Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.84 – Parenting Against the Culture: Sam Sorbo’s Battle for Virtue | Family Discipleship | Christian Parenting | Moral Education | Conservative Faith

Transcript

Ep.84 – Parenting Against the Culture: Sam Sorbo’s Battle for Virtue | Family Discipleship | Christian Parenting | Moral Education | Conservative Faith · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  When you put a child inside a box, you kill something in that
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  child. And so I call that child abuse.
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  And the fact that we as parents are so myopic and conditioned by
• 0:11
  our own schooling to sacrifice our children in this manner is
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  wrong. This is Virtuous Leaders, the
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  podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good, or
• 0:21
  die trying. Here's the show.
• 0:29
  So, well, first of all, thanks for joining and I look forward
• 0:32
  to, I look forward to talking with you.
• 0:33
  I'm wondering if you can start by just introducing yourself and
• 0:35
  what you do. Happy to do so.
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  I'm Sam Sorbo. I am an education freedom
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  fighter. My mission is to empower parents
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  to emancipate from our modern schools and in that way free
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  their children from the enslavement.
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  Of our modern schools, that's it.
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  I also write. I'm a filmmaker, I'm an actress.
• 1:00
  I'm the mom of three grown children now, so my kids were
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  homeschooled all the way through 2321 and 19.
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  So the enslavement of modern schools, Can you tell us about
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  that? Yeah.
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  So let's just say parents are feeling ill equipped to educate
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  their own children. And I see that as a failure of
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  our modern schools in the in the goal of education.
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  But they did succeed in enslaving the parents to them,
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  so that the parents think that they need our modern schools,
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  which they don't. How did you come to that
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  realization? And then what?
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  What is your solution to it? I came to that realization when
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  I was the mother of teenagers and my teenagers would come into
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  my bedroom on any given night when, say, my husband was
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  traveling, and they would sit down on the end of my bed and
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  chat with me about teenager stuff just to spend time with
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  me, just to have the conversation.
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  And I realized that the school was more than willing to rob me
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  of that relationship. And I got angry when I realized
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  that they would have robbed me of it if I hadn't been so hard
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  headed as to as to imagine back when my oldest went to 2nd
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  grade, that even if I failed at homeschooling him, in other
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  words, if I failed at imparting all the good academics that he
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  might need, even if I failed at that, he would still be a better
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  person. And it turns out I was right.
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  I could have actually failed at teaching my children math and
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  reading. Well, teaching them, you know,
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  the upper, upper levels of math and reading and they still would
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  have been better people. It turns out I wasn't that bad
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  at teaching them the academics. And in fact, I didn't have to
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  teach them much about the academics because it's all in
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  the books. And so the idea that we are
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  enslaved to the schools is really anathema to me because
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  it's all in the books. And what we don't recognize,
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  because we were steeped in it, we all went K through 1213 years
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  of this indoctrination, is that by and large, and I'm, I'm not
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  attacking teachers here, but by and large, the teacher looks at
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  the Lesson plan the day before so that she's familiar with it.
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  And then she goes in and she's an expert on it.
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  But anybody could do that with any Lesson plan.
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  It's, it's not rocket science. And so the idea that we've been
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  bamboozled as a, as an entire population now to believe that
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  teachers know best, that they're experts, that they are
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  trustworthy with all of the evidence that stands against
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  them. And again, I'm not going after
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  individual teachers. There are some good teachers and
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  there's some bad teachers. But by and large, we have
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  corporate trust and we shouldn't because we are dealing with
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  individual children. We don't we so, so our corporate
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  trust is transferred to the individual without any kind of
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  anything. For instance, when my kids were
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  little, I interviewed the babysitter.
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  I interviewed the babysitter. She had to pass like some
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  certain standard tests of mine, like she had to have references.
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  She had to have babysat for my friends several times with no
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  events or whatever. Right.
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  And yet, on the first day of school, I walked my little pride
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  and joy my my oldest, down that walkway and handed him off to an
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  absolute stranger just because the school told me to.
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  Because I was a good student and I followed directions all the
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  way through. And so it took me a while to
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  figure out that just because I'm good at following directions
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  doesn't make them the right directions.
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  Well, when almost everyone you know is doing something, it's
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  hard to even be aware of questioning it.
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  And you've done that in spades, it sounds like, which I find
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  really impressive. Well, well, to add to that, we
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  were all conditioned together to not question it.
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  And this is, this is one of the things that I talked to parents
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  about is when, when you take a child who is, is intensely
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  curious about everything, right? Which every two year old, 3 year
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  old and four year old are full of questions and you take them
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  and you sit them down in a classroom and you say no, no
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  more questions. You have to sit down and shut
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  up. And then if you have a question,
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  first you have to get permission to ask the question.
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  And you might not get it because the teacher might say, no, I'm
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  talking about this other thing right now.
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  So you don't get to ask the question.
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  I now see that as child abuse. I see that as shutting down the
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  curiosity and the creativity of the child.
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  When you put a child inside a box, you kill something in that
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  child. And so I call that child abuse.
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  And the fact that we as parents are so myopic and conditioned by
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  our own schooling to sacrifice our children in this manner is
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  is wrong and it shouldn't have happened.
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  But the schools have a great deal of power that they don't
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  deserve. And so my mission is to
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  disempower the schools and empower.
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  Parents. It's also the easy button, isn't
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  it? You mean that it's easier for
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  parents to just go like this? OK, go off to school now.
