Transcript

Skipping School · Mom Wars

0:01
Speaker 1: From the front lines of the mom wars, here's Bethany
0:04
Speaker 1: Mandel and Cara Kennedy.
0:08
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of your favorite podcast.
0:11
Speaker 2: My name is Bethany Mandel and I am a contributor
0:16
Speaker 2: at the Washington Examiner and often write at the New
0:19
Speaker 2: York Post. Are they going to make me a contributor
0:21
Speaker 2: one day? I feel like they should at this point.
0:23
Speaker 2: I am joined by my co-host. Yes, she's still here, guys. Connor, Kennedy, Claremont, where,
0:29
Speaker 2: what are you going by these days?
0:30
Speaker 3: So legally it's Claremont, but my byline is Kennedy.
0:35
Speaker 2: Okay. And where do you write?
0:38
Speaker 3: I write for the free press and I am back.
0:41
Speaker 3: I feel like I've had such a hectic time over
0:44
Speaker 3: the past few months. I feel like my kids are
0:46
Speaker 3: both in very difficult ages right now.
0:48
Speaker 2: They are.
0:49
Speaker 3: Daphne is just about to turn two. And wow, did
0:52
Speaker 3: I think that she was already in the tantrum phase.
0:56
Speaker 3: But apparently that was just like a practice. Now it's really, really,
1:01
Speaker 3: really crazy. Like nobody warned me. And how long does
1:05
Speaker 3: this last?
1:08
Speaker 2: No comment.
1:10
Speaker 3: It's really crazy.
1:13
Speaker 2: And we are joined by Dixie Dillon-Lean. the author of
1:17
Speaker 2: the new book, Skipping School, A History of American Homeschooling
1:21
Speaker 2: and How It Went Mainstream. I have, so funny enough, Dixie,
1:26
Speaker 2: you messaged me on Twitter when your book came out
1:29
Speaker 2: and I missed your message because Twitter DMs are broken now.
1:33
Speaker 2: And then I was like, I saw her book like
1:37
Speaker 2: getting chatted about everywhere. Like she should come on my podcast.
1:40
Speaker 2: So I opened DM to DM you and I was like, oh,
1:44
Speaker 2: you messaged me about this six months ago. Oh my God,
1:47
Speaker 2: I'm so embarrassed. So that is totally fine. I'm just
1:52
Speaker 2: super excited to be talking with you girls today. I
1:54
Speaker 2: am too. So I want to talk through some of
1:57
Speaker 2: my feelings. This is going to be a feelings conversation.
2:01
Speaker 2: So first of all, I would love if you would
2:04
Speaker 2: give like a little bit of a history lesson on
2:07
Speaker 2: American homeschooling because I feel like I am the recipient.
2:10
Speaker 2: So I, by the way, for new listeners, I have
2:13
Speaker 2: six children who I homeschool. the thing I love about
2:17
Speaker 2: homeschooling is that it looks like very different for every child.
2:20
Speaker 2: My older children are in a like homeschool co-op and
2:22
Speaker 2: taking online classes. My middle kids are also to some extent,
2:26
Speaker 2: my youngest is in preschool this year, which I intend
2:29
Speaker 2: to write about for our mom more sub stack this
2:32
Speaker 2: at some point soon. But I would love for you
2:34
Speaker 2: to give us like a little bit of a rundown
2:35
Speaker 2: of the history of homeschooling, because when I was a kid,
2:39
Speaker 2: 30 years ago, the homeschoolers were weird. They were like
2:44
Speaker 2: weird kids. isolationist weirdos who were like denim overalls and
2:50
Speaker 2: didn't know how to talk to humans.
2:53
Speaker 4: Well, I think one of the kind of funny things
2:55
Speaker 4: actually had a super lot of fun in the beginning.
2:59
Speaker 4: And then at the beginning of the epilogue of the book,
3:01
Speaker 4: because I got to talk about mean girls. I don't
3:04
Speaker 4: know if you guys remember that movie.
3:05
Speaker 2: Of course I do.
3:06
Speaker 5: Yeah.
3:07
Speaker 2: Well, there are two of them.
3:09
Speaker 4: One in 2004 and one in 2014. And of course
3:12
Speaker 4: there was a musical in between, but we kind of
3:15
Speaker 4: talk about how at the beginning in that 2004 one,
3:18
Speaker 4: the way they talk about homeschooling is like, it's kind
3:20
Speaker 4: of weird because the protagonist is homeschooled. But then in
3:24
Speaker 4: the 24 one, 2024 one, like everyone knows what it is.
3:28
Speaker 4: Nobody's surprised. So there's been a really big change. And
3:31
Speaker 4: I think a lot of us in the country have,
3:35
Speaker 4: sort of kept hold of our stereotypes of homeschooling from
3:39
Speaker 4: when we were growing up and haven't really realized how
3:42
Speaker 4: much it's changed. And I think the stereotypes were never
3:46
Speaker 4: really 100% correct, but like it's so diverse now. So
3:50
Speaker 4: many different kinds of people do it. It's very public.
3:53
Speaker 4: It's a huge number of children. So it's time.
3:57
Speaker 2: For us to- What is the data? People always ask
4:00
Speaker 2: me the data, and I never have the data. So
4:03
Speaker 2: how many of every kid in America, what percentage is homeschooled?
4:08
Speaker 4: Probably around 6.5%. Wow. Which is twice as many kids
4:14
Speaker 4: as go to Catholic parochial schools, for a little comparison there.
4:19
Speaker 2: Wow.
4:20
Speaker 4: Nobody thinks Catholic school is weird. It may not be
4:22
Speaker 4: what everyone does, but everybody knows what that is. Lots
4:25
Speaker 4: of people do it. So homeschooling is really, I argue
4:29
Speaker 4: in the book, like it's a minor educational norm now.
4:32
Speaker 4: It's not a fringe activity.
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Speaker 2: So one of the numbers that surprises me the most
4:38
Speaker 2: is the number of Black kids that are homeschooled. What
4:40
Speaker 2: is that number?
4:43
Speaker 4: I can't quote the number off the top of my head,
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Speaker 4: but the really big change that happened was that the
4:48
Speaker 4: number quintupled in 2020 times five. Times five in 2020.
4:56
Speaker 3: Why?
4:58
Speaker 4: Because of the school lockdowns.
4:59
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah.
5:02
Speaker 4: So homeschooling just boomed in 2020 across that summer. So
5:07
Speaker 4: from the spring of 2020 to the fall of 2020, many, many,
5:12
Speaker 4: many families chose to homeschool instead of to continue Zoom
5:17
Speaker 4: schooling or whatever was going on in their particular school.
5:21
Speaker 4: And then those numbers went down a little bit gradually
5:23
Speaker 4: for the So that was just a really interesting phenomenon
5:29
Speaker 4: to have happen. But, you know, things like that don't
5:31
Speaker 4: happen out of nowhere. So obviously the very, very strange
5:35
Speaker 4: situation we experienced during the first year of the COVID
5:38
Speaker 4: pandemic prompted that. But people don't do things like that
5:43
Speaker 4: without there being some background there. So this is part
5:46
Speaker 4: of where the history is just so important to understand
5:49
Speaker 4: because everybody was surprised. I don't know if you remember
5:52
Speaker 4: the media, but people were really surprised. What is happening
5:54
Speaker 4: with homeschooling? So I wanted to look a little bit at, well,
5:58
Speaker 4: where did this come from? How did it become the
6:01
Speaker 4: case that all these parents in 2020 actually could just
6:04
Speaker 4: homeschool and were willing to just homeschool? And why are
6:08
Speaker 4: so many doing it today? So the book starts in
6:11
Speaker 4: about 1950. So it's about homeschooling in the last 75 years.
