The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
102. Top Benefits of Homeschooling: Empowering Your Child's Learning Journey
What if you could take control of your children's education and instill the values and knowledge you deem most important? Join us as we share our personal homeschooling journeys. Learn why more families are choosing this path, the incredible benefits it offers, and essential tips for selecting the right curriculum and teaching children as they advance. From navigating middle and high school to making the transition to college, we've got you covered with practical advice and heartfelt stories.
We dive deep into the motivations behind homeschooling, particularly for those with religious and moral convictions. We discuss how many Christian parents prefer to homeschool to ensure their children grow up with teachings that align with their faith. Sensitive topics like the introduction of gender and sexuality education in public schools are examined, along with the paramount importance of parental choice in shaping children's values. Hear thought-provoking quotes and gain insights into why maintaining control over your child's education can be crucial, especially in today's society.
Explore the fascinating world of unschooling, where learning is driven by everyday experiences and curiosity. Discover how this flexible approach can foster a love for exploration and support entrepreneurial spirits in children. We share anecdotes about addressing complex topics like inflation and highlight resources that aid diverse educational approaches.
Whether you're considering homeschooling or are already on this journey, this episode is packed with inspiration, practical tips, and encouragement to help you navigate the unique challenges and triumphs of educating your children at home. Stay connected with us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube at the Radiant Mission for more insights and support.
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Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Twomey and I am here with my lovely co-host and sister, Rachel Smith. Hey everyone, we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Christ, and today we are back to talk about homeschooling again.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, go home.
Rebecca Twomey:Go home, Go home, Funny enough. So I'm going to share with our friends here that last week we actually didn't plan to talk about homeschooling. It just so happened that you guys probably realize already that Rachel and I are really chatty Cathy's and when we started recording we just ended up talking about it was a tangent we went on a 30 minute tangent.
Rebecca Twomey:We went all on it for so long. We're like let's just keep talking about homeschooling. So we kind of feel like there was a lot we probably missed and that there's more detail that we can dive into. So we planned this episode a little bit better and have more of a structure for the conversation so that we're not just all over the place with our tangents and stories.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, yeah.
Rebecca Twomey:So we've, got go ahead.
Rachel Smith:Ray, I was just going to say you know, last week was a little bit of a spontaneous introduction. There you go. Spontaneous introduction, I like that. And now we can get into it more just from the perspective of having been homeschooled, for you were your whole life, I was most of my life. Yeah, I can also speak a bit on being homeschooled and in the public school system, since I went to public school and high school. So we can give a little bit of like comparing and contrasting in that. But then also we both have chosen to homeschool our own children and I've been doing that for what is it? Four years now my oldest is going to third grade. So, yeah, well, three years, I guess.
Rebecca Twomey:Come on homeschool mom, Do the math fast, fast, fast.
Rachel Smith:Here's the thing, though you lose it if you don't use it. You lose it when you don't use it. Yeah, so I feel like I. It's funny because just the topic of education in general think about how much we put on kids to learn, like history and science and geography, and you know all these topics. An adult, like ain't nobody got time for that. Like we don't learn, like I mean you. Hopefully you continue to learn your and educate yourself your whole life. But it is like we put so much on kids in these 12 years and it's just all memories, memorizing facts, and then you know you forget most of it.
Rebecca Twomey:I think that there's a different learning that happens after.
Rebecca Twomey:I actually have had different views on the whole concept of college, since going through college and I also went to grad school and then I went into the business world and I have this opinion that I think that a lot of what we do in school is such a waste of time, because you actually learn on the job. You learn what you need to know working for what it is that you're going to be doing in your life, and we waste all this time going to school or college. I guess I should say we waste all this time in college learning stuff that we're never going to need, and then we get to our jobs and we're like I didn't need any of this, I needed to just be working and learning what I need to know in my job. So I'm definitely a big fan of internships and actually getting into what you might be interested in early, but that's actually a topic we're going to talk about. So before we get off on a tangent again, I'll reel us back in. We have some questions that we want to explore and because Rachel and I know that we are incapable of not going on tangents, I'm going to go ahead and share the questions so that you can kind of tune in and if we get to talking about some of these for too long, we will table them for next time.
