Latest / The Christy-Faith Show / Ep. 112 - Why Homeschooled Kids Are Better Prepared for an AI World Than Anyone Realizes // Lisa Nehring

Transcript

Ep. 112 - Why Homeschooled Kids Are Better Prepared for an AI World Than Anyone Realizes // Lisa Nehring · The Christy-Faith Show

• 0:00
  Christy-Faith: My son Lincoln has wanted to be an attorney since he was old enough to know what an attorney was. And for years, Scott and I thought, great. He's got a direction. He's got a goal. We'll build towards it.
• 0:11
  Then AI happened. And by happened, I mean, it arrived so fast and so completely that we found ourselves sitting Lincoln down for a conversation that I genuinely never thought I would have to have with my high schooler. Have you had a version of that conversation in your house yet? I suspect many of you have. Now, don't get me wrong.
• 0:31
  We weren't trying to kill his dream. Scott and I looked at each other and we said, we're not gonna do that. But we also couldn't in good conscience pretend that the field he'd been aiming at his whole life was gonna look the same by the time he got there. The CEO of Anthropic, one of the most important AI companies in the world, has said publicly that he believes AI could eliminate 50% of all entry level white collar jobs within five years. Legal work is one of those fields named most often.
• 1:01
  Document review, due diligence, the kind of junior associate work that used to be how you learned the profession. That's the entry point Lincoln was heading towards. So we sat him down, and we talked about widening the horizon, about preparing him, yes, to maybe go into law, but also to build the kind of skills and adaptability that could take him in multiple directions. Directions that we can't even name right now because of how fast this is moving. And what I keep coming back to is this.
• 1:29
  I'm not one to believe in soulmates. Now I'm talking about careers, but I also believe that I don't believe in the other kind either, so stay with me for a second. But this idea that there is just one perfect career path destined for your child and they will either find it or live a diminished life, I just don't buy it. I don't believe it. What I do believe is that Lincoln, just like all of our kids and your kids listening right now, will have the character, the set of gifts, the capacity for hard work that can find a home in more places than he can currently imagine.
• 1:58
  And my job is to prepare that kid. I've brought someone on today who's been living inside this question for years. She's a thirty year homeschool veteran who saw this coming before most of us were even paying attention. And she has answers today that will help you educate your kids right now for a future that none of us can fully predict. Lisa Nearing is founder of True North Academy and one of the clearest thinkers I know on what the fourth industrial revolution means for families like ours.
• 2:27
  She's been on the show before, and I had to have her back because so much has changed since we last conversation. My hope for you today is that not only do you have a more clear understanding of what is currently happening in our world today, but also I want you to have some answers on how to better prepare your kids for it. This is gonna be a great show to listen with your spouse and the whole family. So grab your troops, and let's get some direction in this future AI world. Hey.
• 3:06
  Shout out to Summit HealthShare for sponsoring this episode today. I love Summit HealthShare partially because it's my husband's company. What I think they're doing over there is absolutely incredible and life changing for many families. What is Summit HealthShare? Well, first, let me start with one of my rants about health insurance.
• 3:24
  Need I say anything? Probably not. But the co pays, the denials, the in network out of network nonsense, having to get permission to see your doctor, paying thousands a month, and then them still fighting with you every time you need just basic health care. I believe so much in the freedom that comes with leaving health insurance and moving to health sharing. Now it's not health insurance, but it does replace it.
• 3:49
  And it's been around for over a hundred years. With Summit HealthShare, most families and companies save 40 to 60%, and they have a 98% customer satisfaction. You get to see any doctor that you want, even holistic ones. No networks, no permission slips. You ladies know how I feel about freedom.
• 4:08
  I want medical freedom too. Summit HealthShare has different plan options depending on what your family needs. You might just need major medical, and that's great. On our plan, we get a little bit more, and we get free labs, free office visits, free prescriptions, and no co pays. Our family of six has saved a thousand dollars a month.
• 4:26
  And if it sounds too good to be true, it's not. It's actually how health care should work. We've just been accustomed to overpaying for our health care, and a lot of us don't need to do that. So if you are on traditional health insurance at all, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to summithealthshare.com.
• 4:41
  When you get to the home page, you'll see the savings calculator. Go ahead and click that. It takes only two minutes. And when you see those numbers, what you should be paying for the health care you need, you are going to be grabbing the phone so fast because health care is a serious thing, and you're gonna have really personalized questions, and they are used to answering all of them. Tell them all of your concerns, all of your questions, and they will tell you full stop if this is gonna be a fit for you or your family.
