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The Shawn Ryan Show
#188 Leigh & Robert Bortins - Why Parents Are Ditching Public Schools for Homeschooling
03:09:35
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- [00:00]
Lee Bortens
Horace Mann was the primary evangelist for the public school system. He wanted to get rid of Christianity, and he wanted to get rid of individualism and capitalism.
- [00:09]
Robert Bortens
Over the last hundred years of state education, parenting's kind of been drummed out of us and the UN since the 1930s, when it got to be big after the war, has the same agenda as Horace Mann because the UN wants this voucher system to occur because they knew with the shekels come the shackles.
- [00:32]
Sean Ryan
Lee and Robert Bordens, welcome to the show.
- [00:36]
Robert Bortens
Thanks for having us.
- [00:37]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, Sean, thanks for having us.
- [00:39]
Sean Ryan
It's. I've been looking forward to this for a while. So, you know, we were kind of talking off camera just a little bit, but I've been really looking forward to this. My wife and I have little ones, and it seems like every day we're trying to decide what we're gonna do with the schooling. Are we gonna do public school, are we gonna do private school, are we gonna do homeschool? And I think both of us. Well, I don't think I know both of us lean way more towards the homeschooling. We have a lot of friends that do homeschooling, and where we live here seems to be, like, somewhat of a homeschool mecca, but it's also. It's also kind of a. It's kind of a daunting task. You know, it's. It's maybe not. It's intimidating. You know, the. It's intimidating to us. The time commitment, the socialization. Are we gonna do it right? All those kind of things. And so anyways, my wife and I, who's. She never sits in on interviews. This is the first one ever, she's sitting in on because we're so interested in this. So I just want to say to both of you, thank you for coming. And like I said, we've really been looking forward to this conversation, so I appreciate it.
- [01:58]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, we're glad to be here. And you brought up the issues that people want us to address all the time. So it's kind of universal that over the last hundred years of state education, parenting's kind of been drummed out of us. And the confidence that I can teach you reading, writing, arithmetic, that it doesn't take an expert to do it, I mean, just isn't there anymore in our culture versus, if you look back, say, pre1920s, parents wouldn't have even sent a child on to a school situation if they couldn't already read, write, and cipher, as they called it, that they knew that if you can teach them to read, to walk and talk, which are the hardest two things a human being ever learns, parents can teach them pretty much anything else after that.
- [02:39]
Sean Ryan
Wow. Wow. Interesting. I'm just curious. I think the thing that really got us thinking about this was before. Before we even had our son. 2020 Covid hit kids weren't in schools. Kids were wearing masks in schools. Then this. Then, you know, certain outlets started talking about how, you know, kids are falling behind on just picking up on basic body language stuff and all of that. And then on top of that, I mean, I hate talking about it, but it's a thing, you know, the WOKE curriculum, the white privilege stuff, the LGBTQ stuff, like all this stuff that's like, what is this doing in the public school system? And how does this better their future? And so we've really taken note of that, and we've talked to a lot of our friends that have kids in both public and private school. And I have to like, say the only people that we talk to that like, are gung ho about their kids education are the people that are taking the time to homeschool their kids. And so I guess, long winded there, but my question is, have you seen a rise in homeschooling since COVID since 2020?
- [04:13]
Lee Bortens
Well, first, let's just say that all that stuff that's in the public schools is in there intentionally and back. Horace Mann, who started the public school system in the United States 200 years ago, had a vision for all this, but he knew he couldn't introduce it into a Christian nation right away. And so he knew that he had to plant the seeds and let it grow. And so public school has been wildly successful in the United States based on what its framers had hoped that it would accomplish. So pre. Pre Covid numbers, there's, you know, knowing an exact number of homeschoolers, difficult, but about 2 million homeschoolers in the United States pre Covid. You know, during COVID you know, 6 to 8 million was kind of the high point of parents who are intentionally educating their kids, picking out curriculum, you know, not talking about the kids who are doing public school at home, but intentionally homeschooling their kids. And then that's dropped down to about 4 million, you know, three and a half to 5 million, based on some different numbers that I've seen. So it's effectively almost doubled or maybe a little bit more than that post Covid. So I've seen some research that says one out of eight kids of the current generation will be homeschooled at least one year. And so it's definitely becoming an option that families are picking. You know, maybe they homeschool in elementary school, but send their kids to a Catholic school for middle school and public school for high school. So it's just going to be much more ubiquitous when people are gonna be selecting their educational options. But obviously we believe homeschooling the whole way through high school, that parents can do it and do it well.