Rebecca Twomey:And so here's kind of what we're going to talk about today why homeschool? What are the benefits? Why are people homeschooling? How will I know what curriculum to choose? A lot of choices out there and those are all kind of we're bundling that into kind of one topic area. The next topic is what about when things get really hard, like in middle school and high school? Can I teach a kid in middle school or high school? What do I do? And then the third topic is can homeschoolers go to college? How do they go to college? How does that all work? So those are kind of the three topics. Like I said, we're going to dive into it and whatever we're able to talk about today we will. What we won't, what we don't get to, we'll table for next time and get into it. But yeah, as Rachel said, we have experienced this ourselves. We both were homeschooled from kindergarten. Is that a grade?
Rachel Smith:Not when you homeschool no.
Rebecca Twomey:I'm just kidding From kindergarten until Rachel went to high school, starting in ninth grade. I started college at 16. We also have two older brothers. Our oldest brother went to school on and off and was homeschooled for periods of time. He also started college early. And then our other brother, that's a little bit older than me. He was homeschooled and he went to college early as well. He was a unique situation also in that he played sports at the public high school while being homeschooled. So he was homeschooled in high school but he would get dropped off at high school to go play football, run track, wrestle.
Rachel Smith:I think that's like an important thing for people to know about homeschooling, cause I was talking to someone recently who was saying that they have been interested in looking into homeschooling but their kids are really into sports so they wanted them to go to such and such school so they can play sports. And I was like, well, homeschoolers can do that. My brother did that. I mean, it's possible it could depend on the school.
Rebecca Twomey:Well so you could go to a public school because, even though you're homeschooling your children, a public school. Because, even though you're homeschooling, your children.
Rebecca Twomey:You are still paying taxes and when you're paying taxes, you are paying for your children to essentially go to that school. Now I always laughed because he said that the kids at that high school he went to were convinced that he went there. But they're like oh, I saw you, you know like I saw you at lunch, or whatever. He's like I definitely wasn't there at lunch. When they're like oh, I saw you, you know, like I saw you at lunch, or whatever.
Rachel Smith:He's like I definitely wasn't there at lunch when he was just getting dropped off at like 2 30 exactly the sports after school exactly now.
Rebecca Twomey:That's a whole other question too, though, is some parents may or may not want their kids to even be involved in the socialization of public high school, so that's kind of a whole other conversation, but when we talk about middle and high school, we can kind of dive into that a little bit. So let's start with why homeschooling and the benefits and why people are doing this. There's a lot of reasons, and we kind of have a couple of topics that we wanted to talk about. I'm actually going to talk about the second one first, because I think that it applies the most to this podcast, and that is many people are choosing to homeschool for religious or moral reasons.
Rebecca Twomey:You know, a lot of people may want their kid to especially those listening might want their children to go to, potentially, a Christian school, but they can't afford it because it's expensive to go to a private school and the alternate. So the only choice for them is really a public school, and they don't feel comfortable putting their child in that setting, maybe in the early years, or whatever the case may be, homeschooling is a place where you can focus on teaching the Bible and teaching the values and the morals that you want for your children which may not align or be aligned with the public school curriculum. I mean, I think a lot about what is being taught in schools today and there is a lot of sexuality and sexual topics that are being taught to children at very young ages and sex ed classes and gender and you can be whatever you want type of stuff very early and that has been a big motivator for a lot of people to choose homeschooling lately. Just something that I've noticed.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, absolutely. I know this can depend on state and school district, but the things that are being approved for public school curriculum when it comes to multiple genders and, like you mentioned, sex education and things like that and things like that, certain areas are having this curriculum approved younger and younger, as young as elementary school. And so a religious reason is a big reason to homeschool, because I know for myself personally, I believe that it is my role and my husband's role to be the ones to teach our children things like that. Yeah, absolutely, society that you know kind of come and go and wax and wane. It's decided by greater, this, greater entity and kind of put onto us through media and you know whether that's what we watch or the social media that we consume. And then it's also, you know, filtered into the education system, starting at a younger age, kind of shaping society to accept things as what is normal.