• 5:06
  And tell them that you listen to the show because I want you to have the VIP treatment. Go to summithealthshare.com today, and the link is in the show notes. This podcast is also brought to you by The Christy-Faith List. Now hold up because I want you to know what this is. I'm really proud of what The Christy-Faith List has become.
• 5:23
  It started really scrappy just compiling recommendations because I was fed up with guessing which businesses and providers and doctors weren't gonna give me a hard time when I walked through those doors. And I had tons of friends and family members with nightmare situations where they felt like they were walking into an ambush situation just when they were trying to get help for their families. And I was sick and tired of the discrimination that homeschool families were getting. But since then, it has grown into a massive directory of colleges, businesses, doctor's offices, reading specialists, occupational therapists, homeschool graduates that are in business themselves now. You name it all in one place.
• 6:00
  Because why wouldn't we wanna do business with the people who share our values and actually want to work with homeschool families and not give us a hard time? It is completely free for homeschool homeschool families to search. And if you are a business owner or part of an organization that loves homeschool families and wants to reach more homeschool families and grow your business in that way, please sign yourself up. We wanna know who you are. It's the place where homeschool families support the people who support us.
• 6:27
  Go to the christyfaithlist.com today. Lisa, I'm so glad you're back today. You were one of the first voices I encountered in the homeschool world who was already talking about what AI was gonna mean for our kids' futures long before most of us were even thinking about it. Now, a lot of parents are carrying kind of a fear right now regarding the language of AI. We've been seeing the headlines.
• 6:50
  We've heard the word and seen AI a thousand times, but we can't actually explain what's changing or why. Could you give us a little clarity on that today?
• 7:00
  Lisa Nehring: I would love to. So we're gonna talk about the fourth industrial revolution because I'm a homeschooler, so we have to talk about history.
• 7:09
  Christy-Faith: Yeah.
• 7:09
  Lisa Nehring: And we're in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It started about 2012, and every Industrial Revolution reshapes how people communicate and travel. So we saw that from steam engines to cars to computers, But the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a little bit different because it fuses physical, digital, and biological worlds through technologies like AI, robotics, and the Internet of Things, as well as biotechnology and precision manufacturing. So the Fourth Industrial Revolution is where intelligence, data, empathy, and sustainability collide. It's a big smash up and it redefines work, wealth, and honestly purpose.
• 7:50
  Now, one of the things that makes artificial intelligence so distinct is that it doesn't just change what we're doing or how we're working or the tools that we're using. It's actually changing how we think. And that is a big shift from other industrial revolutions. So other industrial revolutions, we gained tools that extended our physical or informational capacity, but AI extends our cognitive reach and it lets machines process reason and create right alongside humans. I mean, use AI quite a bit.
• 8:21
  I use chat for many different things, but it's a great brainstorming tool and you can put in some stuff and go back and forth and come out with something very quickly. So it's got a lot of great capabilities. But that shift does feel really a lot deeper and more personal because I'm not talking to my coworkers or the people, my mentor or my coach, I'm talking to my computer. So it so AI really truly does touch the core of how we learn, how we decide, and how we're imagining things. I know that was a lot right there.
• 8:55
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. But I think and I'm a historian by training. And this seems so much different though than the other revolutions that we've had. Where I remember my dad the other week, he was he is an engineer, he's won all sorts of awards, and he's retired now. But I I remember him just being so relaxed about it.
• 9:13
  Like, oh, we all said everyone was gonna be out of a job when they invented the computer, and it just created more jobs. And I'm like, I don't know, dad. Like, how do you respond to people who are saying that? Because I'm actually seeing in my real world that I need less people to help me do my same job. Like, I'm it's personally affecting me.
• 9:34
  Right?
• 9:35
  Lisa Nehring: Right.
• 9:35
  Christy-Faith: And so what how is it different than when the computer was invented or when the wheel was invented? Well, I'm gonna go back
• 9:43
  Lisa Nehring: to the second industrial revolution because I think that's when a lot of us learned there was an industrial revolution, And this is like between 1890 and 1920. And before 1820, we all used cartwrights. We all would call up our cartwright. Well, we won't call them, but we'd yell out to our cartwright. And a cartwright is somebody who fixed the wheels on carts and buggies.
• 10:04
  But once the automobile came on the scene, all of a sudden we didn't need a KartRite anymore. And that entire professional went kaput. But the automobile industry changed everyone's lives. We have the Rust Belt in America, for goodness sake, a trillion dollar Swath of America, where we had automobiles, tire industry, windshield wiper industry, car washes, for goodness sakes. So while one or two or 20 industries went by the wayside, multiple other industries rose up out of nothing.
