are, or whatever. That that pumps them up, right? You're giving them life skills that are social skills. They do not learn those skills in school, they learn survival of the fittest, Lord of the Flies. I mean, I could go on, right? All of these, those are not the skills that you want your child to know. How to step on others to get ahead.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Right, exactly. And you know, bullying is such a problem now in schools too, right? So you don't you take that element out when you're homeschooling, I would agree.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Well, they train bullying in school. They train it. It is one of the things that they teach. And I say that because they teach children that survival of the fittest is the proven law of the land, and that children have no value because they're just a collection of accidents of nature. So put those two things together. Why should I care if I hurt your feelings as I step my way up the ladder? Why shouldn't I kick you off the ladder so that I can get past you? So we're training bullying. And then at the same time, hypocritically, by the way, we're saying, oh, but don't bully. Kids see right through that. They're much smarter than we give them credit for.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

That's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way. That's very interesting. Let's talk about your foundation and your mission. So at what point did your personal journey turn into something bigger, into creating the They're Your Kids Foundation?

SPEAKER_00 30:41

So I had been homeschooling my kids for a long t a while. A bit of a I wrote a blog post about homeschooling. And I decided that I needed to turn that into a book. And so the first half of the book, that book was called They're Your Kids. I have it here. Um the first half of the book is is What's Wrong with the Schools. Because at the same time I was sort of what was going on in the schools, because my friends had kids in in school and they were adopting Common Core at the time, which was a disaster and a personal affront because I love math and they destroyed Common Core destroyed math. And they implemented it in the schools completely untested, which is by the way the way that they do things, because schools are all about selling school materials and books, because it's all a shell game. Sorry, but it is. And so I decided to turn uh my blogs and my other thoughts on the school system into a book called They're Your Kids. And then I became an advocate, and it's kind of funny because I wrote this book for homeschoolers, but they don't need my book. The book is actually better for non-homeschoolers who have never really considered homeschooling, but they don't want my book. So I clearly was not being very, what's the word I'm looking for? For predictable or whatever, to to do a book that the marketing on which was going to be challenged out of the gate. But in any case, um, I decided that this was I was passionate about this. And the reason that I'm passionate about it is because school is child abuse, and I don't believe we should be abusing children. And my Lord and Savior Jesus said it better than I could not to harm children. And it was better that a millstone be tied around your neck and you be cast into the ocean than that you cause harm to one of these little ones. And I believe they are causing indelible harm to our children in school. And it's not necessarily the teachers, although there are some very bad players in the schools now, because where are pedophiles gonna go to find children? They will go to the schools because that's where the children congregate. But despite that, the system, the fact, I don't believe children should be in an institution. Healthy children don't belong inside an institution. And the more I thought about it and the more I worked on it, the more I realized I am just vehemently opposed to s to that institution. And then the other thing that I want to share is as time went on, I realized what a gift it was for me to be able to be with my children so much. I worked full-time, so you you can absolutely do this if you work from home. And even if you travel, you take your kids with you. We had the means to do that. But just the idea that I I was the master of our relationships. So I designed our relationships, I made them happen. And so as my children grew into teenagers, they would come into my room at night, because I I did a radio show in the morning very early. So I'd always go to bed early. And uh Kevin often traveled, and so they would come into the bedroom at at one at a time, only, you know, to chat, just to just to pour out their day for me. And I realized that the school would have been very happy to rob me of that gift of getting to know my child. And I don't want that for other parents. I want them to have that relationship with their children because they can. Now, I will say that, you know, we one of the first articles that I wrote was um Troubled Teens Born in the Classroom for Breitbart, and I talked about how the school separates the child from the parent, and then also at the same time is telling the child your parent doesn't really know much. Like, like you're in school now, and by the way, have your parent help you with your common core math, and the parent says, I've never seen this before, I can't help you. And the kid goes, Well, you must be pretty dumb because the teacher knows how to do it, and uh, you know, I guess, I guess you're an idiot kind of thing. And so and the school's authority, of course, challenges the parent's authority, but the parent has ceded his authority to the school by dropping the child off at school and telling the child tacitly or otherwise, the school knows better than I do. So then the then the child starts challenging the parent. And the parents not prepared for that because what did I do? And so you've got this chal this this troubled relationship between the teenager and the parent. And that's why we have rebellious teenagers. My teenagers never rebelled. There was nothing for them to rebel against. We were both on the same page. We were working together. If I made a decision that went against their desires or wants, I could explain to them why their desires or wants were wrong for them. And so we never had that kind of animosity. And and in the article I mentioned you know, what happens is there's a there's an aggressive nature that develops between the child and the parent. And then the parents like, you know what, you're too difficult. I need you to go back to school. Just go to school so that you're out of my hair for the day. And it's not like the child doesn't understand that, that metric that's just taken place, that um that shift. And it's very sad, it's the destruction of the family. And I realize that home education, probably the the most important thing it is, is it's the preservation of the family. The academics are not even secondary, they're tertiary. It's the it's the character of the child one, the foundational family to the lifelong relationship, and then it's academics. And the academics are driven entirely by the child. Which doesn't mean by the way that the parent doesn't doesn't actually drive some of the academics in the younger years and say, hey, you need to know some math, so we're gonna do some math. But you know what? If the child can't do math at age seven or eight, that's okay, they can get it at ten or eleven. And and the idea that we send children to school and they struggle with math at seven to eight, seven or eight years old, and so we get them an IEP, right, which singles them out and tells them they're stupid because they need an IEP, and then the IEP is, you know, struggling, and it would be great if they got outside tutoring. And so we then punish them by taking them to an outside tutor, to Kumon or to Mathnasium or whatever after school because they're stupid. It's it's the destruction of the child. They'll get enough math between first grade and twelfth grade for a lifetime. They don't have to know the math in first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade. They can start learning math in eighth grade. They'll be fine. It's just not that important.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Not only that, Sam, there's a lot of math I learned that I've never used after I graduated from high school. It's like I've never had to use calculus again or trigonometry just because of my career path. Just wasn't something I did. Oh, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