Rachel Smith:And that's the thing with people with religious views and this could even be different religions is our beliefs and morality stay the same because it's all based on what our religious like. For us it's the Bible. What the Bible says, what the Bible says is a man and a woman and appropriate, and what is sin and what is not. Have the government educating our children on what they decide now is their version of morality. So there's this quote from Vati Bakam, who is a theologian and pastor, and he says we cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.
Rachel Smith:And I think that is a really great way of putting it for those of us with religious values, and choosing to homeschool is the government, is Caesar, and it's not surprising at all when our children adapt the worldviews of their education system. And we want our children and people can say this could be a criticism. Well, you're just conditioning our children with our religious values from birth and we're keeping them home to do that. But the alternative is they're going to be conditioned from somewhere.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, they're going to be programmed in some way. So are they going to be programmed at school with X value or are they going to be taught and quote programmed at home with Y value? Yes, yeah, so, and that's the thing, though, is that it kind of reminds me of it. Reminds me of that verse train up a child in the way they should go, are old, they will not turn from it. Because when our children are young I'm talking elementary school age that's when they're the most influenced and the most malleable with their brains and their mindsets.
Rebecca Twomey:And if we're sending them off to somewhere for seven, eight hours a day and they are taught whatever, the government or the people within are making decisions on what they should be taught and the beliefs that they should have, and, honestly, even if it's not in the curriculum, they could have one particularly strong-minded teacher who feels it's very important that kids have whatever value they want them to have.
Rebecca Twomey:They're not getting those values from their mother or their father, from their home and from their parents. Those are the values that they're getting from whoever is giving them those values, or from other kids and learning misbeliefs from other kids, and I think that it's important for us to consider these things and this is a big reason why a lot of people choose to homeschool. I know it's something that it's important for us to consider these things and this is a big reason why a lot of people choose to homeschool. I know it's something that's very important to me is that I want to have that influence on my children and it's my right to have that influence over my children, because they're my children, right?
Rachel Smith:Yeah, exactly, and I think that's for every parent to choose how they raise their kid.
Rebecca Twomey:that, absolutely, that's, that's our right as parents, I think that there's a lot of fear that this means that we're going to teach our children not to be accepting of others and that you know they're, because you get this a lot right when you aren't, when you're shielding your children from the things of this world.
Rebecca Twomey:Like, let's say, I'm not going to teach my three-year-old daughter that she can be a boy if she wants to and that she can take drugs to change her gender. Know about that. She should be able to have that choice. I believe, as her parent, that it's my right to protect and shield her from things that she can't understand or that she shouldn't be trained or taught until she's old enough to understand. And I can say that I know I feel like I was very quote sheltered and protected from certain things until I was old enough to be exposed to it, and then, once I was, it didn't make me a less accepting person or a less loving person. It just allowed me to flourish and live as being a kid and not needing to be involved in understanding how people are having sex with each other.
Rebecca Twomey:When you don't even know what that is, yet what that is yet Absolutely.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, that's definitely what I've realized. Having kids of my own and as they get older, is kids start out as accepting and absolutely kind, and absolutely kind Kids are. Yes, we all have that propensity to sin and selfishness. That comes very early too, but the innocence of a child doesn't have to be taught. That's already there.
Rachel Smith:So I know for my kids that's specifically talking about this whole transgender thing and that, whether or not kids are being taught that at a young age I don't teach them that yet for the same reasons, because I just want them to be kids and it's already confusing enough but if they do encounter someone else, they don't treat them any differently and they treat them with love and respect. And that's the thing that I think sometimes might be missed about when you shelter your kids and you keep them home and you educate them yourself so they're not exposed to as many different kinds of people, that we're not still teaching our kids to be respectful and loving towards other people, even when they don't understand their life choices. Yeah, so that, I think, is a is is a misconception, and you know there there definitely can be some people who might be, you know, treat others in more hateful ways or more negative ways. Obviously that's out there, but that's more so in public school, oh, absolutely.