• 10:33
  And every industrial revolution is a time of great disruption. It's not just economic or vocational disruption, it's societal disruption. Everybody got really aware of that during 2020 when we're just like, Woah, what is going on? We saw a lot of educational disruption. That hasn't changed.
• 10:51
  We saw medical disruption and we're seeing vocational disruption. So, I mean, it happens in every industrial revolution, but the rate at which technology is changing is not just two plus two equals four, it's two times two. Instead of four plus four equals eight, it's four times four equals 16. So it's logarithmically advancing, mostly in areas of STEM. So the rate of technology growing and changing things is really at a very fast pace and a very fast rate.
• 11:21
  And that's one of the things that I think is fundamentally different than every other industrial revolution that we've tracked.
• 11:28
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. That speed. And what are the risks of that and the benefits of how fast this is coming at us?
• 11:35
  Lisa Nehring: Well, the risks are that we might all find ourselves needing to pivot and get a different job. So that's a pretty big risk. Yeah. Now, wanna say something. I mean, I own a couple online companies.
• 11:47
  That wasn't possible fifteen years ago, right? So there's a lot of money to be made in every industrial revolution. This is when millionaires were created in the second industrial revolution, millionaires and some billionaires in the third, which was the advent of the computer between 1950 and 1970. And now we're on the verge of trillionaires. If Musk is not a trillionaire yet, he's gonna probably be at the end of this year.
• 12:11
  And so it's changing things. There's a lot of money to be made and a lot of opportunities along with a lot of where'd my job go kind of questions and that feeling of disruption and unease. I mean, as women, we like things to be kind of sorted out. We want to know where the grocery money is going to come from. And so that does feel really uncomfortable.
• 12:32
  And not just women, for men and for kids too. The anxiety amongst our kids is really crazy right now.
• 12:37
  Christy-Faith: Homeschooling for kids means I'm juggling roughly 24 different subjects at any given time. And a few years back during a particularly busy season, I hit a wall. I needed some serious help with the heavy lifting of teaching everything myself and managing schedules for four kids. That's when I found BJU Press Homeschool, and we've loved their courses so much that we keep going back. Some families use them for everything and love it.
• 13:00
  I use them for certain subjects. Either way, total mental load relief. Here's what my mornings look like now. Let us take science for example. My three girls do that one together.
• 13:09
  They fire up the lesson taught by a real teacher, well produced, actual teaching, not just click through busy work. And I sit there with my coffee, watch them, or make breakfast, and we discuss the big ideas. Every BJU Press homeschool course prioritizes critical thinking, a biblical worldview, and hands on learning. I just guide the conversation and pick which activity or pages or projects we want to do, and everything's already planned out. They have an online platform included for you called the homeschool hub, and it keeps everyone on track, both me and my kids, without micromanaging or nagging.
• 13:41
  And when I have questions, I call my homework's consultant. These people don't just help you get set up. They're available for you whenever you need them. It's like having a homeschool expert on speed dial. Go to bjupresshomeschool.com or click the link in the show notes to find out more.
• 13:55
  People are always curious what curriculum I use for my own family, and honestly, it changes. We've tried a lot over the years. Some work for a season and some completely miss the mark, but there is one that's stuck, CTC Math. It's a full k to 12 online math curriculum, and it's won oodles of awards for a reason. It's just that good.
• 14:15
  I use it for all four of my kids, and they couldn't be more different when it comes to math. Finding one curriculum that actually works for all of them, that's been nearly impossible. You know that pit in your stomach when you realize the curriculum that you just invested in isn't working again? Yeah. That was us until this one.
• 14:33
  The genius behind CTC math is that it's adaptive. The questions adjust to each kid's level in real time. So they're always challenged but never crushed. And mama, it does the teaching and grading for us. Yes.
• 14:46
  You heard that right. That's a homeschool mom's dream. Well, especially for me when it comes to math. I would think it's too good to be true if I hadn't been using it myself. And it's not just me.
• 14:56
  Here's why it's become the go to for thousands of homeschool families. Free diagnostics show you exactly where to start, access to all grade levels so your student can fill in any gaps or move ahead, short video lessons that keep your children engaged, automatic grading with instant feedback, and progress reports so you know exactly what's happening without hovering. Math used to be our hardest subject. Now my kids do it independently. Here's the best part.
• 15:22
  Our listeners get 50% off. Use the link in the show notes to do a free trial or to get that half off deal. Don't spend another year kissing math frogs. This one stuck for us, and I have a feeling it's gonna stick for you too. Absolutely.