6:15
Speaker 4: So not whatever sort of cognate there is back in
6:19
Speaker 4: the 18th century or whatever. And then it just follows
6:22
Speaker 4: the movement, talks about what motivated it, why it continued,
6:27
Speaker 4: how it's connected to longer American beliefs about education. And
6:31
Speaker 4: I really hope that it's a book that like tells
6:33
Speaker 4: us something about the country itself and about parenting and
6:37
Speaker 4: about our schools, because it's just not a fringe enough
6:41
Speaker 4: activity to be considered like unrelated to what is going
6:49
Speaker 4: on in the rest of the country.
6:51
Speaker 2: How many parents did you talk to for this book?
6:55
Speaker 4: I think I formally interviewed 45 or 46. And then
6:59
Speaker 4: I mean, I talked to many others. But those were
7:03
Speaker 4: the formal interview sources that either either written or in
7:07
Speaker 4: person or by phone, some combination there.
7:11
Speaker 2: How many parents are homeschooling because of the poor quality
7:15
Speaker 2: of our public education system versus like, they have an
7:19
Speaker 2: ideological need to do this. Cause I feel like that's
7:23
Speaker 2: what's shifted. Am I right?
7:25
Speaker 4: It's definitely shifted. So especially like when people give their
7:29
Speaker 4: reasons for homeschooling and surveys, and we ought to remember
7:32
Speaker 4: that like homeschoolers did not want to be counted in
7:36
Speaker 4: the 20th century. They didn't want people to notice them
7:39
Speaker 4: because they could get in trouble.
7:40
Speaker 2: Right.
7:40
Speaker 4: So we don't have good data in the 20th century,
7:44
Speaker 4: which was very recent. Of course, And even in the
7:48
Speaker 4: past 25 years, our data is very shifty. There's lots
7:52
Speaker 4: of different sources ask different questions.
7:55
Speaker 2: So it's tough. It's tough data.
7:58
Speaker 4: And then we have subjective research, which can help us
8:00
Speaker 4: a lot with that. But what we have is pretty
8:04
Speaker 4: clear that religious motivations have declined in the past 25 years.
8:10
Speaker 4: And it's actually not at the top anymore. I think
8:14
Speaker 4: that most recently... They ask in two different ways. I'm
8:18
Speaker 4: talking about the NCES, the federal government's education surveys. And
8:23
Speaker 4: then the census does some of this too. And then
8:25
Speaker 4: there are other researchers. But they ask what your most
8:29
Speaker 4: important reason is to homeschool. And then they also have
8:31
Speaker 4: a separate question where you can check all the reasons
8:34
Speaker 4: that you homeschool. So it's something like fifth of all
8:37
Speaker 4: the reasons religious instruction is. And it's third, I think now,
8:42
Speaker 4: of the most important reason. And academics are way up
8:45
Speaker 4: there at first or second.
8:47
Speaker 3: Now.
8:48
Speaker 4: So people are concerned about academics and, you know, a
8:50
Speaker 4: number of other things too. School safety is one for sure.
8:54
Speaker 6: Yeah.
8:55
Speaker 4: And so religion is still a big part of it,
8:57
Speaker 4: but it's really not the primary motivator for the movement
9:01
Speaker 4: as a whole. And that's a really big challenge to
9:03
Speaker 4: how we think stereotypically about homeschooling. Yeah.
9:08
Speaker 2: When I think about like HSLDA, a lot of people,
9:11
Speaker 2: which is the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, which in my
9:15
Speaker 2: perception is like they laid the legal foundation for us.
9:20
Speaker 2: Do you think that that's a fair perception of them
9:23
Speaker 2: that like they made it possible for homeschooling to be
9:26
Speaker 2: legal and accepted nationwide?
9:30
Speaker 4: They litigated so much and they lobbied so much. So yeah,
9:34
Speaker 4: there were others too. I think HSLDA has been the
9:37
Speaker 4: most prominent and the most visible, but there were plenty
9:41
Speaker 4: of people who were making significant headway on that on
9:44
Speaker 4: the like secular progressive side of homeschooling. And it's important
9:49
Speaker 4: that we not forget that. But HSLDA really provided a
9:53
Speaker 4: lot of security for homeschoolers because even though it's leadership,
9:58
Speaker 4: leadership is evangelical Christian, you know, anyone could join and
10:01
Speaker 4: become a member and still can and have access to
10:04
Speaker 4: a legal counsel and things like that. So it was
10:07
Speaker 4: sort of a security for them. And they just litigated everything.
10:10
Speaker 4: I mean, whenever there's a case having to do with homeschooling,
10:13
Speaker 4: HSLDA would be involved and they became.
10:15
Speaker 2: Experts on it too.
10:16
Speaker 4: So they definitely- really contributed significantly to establishing it as
10:22
Speaker 4: legal in all 50 states?
10:25
Speaker 2: I'm Jewish, which is not at all common in my
10:29
Speaker 2: community to homeschool. We're definitely major, major, major outliers. But
10:34
Speaker 2: I'm in contact with HSLDA on a one-to-one basis. And
10:38
Speaker 2: they've reached out to me and they're like, can we
10:39
Speaker 2: be of help to Jewish homeschoolers? To their credit, and
10:42
Speaker 2: we're members of HSLDA. And to their credit, they're eager
10:46
Speaker 2: to be a resource for not just Christian homeschoolers. And
10:50
Speaker 2: I always, um, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll
10:53
Speaker 2: make sure I'll spread the word among the 16 other
10:55
Speaker 2: Jewish homeschoolers that you guys are there for them. I'm
10:58
Speaker 2: sure it will come in handy for those.
11:00
Speaker 4: Well, there are a couple in my book, Bethany, you
11:01
Speaker 4: can call them and be like, Hey, you signed up
11:03
Speaker 4: for HSLDA.
11:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
11:06
Speaker 3: Dixie, where are you from and how many children do
11:10
Speaker 3: you have?
11:11
Speaker 4: I live in, in rural Virginia.
11:13
Speaker 6: Yeah.
11:14
Speaker 4: So I'm in, I'm in a, you probably know Bethany,
11:17
Speaker 4: the town front Royal, which is kind of about half
11:20
Speaker 4: an hour outside of the DC sprawl.
11:22
Speaker 2: We've got a lot of trees.
11:25
Speaker 3: I'm in Bluemont.
11:27
Speaker 1: Oh, are you?
11:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, 45 minutes from Front Royal. Well, we're not all
11:30
Speaker 5: that far away then. Yeah, so I'm in Front Royal
11:33
Speaker 5: and I've got four kids. They are six through 15.
11:37
Speaker 5: And my 15-year-old goes to private school. This is her
11:40
Speaker 5: second year in private high school and the other three
11:42
Speaker 5: are homeschooled.
11:44
Speaker 2: Was your oldest homeschooled? Yeah.
11:47
Speaker 4: Just until ninth grade. So she started at a girl's
11:51
Speaker 4: school in town in ninth grade. She's in 10th now.
11:54
Speaker 7: Talk to us about your decisions to homeschool.
11:57
Speaker 3: Was this something that you always knew that you were
12:00
Speaker 3: going to do? Were you homeschooled?
12:02
Speaker 2: No, no, I wasn't.
12:03
Speaker 4: I went to public school K through 12. And I
12:07
Speaker 4: was always really interested in education. I definitely knew about homeschooling.