Rebecca Twomey:That actually kind of rolls us into the next one, which is a lot of the time. People choose to homeschool because they're concerned about the school environment. They're concerned about their children's safety, bullying, the overall school environment and it being able to motivate children, and they may prefer a setting where they have more control over their child's social interactions and safety. Because you know, you think about it. What is the number one thing that mothers and moms groups ask when they're moving to a new state? What do they say when they're asking about moving to an area? Are the schools good? Do they have good schools? What areas have the best schools? And what are they referring to? Academically at the top, safety at the top. No one's on there like, hey, can you tell me what the most dangerous school is in the district so I can send my kids there? You know that's not something that a parent wants or wants to look for for their kids, and that's why a lot of parents choose to homeschool too is to protect the safety and the innocence of their children.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, I mean us living in the United States like just to touch on for a second. But the whole school shooting thing the high school that I went to when I did go to public school, starting in ninth grade, was the school that had I think it was the biggest school shooting in the United States in 2018, marjory Stoneman Douglas where 22, I want to say people were killed.
Rachel Smith:And that those kinds of tragedies and how often that happens there's observationally. These are like pressure cookers for things like this happening thousands of people congregating and it's mainly made up of adolescents in a incredibly stressfully developmental time of their life and without God without moral instruction, without any conversation about demons or morality.
Rachel Smith:Right, and most of these schools are structured like prison, but without protection from safety officers that have firearms or, you know, metal detectors to make sure that nobody's bringing weapons in and things like that.
Rachel Smith:So I think that this safety you know, this part alone is very, very concerning, and it's definitely been in my mind as raising my kids is. It's scary to send your precious little babies off to a place that there's no guarantee of their protection, and this is a big and obviously it sets off huge debates of people wanting to fix it and how, but I think a big. I'm not going to claim to have any answers, but getting down to the root of it is kind of you just referenced spiritual and it also goes in with bullying of how kids are treating each other and obviously not everybody is going to have the same background and the same family life and the same. You know some kids go through terrible things and then they put that on others and you have no guarantee on if your kid is going to who they're going to be exposed to at school, and so that yeah, that definitely was is a big concern of mine and you also don't know who has been abused or sexually abused, and kids that are abused then abuse other kids.
Rebecca Twomey:So especially when it comes to sexual abuse, you know that is something that ends up getting passed to other kids. And then what happens? There's so much shame surrounding that that children can't even talk to their parents about it, and the bond that exists between a parent and child has all but dissolved by this point anyway, by the time that stuff kind of starts happening. I want to say it's more common in middle and then in high school, when, if you think about it, if you're sending your child to public school from day one, from kindergarten, age five, and now they're 13 and they've experienced something, you've now gone how many years Almost a decade where you are spending more time away from your children than you are with your children. I think they say the average parent spends about 45 minutes with their child in the evenings, at night, before they go to bed. So the most influential people in their lives are their teachers and their peers and everyone that they're seeing at school. So now who are they going to talk to when something bad happens to them? They're not going to go to their parents because they don't have that close relationship with them anymore.
Rebecca Twomey:Now, I'm generalizing here, right, some people may, but I have personally known many people that have had this experience and I've said what did your parents say when you told them about this? And they said, oh, I never told my mom. I definitely didn't want to talk to my dad about that. That would be too embarrassing. There's too much shame. I didn't want to bring it up. And it's so sad and heartbreaking because now you have kids that have gone through, experienced it, shoved it down, and then a lot of children end up they're like well, I don't know what to do with this, and then they carry that on, that same abuse. And you know you mentioned bullying before a lot of kids that end up in these situations, like with shooting situations.
Rachel Smith:They've been bullied and this is them lashing out for being mistreated for so many years yeah, and I think that's possibly one of the reasons why they end up taking it to school, because they want, they're seeking some kind of revenge on you know the place and people that hurt them, and it's a really really sad, scary and tragic place that our society is at and, yeah, there's obviously not any overnight solution for that. I wish there were other than Yeshua coming back and making everything right again.
Rebecca Twomey:Well, I mean, the solution is homeschool your kids.