• 15:35
  And that actually leads me to my next question because moms in Thrive Homeschool Community, it's in the discussions, and I suspect that you're hearing it too.
• 15:44
  Lisa Nehring: Oh, yeah.
• 15:44
  Christy-Faith: We're not just worried about our kids. We're worried about our own jobs, our spouse's jobs, all of these things. And so I feel like we're kind of in this space where we wanna prepare our kids well, but we're also feeling like we don't have footing necessarily. The fields that felt stable like finance, marketing, project management, they're the ones that are showing up in the headlines. How real is this?
• 16:09
  How fast moving? And I wanna be I wanna have a real conversation because you've been thinking about this a lot longer than many of us have. And are there people that really should be pivoting right now? I mean, you're seeing advertisements now for getting, like, certifications in AI. I believe that about a month ago, the first c suite level executive of AI was hired in one of the big massive companies.
• 16:35
  And so last night when we were having dinner, it was a beautiful March day. We're having a lovely dinner, and Scott was saying, you know, I'm not that pessimistic because I think what's gonna happen is what a company that used to need 80 employees now might need only about 10, but what's gonna happen is that entrepreneur might own 15 of those companies that all have 10 employees. And, like, he's like, margins might be lower, but you can own more, like, scaling. And so that's kinda how he was looking at it. But how do you respond to that too?
• 17:09
  We're fearing for our kids, but we're also fearing for ourselves.
• 17:12
  Lisa Nehring: Yeah. Well, I think that sense of disruption is real, and it's not going away anytime soon. The research shows that most industrial revolutions last twenty to forty years. We're in the middle of ours, and we're like at year fifteen to twenty, and it's no signs of slowing down. It's just going to continue to continue because of the rate at which tech is changing.
• 17:34
  Musk actually predicts that there's going to be more comfort and ease around the world as a result of the technology. More people will have more money. We're not gonna have to rely on Social Security because there's gonna be so much money floating around. I'm not sure that I believe in the goodness of man that much.
• 17:51
  Christy-Faith: I wanna make sure that he says that. Wasn't he also talking about, like, universal income because everyone will be out of shape? I know. So I just wanna be careful about what I'm
• 18:01
  Lisa Nehring: seeing there. But but there's a really interesting article, and it's called Something Big is Happening by Matt Schumer, And it's honestly a must read because it talks about the logarithmic change of AI in particular. But you couple that with the precision economy, robotics, and the Internet of Things, and all of a sudden you have, like, you have the capability of creating and doing so much more, so much faster and with so much more precision than if a human did it. So I think Scott has a really good point that there's going to be more capability of people creating jobs. The reality is anybody can create a job if they can solve a problem, no matter how much tech is on the scene.
• 18:44
  So if you can have those critical thinking skills and ask the questions, you know, what irritates me and what irritates other people enough that they'll give me money, you're going to be okay. I do think that we need to be really aware some jobs are going by the wayside. Now, you mentioned Lincoln's desire to go into law, and I just watched a lawyer online who said that this woman sued a company and they were found guilty, and so they paid her an amount and then she had to sign, I forget what it's called, but she had to sign a legal document that said she was compensated and she would never sue again. Okay? That's really common.
• 19:22
  A year later, she put it into chat. Chat said, We'll try again. So she sued again and the court kicked her out and said, You signed this disclaimer. She sued again. She did this multiple times.
• 19:32
  And at the end it was found that she was wrong, but the company paid $300,000 in legal fees to keep her at bay, which was far more than the original amount they paid her. Now that is going up the chain of the legal system because of this lady's misuse of an AI tool to try to game and beat the legal system. And now they're saying lawyers can't use chat. Well, a lot of lawyers were using AI agents as like their law clerk team, right? So they were saying instead of two or three or five people, I could use two or three agents, which is going to cost me pennies on the dollar literally.
• 20:12
  And now there's this thing being fought about in the courts. Can lawyers use AI agents or not? Because if we make this overarching thing, you can't submit anything an agent put into a court of law that leaves the lawyers out to lunch too. So or out to, you know, whatever that idiom is. I'm not great at idioms.
• 20:31
  Christy-Faith: But And I do think just to clarify because this is in my notes, we're hearing the term agentic AI. What is what because I create agents myself. Let's talk about what agentic AI is. Am I pronouncing that correctly? A b
• 20:49
  Lisa Nehring: I think that is exactly how you pronounce it. I can't give you an exact term, but I've gone to some trainings. And Allie Kay Miller on Instagram, she's got some got a website. She's a brilliant mind in AI. She's actually the niece of a good friend of mine and one of the foremost voices in AI in the world right now.