12:11
Speaker 4: My parents were teachers and it was something we knew
12:14
Speaker 4: about and talked about. So I was like, Like, oh,
12:18
Speaker 4: like that sounds reasonable. But I definitely intended to send
12:20
Speaker 4: my kids to school. And then I started my research.
12:25
Speaker 4: This has been a really long project. I started my
12:27
Speaker 4: historical research somewhere around like 2010. And I wasn't married
12:32
Speaker 4: and I didn't have kids. Then I got married and
12:35
Speaker 4: I had kids. And then when our eldest was five
12:39
Speaker 4: and getting ready for kindergarten, or I guess she was
12:42
Speaker 4: four when I was thinking about it, It was really
12:44
Speaker 4: just that where we live, we didn't have confidence in
12:48
Speaker 4: the public schools, but it wasn't just that. It's like,
12:51
Speaker 4: there's so many reasons. And like for us, you know,
12:55
Speaker 4: we're not a Luddite family. Like we do use screens,
12:59
Speaker 4: but I did not want my young children using screens
13:04
Speaker 4: all day at school. And, you know, the pedagogy that
13:07
Speaker 4: alone was enough to really turn me off from our
13:09
Speaker 4: public schools. And yeah, you know, public schools cost tuition money.
13:14
Speaker 4: And it's so common. Like, I don't think we talk
13:18
Speaker 4: about the financial aspect, but like most people don't actually
13:21
Speaker 4: have the money for tuition. So for a lot of people,
13:25
Speaker 4: it's like, if there's a problem with the public school,
13:27
Speaker 4: they can sort of get directed into homeschooling because the
13:31
Speaker 4: private schools aren't accessible.
13:33
Speaker 2: So, yeah. That's it for us. Like we wanted to
13:37
Speaker 2: have an, I always joke, we wanted to have an
13:39
Speaker 2: irresponsible number of children. So everyone in our neighborhood and
13:43
Speaker 2: everyone in the Orthodox Jewish community sends to what's called
13:47
Speaker 2: Jewish day schools, their private Jewish schools. And where I
13:50
Speaker 2: live here, it's like about 30K per kid per year.
13:54
Speaker 2: And I don't think we would get financial aid. I
13:59
Speaker 2: consider us poor, but because we are really, really aggressive savers,
14:04
Speaker 2: we have a savings account for kids 529s, their bar
14:07
Speaker 2: and bat mitzvahs, our retirement, like, I automatically every month
14:13
Speaker 2: file away 1000s of dollars from what we're making into
14:17
Speaker 2: basically my husband makes nothing like everything that he makes
14:19
Speaker 2: is just put into savings. And that would end but
14:23
Speaker 2: it would also it would render us like unable to
14:27
Speaker 2: get financial aid. So we would no longer be saving anything.
14:31
Speaker 2: And I don't think that it's worth $ 30, 000. If I'm
14:34
Speaker 2: just being honest, per child per year, and we wouldn't
14:37
Speaker 2: have been able to have six. And I look at
14:40
Speaker 2: numbers four, five, and six, and I'm like, what would
14:42
Speaker 2: life be like without you? And there's a lot of
14:45
Speaker 2: people in my community who are making birth choices, like
14:49
Speaker 2: fertility choices based on tuition. I have a friend who
14:53
Speaker 2: asked the school, like, she has two young kids who
14:56
Speaker 2: are not yet old enough. And she said, well, How
15:00
Speaker 2: much financial aid are you expecting to give us? Because
15:02
Speaker 2: if it's nothing, then I don't think we can afford
15:04
Speaker 2: to have a third. And so she's like really like
15:06
Speaker 2: verbalizing their decisions along these lines. And I find it
15:12
Speaker 2: so disturbing and so sad. And so, you know, we were,
15:16
Speaker 2: when we started having kids, they're very back to back.
15:19
Speaker 2: And we kind of were like, we're not going to
15:23
Speaker 2: make choices based on that.
15:26
Speaker 3: Calculus.
15:26
Speaker 2: Yeah.
15:27
Speaker 4: Well, and so often it's like, it's just, I mean,
15:30
Speaker 4: what we're talking about is family circumstances. So where you live,
15:34
Speaker 4: you know, what your income is, how many children you
15:36
Speaker 4: have also things like your health and your preference, you know,
15:38
Speaker 4: and like your kid's health and all of that. And,
15:42
Speaker 4: you know, if, if the local school is not an
15:45
Speaker 4: acceptable baseline for you, and there are lots and lots
15:48
Speaker 4: of reasons why it might not be, it might be,
15:51
Speaker 4: that's fine too, you know, but it's like, okay, so
15:54
Speaker 4: you're problem solving. You're looking for a way to solve
15:56
Speaker 4: your problem. And homeschooling can be a good way to
16:02
Speaker 4: do that. And that's kind of a push factor. There
16:04
Speaker 4: are also like pull motivations in homeschooling. And like we,
16:08
Speaker 4: you know, I express it that way. Like we had
16:10
Speaker 4: these decisions. We couldn't find a good school. So we homeschooled.
16:13
Speaker 4: But it's not just that. It's also that I'm a teacher.
16:16
Speaker 4: I love to teach. I wanted to be with my children.
16:20
Speaker 4: You know, I valued that. And that sort of thing
16:23
Speaker 4: for me, as I've homeschooled more and more years, I
16:26
Speaker 4: think we're in our 11th year now. of homeschooling is like, man,
16:30
Speaker 4: I'm in my groove. I know what to do. I
16:33
Speaker 4: get to do what I want. I can respond to
16:35
Speaker 4: my children. I can observe my children and like, they're just,
16:40
Speaker 4: there are benefits. So I'm, I would never say it's
16:43
Speaker 4: for everyone or that everyone should do it, but I
16:46
Speaker 4: would like for people to have choices. And I think
16:49
Speaker 4: that in truth, most people don't really have school choices
16:54
Speaker 4: in our, in our country.
16:55
Speaker 2: And it's worse.
16:57
Speaker 4: Mentioning that money does matter in these situations.
17:00
Speaker 2: Very much.
17:08
Speaker 8: This week on Conservative Crossroads, should Congress approve President Trump's
17:13
Speaker 8: $ 350 billion defense budget request through reconciliation without requiring any
17:19
Speaker 8: spending cuts to pay for it? Mackenzie Eaglin says yes.
17:23
Speaker 2: The global chessboard is I've never actually been worried about
17:29
Speaker 2: so many things at once.
17:31
Speaker 3: So it's like, you're going to pay me a dollar
17:34
Speaker 3: today or you're going to pay me five tomorrow. And
17:37
Speaker 3: no matter what, we're going to be paying this defense bill.
17:39
Speaker 2: So I'd rather get in front of it to the
17:41
Speaker 2: extent we can.
17:42
Speaker 6: I think that we really have a unique moment in
17:49
Speaker 6: our fiscal stresses for the nation where we could not
17:52
Speaker 6: only fix part of the budget process, but fix defense
17:55
Speaker 6: spending at the same time.
17:57
Speaker 8: Defense spending hikes without pay-fors, coming up on Conservative Crossroads.
18:03
Speaker 6: Ricochet!
18:05
Speaker 1: Join the conversation.