Rachel Smith:Well, yeah, that's why we're here today. I'm just saying to fix that school system, sure, but yeah, the solution for me personally is to keep my kids system. But yeah, the solution for me personally is to keep my kids home. So, yeah, we're just trying to mitigate harm. It's sheltering. We're sheltering them from harm, whether it's physical or mental or emotional, as much as we can, because they're gonna be exposed to that stuff someday. They're going to be hurt by other people someday. It is inevitable. But it's part of the preservation of childhood. I think that's kind of the message behind, at least for myself. My driving force for homeschooling is preserving their childhood as long as I can, and I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. But our society has now had this shift of exposing kids to things earlier than maybe they should.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, they think that kids are resilient and kids. There's a push for independence with children way earlier than there should be. Yeah, you know, I mean I'm talking babies, right? We all know that person that said they're just trying to manipulate you and the baby's literally like one month old, right? Yeah, so it's kind of this idea that our society feels that independence and resilience are these traits that little baby children should have.
Rebecca Twomey:We are adults and we don't even have resilience. We don't even have true independence. Sometimes we still need others. We still need our mom, sometimes we still need our spouses or we need the comfort of another person. That's just what it is to be human. So to throw these baby children into these situations they can't handle. Listen, I take my kids to play places and parks and stuff all the time and I see the way that kids interact and talk to each other and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad that my kids don't have to be around that without me present to adjust the conversation and the way that kids are talking, because I couldn't imagine. And then what happens is your kid comes back home talking like those kids that were bullying other kids.
Rachel Smith:So yeah, yeah, my kids are getting exposed to more now that they're older, being around other kids who aren't homeschooled and it's. It's interesting because whenever we're around other homeschoolers, all of our kids are kind of like on the same wavelength of what they know and what they don't know. But then now mine are at the age of when they get around kids who are not homeschoolers, they're aware of way more and it's a lot of first hearing things whether that's the crazy Gen Z and Gen Alpha, what's it called? Slang that is part of their culture now is so weird. I swear these are like the weirdest generations. I mean, maybe that's what boomers thought about us millennials when we were young.
Rebecca Twomey:I don't feel like they said that weird of things, though I don't know, I know.
Rachel Smith:Like saying like cool, like that's a slang word. Now kids are saying skibbity, toilet, like what is that? But it's part of the culture that comes from. You know, kids being exposed to each other in school and it's not really in the homeschool world. So it's kind of funny. And then there's also curse words and just being exposed to other things, but that is kind of a part of life. So I'm not surprised that my kids are starting to be exposed to that. So I'm not hating on it, like I'm going to shelter them from ever hearing anything. I don't want them to.
Rachel Smith:In a way, it's kind of like you said that we might not be able to control the things that we hear, but we can be involved in how they process it. So one of my boys recently, not long ago, told me that someone a neighbor he was playing with uh called their sibling the b word. But he said the word. He never heard that before and I was like wow, do you know what that means? He's like I think it's a bad word and I was like it is a bad word and that's not nice, that that was said and that's not something that we're going to say. So I appreciate this closeness and not just in proximity, but that we're always together, me and my kids, because then they hear something like that they tell me about it, we talk about it and then we move on. It's not like I can control whatever they hear all the time, but if they were in school and then they don't see me till six or seven hours later, and then that's, I'm not being able to be a part of that.
Rebecca Twomey:Of shaping that Exactly, shaping their language.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the academic aspect of this and the curriculum.
Rebecca Twomey:So I'm kind of going to roll this idea of a personalized education and academic concerns into kind of one topic here, because this is another reason why a lot of parents are choosing to homeschool is because they want to tailor the curriculum to their children, be it for learning style purposes or pace, which we talked about last week, kind of just allowing our children to work at their pace and to allow them to kind of dive into their interests, which we can talk about, some of these different naming conventions that they have today.
Rebecca Twomey:But this can lead to kids enjoying school more and having a more enjoyable experience. But then the other side of this is that this can also provide an opportunity to have a more dynamic and a more specific education and really help children's needs to be met, really help children's needs to be met. And also we can talk about the idea that and it goes back to what you and I have already been talking about which is the school choosing what to teach and us choosing what to teach, like in the example of evolution versus creationism and that type of thing, but I don't know if you want to mention, like unschooling, the concept of unschooling. Yeah, I was actually thinking about that.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, yeah. So I think you know we can just touch on it and mention if you've never heard of unschooling, it's a offshoot of homeschooling where essentially it's child-led education. It's not formal curriculum like how we break things up into subjects of science and math and language arts and history and stuff like that, instead of doing all that and there even are unschooling schools these days, but it still is considered homeschooling, I believe. But the concept is essentially that you don't really do anything until the child expresses interest in it. Interest in it.