• 21:07
  She's got a statue of the Smithsonian, a really brilliant young gal. And she did this whole training on using agents in your business. And basically you build a bot or whatever they're called. I don't know all the technical terms. Probably do more than I do, but you create a helper that's AI focused on whatever question you're trying to solve for.
• 21:28
  And so it's just an agent that you use that is created and coded specifically toward the problem you're trying to solve. Is that a good way to say it, would you say?
• 21:36
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, like, in the business world for the last decade, we've talked about automations. Like, how can you automate this? How can you automate this?
• 21:44
  Yeah. This is like automation on steroids where it's almost like if this happens, then you can do that. If this happens, then you can do that, and you can program it. And the other day, Scott was like, I think that I have been having an email con a customer service email conversation back and forth with an agent. And he probably was, but it's not just, like, doing the you know, you can imagine it with reception.
• 22:10
  Like, hello. This is La dee da. How may I direct your call? And then but it's more than that now. I mean, there
• 22:17
  Lisa Nehring: It's very sophisticated.
• 22:18
  Christy-Faith: Yes. It's
• 22:19
  Lisa Nehring: yeah. For sure. And a lot of us are using agents for customer service because you can do a lot of vetting with that. It's very helpful. It saves on manpower.
• 22:29
  Saves on, I mean, any of us running a business know you always run out of day before you run out of things to do. Using somebody who can say, We're not a good fit for you, or you're a great fit for what we're offering, but you need to know this about it, that's really super helpful. And so I think a lot of us are interacting with AI agents more than we understand that we are.
• 22:47
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. And the one thing that that I personally, as a business owner, find appealing is that you can really eliminate human error because a lot of these agents you can program that you can only say this. Like, you can't make a mistake. And so sometimes with customer service, we're relieved with an agent because Yeah. It's like we don't have to explain this over again.
• 23:05
  We don't have to you know, all of those things. But I wanna move on to the next question. So we've talked about what's at risk, and I wanna leave it there. The World Economic Forum says that while millions of jobs are displaced, even more roles are emerging because of AI. We've kind of touched on it briefly, but I think this is the kind of the sweet spot and how we have a leg up as homeschoolers, honestly.
• 23:28
  Because the public school system, when are they gonna catch on? Right? Thirty years from now, they're gonna be like, wait a minute. Maybe we should help kids. Yeah.
• 23:36
  They're still fighting about how much screen time the kids have at school and taking away phones. So, anyway, what are the types of jobs that AI is going to make that we can start thinking about for our own kids? Is your child struggling with attention, memory, reading, writing, math? If you're experiencing this, you know how heart wrenching it is to watch them face these hurdles. You've poured love, time, and attention into their education, yet the struggle persists, leaving you feeling stuck and desperately searching for answers.
• 24:06
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• 24:34
  Think homeschooling means doing it all yourself? Let me stop you right there. If you're looking for a partner you can trust, one I trust with my own kids, check out True North Homeschool Academy. They're Cognia accredited and offer live online classes and flexible self paced options for grades six through 12. Your teen can pursue a dual degree track or a tech and trades diploma, all with teachers who share your family values.
• 24:58
  Small classes, college ready rigor, real world skills, and it all fits your schedule in a faith friendly environment. Ready to learn more? Head to truenorthhomeschool.academy or click the link in the show notes to explore courses and get started today.
• 25:13
  Lisa Nehring: I'm gonna mention eight emerging jobs. Six of them, you're not gonna be surprised about at all. So I'm gonna go through those six first and they're really STEM oriented. Number one, AI data and software development. Everybody is like, okay, makes sense.
• 25:26
  Number two, cybersecurity and digital protection. Cyber piracy is a multi billion dollar profession right now. Yeah. And so cybersecurity is really important. And just to, I'm just gonna put in a little, like, I'm an old mom note to all the young moms listening and parents.
• 25:44
  When your kids get online, be really aware of where they're at. If they're somewhere, you be there too. And I hear this from parents all the time, I trust my kid. Well, you need to not trust the nefarious people out to So scam your kid, it's not about trusting your kid, it's about being aware of the stuff going on. So cybersecurity.
• 26:02
  Number three is robotics automation and advanced manufacturing. And this is, there's a lot changing in robotics and automation. You add that with the advanced manufacturing, the precision economy and things like you said, things are happening almost perfectly, very quickly in factories. It's crazy. Number four is energy infrastructure and sustainability.
• 26:23
  So think environmental science. How are we gonna use different kinds of energy sources? Now one of the things Musk is doing is very interesting is he wants to get to the dark side of the moon because AI uses electricity, you have to cool off this stuff with water. But if you go to the dark side of the moon, it's already really cool there. So don't check me on the science on that, but I think I got that kind of right.