- [05:51]
Sean Ryan
It seems like it's exploded. And just to elaborate, you know, like, it's just like the white privilege stuff. I think it's important to learn about everything that happened with slavery and the mistakes that we made as a country and all of that kind of stuff. But I don't want my son or daughter to feel guilty for being a Caucasian straight male or a Caucasian straight female. And I've brought on all kinds of people to talk about this and wasn't necessarily the focus of the interview, but I brought on this guy, Chris Beck, who is the first, maybe the only, I don't know, but the first transgender Navy seal. And I wanted to get inside of his mind and see, you know, how does this, like, how does this happen? Like, I just wanted a snapshot into his mind. And throughout his conversation, he talked about love bombing. Are you guys familiar with this?
- [06:54]
Lee Bortens
No.
- [06:55]
Sean Ryan
So they basically like love bomb you into the. They basically just like fill you with love and da, da, da, da, da. Everybody's looking for acceptance into something and so they like, they overdo it. And that's what they call it. They call it love bombing into that culture. And then if you leave, then it's.
- [07:22]
Lee Bortens
Like you're a pariah.
- [07:24]
Sean Ryan
Exactly. And he went on to talk about how that happens in schools, and he has transitioned back. And so it was a fascinating conversation. One of my best interviews ever. But. But that all these things are just like in my head and then in. Man, I could go off on tangents all day, but I mean, kids these days can't read. You know, that they're. Their, their math skills are shot, their reading shot. They have no physical education. They don't know how to balance a checkbook. They have no financial skills. They, they don't, they don't know how to apply for a job. They have no confidence. I mean, I see this, like through the youth everywhere I go. I mean, I brought it up several times. You know, I go to Home Depot or I go to any home improvement center, department store, restaurant, you know, and I get a limp wristed handshake. I Get a kid who has zero confidence and is staring at his shoes when I ask him, where, you know, where's the doorknob section? You know what I mean? And it's like, they don't know. They don't know how to act. And I'm like, man, what? Like, I know a lot of that goes off on parenting as well, but, I mean, it's just a. It's atrocious out there.
- [08:41]
Robert Bortens
Well, for five generations, our parents have been in, all went to public school right before the 1920s, hardly anybody did. And so each generation of parents bought into a little bit more of what I call the. The box of education that it's fun, it's funded by distributed income, it's socialist in nature. Of course, Marxist ideology is what the content will be no matter how much you try to put school prayer or patriotism or anything else into it. Because the box itself, the public education, is Marxist. Every generation, we've accepted since the first universal socialist program, public school, we've accepted each generation another form of socialism, whether it was socialized housing or Johnson's Great Society or now, health care. You have to remember when people paid their own doctor bills and had insurance, not health care from the government. And then we got to the point where now parents are like, I'm not in charge of their education, of their housing, of their food, because we're on food stamps. And that's all subsidized by the government. And so now, like, I don't even know what gender they're supposed to be. I'm so confused. And so you had parents actually saying, because of the love bombing. So now I know what you're referring to. I'll love you no matter what you do. And that, of course, they say that's the Christian way of doing things, but they forget that even though God is love, love isn't God. And that there's four kinds of love talked about in the scriptures. So it's a lot of confusion because each generation accepted something the previous one wouldn't have until now. We're at the point where we fought against all this subsidization for the last 30 years, and now they want to subsidize homeschooling. And we're like, with the shekels come the shackles. We don't want civil government influencing our children's minds. Stay away. And people don't recognize that that's what happened, that every new plan with the dollars attached made it so. A woman like me, a woman like your wife, we don't need our husbands anymore. We have full time daycare. And if we're worried about our children being good citizens, the civil government will be sure to control their minds.