18:16
Speaker 2: I think that that's a really good way of framing it,
18:17
Speaker 2: because we felt pushed to homeschool in the beginning because
18:20
Speaker 2: of finances, because we wanted to have an irresponsible number
18:23
Speaker 2: of children. And And as it's gone on, I guess
18:26
Speaker 2: we're in year eight now because my oldest is in
18:29
Speaker 2: seventh grade. I've started to feel that pull in the
18:32
Speaker 2: last couple of years for several reasons. One, I love
18:36
Speaker 2: the flexibility. Last year, we spent six weeks, one week
18:40
Speaker 2: in Greece doing like an ancient Greece trip and then
18:44
Speaker 2: five weeks in Israel. Next year, we're going to do
18:47
Speaker 2: probably the same amount of time in Italy doing like
18:50
Speaker 2: ancient Rome stuff. And that you can't replace that flexibility.
18:54
Speaker 2: But I was sitting with my fourth grader this year
18:58
Speaker 2: and we were doing math. I think it was like
19:00
Speaker 2: yesterday or the day before. And I was thinking about
19:02
Speaker 2: you and this podcast when I was doing it. And
19:05
Speaker 2: I changed math curriculums this year for two of my
19:07
Speaker 2: kids because their brains need something else. And I thought
19:11
Speaker 2: to myself, like, what a blessing it is that I
19:14
Speaker 2: can do that. That like I recognize that these kids
19:16
Speaker 2: have a different need than my older two kids did.
19:19
Speaker 2: And that there are options and that I can use
19:21
Speaker 2: them based on their individual needs. And he was struggling
19:26
Speaker 2: with multiplying two two-digit numbers. So like 12 times 24.
19:30
Speaker 2: And I said to him, you struggled with this last year.
19:36
Speaker 2: Let's redo this again. And we went through. And I
19:39
Speaker 2: remembered last year sitting there for like three days doing
19:43
Speaker 2: it with him before he got it. And I was
19:47
Speaker 2: his third grade teacher. And now I'm his fourth grade teacher.
19:50
Speaker 2: And I had that recall of like, oh, I remember
19:53
Speaker 2: sitting with you on your bedroom floor doing this for days.
19:57
Speaker 2: Let's do that again. And it caught much quicker this
20:00
Speaker 2: time than it did last year. And I thought to myself,
20:03
Speaker 2: like what a blessing it is that I have taught
20:06
Speaker 2: him multiple years in a row and I know where
20:08
Speaker 2: his weakness is And we can hone in on it
20:11
Speaker 2: and stop. And so I love that about home selling.
20:15
Speaker 2: That's definitely been a pull for me as, you know,
20:17
Speaker 2: we've gone deeper into the trenches on it.
20:21
Speaker 3: Bethany, what was your process like with deciding whether to
20:26
Speaker 3: send them to like the local free school? Was that
20:30
Speaker 3: ever an option?
20:31
Speaker 2: No, no, unfortunately. So our local zone school is a
20:35
Speaker 2: Spanish emergent school because everyone is an immigrant for the
20:38
Speaker 2: most part. And so first of all, they would struggle
20:41
Speaker 2: because they don't speak Spanish. And it's very, very difficult
20:46
Speaker 2: to get a change of school assignment. And the school,
20:51
Speaker 2: I think unrelated to the Spanish language, actually, this is
20:55
Speaker 2: the case across the county. It's slightly worse at my
20:58
Speaker 2: local school. It is just barely in the double digits,
21:02
Speaker 2: the number of children in fourth grade who can read
21:04
Speaker 2: on grade level and do math on grade level. Right.
21:07
Speaker 2: And so first of all, I don't think my kids
21:09
Speaker 2: will learn anything. But second, like I don't want them
21:11
Speaker 2: surrounded by peers where that is the norm. I don't
21:14
Speaker 2: I don't accept that. I don't accept that that is
21:17
Speaker 2: like my kids social circle. One of the things I
21:20
Speaker 2: really I always say that it's a feature, not a
21:22
Speaker 2: bug of socialization with homeschool because I get to choose
21:26
Speaker 2: who my kids socialize with. It's not a default of,
21:29
Speaker 2: you know. It's every kid that was born in the
21:32
Speaker 2: calendar year in a, you know, three mile radius. I
21:35
Speaker 2: don't want them to be friends with those people. They're
21:37
Speaker 2: not good kids. And so I, it was unfortunately never,
21:42
Speaker 2: ever an option. We've considered high school, public high school
21:45
Speaker 2: in Montgomery County. It depends if I have the school choice,
21:49
Speaker 2: if I'm able to get, if I'm, if I'm zone,
21:51
Speaker 2: if I'm, if the question is where I'm zoned for
21:55
Speaker 2: in the high school, it's not safe. Middle school is
21:58
Speaker 2: the same. It's not physically safe. There was a girl
22:00
Speaker 2: who was assaulted with a bat last year who was
22:03
Speaker 2: left permanently brain damaged after two weeks in the ICU.
22:06
Speaker 2: That was the middle school here. That was the local
22:11
Speaker 2: zoned middle school. And the high school isn't any better.
22:13
Speaker 2: And so if we were able to get a transfer
22:16
Speaker 2: of school to somewhere like Montgomery Blair, which is a magnet,
22:20
Speaker 2: good public high school, I would consider it. But that's
22:23
Speaker 2: only if I could get it.
22:25
Speaker 4: Well, what you're saying, Bethany, speaks to sort of the
22:28
Speaker 4: reality of school in America, which is that even though
22:33
Speaker 4: it's become more federalized and more standardized and the decisions
22:37
Speaker 4: are being made at a higher level, not as much
22:39
Speaker 4: at a local level anymore, it still varies so much
22:43
Speaker 4: place to place and even school to school within the
22:45
Speaker 4: same district. So I think sometimes when people are really
22:48
Speaker 4: dismissive of homeschooling, they're thinking about a good public school
22:51
Speaker 4: experience that they have.
22:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.
22:53
Speaker 4: Or that they're happy with their kids' public school. And
22:56
Speaker 4: I don't think it's that we really realize that you
22:58
Speaker 4: can't generalize in the same way that like we wouldn't
23:01
Speaker 4: generalize and say that every school in every district is
23:04
Speaker 4: like the ones you're talking about, Bethany. You know, like
23:09
Speaker 4: it can still, for many people, it's the situation that
23:11
Speaker 4: they don't feel that the school is academically good enough
23:14
Speaker 4: or it's not socially good enough or it's not safe.
23:17
Speaker 4: You know, and on average, if we look at averages
23:20
Speaker 4: on school performance, they're really shockingly poor. And that doesn't
23:24
Speaker 4: mean that there aren't kids who do well, but the
23:27
Speaker 4: average for public schools is poor. So proficiency, grade level proficiency,
23:33
Speaker 4: we're talking about 35% about that of kids in reading
23:37
Speaker 4: and math, public school kids in fourth grade and eighth grade,
23:41
Speaker 4: 35% of them. And then there's another 30% that have
23:45
Speaker 4: like basic and 30% that are way below. So When
23:50
Speaker 4: we talk about this, I think often people in the
23:53
Speaker 4: media make the mistake of talking as if the public
23:56
Speaker 4: schools are working.
23:58
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:59
Speaker 4: Because if they're working really well for most kids, you
24:02
Speaker 4: have to make a stronger case, I think, for homeschooling.
24:07
Speaker 4: But when they're so poor in so many cases, it
24:11
Speaker 4: becomes a little bit ridiculous to say, well, you shouldn't
24:14
Speaker 4: get to homeschool because they need to be in this
24:16
Speaker 4: public school. Yeah, I did an interview with a German
24:19
Speaker 4: reporter and homeschooling is illegal in Germany. And so they're
24:23
Speaker 4: like very interested in homeschooling. And she walked in, she
24:27
Speaker 4: told me afterwards, like expecting me to be a religious extremist.