And by the way, it was it was maybe valuable that you learned it. Like it was challenging and you you you stepped up to the plate and you met the challenge, and that's good for you, right? I'm talking about the downsides. Because when we're teaching children that they're stupid, because all the other children get it, and the teacher makes a side comment because he's frustrated because this kid doesn't get it, you know, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's child abuse. So so to avoid that, you give the child what the child needs when the child is able to accept it.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Well, I wish I'd met you 20 years ago. Because I probably would have made a different choice after hearing all your arguments. You've got me convinced. I was like, I wish I had a I wish I wish I could have a do-over, Sam.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Yeah, don't we all though?

SPEAKER_01 37:47

I know, right? There's a lot of things I would have done differently. Here's another question for you. Education can bring up strong opinions from all sides, as you know. How do you approach those conversations in a way that keeps people open rather than divided?

SPEAKER_00 38:00

I don't know. I speak the truth. I speak it boldly. Uh, that's actually my catchphrase. And uh you don't have to like it. I don't, I make no apologies for the truth. I I am willing to say to somebody's face, you need to homeschool your children. I'm willing to say to somebody, if your child has asked you to homeschool, you better, you better do it. That's that's the worst case scenario when a child asks to be homeschooled and the parent says, no, I can't. Uh that's just that's that breaks my heart. So I'm here to say everybody can. I know people people always say to me, but what about the people who can't, Sam? And I'm like, show me the people who can't. I know you'll show me people who won't. Show me people who can't, because I don't, I don't know that they're out there. It's they're so few and far between. It's like, what about rape and incest? It's one of those sort of theological questions. And in theory, abortion is always wrong because it is murdering a human, innocent life. In theory, homeschooling will let's put it this way, school will never beat home education. It will never beat it. So what's the what's the optimal choice? Home education. The optimal choice.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

And I've I read a while back that I don't know if there's if there are actually groups that do this, but that there were groups of moms that were helping each other to homeschool each other's children.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

So making those smaller and so those are co-ops or micro schools, or there's lots of different ways that people are getting it done now.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

And I understand that. I understand that parents are completely insecure because they went to school and they were taught that they are incapable. That's what our schools teach us about ourselves, that we are incapable, except in the one area that we, you know, got our degree or whatever. So I understand that people feel like they need support. And my my prayer for those families is that they slowly realize, or quickly realize, that in fact it's just not rocket science to bring a child up because really all we're talking about, in a sense, is child rearing, is parenting. But that said, it's fun. It's fun to get together. The kids get together and they learn stuff and they learn from each other and they have conversation. I mean, I did it. I did a co-op all the way through called uh classical conversations, loved it. And it opened up my eyes because I I had not had the education that I kind of thought that I had had, or you know, I assumed that I'd been taught a whole bunch of stuff in school because I was a I was a straight A student or whatever, but they never taught me about the Bible, right? They never taught me about lots of things, right? And so when we did classical conversations, I learned a lot of that stuff and I was able to expose my children to that stuff. So I found it very beneficial. So there are ways of figuring it out using, you know, what other people have developed or designed or are working on currently, and it can be just a great project. What it's doing is it's building families and community at the same time, which is a beautiful thing, and we should get back to that. So I highly encourage people whenever I'm coaching, because I because I coach families, whenever I'm coaching a family, I say go online, find your homeschool communities, see what they've got going on. If you've got young kids, it's park days, great. If it's a little bit older kids, maybe they're doing trips to the museums and stuff like that. Like those are fun, they're social, so your kids get to be around other kids and other adults, and that's like the best of both worlds. And uh yeah, there's just a lot of opportunity out there right now.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