• 26:46
  So anyway, science kind of stuff. Number five is biotech and health technology. Again, we're going to use robotics. We're going to use bio tech. So nanobots, which are really teeny tiny little bots, they're actually using those to do some kind of surgeries and things like that now, which is amazing.
• 27:04
  That's really going to be a blooming field more so than ever before. I saw that they had just done a full face transplant. They've done two of them so far. So, there's some really crazy, amazing, miraculous, truly miraculous things. Paraplegics are walking, those kinds of things.
• 27:21
  More of that is going to be happening. Number six is human centered design in digital media. And so anything in digital media, in fact, I just saw that they had created a movie with a star. He got like $11,000,000 and he doesn't show up. It's all AI.
• 27:37
  Christy-Faith: Wow.
• 27:38
  Lisa Nehring: But they paid for his image and who he was. Now, the couple that you might not have thought about. Number seven is the empath economy. The empath economy is anybody who can touch you physically, spiritually, socially, or emotionally. So think coaching, teaching, leadership, sales, anything pastoral, anything mental health.
• 27:57
  What a lot of people aren't considering in those fields is some of those fields are really very politicized. And so I hear this all the time about kids go through therapy because they had anxiety, now they want to go and be a therapist. And what they're not realizing is that there's a lot of politics involved in the mental health field. The teaching profession is so politicized right now on so many different levels, coaching a little bit too. So if your kids wanna go into the empath economy or you do, just be aware of that.
• 28:25
  And then eight, and this might be a big surprise for everybody, maybe it's not at all, is that the skilled trades coupled with smart tech is going to blow up. So the median age of a skilled laborer in The United States right now is 55. And that means they're gonna be retiring or I hate to say it, passing away, right? And so their jobs are gonna be opened up and their businesses are gonna be opened up. So if you have somebody who went into the trades and became a business owner as a result of that, when they leave their field, that leaves a job open.
• 28:59
  And there's going to be a real shortage of skilled tradesmen, especially people who can work with smart technology. And that includes electricians, HVAC techs, mechanics, automotive specialists, etcetera. Anybody who has hands on and can work with AI enabled systems. So there's a lot of opportunities and possibilities for people. A business person I really like to follow is Cody Sanchez.
• 29:21
  She's young and smart and sharp. And she's like, buy the boring businesses because those people are retiring and you don't have to start your own business. It's harder to start your own business and have it work out than it is to buy a business that's been already proven successful. So there's a lot of opportunities for our kids right now. If they're not STEM oriented, that's okay.
• 29:41
  And if you're not either and you feel like you need to pivot, you don't have to go, I'm not a STEM person. I'm a humanities girl through and through. I mean, you want me to teach your kid formal poetry or how to read or understand the classics, call me, okay? But if you want me to like, code a program or something, anything tech, I'm not your person. So but there's just a lot of opportunities for people no matter what their orientation is right now.
• 30:06
  Again, it's a revolution, so things are disrupted. That means a lot of opportunity.
• 30:11
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. Well and so and that brings me to college. And this was not a question on the list I gave you, but it's just begging and itching to be asked because I what you said, I don't hear any majors in. What you have. Mentioned.
• 30:26
  And so it's interesting. I don't think these people will be listening, but I'm in a small group at my church of parents of teens and tweens. And so a lot of the families right now are going through the process of applying for college and how stressful that is and the major and the roommate and the this and is it a Christian college? Is it not? If it's not a Christian college, is there a Christian club?
• 30:49
  And all of these types of things. And Scott and I are sitting there because Lincoln is currently in a your dual degree, and we're like, our kid doesn't I mean, not that we're we're not in a prideful way, but we're, like, so happy to have dodged that bullet. Right? Because well and I think about, okay. He would go to college, and if it's not law, I'd probably be majoring in business because Yeah.
• 31:12
  That is what is can apply to the most things at least right now with everything that's so unknown. And but I was thinking, like, what are these kids majoring in? Like, what exactly are these these colleges aren't ready for this, and they're certainly not gonna be able, at least in the next, I would say, four to ten years to change their majors and overhaul their programs enough to be able to adequately prepare kids. And, you know, this is so interesting. I can't wait to hear you talk on this.
• 31:42
  But when Lincoln was born, I said, oh, we gotta start saving for college. Right? Let's start saving for college, honey. And Scott looks at me, and he goes, yeah. Absolutely.