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  Well, that is absolutely true. But I don't like to, I don't
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  want to denigrate parents. I don't think they're
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  necessarily just going, oh, this is easy.
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  Let me just do this. I obviously some parents
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  probably are like that. I think that a lot of parents
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  just don't quite understand what's at risk and they also
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  don't understand upside. They think when somebody look,
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  I've had, I had a teacher, a third grade teacher and I, we
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  were at an event And so we were just chatting.
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  We were seated next to each other and I was chatting with
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  her. And this is, this is way back
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  when, right after I wrote my first book.
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  And so this was early days and people didn't really know me or
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  whatever. And so I said to her, so you
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  teach 3rd grade, but you have little kids.
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  Have you ever thought of homeschooling your little kids?
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  And she said, no, my gosh, no. I would kill them by Wednesday.
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  And I looked at her and I said, I didn't say this.
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  I thought, I thought this do the parents of the children in your
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  classroom know that you speak about your own children like
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  that? We we as a culture, we hate
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  children. We disdain children as a
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  culture. This culture absolutely hates
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  children. We rob them of their childhoods
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  by sending them into an institution all day.
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  We're the only culture that institutionalizes healthy
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  children. And and then when they get out
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  of the institution all day, they get homework, they have to go up
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  to their room another box and sit there and do homework, which
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  I think is absolute child abuse. And so I don't support homework.
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  And we, we celebrate abortion. We, you know, shout your
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  abortion like we murder children and we, you know, shout about it
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  and, and we fight, we fight for the privilege.
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  And we have a political party that literally put an abortion
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  facility outside of their most recent campaign event for, for
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  the presidency of the United States, the, the national
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  network, right? So, and then, and then we've got
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  the gender mutilation of children and we call that
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  healthcare. So it's very clear to me that
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  this culture despises children, and I'm trying to wake people up
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  to that. So it's not just about school.
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  In fact, I don't call homeschooling homeschool because
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  it's not school at home. It should be home education or
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  discipleship or parenting. It should be those things.
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  And that's the way we should think about it.
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  And so now when you have your children, they're your kids,
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  right? That's the name of my first
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  book. Because they belong to you and
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  they're your responsibility. And you shouldn't, you shouldn't
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  delegate that to somebody else because your children don't want
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  you to do that. And frankly, God doesn't want
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  you to do that. The reason that you have your
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  children is for them to teach you and for you to teach them.
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  It's this grand equation that is spiritual in nature that cannot
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  be denied. But the school comes in and puts
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  in a a a slash through the equal sign and makes it unequal and
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  destroys the parent child relationship.
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  A lovely idea of thinking of so-called homeschooling just in
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  terms of parenting, because parenting is just forming your
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  child to to be an adult and a virtuous human being and a child
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  of God and live their vocation, and that includes the
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  intellectual formation. That includes the and and so if
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  you want to expand on that, and I love that you just said that
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  because I totally agree. The idea of homeschooling itself
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  or home education should be to bring a child from childhood
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  into adulthood. And so that basically is
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  training the child to be an adult, not drilling him on math
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  facts, not inputting history, dates and times and names and
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  places. It's actually the, the, the
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  rendering from this child, a responsible, loving, virtuous
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  adult. And there are a lot of different
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  ways to get there, but one of them is not data entry.
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  Like the one way to not get there is the what the schools
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  are doing now. And in fact, if you want to take
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  it back a step, so years ago, schools told us, you know, it's
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  not doctrine. So we shouldn't be having the
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  Bible in our schools because that's, that's indoctrination.
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  And that's not what education is.
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  Education is academics. And so get your Bible out of the
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  schools and stop praying in the school because nothing, none of
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  this is doctrine and shame on you for even thinking that.
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  And so they took the Bibles out of schools and then they took
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  prayer out of schools. And then we, we just for went
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  all the doctrine. OK, So then it became academics
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  without any kind of morality, which is what it is, right?
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  But now, now that they've failed to teach the academics, because
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  honestly, the only way you can teach academics is if you've
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  already instilled character in the child, but they're not busy.
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  They're not about instilling character, OK?
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  And so now they've changed it because they can't accomplish
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  academics. They've gone back to doctrine.
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  And so now it's gender theology, and it's Marxism and it's
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  critical race theory and it's DEI, and it's all of these other
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  isms, these other belief systems that they are trying to put into
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  the children. So my audience of based young
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  parents listening to this, they're nodding along and
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  they're wondering, OK, so what's, what's the next step?
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  How do I work along this path? What?
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  What do you have to offer for them?
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  Well, of course, my book, which is parents guide to home school,
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  which was so it's it's the follow up to they're your kids.
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  They're your kids is basically an indictment against the
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  schools. Really what's wrong at the root
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  of the schools and why they can't help but fail.
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  And so you understand how we got here in a sense.
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  And then the second-half of the book was is my personal story.
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  So some of my some of my wins and some of my losses, some some
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  of the areas where I had to learn a hard lesson or two.
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  And so that's the first book. The second book is a workbook
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  for parents. It's called parents guide to
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  Home school. And it basically takes apart
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  what how we define the word education.
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  So in other words, if you're a parent, you're saying, but I
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  want my kid to be educated. OK, What do you mean?
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  We need a good working definition for educated.
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  And it's not straight A's. That's not what it is.
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  And so you have to take a step back and really consider what
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  are your hopes and dreams? What are your aspirations for
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  your child and also for you because you are a component of
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  this, OK. And we've successfully removed
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  the parents, in a sense, from the household.