- [10:50]
Sean Ryan
Yeah, you know, I mean, that's another thing. I don't, I just don't see very many critical thinkers out there are free thinkers anymore. Everybody's told how to think through the media or told how to think, ah, very obviously through the universities out there and now into like little kids. I mean, even the patriotism. I mean, I don't have kids in school yet, but it seems like the Pledge of Allegiance has been yanked out. And I mean, I went to public school, I did one year of homeschooling. It was the fastest. Like, I learned the fastest there. I excelled the fastest there in probably a quarter of the time that I was in public education that year. I think it was sixth grade. But I mean, I remember going to school and like Election day was like a big day. It was a big day. Everybody's talking about it. It wasn't divisive. It was like, yeah, we get out. That's what we do as Americans. We get out, we vote for what we believe in. And, and now, like, I just, I mean, I don't see any of that stuff happening anymore.
- [11:54]
Lee Bortens
And as Americans, we think that we're the center of the universe and that like, these things have never happened anywhere else. Like, again, our public education system was implemented. It was imported from Prussia. Now most people probably don't even know what Prussia is.
- [12:08]
Sean Ryan
I don't.
- [12:09]
Lee Bortens
Germany, Pre World War I, our education was based on the same education system that initiated World War I. They had the same sexual revolution back then because they could see that that would affect the children and stuff. But then they saw that it was destroying their society. And that's why part of the reason why Hitler killed the gays and those type of things because they had put this sexual idea inside their kids so that the state could control them. But then when they realized that you wouldn't be able to keep your civilization going, I mean, we have a birth rate problem here in the United States. Once these Marxist ideas get inside of our children's head, that that wasn't going to be worthwhile. And so, you know, again, this is, the sexual stuff, you know, is really perverted now, but it's nothing new. There's nothing new under the sun. And they've done this before in other countries and it's gone terribly awry. And so that's why, you know, how.
- [13:04]
Sean Ryan
Were they doing it back then? I mean, because These gender surgeries are relatively. I mean, sexual.
- [13:11]
Lee Bortens
I mean, sex.
- [13:11]
Sean Ryan
10 years. So how were they sexually perverting the public schools back in World War I?
- [13:16]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, I mean, not here in the United States, but in other countries they're doing the same thing. Oh, we need to have sex education for sixth graders. Now it's fourth graders, now it's second graders. You know, in Minnesota, they just passed a law where they want to teach third graders how to implement they them pronouns here in the United States today. So it's the same. Same things that they're doing here in the United States, the same arguments, hey, we need these kids to understand, you know, their sexuality and things like that. But the kids minds aren't developed for that, and so they develop perverted mindsets and they want to fit in or whatnot, or be different. And so, I mean, these playbooks that they've used in the US for the last 20 years isn't something that hasn't been tried before.
- [13:57]
Sean Ryan
It's not even just genders now.
- [13:58]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [13:59]
Sean Ryan
I mean, in Cookeville, Cookeville, Tennessee, I think it was Cookeville, they had somebody, of course, from California. Go figure, right? Oh, another one from California moving to Tennessee for whatever the hell reason. I don't know. You don't fit here if you think like this. They bring their kid to school in a crate and call it a furry. Called a furry. I think it's called a furry. I can't remember what it's called. A furry. They shit and piss in a litter box. And like all the. All the rest of the kids, it's like, like, how is that. How is that not a disruption? Cook Phil said they didn't stand for it. They were like, well, we're going to sue the school. And they're like, cool, you came from California. You can go right the fuck back to California where you belong. We don't have furries in public schools here. But I get like, so pissed off.