• 31:50
  He goes, but I'm not quite sure college is going to exist by the time he gets there. And I'm like, what? That's, like, under twenty years from now. And he said, I just don't see it. You know, of course, we already were half deschooled because we're like, this is all bull crap anyway.
• 32:07
  Right? We don't like school's irrelevant, honestly. But it's just interesting because you're kind of at the forefront of you were talking to me two years ago about your dual degree program. And the first time you mentioned it to me, I felt like I was hearing a different language. Like, what?
• 32:24
  What? What? What? Right? Because you heard of we've all homeschoolers have all heard of the credits.
• 32:30
  Right? Getting credits that can apply. That never really appealed to me because I'm like, well, what if the credits don't apply to the school he wants to go to? We just spent all this money on general ed, and it's not gonna transfer. But you have solved this problem for a lot of us, and it was so cool because it was actually Lincoln's decision to join your program.
• 32:49
  But first, before and this by the way, this is not she was not expecting this question. This is not a sales pitch on her program at all, but it it kind of it had to be asked here. Where's college going? What's happening right now? I know colleges are closing.
• 33:03
  So Yeah. Jump it all on us, girl. Give it to us. I'll have some water.
• 33:08
  Lisa Nehring: Got it. Okay. So 25% of colleges are gonna close in the next ten years, which is a huge number of colleges and universities in The United States. The reason for that is that over a third of the kids in this generation were not even born. Okay?
• 33:22
  And then the baby boom is over and a lot of kids are opting not to go to college. The kids who do go to college, they're graduating in six years, not four, although forty percent of them are not graduating. And they have on average $37,000 in debt. So right now The United States has $1,700,000,000,000 in student loan debt. You cannot bankrupt that debt.
• 33:46
  So if your kids take out $40,000 in debt and they get sick or they break their legs or anything else, guess what? They still have to pay that debt. It does not go away. And so a lot of people are dying with debt. I mean, there's a huge thing about people 60 in America right now who still owe 6 figures in debt.
• 34:06
  And because the student loans companies were deregulated several years ago, what happens is you can start out with $10,000 in debt, pay on that debt for five years, take a forbearance for a year, which is completely legal, and owe more than $10,000 at the end of that year because you still accrue interest on the principal. And a lot of people have no idea about that. As homeschoolers too, we protect our kids for eighteen years. We're so careful about what they watch and what they see and what they do. And then we're like, college is the way and they sign a student loan.
• 34:39
  They've never taken out a car loan, most of them. They have never taken out any significant debt. And then we're just like, this degree is so important. And my question to parents right now is, why is it so important? Now, I have two graduate degrees and my husband has three.
• 34:52
  So we're a pretty academically oriented family. Our kids are between 23 and 39 because there's three and a half to five years between each of our kids. And from the time my oldest daughter went to college, she got a fully bribe four year scholarship. And the time my youngest went to college who got significant scholarships, the world had changed and college had changed. Now between the time my husband and I went to college and our youngest went to college, it was literally almost forty years because we had kids in our twenties, thirties and forties.
• 35:22
  So I'm an older mom to my younger kids. And I mean, I literally called the dean of her college and there were some values issues I had a problem with, but more than anything, the college professor in a fifty minute class spent ten to twenty minutes showing the kids disgusting videos with women being beheaded. The lyrics were so crude and rude, had nothing to do with the class. This was literally an Old Testament class. And I called the dean and I was like, this is literally fraud.
• 35:52
  I'm paying $1,200 for this class and a third of it is disgusting videos. Like, give me a break. So I think parents have to be really careful about where they're sending their kids to college right now for so many reasons. What skills are they going to learn? Literally, what skills are they going to learn?
• 36:09
  The research shows that most kids leave college feeling like they didn't add value to their skill stack. Also, lot of people don't understand this. There's a lot of foreign money pouring into our colleges right now, including Christian colleges. And when foreign money comes in, foreign ideologies come in. I have a very good close family friend who sent both of his kids to the number one ranked public business school in America, and they both left a business school touting communism.
• 36:38
  They don't really believe in capitalism too much anymore. This is a business school. That does not even make sense. So we have to be really careful about why our kids are going to college and if it's important. If it is, I do think the degree is still very important, and I'll tell you why.
• 36:53
  Because it's kind of like taking the ACT or SAT to go to college. And a lot of colleges are saying, We don't even need it anymore. You don't have to do that, so parents aren't doing it. But it's a fast track to getting scholarship money. So if your kids get a good SAT score, they're going to have more scholarship money available to them.