I know you and your family lean very heavily into your faith. Can you tell me a little bit about that and when that became so important for you? Were you brought up in faith? Can you can you tell me a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 41:31

So I found faith after college when I realized that money was not the root of all happiness, which is what I had learned in school, right? And I was like, well, um, if if getting the money was the goal, I've accomplished the goal, so I guess I'm done now, so I'll just off myself because there's no other purpose in life, right? And I started to think that that seemed a bit odd. And I went on a journey of searching for meaning in the universe, and I discovered that there is order in the universe and therefore there is God. I could have called him dog, but I just thought God would fit better. And then eventually I ended up in church. So that's how I came to faith. But I will say that God has ordained for the parents to teach the children. It's in the book. There's nowhere in the book that says find a good school for your child. It says, you are the parents, teach your children my words, teach them as I as you walk by the by, as you lie down to sleep, as you wake in the morning, teach them my words. And if you give your children the Bible, you are giving them truth, history, story, which they love. And what happens is they develop a thirst and a yearning for the truth, and the truth is everywhere in God's creation, and so they will be set free to then learn everything. Because truth is math, truth is history, truth is science, truth is reading and literature, and they will develop a taste for that. And to the extent where they they won't be as interested in Hollywood, in social media, in all of the trapings of this very superficial life that we're leading now.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Thank you for talking a little bit about that. I interview a lot of people, and lately, but for some reason we've been it's like something's happening in the universe because a lot of our conversations lately have been around faith and God, and it's been very interesting. So I I wanted to touch on that with you because I I think I knew that you were very, very uh into your faith. So thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

I'm I'm actually into the truth. Into the truth. I developed a love of truth in fourth grade, and it just has never left me. And uh now that I know the author of truth, I proclaim him.

SPEAKER_01 43:39

I love that. I love that. For someone listening uh right now who isn't ready to homeschool but wants to just wants to educate differently, what's one small shift they can make right now?

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Yeah, take your kids out of school, don't wait. So it's funny because I was at a speaking event and a guy in the audience and I opened it up for questions, a guy in the audience said. I'm the father, I have two kids, two kids in school currently. His he had younger kids too. His daughter, I can't remember exactly, the daughter was excellent, but the son was really struggling, or vice versa. And he he knew that he he wanted to take them out of school, or he wanted to take one of them out of school at the end of the year, and he didn't know if he should take the other one out because the other one was very happy in school and was really thriving. And I just looked at him and I said, first of all, you know you need to take them both out. But why wait? What good will come of the last two months of the school year that is like this? This is like this is super good and then it's bad. No, take them out tomorrow. Write the school a letter, do the stuff that you need to do. This was in Florida, so it was it was fairly straightforward. I don't know for every state if it's like that. And then I ran into him like three years later, and his whole family is in the business together. And he said, he and his wife both came to me and they both had tears in their eyes. They like, that advice was the best advice. We got our kids back. We're so happy now. We work together as a family, we've become so cohesive, and my kids are so smart, and they've been set free of all of the stuff that lands on you in school. The peer pressure, the anxiety, the teachers. I don't know if you know this, but like 81% of children report being bullied by a teacher at some point. Like it's it's insanity. And we just keep doing it because we're just mice on the on the week. And you know, we just don't question, we just do what we always do or whatever. Um take them out tomorrow. Take them out. Do never send them back, just don't send them back, and then you can figure out afterwards because it's not a race, it's not like, oh, when they turn 18, they better be finished. And by the way, like, in fact, that's sort of the feeling. Like if they turn 18, they're finished human beings. And we all know that that's a lie, okay? Because even at 18, our children are going to college, taking remedial classes. There's a the um the class valedictorian in a Detroit high school, she was valedictorian. She went to University of Michigan and had to take remedial math, and she was the class valedictorian. They are no longer graduating high school like as fully fledged human beings, they go through college and they've developed a new word called adulting because they have no idea how to be an adult. Okay. So when you take your children out of the infantilization that is imposed on children in school, and you bring them home and you give them chores and responsibility, and you make them members of a family unit where they they have to answer questions. They are responsible for themselves and for others. You you are creating an adult so that by the time they are actually grown into the adult body, they're actually almost adults. They still need some guidance and stuff, but they're pretty, they're pretty clever and they're pretty thoughtful, and they're thinking about what they're doing with their lives already at the age of 14, 15, 16, 17, instead of by the you know, at 22 after graduating college, going, I don't know what I want to do with my life. I've got this degree, but maybe I'll go back to school and do something else. Or, you know, like which is what we're seeing all the time now, an amount of debt.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