- [14:52]
Lee Bortens
It goes back to that crt, the critical race theory ideas, right? If you're a white CIS male or white CIS female or, you know, a normal human being, right. You don't have any sort of privilege, and so you are automatically an oppressor. And so why you see this number of, you know, just these astronomical number of people being LGBT identified is because they've been told they're oppressors their entire public school life. And how do you. If you're a white male, what's the only way to stop becoming an oppressor? By becoming a white female.
- [15:21]
Sean Ryan
Interesting.
- [15:22]
Robert Bortens
The other thing is like all this is kind of a new way of talking about it. Something that's been around in the classical books and education is this idea that you can either teach your children that they're a little better than monkeys or a little lower than the angels. And that changes a whole worldview of how children are raised and taught and what's expected of them. And so public schools is where, where Darwinism and its both social and scientific ideas was ushered in and made a cultural norm. And so if you have children who think they're just little better than animals, eventually that's how they act versus if you think your children are just a little lower than the angels, they know what to aspire to.
- [16:03]
Sean Ryan
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- [20:07]
Lee Bortens
But we sound cool.
- [20:09]
Sean Ryan
Yeah, you do sound cool. But yeah, you guys, I mean, obviously met my producer, Jeremy. His kids are in the curriculum. Do you call it a curriculum?
- [20:21]
Lee Bortens
Community.
- [20:22]
Robert Bortens
Community.
- [20:22]
Sean Ryan
Community.
- [20:23]
Robert Bortens
Because it's not the children or the curriculum that matter. It's the parents and the families together that matter.
- [20:29]
Sean Ryan
Okay. But he's had phenomenal things to say about the program, and just a whole bunch of people we know here in Tennessee are in the immunity. So a couple other things. Everybody gets a gift.
- [20:43]
Lee Bortens
Oh, thank you.
- [20:44]
Robert Bortens
There you go. Thank you.
- [20:49]
Sean Ryan
I wouldn't recommend giving these to your homeschool kids because.
- [20:54]
Robert Bortens
Gummy bears. Yeah, High quality ones. I've heard from your other guests.
- [21:00]
Sean Ryan
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [21:01]
Robert Bortens
Wonderful.
- [21:02]
Lee Bortens
Thank you so much.
- [21:02]
Sean Ryan
You're welcome.
- [21:03]
Robert Bortens
They will be enjoyed. Got lots of grandbabies.
- [21:08]
Sean Ryan
You have another son that's a Green Beret, correct?
- [21:11]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, our youngest.
- [21:12]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [21:12]
Sean Ryan
Very cool. Maybe we'll get him on the show someday too. But, but so one last thing before we get into the interview. I have a. I have a subscription account. It's turned into a community of people. It's gone patreon. And so the patrons, the community, they've been here since the beginning when it was me and my wife doing this thing in the attic and we couldn't figure out how to make any money doing this. And they are the reason that I get to be here and that you guys get to be here and that we got this studio and we're moving on to the next. They're just our top supporters and we've turned it into one hell of a community. And so one of the things we do is we offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And so this is from. This is for Lee from Steven Casey. We've used Classical conversations for all five of our children. Four have graduated and one now is 17 is still in the program. Is classical conversations grows as an organization. How do you ensure it stays true to its founding principles of a God centered classical education and does not drift off course?
- [22:30]
Robert Bortens
That is a really good question and it's really difficult both to do and to answer. So the way we go about it is we vet as well as we can the leadership team we hire. We work at the C suite level and below to really write good training curriculum, not just curriculum for the children. We value the Face to Face more than I think a lot of companies do in this day and age of online and digital technology. We have over 15,000 tutors using our curriculum that requires us to have almost 3,000 trainers. We have a whole structure where each trainer takes only eight people and helps them understand the classical Christian model and then filters down. Is it going to get watered down at the lower level? Yeah, it's going to. But I don't own this company or run this company in the normal sense. The Holy Spirit is our guide and it's the Lord's business and I trust him to fill in the gaps where our families are struggling and we can't actually reach them. So a lot of prayer and like even just being on the show today. Shawn, you don't know how many people have texted us saying they're praying for you and for this to go well. We raise our children so that they can see the unseen. They know the World has windows and that they pursue their purpose rather than their weakness. And as you help parents see how to do that, it can not do anything but naturally filter down to helping their families know God and make them known. So we're going to have a lot of failures. We're human beings, but the vision is what we have to stick to and we have to keep knowing who's in charge.