Rachel Smith:So every day is kind of like almost like a free day and you let the child be bored. That's a big part of it. And then they and this is natural for children will have a idea or interest like I wonder how you, how guitars work. So you take that as the child-led curriculum for the day of we're going to explore how guitars work and how we play guitar and maybe have them take a guitar lesson and the history of guitars, and so it's kind of using the child's interests to personalize and cater their education. And it could go for a lot of things, because the same could be said of science.
Rachel Smith:Like you go for a hike with your kids and they're like wow, look at this pile of roly polies and then you use that as an opportunity to study bugs and nature and things like that. So that's kind of the concept behind unschooling and I think that there is varying degrees of how you know. If there's a spectrum of like homeschool is modeled exactly like school and unschooling is doing absolutely nothing, there is a spectrum of how close you are to either side. So I have heard some people who practice unschooling who still have formal curricula for reading and math, because that is a criticism I've heard of. Unschooling is children don't naturally just randomly wonder how algebra works.
Rachel Smith:Math is something that just pops into your mind, but you can work math into natural day-to-day life. So that's I mean. This is my brief summary. I don't know if you have anything else to say about unschooling, but it's gotten very popular.
Rebecca Twomey:It's like the school version of baby led weaning. You know, in baby led weaning you let the child lead with you, give them foods and they eat them and they try them or not. And with unschooling it's kind of the same concept that you're allowing your child to express what they like and then you're diving deeper into that particular thing. So it into that particular thing. So it's an interesting thing. It's becoming more and more popular. I'm sure most people have heard of Montessori schools. Montessori is kind of it's also child-led yeah, a very similar kind of concept. But Montessori is much older. Unschooling is kind of like a new name.
Rachel Smith:I feel like over the past decade or so. Yeah, I think it is a new name, I definitely. I think I would say I take inspiration from that because there's something to be said about homeschooling in general and this is probably one of my greatest driving forces other than religious reasons is I like I keep saying it's all about preservation of my kids' childhood and I want them to be kids for as much of the day that they can. And sitting at a desk for hours and doing busy work or having to do workbooks and things that they're not interested in enforcing, that is not my style. Not interested in enforcing, that is not my style. So I do take a little bit of inspiration from this myself that I have formal curriculum and I definitely think reading and math is important to learn, but I don't take music and at least right now, music and history so seriously.
Rachel Smith:But on any given day my kids could ask me a question. Like a few months ago we were driving out of a parking lot and there was a dollar store and one of my kids asked how come things in the dollar store don't cost a dollar anymore? Everything costs more than a dollar and I said that's a really good question. So I put on a podcast episode from. We listen to a lot of podcasts.
Rachel Smith:Any that you want to shout out For this particular one. It's called Million Bazillion and it's actually specifically about financial topics for kids, and I brought up the episode on inflation and so we listened to it. I didn't even totally agree on some of the points that they made, because they were talking about the Federal Reserve in a really positive light and when we listened to the whole episode I'm like now.
Rachel Smith:Let me tell you about the Federal Reserve, and I even had a really good friend of mine who is a libertarian journalist. I had him send a voice memo or something about just a short summary on the Federal Reserve for kids and we talked about it together. And this is the beauty of homeschooling is that they ask me a question and then I get to kind of do a short little lesson on inflation and I get to talk about my point of view, not just what a textbook says or what any one entity says. They can be exposed to the positive and the negative. They can be exposed to someone else's point of view and my point of view, and then they can choose what they want to believe. So anyway, this was a tangent to say. In this sense, I kind of like that unschooling flavor of something that comes up because we have time together, let's explore that topic together. And that's just one example. We do this constantly, all the time, with everything.
Rebecca Twomey:I pulled a book that I have to read here. I don't know if you can see what this says. Oh my blur. Can you see it? Can you see it? No, Put it right next to my face Will it work? No, it's still blurred.