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  When we send the kids off to school, the parents are left
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  behind. They're not invited to
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  participate Less and less, right?
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  And so now the parents speaking up at school boards are branded
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  as as domestic terrorists, right?
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  They really want to separate you from your children.
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  And I don't want that for you because nobody, nobody was ever
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  buried saying I wish I'd spent more time at the office.
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  Life is about relationship. It's not about money.
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  Schools make it about money. So the schools have taught us.
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  This is one of the things that I debunk in this book, Parent's
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  Guide to Home School. The school's value metric is
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  money is at the top of the hierarchy.
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  And the reason I say that is because for 13 years you were
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  trained in college prep and career readiness.
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  And So what that did was that set up for you, OK, I have to go
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  to college. I have to go to college.
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  I have to go to college, right? Which means I have to get
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  prepared to spend a lot of money.
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  So, I mean, not for nothing, it's kind of a Ponzi scheme, but
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  OK, spend a lot of money to go to the best school.
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  Why the best school? Because a better career?
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  Why a better career? It's all about money, OK?
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  And so when you tell a child you're an accident of nature,
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  you're just a collection of accidents of, you know, on the
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  molecular level and there's really no reason for you to be
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  here except college prep and career readiness.
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  Your whole value is tied to the dollar.
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  That's child abuse because children have intrinsic worth
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  just by virtue of them existing, they have worth.
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  And to tell a child that he has no worth because evolution and
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  oh, by the way, survival of the fittest is the law of the land,
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  which means, well, what does that mean, right?
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  Survival of the fittest is the bully wins.
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  And in fact, I just saw a video on, you know, one of the social
• 15:56
  media platforms of a of a young boy who went home and he said,
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  mom, they told me that if I was being bullied, I should not tell
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  my parents. Schools support bullying, sadly
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  not individuals. I'm not going after individuals,
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  but the institution absolutely supports bullying.
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  And you will find that there are individuals in the institution
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  who also support bullying. In fact, I think 90.
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  What was the statistic? Somewhere in the 90th, In the
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  90th, percents of children feel that they were bullied by a
• 16:30
  teacher, feel like they were bullied, not by another student.
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  That's also high, but it's not in the 90s, but almost 90% or
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  close to 90% of students have reported that they felt bullied
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  by a teacher at one point or another.
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  So when you, when you tell a child, hey, survival of the
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  fittest and other than that, you really have no value.
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  And, and then, and then we wonder that these kids get
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  bullied and they commit suicide. And I'm like, but you told them
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  that they have no value. Why would they stick around for
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  that? So, so and then their value is
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  tied to the dollar because college prep and career
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  readiness. And by the way, are we
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  graduating career ready students?
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  Because last time I checked, not so much.
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  In fact, employers are actually going and trying to hire
• 17:18
  directly out of high school now because don't like what the
• 17:22
  colleges are turning out anymore in terms of employees, in terms
• 17:26
  of people with wherewithal that can think outside the box can
• 17:32
  problem solve, right What what the school is creating is
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  conformists who can't problem solve because everything's been
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  spoon fed to them. It's all been handed to them and
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  they've been asked to regurgitate it on the test.
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  So the whole system of schooling is corrupt and perverted and it
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  does terrible things to children.
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  And then on the flip side, we can talk about the incredible
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  gift that we have with home education.
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  It's legal in all the states. I know that many states are now
• 18:09
  adopting school choice, which is very dangerous.
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  And I'm happy to speak on that a little bit.
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  And if you'd like, it is not a popular position, but it is the
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  truth. So, So I would love to share
• 18:23
  about that. But before I do, I want to point
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  out to people and this, this is part of what's in I have the
• 18:29
  book here. Actually, this is part of what's
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  in the parents Guide to home School, which you can go to
• 18:34
  Sorbo Studios if you want to get it and free shipping.
• 18:38
  One of the things that I talked about in that book is this idea
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  that when you decide to take this on, your children are
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  curious. They were born that way.
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  And if they haven't been to school yet, they will continue
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  to be that way as long as you are willing to engage and as
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  long as you are willing to engage.
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  And you can show them how to learn.
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  Which means if they ask you a question you don't know the
• 19:07
  answer to, you need to bring humility.
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  Say I don't know the answer, let's go try to find it.
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  And that's how you show them how to learn.
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  Once you show them how to learn, all bets are off.
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  The rocket is lit and you better get out of the way.
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  And that's the beauty of the home education paradigm is that
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  it empowers the child to teach him or herself anything for the
• 19:32
  rest of his life. Anything.
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  And that's a child who truly has power.
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  So the job of the parents is actually quite simple.
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  When the children are quite little.
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  Spend as much time with them as possible.
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  Read to them as much as possible.
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  Show them how reading works. You don't need all the
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  paraphernalia, but if you want to get it, sure it can be
• 19:55
  helpful. Don't get so stressed about Oh
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  my gosh my child is 3 and doesn't read or my child is 6
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  and doesn't read. Boys probably shouldn't have to
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  sit down to do academic work until they're 8.
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  Like, let's just take the foot off the gas because there's not
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  a race. And when you teach a child to
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  read, you are handing them the world.
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  And once you do that and you've and you've indulged and provoked
• 20:24
  their curiosity, they will go places that you never dreamed
• 20:27
  of. And so it's much easier than we,
• 20:30
  we think. And there's a reason for that.