- [24:12]
Sean Ryan
Very cool. I'm just. So you have. Did you say 15,000 tutors?
- [24:17]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. When you just announced the numbers. That's just how many students we have this year. We've been doing this for 20 years. We've had over a million. Almost a million students go through classical conversations.
- [24:28]
Sean Ryan
Tutors are teachers, correct?
- [24:30]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, yeah. So we have about one tutor for every eight students.
- [24:33]
Robert Bortens
You want to explain the structure? Can you do that?
- [24:35]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So we form communities. So we'll have a community leader we call community director. And for each kind of, I'll call them grade levels for the sake of our conversation, they have a tutor. And they get training from classical conversations, you know, home office. And we have all sorts of online modules for them as well as in person training opportunities for them. And so they're leading the parents and the students once a week inside of community. So you. And for especially K through sixth grade, you know, typically the mom and the kid go together. So there's eight kids and, you know, eight moms with one tutor, and she's demonstrating how to go through all six subjects on a weekly basis. And since we have. Since homeschool, parents have to teach all subjects. We have one tutor that's teaching all the subjects. And we believe that's part of that classical model. And so it's not. It's a really strong bond. You know, the Bible says a bond of three is not easily broken. So you've got your family, you've got your tutor, and you've got classical conversations, home office, all backing up you and your education endeavor.
- [25:43]
Sean Ryan
Interesting. So what is the. So if somebody has. That's a lot of people, 15,000 tutors.
- [25:51]
Robert Bortens
We spend a lot of time and money training people who love classical Christian ed.
- [25:55]
Sean Ryan
So what if somebody goes array. What happens? How does that come to your attention? How would a parent.
- [26:02]
Robert Bortens
So we have a leadership structure. We've got the world and then the U.S. in particular structures in groups of, say, 10. So we have 10 regional leaders who have about 10 folks that are then state leaders. They're kind of divided by a few million people. And then they have all those local leaders that we've been Referring to. And so the regional leaders are trained in quality control and they know the classical model really, really well. And so they're always working with the folks that they license to be tutors with us as well as parents at these online as not online live events. And so they'll go, huh, that was kind of funny what you just said. Let me look into it more or wow, you guys got it. You really understand what's going on. And it's all that one to one, face to face time is what is the best that we can do for that person who goes awry? Because it does happen.
- [26:56]
Sean Ryan
It does happen.
- [26:57]
Robert Bortens
Yes, of course it does.
- [26:58]
Sean Ryan
Yeah. Yeah.
- [27:00]
Lee Bortens
And because we have such a big community network, if it goes really sideways, we typically can put them into a local community nearby to finish off that academic year. I mean, it's once or twice a year something happens, but when you have, you know, 15,000 people, that's a pretty good track record.
- [27:15]
Sean Ryan
Yeah.
- [27:15]
Robert Bortens
So something that I like to share with the parents is if you're at all into venture capital, you know, the first round funding never gets you anywhere. But there's no second round funding where you have the profit and the impact on society if you don't have the first round. So that's how we look at a new community. In classical conversations, it's a bunch of parents. You don't know what they're doing, but they're trying. And you give them that. That funding from us and the funding from the parents, and we all as a group work together. Guess what happens? The next year starts to get good, and the next year it gets even better. But we have to start because the public school system isn't going to ever do what we do, and this state is never going to. We don't want them to fund what we do because that will inherently destroy what we do. So we just have to trust people to just try. The Lord trusted you guys with two kids. Is he crazy? He might be. Yeah. Right. So I'm saying I trust you to work with other families who have the same goals, to work together and figure this out. And I know you can do it because I know you believe in freedom and that you want your children to be made for freedom. And that's what's in the heart of every person. Not slavery. And so we just have a totally different worldview of what the human is and what they can accomplish. In classical conversations, we don't want any child ever excluded from any form of human endeavor. We want them to say, I can do that. It's going to be hard, but I can do that.