Rachel Smith:Oh, there you go In front of your face. Put it in front of your face there.
Rebecca Twomey:Yes, I can see it now Roots of the Federal Reserve, tracing the Nephilim from Noah to the US Dollar. Dr Laura Sanger.
Rachel Smith:Yes, I didn't get totally into all of that with the Federal Reserve. That's more of maybe a fifth grade lesson, yeah right, but the kindergarten lesson.
Rebecca Twomey:This kind of rolls into something that I want to mention, which is you just briefly mentioned this idea that what is taught in a textbook and it's very black and white it's one opinion, it's one way, it's the record of history that this school system wants to teach and this is the reason why our parents chose to homeschool in the first place was because of this.
Rebecca Twomey:When they were schooling our oldest brother, it was in the 80s and during that time evolution was new to the curriculum, so it was not part of the public school curriculum. Charles Darwin wrote his Origin of Species in 1859, and it was not accepted. It was not a widely accepted theory, I guess you could say, but it took people that were very anti-God and atheists, essentially, and agnostic people to say, well, we believe this and it was a very counter-God argument. But yet somehow it was pushed more and more after World War II and taken to the US Supreme Court actually, and in 1968, they placed evolution in the public school curriculum. And it was in a case called Epperson v Arkansas in 1968, where they struck down a law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools and they ruled that the bans were unconstitutional and that they had violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Rebecca Twomey:So, starting in the 80s, teaching evolution became the norm and became generally accepted. So, kind of out of nowhere, people were being taught God created the earth forever before this, before 1968. Some folks push and say well, we want to teach this, take it to court, get it pushed through. And now it's something that becomes this massively taught theory. And the thing that's the craziest is now doctors and scientists are coming out today, in 2024, saying it's rubbish, it's trash and it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't hold any water. And so what?
Rachel Smith:because it's people been teaching generation 40 years yeah, and it's because our generation was the, you know, one of the first that this is an integral part of the curriculum. Yeah, you are told that you're crazy. If you believe anything else because that's kind of how it goes is what's decided on as quote unquote truth for curriculum and textbooks that are then bought and used in public schools by the government if you have a differing opinion than that, then you you're.
Rebecca Twomey:You're told that you're crazy. Yeah, you're, you're crazy. You're a conspiracy theorist. You don't know what you're talking about. You're uneducated, right? You're clueless, honestly, this kind of reminds me of 2020, doesn't it? This had 2020 vibes to it, where people this is going to be all about a vaccine. The vaccine is going to poison people, and people are like no, get the shot, get the shot. And now, here we are in, a couple of years later, and they're admitting the shot injures people and it causes cancer, and it's the same thing. People were screaming from the rooftops Evolution is not it, it is not the way. This is not the truth and being shot down for it. You're just a bigot, you're just an idiot, you're just. You know, yeah, you're just dispelling science, but science. So this is a big reason to homeschool and, in fact, reason why our parents went to Tallahassee and lobbied for homeschooling in the 80s, which homeschooling became legal in 1985 because of this lobbying that other parents were doing in the state of Florida.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, I think the state of Florida states had it legal.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, exactly, but in that state because they wanted to be able to choose what their children were being taught, and so it's very important. You know, it's one of the most important things, as Rachel and I figured. We have gone on a lot of tangents in this episode so far, so I'm going to run through a couple other reasons for homeschooling and then we're going to wrap up in next week. We're going to talk about the other points. I'll summarize that when we get through what we get through, but kind of the other big reasons that people homeschool flexibility. So schedule you, you know you have a more flexible lifestyle.
Rebecca Twomey:Special needs this is a huge one.
Rebecca Twomey:A lot of parents and especially for us during the early 90s, when you and I were being homeschooled and autism was not something that was being diagnosed and understood and people didn't understand ADHD and ADD and all of that stuff Parents were keeping their children home because being in a school environment was not the right place for them.