• 20:34
  Because if the educators let me put that in air quotes, if the
• 20:38
  educators can convince us that they know best, then we won't
• 20:44
  try. That's beautiful.
• 20:46
  I I love not only what you said, but how you say it.
• 20:49
  And I have to say it's it's unique.
• 20:52
  So I'm curious, just as you're talking, where, where are you
• 20:55
  getting this inspiration from? How, how are you such a, a
• 20:59
  persuasive and let's say, strong truth?
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  Speaker. When I was in 4th grade, I had
• 21:06
  an encounter with the truth. It was unpleasant.
• 21:13
  I had learned about fractions before I entered 4th grade and
• 21:18
  my 4th grade math teacher put he gave us a verbal question what
• 21:23
  is 10 / 1/2 + 2 and he started asking kids in the class and the
• 21:31
  first kid said 7 and so every other kid after that said 7
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  until he got to me and I said no I don't think he said you think
• 21:38
  it's 7. Also like you 7777, I said, no,
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  I don't think. I don't think so.
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  And in like I'm a puny 4th grader, very shy and I'm sitting
• 21:49
  there calculating in my head because this is hard.
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  It's hard to speak truth to power like go against the whole
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  class. Like I said, no, he said, wait,
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  no, you don't. You don't think it's seven.
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  What do you think it is? And I redid the calculation.
• 22:07
  I'm like, it's it's 22. He said it's 22 class.
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  She thinks it's 22. That's ridiculous.
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  Everyone else says it's 7. Should we throw her out the
• 22:16
  window? Which scared me.
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  I was like, wait, that wasn't the outcome.
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  I thought it was a possibility. And then he said, but she's
• 22:26
  right. And man, that feeling of being
• 22:30
  right, I got hooked and I realized that the truth has a
• 22:35
  great deal of power. And so I, and I've been having
• 22:39
  an argument with a lot of my conservative friends,
• 22:46
  conservative Christian friends, I would say, who are voting and
• 22:51
  so excited about school choice, which is really, we should call
• 22:55
  it school welfare or student EBT cards, or how about parent Ubi,
• 23:01
  universal basic income. It is not a conservative value
• 23:06
  to go beg the government for your own money back.
• 23:10
  It is not. But what it will do is when you
• 23:16
  take that government money and you say, I want to put it in
• 23:19
  this, I want my child to go to this little Christian School
• 23:22
  over here or this little whatever Jewish day school or
• 23:26
  whatever, right? This, this is the school that I
• 23:32
  choose to send my government money to that becomes a
• 23:37
  government school. So it's the takeover of all the
• 23:43
  private institutions by the government.
• 23:45
  And I'm very sad to say that I have plenty of conservative
• 23:50
  Christian thinkers, really great people who I just, I don't
• 23:55
  understand that they can't see past this.
• 23:57
  They see, but it takes money out of the government schools.
• 24:02
  And I'm like, no, it doesn't. It puts government into the
• 24:06
  private schools and that is a government takeover.
• 24:10
  And we are so blessed right now that in every state you can home
• 24:15
  school with very limited regulations in most states.
• 24:20
  But I just heard in Alabama they they passed school choice last
• 24:23
  year. And do you know home educators
• 24:26
  get $2000 a child up to two children, But if you put your
• 24:31
  child in a private school and you want the government to fund
• 24:35
  it, they will give you much more money per child and for more
• 24:39
  children. So this is literally prejudicial
• 24:45
  against home education and they still can't see that they are
• 24:50
  feeding the beast. Does that make sense?
• 24:55
  Do do? Should I?
• 24:56
  Explain. You know, I go firstly like Alex
• 24:59
  Newman. He's a.
• 25:01
  Oh, he's, oh, he's. Yeah, yeah, it's the very first.
• 25:04
  Time he's from. Liberty Sentinel Media, he's the
• 25:05
  very first time I've heard this argument that you're
• 25:08
  articulating and expressed. And I was surprised and a little
• 25:14
  bit discouraged because I was really hopeful that this school
• 25:16
  voucher thing would be very helpful for parents who are
• 25:19
  struggling to send their kids to a private school.
• 25:21
  So I, I really hope that it's what you're saying is not going
• 25:24
  to happen. I don't, I don't see a better
• 25:27
  outcome. I look, I would love to be
• 25:29
  hopeful, but I'm not Pollyanna on this.
• 25:31
  We've been around this block many times.
• 25:34
  It's a government takeover and you can think, but it's money
• 25:38
  and the parents really love it. Do you know in the state of
• 25:40
  Florida, I have, I have an acquaintance who got the money
• 25:43
  and you have to spend it all in the same year and she got like
• 25:47
  it's almost $8000 in the state of Florida.
• 25:49
  It's a lot of money and she couldn't find enough to spend it
• 25:52
  on. So she bought 2 flat screen
• 25:53
  TV's. I have another friend who bought
• 25:56
  tickets to Disney World for like like year long passes for Disney
• 26:00
  World with the money with the money.
• 26:02
  So don't think that it's all going to these privately, you
• 26:05
  know, whatever little institutions that are going to
• 26:08
  set these children free because by the way, and look, private
• 26:13
  schools do their own thing and some of them are small enough
• 26:17
  that they insist that the parents are involved.
• 26:20
  And so it's actually, it is a step up.