24:31
Speaker 4: And I was like, here's data. Here's the data from
24:35
Speaker 4: my local school. What do you expect me to do? Like,
24:39
Speaker 4: I'm not okay with that. I don't find that to
24:41
Speaker 4: be an acceptable environment for my child or education for
24:45
Speaker 4: my child. So I don't have 30,000 times six either.
24:51
Speaker 2: I don't have that amount of money. What are my options?
24:56
Speaker 2: This is it.
24:57
Speaker 4: And the private schools may not be a fit either,
24:59
Speaker 4: even if you have the money.
25:01
Speaker 2: So that motivates a lot of people. So as I
25:05
Speaker 2: was reading, this is something that I kind of wanted
25:08
Speaker 2: to like talk through with you. I have been bothered,
25:11
Speaker 2: I think in the last year by a phenomenon that
25:15
Speaker 2: I think maybe is my, and I'm curious where you
25:18
Speaker 2: think it's coming from or if it was always there,
25:21
Speaker 2: where I'm seeing homeschoolers say things like a trip to
25:26
Speaker 2: Costco is educational. Yeah, it is. But also it's not school.
25:32
Speaker 2: Like that's not a replacement for sitting down with your
25:34
Speaker 2: kid and like doing a lesson. And it doesn't have
25:37
Speaker 2: to be in a book. It doesn't like, but you
25:39
Speaker 2: have to be something, you have to be doing something
25:41
Speaker 2: that is like explicitly educational. And I feel like I
25:46
Speaker 2: am observing a slide in homeschooling. It just, my observation,
25:52
Speaker 2: what I feel like I saw seven or eight years
25:54
Speaker 2: ago versus now, where it's a lot more experiential and
25:59
Speaker 2: aesthetic and, you know, let's count rocks and that counts
26:04
Speaker 2: as math in like seventh grade. That's fine for kindergarten.
26:08
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
26:09
Speaker 2: But I remember having what was, in my opinion, a
26:13
Speaker 2: really shocking conversation with someone who I thought was doing
26:16
Speaker 2: a good job. So we had two separate conversations. She
26:22
Speaker 2: told me that her sixth grader, what she wrote on
26:27
Speaker 2: the form for the county of how she was fulfilling
26:30
Speaker 2: her obligations as a homeschooler, what she wrote for language
26:32
Speaker 2: arts was that her child would print song lyrics and
26:35
Speaker 2: sing along with the song lyrics that they printed. That was...
26:38
Speaker 2: English language education in sixth grade. And then she tried
26:41
Speaker 2: to transfer her child two years later into a school setting.
26:45
Speaker 2: And the kid was way behind, like could not do
26:50
Speaker 2: anything resembling on grade level. And I feel like I'm
26:55
Speaker 2: observing that more prevalent. And maybe it's because homeschooling is
26:59
Speaker 2: more common. And so, but I just, I feel like
27:03
Speaker 2: I'm seeing a slide even in the homeschooling world. Is
27:06
Speaker 2: that a fair, what are your thoughts?
27:08
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean, I think, I think for
27:10
Speaker 4: sure we're a lot chattier about homeschooling in the past,
27:14
Speaker 4: you know, seven years than we were before. So we're
27:16
Speaker 4: probably just like encountering it a lot more and from
27:19
Speaker 4: a lot more people.
27:20
Speaker 2: So that's part of it.
27:21
Speaker 4: I think, you know, what you're saying makes total sense.
27:25
Speaker 4: And I think there are definitely families that neglect their.
27:28
Speaker 2: Kids' education.
27:31
Speaker 4: But I think we have to be careful about generalizing
27:34
Speaker 4: from what we see Because even if it were the case,
27:37
Speaker 4: and I just don't know whether it's the case where
27:40
Speaker 4: like locally or in your circles, there is that slide.
27:43
Speaker 4: How generalizable is that? So if we're talking about homeschooling generally,
27:48
Speaker 4: so there's always this question of like homeschooling is done
27:50
Speaker 4: by families. So it's like super local and it can
27:54
Speaker 4: be very private. Although most homeschoolers are out participating in
27:57
Speaker 4: the public too. But the thing overall is like something
28:02
Speaker 4: where we need to find out national patterns and And
28:05
Speaker 4: it's hard to do research on outcomes of homeschoolers because
28:08
Speaker 4: there's so much diversity too. So a lot of the
28:11
Speaker 4: studies that we do have do suggest that they do
28:14
Speaker 4: considerably better than public school kids. It's hard to say,
28:18
Speaker 4: you know, really with this population, but we also know,
28:22
Speaker 4: for example, they do a whole lot better on the
28:26
Speaker 4: ACT and on the CLT than public school kids. And
28:31
Speaker 4: they're sort of right below private school kids. So they're
28:34
Speaker 4: right up there.
28:35
Speaker 2: It's a college readiness test.
28:37
Speaker 5: Yeah.
28:38
Speaker 2: Oh, sorry.
28:38
Speaker 4: So the ACT, it's a, yeah, it's like the SAT.
28:42
Speaker 4: So you take it, the SAT, you take it when
28:44
Speaker 4: you apply to college and your score determines, helps determine
28:48
Speaker 4: whether or not you're accepted at that school. So it's,
28:51
Speaker 4: it's a really super common thing to do. Anybody who's
28:54
Speaker 4: college bound will take one of these tests. And so we,
28:58
Speaker 4: what that tells us is not that if your child
29:00
Speaker 4: is homeschooled, he will do well in ACT. It doesn't
29:03
Speaker 4: tell us that. what it does tell us is that
29:06
Speaker 4: homeschoolers are doing fine on average. They're doing fine on average.
29:12
Speaker 4: So in terms, it doesn't tell us things about public school.
29:14
Speaker 4: It tells us though that homeschooling is doing fine on average. Well,
29:20
Speaker 4: let me say, let me say one more thing about it, Bethany.
29:23
Speaker 4: So when you were talking, I was thinking about like
29:26
Speaker 4: this question of these people who are like, oh, baking
29:29
Speaker 4: is homeschooling. And you're like, yeah, sort of when you're,
29:32
Speaker 4: you know, sort of, it's not your entire math curriculum though, right?
29:37
Speaker 5: You know?
29:37
Speaker 3: Yeah.
29:38
Speaker 4: But it reminds me of just like other mommy war
29:42
Speaker 4: stuff or like the whole bless this mess thing, like
29:46
Speaker 4: scruffy hospitality. You don't have to clean up. Like people
29:48
Speaker 4: should come over. And I'm always torn because on the
29:51
Speaker 4: one hand, I'm like, it does not have to be pristine. Like,
29:54
Speaker 4: look back here. This is my real homeschooling shelving.
29:57
Speaker 6: Right.
29:57
Speaker 2: Okay.
29:57
Speaker 5: Okay.
29:58
Speaker 4: But I also know I'm super uncomfortable in a house
30:01
Speaker 4: that's like seriously dirty and the bathroom has like scum
30:06
Speaker 4: on it. And I'm kind of like, I kind of
30:08
Speaker 4: do want you to clean up a little bit, you know?
30:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:12
Speaker 4: So I think homeschooling is like that. They're going to
30:14
Speaker 4: be people who are like, oh, you don't really have
30:16
Speaker 4: to do anything.