Rebecca Twomey:Now, of course, today there are more special needs programs, but you don't know how or what they're doing with your children, just like when we talked about in the bullying point. It also allows for stronger family bonds Because, like I said a little bit ago, your kid's spending seven, eight hours with other people, with strangers, being home with mom for seven, eight hours, you're going to create a strong bond, really the desire for independent thinking and learning and allowing your children to explore the subjects more deeply and really develop critical thinking. That's a huge reason and I think kind of goes along with what we were just talking about. And then the last point being really a dissatisfaction with traditional education, just dissatisfied with this one size fits all You're going, you're sitting, you're doing this, then you're doing this, then you're doing this and you're doing this in such a way you know kind of. Some other alternatives that we talked about were Montessori, but also classical education or unschooling.
Rachel Smith:Those are kind of the opposite of this. Sit in a classroom, sit at your desk for eight hours and learn this one and only way and I'll make it super quick, because it just popped into my mind of having the independence and the ability to have flexibility is and I didn't even intend for this to be a homeschooling lesson but my oldest child, everett. He has wanted to have his own business since he was like five years old. He's constantly coming up with ideas. He's asked me a hundred times if he could sell all his toys to his friends, because he wants to make money or have a lemonade stand or sell cookies or sell this or that.
Rachel Smith:Like. This kid is like money motivated. He's always wanted a way to make money. And one day he came up to me after quite a time with and you know the story but I've never talked about it on here on the podcast because it happened a year ago with two pieces of Legos that he tied to a string and he made them into a necklace that when they clipped together made a heart, so a heart necklace. He's like mom, look what I made in my room. And as soon as he showed it to me, I'm like this is great, this is a really cool thing. I think you can make these and sell them.
Rachel Smith:He's like really Like my own business. And I was like, yeah, and he's like well, I want to do that. And I was like I'll tell you what, I'll be your first investor. And I ordered all the pieces for him. And then we got them all and we troubleshooted like what kind of string to use and this and that, and we made his product. And then we got to go through this process of starting a business, running a business. I taught him how to have a assembly line, how to create consistency and product, and I started out just posting on my social media about them and friends and family buying them. But then everyone loved them so much and people wanted to buy them for their friends or their kids' classrooms or whatever that I ended up starting an Etsy page for him and we started selling at farmer's markets. So he's gotten this crash course in entrepreneurship and owning a business at seven, eight years old, and his business name is called Brick Network Factory. You can find us on Etsy.
Rachel Smith:Maybe Rebecca can put it in the show notes if anyone is interested because people love the story of a second grader who started this Lego business and he has the cutest designs. He's got a lot of stuff now, but anyway, I just wanted to take this, as you're closing out, as an example of the beauty that can come from homeschooling, of using their imagination and their freedom freedom and then me, as their parent, able to take that and teach them about very real world skills and learn alongside them, because I didn't know how to do any of this stuff either. So it's really, really cool to be able to do this kind of stuff with your kids.
Rebecca Twomey:Absolutely. I was looking around my desk because I have brick network necklaces everywhere, everywhere. I'm one of the founding investors of Brick.
Rachel Smith:Network. He has invested heavily in Brick Network.
Rebecca Twomey:I really love his princess collection. He has a princess collection that are inspired by the different you know, Belle and Aurora and all that, and Brooke has all of them that she can match with all her outfits and stuff, and so definitely I'll link Everett's business in the show notes. But that is such a great example of the things that you can do when you're homeschooled.
Rachel Smith:Yeah. So, love that. Thank you for sharing that.
Rebecca Twomey:That was great, that was perfect. Yeah, it just popped into my head.
Rebecca Twomey:Well, now we ran out of time, as predicted. So next week we're going to talk about what about when things get hard in middle school and high school, and then we're going to talk about the college age and kind of how all that works. But thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I hope you learned something from today or this was a helpful conversation or kind of just got you excited or inspired in your own plans with schooling and kind of what to do next. So thank you for being on this journey with us everybody. Yeah, if you'd like to follow along outside the podcast, be sure to join the mission on Instagram, facebook and YouTube at the Radiant Mission. And today we're going to close with a verse that really emphasizes the value of continuous learning and seeking guidance and really highlighting that wisdom and discernment come through actively pursuing knowledge and understanding, and that is Proverbs 1, verse 5, let the wise listen and add to their learning and let the discerning get guidance. We're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye guys, bye.