• 26:25
  They can be a step up from government schools, but they'll
• 26:27
  never beat homeschooling, They'll never beat the parent
• 26:31
  child relationship because they interfere with it, they can't
• 26:34
  help it. And so while I, I, there are
• 26:37
  private institutions that I can say, well, I like that one,
• 26:41
  they're doing a pretty good job, They're never going to beat home
• 26:44
  education. And so while the government is
• 26:46
  busy trying to influence you to send your children to a school,
• 26:51
  they are busy taking over that school.
• 26:53
  And don't you know, they need to do that?
• 26:55
  Because if they can eliminate home education, then they don't
• 27:01
  have a metric to live up to. We put them to shame because
• 27:05
  home educated students score roughly 25% better on their
• 27:10
  tests. Not not the home school tests,
• 27:13
  their metrics. And in the inner city, in the
• 27:17
  minority community, it's as much as 42% better.
• 27:22
  And this has absolutely no relation to the parents level of
• 27:26
  education because like I said, the parent is not the teacher.
• 27:32
  This is what I have to drill into people's heads.
• 27:36
  When you decide to home educate your child, you are not there.
• 27:40
  So let me tell you a quick story because this, this story, this
• 27:44
  is it. This is, this is how I learned
• 27:46
  it. OK?
• 27:47
  I learned most of this stuff from my kids.
• 27:49
  I'm just going to be honest, right When my daughter was 11 or
• 27:53
  12, she's she's an artist. She loves to be alone in her
• 27:58
  room doing art. And she's quite talented.
• 28:01
  Like actually, she's crazy talented and her brain works in
• 28:05
  mysterious ways that I don't quite understand.
• 28:08
  My first two children, I knew basically where they were headed
• 28:13
  and I knew that I could get them there or help them get there
• 28:16
  basically. And if they chose to go to
• 28:18
  college, which eventually they chose not to, we would be able
• 28:22
  to navigate that. But for Octavia, my daughter,
• 28:25
  being an artist, I, I was stymied because I don't know
• 28:30
  art. I can't teach art.
• 28:31
  And I was like, I can't teach this.
• 28:33
  What am I going to do? And so somebody said to me,
• 28:36
  well, maybe get her an anatomy class because like artists
• 28:39
  should know anatomy. I was like, Oh, that's actually
• 28:43
  a great idea. So I ran up to her bedroom.
• 28:45
  I said anatomy class. And she said, oh, mommy, because
• 28:49
  she's 11 or 12. And she shows me her sketchbook
• 28:54
  of drawings of, like, the interior of the human knee in
• 28:57
  various positions. And I said to her, you're
• 29:04
  already teaching yourself anatomy.
• 29:06
  She said, yes, mommy. I mean, if I want to be an
• 29:08
  artist, I need to know anatomy. OK, The only reason for that is
• 29:15
  because our academics, which I was super focused on at the
• 29:19
  beginning and frankly all the way through, because I believe
• 29:23
  in academics. It's not that I don't believe in
• 29:25
  them, but the academics that I was focusing on took half the
• 29:29
  day. But the the second-half of the
• 29:32
  day, my kids were free to pursue whatever interested them.
• 29:37
  And she knew I'm an artist and I need to know anatomy because I
• 29:40
  can't draw that if I don't understand what's underneath it,
• 29:43
  what's underneath the skin, how it's going to how it's going to
• 29:46
  look if it moves in this direction as opposed to that
• 29:49
  direction. And so that's my point is the
• 29:52
  curiosity is there. And if you would just get out of
• 29:56
  the way, your child is his own greatest teacher.
• 30:01
  And also, I'll just, I'll put it more succinctly.
• 30:03
  We don't learn anything that we don't first purpose to teach
• 30:07
  ourselves doesn't matter. You can lead a horse to water.
• 30:11
  You can sit a child in a classroom.
• 30:13
  He will not learn it unless he is incentivized to you to learn
• 30:16
  it. Which brings us back to the the
• 30:18
  discussion of character. So all these kids are going to
• 30:21
  school being told that their lives are useless because they
• 30:24
  have no value except that they need to go to college and earn a
• 30:28
  lot of money, a lot like more than you can like just go earn
• 30:33
  money, right? And so they, they're nihilists
• 30:36
  and they're going well, I don't care about this stuff that
• 30:39
  they're teaching me. I guess my dad will get upset if
• 30:41
  I don't score well on the exam. But without character, there's
• 30:47
  no impetus to learn about the First World War or the Second
• 30:51
  World War or how they were related or, or any of that
• 30:53
  stuff. And so if, if, if the schools
• 30:57
  are successful, which they have been at killing the curiosity of
• 31:00
  the child, there's no way that they can teach them the
• 31:02
  academics. But parents don't think that you
• 31:07
  have to teach the academics. You don't.
• 31:09
  My children, when they were done with school, they started
• 31:13
  reading philosophy. And it's not because I'm this
• 31:17
  great philosopher. And so I just managed to like
• 31:20
  impart this great love of philosophy.
• 31:23
  No, it's because they're so Dang curious.
• 31:27
  They need to know because it's because it's vital for their
• 31:32
  eternal soul to know. They want to know that their
• 31:35
  decisions are based in truth, that they, that they have, you
• 31:39
  know, an understanding of why they're doing the thing that
• 31:43
  they're doing or why they shouldn't do that, that thing.
• 31:47
  And so if you can just, and that's the book, right?
• 31:51
  If you can wrap your head around what we mean by education.
• 31:55
  And by the way, the subtitle is making education easy and fun,
• 31:58
  because it is. I know we don't believe it is
• 32:01
  because we went to school and we learned in school that learning
• 32:05
  is hard, teaching is hard, parenting is hard.