• 37:10
  That's the same thing a degree does, is that it's a fast track to gaining employment, to getting advancement and those kinds of things. It's the system we're used to. And it tells people, you know how to complete something and you have an area, a subject area of specialty, and that makes sense to us. So I do think the piece of paper still absolutely does matter. If it's in a skill based program, your kids are going to leave it with skills, which is exactly what our program is designed to do.
• 37:41
  I think that college right now is really concerning, especially for faith based parents, it should be really concerning. Parents do your homework. The other thing a lot of parents aren't realizing is that if your college is one that closes, even if they have a partner school to take those kids and those credits, which they all are supposed to before they close, doesn't mean that's going to happen. That actually happened to my son's small classical school. Thankfully, he had graduated when it closed, but a good friend of ours, she had not, she was a junior and the school closed.
• 38:12
  She went to the partner school and they did not accept an entire year's worth of credit towards the degree. So she had 80 credits of electives and not enough towards her degree. It took her two more years to graduate instead of the one that would have taken. That's debt, that's time. You know, there's so many things.
• 38:30
  I could keep going, but I mean, this is an area I'm just I'm fired up about because parents, you put so much time and energy into your kids. It's time to be really diligent when they're launching. In fact, that might be one of the most important times that you need to be aware of what's happening just do your research.
• 38:48
  Christy-Faith: Yeah. And, you know, the opportunity has been around for a while for homeschooled high school kids to get credits and things like that. Yeah. You know, we've heard of parents sending their kids to the local junior college. Most of those end up disastrous experiences.
• 39:08
  Right? Because it's like you've homeschooled your kid all this, and you're throwing them to the junior college. Like, woah. And so, I mean, that's one thing that was off the table for us. We weren't gonna do that.
• 39:18
  And that's what was very appealing when we found out about your program is that, oh, Lincoln's in there with other kids his age doing college with them. They were kinda all in the same program Right. Working together towards this same goal, which is really exciting. Plus, he got all fired up. He's he feels like he's Doogie Howser right now.
• 39:37
  He is. Yes. Yes. Yeah.
• 39:40
  Lisa Nehring: That's the exciting part about the program is that I think people keep asking me, how is this even working? Like you're doing an accredited bachelor's degree while they're in high school. These colleges are forward thinking. They're seeing the handwriting on the wall. And if they don't get people into their programs, they're going to close like everybody else.
• 39:57
  Yeah. So the I think it's really forward thinking of these colleges that we're partnering with too.
• 40:02
  Christy-Faith: Yes. And, also, you know, for him, it was a no brainer because he plans to go to graduate school. So getting that undergrad over with as fast and as cheaply as possible was very motivating for us. Yeah. Especially since but yeah.
• 40:15
  And I think that part of it is that's gonna take society a lot longer than homeschoolers to grasp because we're already halfway there. If not, they're already. Right? Let's have a little deschooling sesh is we're not viewing an education as content. That's not Right.
• 40:33
  We're already halfway there. We already know that we wanna build skills. That education is building a human being. A whole healthy yes. Are you nourishing the mind as well?
• 40:45
  Yes. That's part of it, but that's only part of it. That's not all of it. And so that's why we don't get hung up on those minor details that really don't matter in the long run, like memorizing the periodic table per se. You know?
• 40:58
  Yes. Is memorizing a skill that is important? Yes. But is that particular thing that you are memorizing, like, is that really gonna serve you
• 41:08
  Lisa Nehring: the thing.
• 41:09
  Christy-Faith: Later? Is that the thing? So and we have the power to decide if that thing is worth knowing. Right? Like, skip counting.
• 41:17
  Yes. Times tables. Yes. You need to know those things, but other things, maybe not. Or maybe this past year, Lincoln's in a pretty intense cultural geography class, and there was a ton of content to memorize for a test.
• 41:32
  We are in an academic coop. And he has already proven to me that he can memorize really well, really easily. So he could have, you know, crammed for this thing. It was a type of test where you would none of it was super relevant information. And so but what I did notice as he was studying is he really wasn't where I wanted him to be with being able to skim a text, find information that he needs.
• 41:59
  Because you have to remember, we're raising kids that don't well, I'm not a text I have not historically been a textbook home cooler. Right? Like, we've done history with living books. And I realized, oh, now's the time. Like, he should be able to navigate a text like this.
• 42:16
  And so I let him take the test open book. Why? Because the skill was what was important in that moment for him to grow that will serve him better later. He probably retained, you know, enough of the content itself. But that's what we're talking about here, like these skills.
• 42:35
  Thanks for tuning in to part one. The future is uncertain, but our kids don't have to be unprepared. Join us for part two because that's where Lisa is gonna reveal to us the exact five skills our kids will need to succeed in the future AI world.