30:16
Speaker 2: And that's homeschooling. I mean, so I think what's interesting is,
30:22
Speaker 2: and I don't remember if you got into this in
30:24
Speaker 2: your book, but there's like different like very different philosophies
30:28
Speaker 2: and thought processes behind homeschooling. There's people who are classical
30:32
Speaker 2: or Charlotte Mason, unschooling, and it's the unschooling that I'm
30:36
Speaker 2: not so comfortable with. Yeah, I agree.
30:41
Speaker 4: I agree. It can be something that people say they're
30:45
Speaker 4: doing when they're doing nothing.
30:47
Speaker 2: Right. And then you add a label.
30:49
Speaker 4: But if you look at like the philosophy of unschooling
30:52
Speaker 4: or things written by John Holt or Pat Ferenga or
30:55
Speaker 4: other people like that about unschooling, which they call self-directed learning,
30:59
Speaker 4: it's supposed to be very supported by parents. So like
31:06
Speaker 4: unschooling done well, I've seen work tremendously well. But unschooling
31:11
Speaker 4: that is just do nothing with your children is I mean,
31:15
Speaker 4: I think people like that would say it's not unschooling,
31:18
Speaker 4: but it can be used that way or spoken of
31:22
Speaker 4: that way. But like the philosophy itself, I think has
31:24
Speaker 4: a lot to it. And I've used elements of it,
31:28
Speaker 4: but what it is not or should not be is
31:32
Speaker 4: just like letting your kids do whatever and abdicating all
31:36
Speaker 4: your responsibility. Because if a child is going to be
31:39
Speaker 4: unschooled well, if they've got an interest in dinosaurs, They
31:44
Speaker 4: need you to take them to the library. They need
31:45
Speaker 4: you to show them how to find books. They need
31:47
Speaker 4: you to buy the poster board. They need you to
31:49
Speaker 4: take them to the museum. They've got to talk with you.
31:51
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? It's that kind of stuff
31:54
Speaker 4: that you already do with your kids when they're interested
31:56
Speaker 4: in something.
31:57
Speaker 2: And this is something that I struggle with when I
32:01
Speaker 2: write about it and talk about it and also just
32:02
Speaker 2: in my personal life. I don't want Montgomery County, Maryland
32:08
Speaker 2: to tell me how I'm doing because I have some
32:11
Speaker 2: thoughts about how they're doing. It's like blind meeting the blind.
32:16
Speaker 2: You don't get to tell me that I didn't do
32:18
Speaker 2: language arts adequately when 14% of the kids at my
32:22
Speaker 2: local school can read. No, you're not the adequate judge
32:25
Speaker 2: of that. That being said, there are some people who
32:29
Speaker 2: are homeschooling where I'm like, someone really should be checking
32:31
Speaker 2: on that. because that is not okay. And I struggle
32:35
Speaker 2: with that dichotomy of like, there was once where, where
32:38
Speaker 2: I used to live in New Jersey, weirdly enough, New
32:41
Speaker 2: Jersey has like no homeschooling laws to the point where
32:44
Speaker 2: I'm actually uncomfortable. You don't even have to tell them
32:48
Speaker 2: you're homeschooling. Like they don't know your child exists. That
32:51
Speaker 2: to me, I'm not so comfortable with. And so there
32:55
Speaker 2: was a woman who everyone in our neighborhood knew about
32:58
Speaker 2: who who, like, she didn't bathe her children. She didn't
33:02
Speaker 2: feed her children adequately. Like, I would see her kids
33:04
Speaker 2: at the playground and give them food. They were, like,
33:08
Speaker 2: there were conversations about calling CPS. And my bar for
33:11
Speaker 2: calling CPS is so high. But not feeding and bathing
33:15
Speaker 2: your kid is when I hit that. So she, at
33:18
Speaker 2: one point, in a Facebook group, asked about homeschooling. And
33:22
Speaker 2: it was hard to even read her message because it
33:25
Speaker 2: was so intense. Like she couldn't write words. And I
33:30
Speaker 2: thought to myself, like, this is God challenging me and
33:34
Speaker 2: my like anti-anything oversight on homeschooling because if this woman homeschools,
33:40
Speaker 2: this will be the end of these children. Like they
33:42
Speaker 2: desperately need to be in a school setting if they
33:45
Speaker 2: have any chance at survival. Not just success, literal survival.
33:50
Speaker 2: And so I really, I struggle with that when I see,
33:55
Speaker 2: you know, public conversation about homeschooling.
33:58
Speaker 7: Because school, for some people, I guess, can be the
34:01
Speaker 7: only structure they have to their day, right?
34:05
Speaker 4: Yeah.
34:06
Speaker 2: And I think.
34:09
Speaker 4: It's just a lot more complex than people talk about
34:12
Speaker 4: because you will see people saying there should be no
34:15
Speaker 4: regulation or no... Or you bring up CPS and you're like, well,
34:18
Speaker 4: CPS does exist for a reason. It's a disaster, but
34:23
Speaker 4: it exists for a reason.
34:24
Speaker 5: And so.
34:27
Speaker 4: I think the struggle is to figure out how to
34:28
Speaker 4: respond to the fact that there are children in our
34:31
Speaker 4: communities who are being abused and neglected among homeschooling and
34:35
Speaker 4: in other areas. It's really hard to do research on
34:38
Speaker 4: abuse for obvious reasons.
34:41
Speaker 2: It's very underreported.
34:43
Speaker 4: We do not have any actual data evidence that homeschoolers
34:47
Speaker 4: as a class are at higher risk of abuse. So
34:51
Speaker 4: we do know anecdotally, though, it happens just like it
34:53
Speaker 4: does with anything else and educational neglect.
34:57
Speaker 2: And I think that's.
34:58
Speaker 4: Just the struggle is like, where's the balance? Because if
35:00
Speaker 4: you're going to restrict and regulate a huge population because
35:05
Speaker 4: of an extremely small part of the population that might
35:07
Speaker 4: be abusive, it's like you have to be really careful.
35:09
Speaker 4: So I'm kind of with you in that I don't
35:12
Speaker 4: want a lot of government oversight over this, but we
35:14
Speaker 4: have to accept that, or I think we ought to
35:16
Speaker 4: accept that the public, including just us as members of
35:19
Speaker 4: the community, but also the government does have a responsibility
35:23
Speaker 4: toward children. So how do we balance that out so
35:26
Speaker 4: that kids like that that you're talking about get help?
35:29
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I've written about this stuff and I've done
35:32
Speaker 2: some research and there was government data done 15 years
35:36
Speaker 2: ago into risk factors for abuse and neglect, according to
35:40
Speaker 2: the government data that they have. And homeschooling was actually
35:42
Speaker 2: not as a risk factor for that. And so, you know,
35:48
Speaker 2: there's lots of touch points on a kid, not just
35:50
Speaker 2: in school. But this was something that bothered me about
35:54
Speaker 2: the pandemic was that we closed the schools and cut
35:57
Speaker 2: off a pipeline of mandated reporters to kids who needed
36:01
Speaker 2: a mandated reporter in their lives, unfortunately. But this, it's just,
36:05
Speaker 2: I wish that there was something else because even this
36:11
Speaker 2: kid who I talked about who was printing song lyrics,
36:15
Speaker 2: were they better served at home than they would have
36:17
Speaker 2: been at their local public school, which is, you know,
36:20
Speaker 2: my local public school? I think so. Because like, I
36:24
Speaker 2: don't think that they were being served adequately academically, but
36:28
Speaker 2: they were physically safe. And that's not the case.
36:32
Speaker 4: It's just kind of ugly stomach turning things to have
36:35
Speaker 4: to consider.
36:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:37
Speaker 4: You know, these are really hard things to consider.
36:41
Speaker 2: And so thank God, like I, so there's two ways
36:43
Speaker 2: to legally homeschool in Maryland. You can report to the
36:46
Speaker 2: county or you can be under a religious umbrella. And
36:50
Speaker 2: I actually run the religious umbrella for the Jewish community
36:53
Speaker 2: in Montgomery County. So thank you for listening. It was,
36:56
Speaker 2: you know, and thank God I have never, I've never
37:01
Speaker 2: faced a question of like, do I find this acceptable?
37:03
Speaker 2: Because I have to, I have to monitor my peers,
37:06
Speaker 2: like literal peers, my friends, the parents of the kids
37:10
Speaker 2: that I'm my kids are socializing with every single day.
37:14
Speaker 2: And when I first took this on a couple of
37:16
Speaker 2: years ago, I thought to myself, like, what would I
37:20
Speaker 2: do if someone hands me a form back where I don't,
37:25
Speaker 2: I don't think that's adequate. Like, what do I do?
37:27
Speaker 2: And I think God, I've never, I've never had to
37:30
Speaker 2: answer that question, but I don't know how I would
37:33
Speaker 2: answer that question because at the end of the day,
37:38
Speaker 2: like what I'm going to tell them to go to
37:39
Speaker 2: Kent Mill Elementary School, No, I don't I don't want
37:43
Speaker 2: to fail them and send them to a school that's
37:44
Speaker 2: not safe or to Odessa Shannon, the middle school or
37:48
Speaker 2: to Kennedy, the high school. Like, I don't want to
37:50
Speaker 2: have to, you know, say F you're failed on homeschooling
37:54
Speaker 2: and then send you to the county and the county
37:56
Speaker 2: says then you have to go to this physically unsafe building.
38:00
Speaker 2: That's a that's a like moral quandary that I hope
38:03
Speaker 2: I'm never in.
38:04
Speaker 4: Yeah.
38:04
Speaker 3: Yeah.
38:14
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Karumbas. Join Jim Garrity of National Review and
38:17
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38:39
Speaker 2: So what is your sort of takeaway from the book?
38:42
Speaker 2: So you kind of you get into the at the end,
38:46
Speaker 2: you sort of go into like the modern homeschooling movement.
38:50
Speaker 2: Where do you think it's going in the next like
38:52
Speaker 2: 10 or 15 years if you had like a magic
38:54
Speaker 2: eight ball and had to predict?
38:57
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's really we live in a really
39:00
Speaker 4: innovative time in education. So people are coming up with
39:03
Speaker 4: all sorts of alternative ways to educate. And a lot
39:07
Speaker 4: of that is within the umbrella of homeschooling. So there's
39:10
Speaker 4: kind of like a fuzzy boundary, for example, between co-ops
39:13
Speaker 4: and micro schools.
39:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:16
Speaker 4: And a lot of kids who homeschool are now enrolled
39:18
Speaker 4: through public school charter programs online. Like all of these
39:21
Speaker 4: boundaries are becoming really fuzzy. So I think one thing
39:25
Speaker 4: that's probably going to happen is that definitions are going
39:29
Speaker 4: to continue to change. Because, you know, people used to
39:33
Speaker 4: homeschool quite independently in the 70s and 80s. And they
39:40
Speaker 4: don't do it independently anymore. So what does that mean?
39:44
Speaker 4: So I don't know, but I think people are so
39:46
Speaker 4: much more willing to embrace it than they were in
39:49
Speaker 4: the past. So I expect it will continue to grow.
39:53
Speaker 4: In terms of policy though, who knows what will happen
39:56
Speaker 4: because there has been, you know, I don't know if
39:59
Speaker 4: you remember, but in the first couple of years of
40:01
Speaker 4: the pandemic, when homeschooling was growing so much, there were
40:04
Speaker 4: lots of people, especially like celebrities who were saying, oh
40:08
Speaker 4: my gosh, you homeschooling moms are amazing.
40:10
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know how you do it.
40:11
Speaker 4: This is incredible. You're so whatever. But then there were also,
40:15
Speaker 4: there was a lot of backlash and there's a lot
40:18
Speaker 4: of alarmism too. And so, you know, you never quite
40:21
Speaker 4: know which way the winds are going to blow with that.
40:24
Speaker 4: So we could see a lot more regulation as the
40:28
Speaker 4: numbers grow.
40:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, Connecticut could pass some really crazy laws.
40:33
Speaker 4: And like with education savings accounts, there's when those can
40:36
Speaker 4: be used for homeschooling, there's always the possibility that that
40:39
Speaker 4: can lead to increased regulation for good or for ill, right?
40:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
40:43
Speaker 4: So we'll see what happens. I wouldn't be surprised if
40:45
Speaker 4: homeschooling splits into a few different things, but I don't,
40:48
Speaker 4: I don't really know. A lot of it depends on
40:51
Speaker 4: how the law develops in our country, to be honest.
40:55
Speaker 5: Yeah.
40:55
Speaker 7: I have a question for both of you. So you
40:59
Speaker 7: said that your oldest goes to high school. Is that
41:03
Speaker 7: common to homeschool up until high school age?
41:08
Speaker 4: It's actually really common for homeschooling families to at some
41:12
Speaker 4: point put at least one child in school.
41:15
Speaker 6: Okay.
41:15
Speaker 4: So like what Bethany is doing with a preschooler, you
41:18
Speaker 4: have a preschooler in school, right, Bethany? That's so common
41:22
Speaker 4: because it makes a huge difference in your ability to
41:25
Speaker 4: teach the elementary school age children if your three-year-old isn't
41:28
Speaker 4: in the other room with a Sharpie. Yep. Drawing on
41:30
Speaker 4: the wall.
41:30
Speaker 2: Literally you've described what... Just see what drove me. Yes,
41:35
Speaker 2: but it's actually, no, it's common.
41:37
Speaker 4: So the majority of kids who are homeschooled are not
41:40
Speaker 4: homeschooled K all the way through 12. Don't quote me
41:44
Speaker 4: on that, but it's something like 60 or 70% of
41:47
Speaker 4: kids who are homeschooled are homeschooled for part of their education,
41:51
Speaker 4: but not the entire time.
41:53
Speaker 3: And Bethany, is this the first time you've put a
41:55
Speaker 3: kid in preschool?
41:57
Speaker 2: So I had my middle kids in a very part-time
42:00
Speaker 2: preschool that was like two or three days a week.
42:03
Speaker 2: and it closed. And I found out that this very
42:08
Speaker 2: super beloved preschool, the hours were actually much shorter than
42:12
Speaker 2: I had assumed. And so I had never considered it
42:15
Speaker 2: because I thought it was like 8am to 5pm. And
42:18
Speaker 2: I was not willing to consider that. And then I
42:21
Speaker 2: heard that the actual school day ran from 845 to 245.
42:27
Speaker 2: And while a lot of parents opted for aftercare, the
42:32
Speaker 2: actual school day was up to 245. And I was like, oh,
42:35
Speaker 2: that's amazing. I would do that. So I applied like
42:40
Speaker 2: literally a year ago for a spot that opened up
42:42
Speaker 2: in September because it is so beloved that it like
42:45
Speaker 2: fills up super quickly. But I have noticed that my
42:49
Speaker 2: stress levels are exponentially lower because I'm not being interrupted
42:55
Speaker 2: every 30 seconds. So I have five kids that are
42:58
Speaker 2: homeschooling this year. My fifth is in kindergarten. My fifth
43:02
Speaker 2: is five. And I was just like, I don't think
43:05
Speaker 2: I can juggle that many balls in addition to the
43:07
Speaker 2: amount of work that I'm doing. And I would sign
43:10
Speaker 2: him up for the four-year-old program tomorrow. Like there is
43:13
Speaker 2: no question in my mind he's going next year. And
43:16
Speaker 2: I probably will send him for kindergarten too because my
43:20
Speaker 2: stress is so much lower. If I could send my
43:24
Speaker 2: kindergartner this year, I would, but they won't take him.