• 32:07
  It's not hard. It's not.
• 32:11
  We have to stop telling ourselves these lies.
• 32:15
  You don't need to convince me. I wonder, do you want to talk a
• 32:20
  little bit about your experience in the film industry?
• 32:25
  Sure. What would you like to discuss?
• 32:26
  Well, I'd be curious to follow your lead, but I I saw you
• 32:29
  recently released a movie looks like is that what was that all
• 32:32
  about? OK, so the most recent movie is
• 32:36
  Miracle in East Texas, but it began with Let There Be Light.
• 32:39
  So, so you know what, because we have a few minutes, I'll back up
• 32:43
  a little bit to tell you a little bit more about my story
• 32:47
  so that you understand where I'm coming from with the rest of
• 32:50
  this stuff. I went to school.
• 32:51
  I was raised in an atheist household to be Jewish because I
• 32:57
  have Jewish blood. So by blood, I'm a Jew and, but
• 33:01
  my mother's an atheist and we celebrated Christmas and Easter
• 33:04
  with, you know, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
• 33:07
  And I left all religion behind at the age of 12 because it
• 33:13
  didn't serve me. And I didn't understand why I
• 33:15
  should go to Saturday school. And my mother couldn't, couldn't
• 33:18
  come up with a good excuse. And so I graduated or I left, I
• 33:23
  guess I, I went to college and in college I was going to study
• 33:28
  medicine. That was my was pre Med.
• 33:30
  Then I decided that I really liked engineering.
• 33:32
  So I became an engineering student, but I was biomedical
• 33:35
  engineering because I still wanted to go to medical school
• 33:37
  because I knew that I had to earn the money.
• 33:39
  And being raised by basically a single mother who was always
• 33:43
  worried about money because she never graduated college.
• 33:46
  I was set up right to believe college is the only way I have
• 33:51
  to get a good career. A good career is medicine.
• 33:54
  I'm going to make a ton of money, and then I will be happy.
• 33:57
  And of course, all my schooling pointed that way, even though I
• 34:01
  really loved acting, really loved it.
• 34:04
  Like I was passionate about acting.
• 34:05
  But they told me that I couldn't succeed because, let's face it,
• 34:10
  the pretty young drama coach that the school hired had gone
• 34:14
  to New York, and she didn't succeed, so why would I, Right?
• 34:17
  So she's the one advising me. OK, thanks for that.
• 34:22
  I'm sorry, there was a girl who graduated a couple years ahead
• 34:27
  of me and she also went to Hollywood and had a huge career
• 34:30
  in Hollywood. So it can be done.
• 34:33
  And just because the acting coach didn't do it doesn't mean
• 34:37
  that no one else can do it. I'm sorry to tell her.
• 34:39
  But in any case, I was at, I was at Duke University and I was
• 34:43
  working on an ulcer because I was so stressed out by the idea
• 34:48
  that I had to make money. And I grew up relatively,
• 34:52
  relatively poor, I would say low middle class.
• 34:54
  And we weren't like impoverished, but low middle
• 34:56
  class. My mother remarried and divorced
• 34:59
  and then remarried and stuff like that.
• 35:01
  And so I was very stressed out and I was working on an ulcer
• 35:04
  and I realized I needed to take time off from college because I
• 35:07
  was working on an ulcer and I was going into debt and my
• 35:09
  grades were suffering and all that.
• 35:12
  And so I went abroad and just just forwarding through all of
• 35:17
  this, I went abroad and I modeled and I earned a crap load
• 35:20
  of money. And I went back to Duke and I
• 35:23
  took the hardest classes I'd ever taken, upper graduate
• 35:26
  studies or whatever, and made the best grades I'd ever made.
• 35:30
  Easier than π because the stress was off me because I'd already
• 35:34
  made a ton of money and I knew that I could go back to making
• 35:37
  money. And so at that point I, I sort
• 35:41
  of went, OK, what am I? What do I want because I can do
• 35:45
  the biomedical engineering and go into debt and pursue medicine
• 35:49
  and get a a lucrative career. Or I can already have a career,
• 35:55
  travel the world, learn foreign languages, do everything else
• 35:58
  that I ever wanted to do, maybe even go into acting like
• 36:01
  literally everything else or this one thing and debt.
• 36:06
  And I went that one like, and so I ended up in Hollywood.
• 36:12
  And while I was in Hollywood, I was like, wait, I did it.
• 36:18
  I, I did exactly what they told me to do.
• 36:21
  I, I got all the money. I had a big bank account.
• 36:24
  I never spent it because I didn't know anything about
• 36:26
  spending money. I only knew that you put money
• 36:29
  into a bank account, you leave it there.
• 36:32
  And I went, So what is life about that?
• 36:36
  If I made, if I did what they told me to do, why didn't they
• 36:39
  tell me what comes after that? Because I'm not dead yet.
• 36:43
  It didn't take me as long as they thought it would take me.
• 36:45
  Like I'm here now What? And so that's what set me on my
• 36:50
  path into my religion, because I needed a worldview.
• 36:55
  And the worldview that I had that money was the greatest
• 36:58
  value was corrupt. And that's the that's the
• 37:02
  worldview that the school gave me and, and, and my home school
• 37:06
  and home gave me. So when I realized that there
• 37:10
  was a bigger worldview, a better worldview, a truer a true
• 37:14
  worldview as opposed to a lie, I started down that path.