And the degree that you see, yeah, say that you spent$200,000 to get.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Right.

unknown 47:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

And they're like, okay, so now I have this degree. I just talked to a family, they're sending their son to UCI USC film school. Very good film school. Very good. I have no idea what that means anymore. Do you know how to how to climb the the ranks in film in Hollywood? Not by getting a degree.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

You know, it might be fun. You might meet some people, sure. And I'm sure USC does a lot to like bring Hollywood to USC so you get exposure. You know the better way to get exposure? Get a job. Get a job, earn a little bit of money, work on a film. I'm sorry, it's like it's not rocket science, but it has to be said because we we've all been so steeped in this culture of go to school.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

That that that it's, you know, I feel like I have to shake people sometimes. But I'm willing to do it.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

I love your movement. I love your movement. So we talk a lot about connection on this show. What does a meaningful hang look like for your family?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Uh well, we travel a lot together. So if I'm understanding your your answer, hanging out. Yeah, hanging out. We like to eat together, we play games together, and we travel together a lot. Right now, I have a daughter who's out in Vegas. She's caring for an elderly um family member. So I'm going to see her. Actually, we're all going to see her, except for my other son who's in Japan, but he's getting I think he's getting homesick. So he'll be home in June. He will have done almost six months in Japan. Yeah, that's you know, we but but we all hang out with each other on the phone. I know that my kids all, because they're very they're much more facile on the phone than I than I am. And so they're they're FaceTiming and you know, doing all the games and stuff like that on the phone also. How old are your kids? So my daughter's 20, my other son who's in Japan is 22, and I have a 24-year-old who's about to get married. And one thing that I will say is my daughter and I have started reading together. Well, I mean, we used to read together, and we used to read aloud because it was just fun, and she liked being read aloud too, because she's an artist, so she would do her drawings even as a little girl and growing up. And now we've just started reading the same books. So she's turned me on to this new series, so now I'm in book two. She's like, Oh, did you get to the part where you know, so that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 49:37

What's the series? Because my daughter just started one too. What's what's your series that you're reading?

SPEAKER_00 49:42

It's called a I think it's called A Voice in the Wind. It's a Francine Rivers story in uh ancient Rome.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Okay, all right. My daughter's 24, also. The one that's she's actually moving out to Burbank, California pretty soon. So it's a big change for us. We're East Coast, we're East Coast people, we're from New England originally, so it's uh that's a long ways away from me, so I'm not too excited. No, I'm sure she'll do fine though. Good. So what's that? Good, yeah. Yeah, we'll see, right? So you just have to buy plane tickets. I know, I know we would. So if people want to get involved with your foundation, how can they get involved?

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Yeah, just samsorbo.com, everything is there. Um it's also thereyourkids.org, but go through samsorbo.com, that's my name. It's the easier thing to remember, and you'll see all the information there, all the homeschool resources that I have, all the curricula that I have. Although I do say to parents, it's not about the curricula. So we we go to school and we learn that education is data entry. It's not. Education is the lighting of a fire, school is data entry, and some children are more receptive to the data, and some are less receptive to the data. And and sadly, they are mis mislabeled stupid because they're not as receptive to data, right? It's silly, right? Um so so what I say to parents is you are the curriculum because your child wants to be you, and you should not disabuse them of that notion. They will learn fast enough that you're not all that and they don't really need to be just like you. They will learn that. But your job is to just raise them up to be better than you, and that's what's that's the beautiful equation is that God gives us our children to teach us how to be better people.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Yeah, I love that. It's true, it's true. They've made me, they've challenged me in ways I never thought possible, and blessed me in ways I never thought possible, right?

SPEAKER_00 51:36

That's a blessing, that's fabulous.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

Yeah, it really it's been, yeah. I I feel like the joy of my life has been watching them become the humans that they were meant to be and just being as artists. As is only proper. Yeah, right. It's wonderful. Well, today's conversation with Sam Sorbo invites us to think a little differently, not just about education, but about agency involvement, and the role we play in shaping the lives of the people we care about most. Her work through the They're Your Kids Foundation is rooted in a belief that parents have a powerful role to play. And whether you agree, disagree, or fall somewhere in between, I think the real takeaway is this. We don't have to be passive participants in the systems around us. We can ask questions, we can stay engaged, and we can choose to be more present in the lives and learning of our kids. If this episode sparks something for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And as always, thanks for hanging with me. Till next time.