43:26
Speaker 7: Are your plans to homeschool... And then send, because your
43:32
Speaker 7: oldest is probably going to be in high school.
43:35
Speaker 2: She'll be there in two years. So I don't know.
43:37
Speaker 2: I mean, the truth is, it's $ 120, 000 per child for
43:38
Speaker 2: high school. Yeah, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, $ 30, 000 a kid.
43:39
Speaker 2: It's $ 120, 000. So I don't want to do that. Maybe
43:40
Speaker 2: I'll be forced to. I certainly don't have that. So
43:42
Speaker 2: that will be a conversation that might be a Gilmore
43:44
Speaker 2: Girls situation. But also, there's so many cool opportunities to
44:05
Speaker 2: be homeschooled in high school. You can go to the
44:07
Speaker 2: local community college and take any one of their classes,
44:10
Speaker 2: which you could graduate high school with an associate's degree, basically.
44:14
Speaker 2: You could be halfway done with college when you graduate
44:16
Speaker 2: high school. They can work. They can travel. I would
44:20
Speaker 2: be okay if they said in 10th grade or 11th
44:23
Speaker 2: grade or 12th grade, Mom, I found a cheap ticket
44:27
Speaker 2: to England. Can I go with my brother? for three
44:30
Speaker 2: weeks and I've been working at the local pizza shop
44:33
Speaker 2: and I can pay for it, I would say yes.
44:35
Speaker 2: And I've said that to them. And so, I mean,
44:38
Speaker 2: I'm pushing in the direction of like, we're not going
44:41
Speaker 2: to drain your 529. And instead you have all this
44:44
Speaker 2: freedom to take college classes and to travel and to
44:46
Speaker 2: work and to like get that huge leg up in life.
44:50
Speaker 2: I feel like, or, you know, I'm open to the
44:53
Speaker 2: possibility of applying to see if we can get into
44:56
Speaker 2: a better public school.
44:58
Speaker 4: There's, I think a, So for our family, it wasn't
45:02
Speaker 4: that I had in mind when they get to high school,
45:04
Speaker 4: we will send them to school. It's like this constant discernment.
45:08
Speaker 4: I think some families do work that way. But for us,
45:11
Speaker 4: it was like this particular child really wanted and needed it.
45:16
Speaker 4: The school seemed like a fit. We could do it.
45:18
Speaker 4: But like my seventh grader, I don't have like a
45:21
Speaker 4: plan to send him to high school. If he needs
45:23
Speaker 4: it and we can do it, we'll do it. But
45:25
Speaker 4: like you were saying, Bethany, there's so many options now.
45:29
Speaker 4: You could do things all these different ways and the
45:33
Speaker 4: academics don't necessarily take that long. And so there's, there's
45:38
Speaker 4: time for like apprenticeships. Like I told my son, he
45:41
Speaker 4: wanted to get meat rabbits and I did not want
45:44
Speaker 4: to get meat rabbits. I mean, you have rabbits that
45:46
Speaker 4: you raise for meat.
45:47
Speaker 2: We live in the country.
45:48
Speaker 3: Okay.
45:50
Speaker 4: But I told him, cause I didn't want to take
45:52
Speaker 4: on that project. Also, I don't want to eat rabbits,
45:54
Speaker 4: but I told him, okay, if you are still homeschooled
45:59
Speaker 4: in high school, you can learn about meat rabbits and
46:03
Speaker 4: you can do this as a project by yourself. And
46:06
Speaker 4: you can go and ask Mr. Daly, our friend who
46:09
Speaker 4: has meat rabbits, if you can shadow him and like
46:14
Speaker 4: participate in a slaughter. So you know what you're getting
46:16
Speaker 4: into and then.
46:18
Speaker 2: You can do it.
46:19
Speaker 4: So maybe that was kind of a grotesque example, but
46:22
Speaker 4: like you could do that. Or like the kid wants
46:24
Speaker 4: to apprentice somewhere. you can do that without having to
46:28
Speaker 4: choose between school, between academics and apprenticeships.
46:32
Speaker 2: So it's kind of cool.
46:33
Speaker 4: There's a lot of opportunities, but it is like a
46:35
Speaker 4: year by year discernment for us. And I think for
46:38
Speaker 4: a lot of people.
46:40
Speaker 2: Us too. My older two are interested in potentially going
46:43
Speaker 2: to high school, but the more I talk to them
46:45
Speaker 2: about it and I like, I open the books with
46:47
Speaker 2: them on like the amount of money that we have
46:49
Speaker 2: saved in their 529 college accounts and in their ESAs.
46:54
Speaker 2: And I tell them like, With this amount of money saved,
46:57
Speaker 2: the private school will almost certainly not give us financial aid.
47:01
Speaker 2: In my opinion, North should they. So then your question is,
47:05
Speaker 2: do you want to drain this in order to go
47:08
Speaker 2: to high school? You're going to come out of college
47:10
Speaker 2: with debt. And if that's a choice that you are, like,
47:14
Speaker 2: I'm empowering you to make that choice. And when I,
47:17
Speaker 2: you know, I do the math with them and I say, like,
47:19
Speaker 2: this is how much money you will have going into
47:21
Speaker 2: college if you do this. And this is how much
47:23
Speaker 2: you will have if you don't. They're like, oh, oh,
47:25
Speaker 2: I don't know if I want to do that. And
47:29
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't want to do that.
47:31
Speaker 7: My plan is to send my kids to school in Britain,
47:34
Speaker 7: whether they like it or not.
47:37
Speaker 2: There you go. Dixie, thank you so much for coming on.
47:41
Speaker 2: This was a wonderful conversation. Where can folks, I mean,
47:45
Speaker 2: obviously like Amazon, right? Skipping school. Yeah, mine.
47:49
Speaker 5: Well, thanks.
47:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been fun.
47:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can get on Amazon. You can find me
47:53
Speaker 4: on Substack at the Bad Moms Homeschool with my friends
47:56
Speaker 4: Ivana and Nadia. And also I'm an editor at this
48:00
Speaker 4: journal called Hearth and Field, which you can check out too.
48:03
Speaker 2: This is our most recent issue.
48:05
Speaker 4: But yeah, the book's on Amazon. I think there's a
48:09
Speaker 4: coupon right now. There's often coupons. And where can people
48:13
Speaker 4: follow you on social besides Substack? Yeah, I'm on Twitter,
48:17
Speaker 4: Dixie Dillon Lane and Substack. So that's, those are the
48:21
Speaker 4: social media I'm on.
48:22
Speaker 2: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on. This
48:24
Speaker 2: was a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate all the work
48:27
Speaker 2: that you've put into, you know, the data. Y'all don't
48:33
Speaker 2: forget to hit subscribe and leave us a review. It's
48:35
Speaker 2: been a minute since you guys have done that. Until
48:38
Speaker 2: next week, saddle up.
48:47
Speaker 6: Ricochet!
48:49
Speaker 1: Join the conversation.