• 37:17
  And that is what led me to understand that relationship
• 37:23
  Trump's everything. So when my husband and I were
• 37:27
  engaged, he had a severe health illness, health crisis, I would
• 37:33
  say, and I quit my job. I, I walked away from a very
• 37:37
  lucrative job, which basically annulled my career.
• 37:42
  And my agent said, you know, if you don't do this job, you've
• 37:45
  been, you've been cast for this. If you don't do this, you know
• 37:47
  what that means? And I'm like, yes, I do, but he
• 37:49
  needs me. And so I did that.
• 37:52
  And then later on, when my toddler demanded that I not go
• 37:56
  out on auditions, I realized that there was no point in going
• 38:01
  out on auditions. My, my children wanted me.
• 38:03
  They, and it's lovely to be wanted and we should lean into
• 38:06
  that and we shouldn't allow the culture to tell us no, no,
• 38:10
  they'll be fine. They're resilient.
• 38:12
  We should not, we should tell the culture, shut up and sit
• 38:15
  down like we were told to do in school because the culture is
• 38:19
  stupid, really stupid right now. And so I'm, I want to encourage
• 38:24
  parents out there, if you get, if you get any more maternity
• 38:27
  leave, take it. If you want to quit your job, do
• 38:30
  it. If there's any compunction about
• 38:33
  leaving your child, don't leave your child.
• 38:35
  Just don't do it. Erica Komisar is now speaking
• 38:38
  about this and there are other experts out there that are
• 38:41
  saying we have we have foregone relationship with our children
• 38:47
  to an extreme detriment of our children themselves.
• 38:51
  And so so I did that. I walked away from my career
• 38:55
  twice and then as I as I began homeschooling and realized that
• 39:01
  we traveled together when my husband was going to be gone for
• 39:05
  any length of time over 2 weeks. We absolutely went on the road
• 39:09
  with him, which meant that we travelled a lot.
• 39:12
  And we started that even when the kids were even when my
• 39:14
  oldest was in 1st and 2nd grade, we had this pact that we would
• 39:19
  not be apart for more than two weeks, which was for our
• 39:22
  marriage more than for the kids. But then we slowly realized this
• 39:25
  was actually a better call for the kids.
• 39:28
  I said to Kevin, look, I'm travelling with you anyway.
• 39:31
  If they have a part for me that's like a day shoot or two
• 39:34
  day shoot, I'll just come, we'll be on set and I'll shoot it and
• 39:37
  it would be fun and why not? And so I started back to work
• 39:42
  basically like that. So I think the first part I had
• 39:46
  to audition for, which was fine and I got it.
• 39:49
  And then after that they just frankly, if you can get I, I was
• 39:53
  a successful actress. And so if you can get a
• 39:55
  Hollywood actress basically for free rather than taking local
• 39:59
  talent. They do, and they had to pay my
• 40:03
  airfare anyway because they had to pay for us to travel with
• 40:06
  Kevin. And so it just worked out.
• 40:09
  And so I, I gradually, I did a little bit of work here and
• 40:12
  there and then I realized that I was raising 3 Christian children
• 40:19
  in a largely secular society that challenged their faith many
• 40:24
  times a day. And I was in the car one day and
• 40:27
  I was just sort of thinking about that.
• 40:32
  And I went, I wonder why atheists don't have their faith
• 40:35
  challenged, Because I mean, atheism is a faith.
• 40:38
  You've got to be really committed to be an atheist with
• 40:41
  all the evidence, right? And I, and I thought, that's
• 40:46
  funny. That's a movie.
• 40:47
  I would, that's a movie I would like to see.
• 40:49
  Wait a minute. I'd like to write that movie.
• 40:53
  Oh, maybe that's what I'll do. I'll write that movie.
• 40:56
  And so I wrote that movie and within two weeks it got funded,
• 41:02
  which doesn't happen. And we were shooting within a
• 41:08
  very short order. And my Co writer, because I got
• 41:12
  a Co writer on it, insisted that I cast the boys and insisted
• 41:16
  that I play the female lead, which was never my intention,
• 41:21
  but he insisted. And he said and you have to cast
• 41:23
  your boys. And I'm like, my boys can't act.
• 41:25
  But they had been taking acting classes because they were
• 41:27
  interested. And lo and behold, I auditioned
• 41:30
  them and they could act, which shocked me because I hadn't gone
• 41:34
  to their acting classes. I just assumed that they didn't
• 41:37
  really know what they were doing or whatever.
• 41:39
  And they acted for me. And I'm like, Dang, you're
• 41:42
  pretty good. And I will tell you a quick
• 41:44
  story on the set. The first day we were shooting,
• 41:48
  we had the full, we had a full crew and a crane and the whole
• 41:51
  thing. And we were going to be shooting
• 41:53
  outside and it started to rain and so we had to move inside.
• 41:57
  So we had to move up day three and shoot day three.
• 42:00
  On day one and day three, the first scene up was the boys
• 42:04
  scene and they came on set ready to play.
• 42:10
  They've been studying their lines.
• 42:11
  They were and mind you, they were what, 14 and 12, I think 13
• 42:15
  and 11, something like that. And but they came on set ready
• 42:19
  to go and we, the first time we shot the scene, the entire
• 42:24
  attitude on set changed because when people saw that the boys
• 42:30
  actually could act and the scene was a very cute scene, they
• 42:35
  realized that they were taking part in a real movie, not just
• 42:39
  like some fluff, you know, vanity piece that Kevin Sorbo
• 42:42
  was putting together. It was really quite interesting.
• 42:45
  I've had that experience a couple of times because also for
• 42:49
  me, people assume because I'm married to the star that, you
• 42:53
  know, whatever he cast his wife or whatever.
• 42:57
  And and then I show up and I do work and they're like, oh, I
• 43:03
  didn't realize that she actually was an actress.
• 43:07
  That's funny. So, so yes.
• 43:11
  So, so Long story short, I I tell this story because I want
• 43:15
  women to understand when you walk away from your career for
• 43:19
  your children, it's worth it. And if you're meant to have that
• 43:23
  career, it will. Absolutely.
• 43:25
  You mentioned Erica, I've interviewed her twice and she's
• 43:28
  she's been one of the most highly feud guests on the show
• 43:31
  and. She's another example of walking
• 43:34
  away from her career. She kept her, she kept her toe
• 43:37
  in the water like she did a little bit here and there, but
• 43:40
  she basically hung up her career for her kids to be Mama and then
• 43:45
  she sent them to school. So it was for not a prolonged
• 43:48
  period of time, but, but parents have to understand this.
• 43:53
  The school paradigm is a brand new paradigm.
• 43:55
  It's 120 years old. It's a it's an experiment, it's
• 43:59
  a failed experiment. And usually when we do an
• 44:02
  experiment, we look at the results and we change our
• 44:05
  hypothesis, but not in this case.
• 44:08
  In this case, we're looking at the results and we're changing
• 44:11
  the amount of money that we're spending or we're changing how
• 44:14
  we're implementing. And it's ridiculous.
• 44:17
  It's a failed, it's a failed experiment.
• 44:21
  But if you choose to just parent your kids, what happens is you
• 44:24
  involve your kids in your business and they travel with
• 44:28
  you and they're not superfluous. They become an intrinsic part of
• 44:32
  your endeavours. And they should and they should.
• 44:37
  You know, for for millennia, the the father worked from home.
• 44:42
  He was the Carpenter, he was the Tanner, he was the whatever.
• 44:45
  And the kids learned the business because they needed
• 44:48
  extra hands. And now Dad goes away from the
• 44:53
  home. The kids never see him.
• 44:54
  There's no wonder that we have a loss of fatherhood.
• 44:57
  We've denigrated fatherhood to the point where the culture just
• 45:01
  says they're useless. Every TV show says Dad's an
• 45:05
  idiot, imbecile. What a loser.
• 45:08
  He's fat, he's slovenly, he's dumb.
• 45:11
  The the wife picks on him. I, I mean, it's, it's a terrible
• 45:16
  thing. The stories that we tell
• 45:17
  ourselves about who we are are corrupt to the NTH degree.
• 45:24
  And we need to rewrite our own personal narratives and start
• 45:29
  telling ourselves the good, the good, the true and the beautiful
• 45:32
  about ourselves. And it's not that hard to do.
• 45:35
  You just have to start doing it. And then you have to, then you
• 45:37
  have to find your tribe. You have to find your clan.
• 45:40
  You have to get with like minded people and, and find a
• 45:44
  community. And because you need support,
• 45:46
  we, we need support. And luckily now with
• 45:48
  homeschooling, there's a lot of support.
• 45:50
  But I, but I have to say, not a lot of home educators really
• 45:55
  understand that it's not school at home.
• 45:58
  So do be careful. Don't let them like impose that
• 46:02
  paradigm on you. Well, where are you going to
• 46:04
  test your child? I never tested my children.
• 46:08
  I knew exactly where they were. I knew exactly what they
• 46:10
  understood, what they didn't understand.
• 46:12
  We we didn't have any need for testing.
• 46:14
  And depending on where you live, right, So some states insist on
• 46:18
  it. So you got to do it.
• 46:20
  But if you live in states that don't, then you're you're free
• 46:23
  and clear. Amazing.
• 46:24
  Well, you were an extraordinary individual, Sam.
• 46:28
  Thank you, just trying to help people.
• 46:32
  I want to save. Those kids, man.
• 46:33
  I hope you do some very important mission once again.
• 46:36
  Where can people follow you? Thank you.
• 46:40
  Just go to sorbostudios.com. You can also follow me on X or
• 46:44
  Instagram and I'll send you the links if you want to post them.
• 46:48
  But sorbostudios.com is a great place because you sign up for
• 46:52
  our e-mail. We don't send a bunch, but every
• 46:55
  week or every other week, something like that, and we
• 46:57
  include sort of updates on what's happening.
• 47:00
  For instance, my husband and I are leading a tour in Greece
• 47:03
  coming up in September, and I think it might, it might already
• 47:09
  be sold out. We might have a few spots left,
• 47:11
  but we're going to be walking in the footsteps of Paul.
• 47:14
  And then of course, at the end of the tour, we're going to go
• 47:16
  to Mount Olympus because my husband played Hercules.
• 47:20
  So we have to do that. We have a couple of other things
• 47:22
  on the events page, so you can do that and then just sign up
• 47:25
  for the newsletter so we can stay in touch.
• 47:27
  Social media is still, you know, somewhat antagonistic.
• 47:30
  So that's the way that we can stay in touch with people.
• 47:33
  Well, thank you for joining, Sam.
• 47:35
  Thank you. Thanks for listening.
• 47:36
  Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
• 47:39
  See you next time.