- [28:38]
Sean Ryan
Okay. Okay. Well, let's move into. So we've been married since 1983. You were an aerospace engineer. I mean, that's amazing. What was it that. Why did you give up that career to start homeschooling?
- [28:57]
Robert Bortens
Because I loved him.
- [29:02]
Lee Bortens
What about dad? Give him a little more details.
- [29:06]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, so. Well, that's the big.
- [29:08]
Sean Ryan
I mean, was there.
- [29:09]
Robert Bortens
So I was. When I was pregnant with Robert, a friend of mine, we didn't have a tv. We chose not to have tv. Back then, a friend and I, who were both pregnant, walking through a shopping center, and there was some tv. So we stopped and watched some tv, and Phil Donahue was on, and he had this very strange family that homeschooled, and that's what the episode was about. And we watched it for 10 minutes, and my friend looked at me and goes, I would never do that. And I looked at her and I said, I'm pretty sure I'm going to do that. So my husband, who's 10 years older than I and also met in the aerospace engineering department at the University of Michigan. That's where we met and were married and finished our education. Education. I went home and I said to him, could we home school? I think I want to homeschool our children. And he looked at me and he goes, oh, my gosh, I am so happy because you guys that are 10 years younger than me are so dumb. There's no way I'm sending my kids to public school. So we just. From the time I was pregnant, we just knew something wasn't right. And we weren't Christians at the time, but we wanted better academics. And we saw the destruction of the family occurring because me being an aerospace engineer, you can imagine the pressure to work and to not be at home with him and the expectations. And we're like, this is destroying the family. We're not gonna let that happen to ours.
- [30:22]
Sean Ryan
How did you pick up on that before you had kids? I'm just curious. Well, I saw the destruction. You said you saw the destruction of families occurring.
- [30:31]
Robert Bortens
So my husband had amazing parents, as did I, and they were just really both astute politically and culturally. I can remember being seven years old, watching a cartoon on a Saturday morning with my siblings, and my dad was in the room, and for the first time, an advertisement came on directed at the children rather than the adults. And he stood up and just said to nobody in general, thanks for making my life so much harder. Like, that's the background I come from. My parents were always paying attention to what it meant to be a good family, good parents, and to serve the community.
- [31:07]
Sean Ryan
You said you weren't a Christian before. How did that change? Neither you nor your husband were Christians?
- [31:15]
Robert Bortens
Nope. So I became a Christian when our second son, John, was 3 years old. It was on his birthday, so that's why I remember it. And then my husband became one 13 years later. So for 13 years, I had to be like Esther and see him as the king on the crown, the king on the throne. And to keep my tongue, bite it. Don't say all the things you want to say to him. And learn to honor and respect him in a way that was impossible in my own strength. And one morning, I got up early on a Sunday, and there he was in the living room in his suit. And I looked at him and I said, what are you doing in a suit? He said very angrily, I'm going to church. Isn't that what Christians do? And I was like, okay, you're really fighting this. So a few years later, when he really was committed, I looked at him and I said, what was. What happened? Like, how did you change your mind? And these boys were college age at that point. We have our four children. There's a gap of 15 years. So the two oldest were in college, and we had two at home. And he looked at me and he said, because I want to be like my boys. Because he and John were very strong in their faith. And this is what homeschooling did for our family.
- [32:27]
Sean Ryan
Wow. And so what brought you to Christianity?
- [32:31]
Robert Bortens
So when I left Boeing to stay home with Robert and had John, it was kind of the hounds of heaven chasing me down. We were in Seattle, which isn't known for Christian, you know, culture, and yet my dentist was a Christian and was always playing this Christian contemporary music. Our gas station played it, our grocery store played it. And then this lady behind me named Joni Isaac was homeschooling and knew I was interested in it. And she was a really strong Christian, and she kept inviting me to church. And I was like, what is going on? So I said to my husband, can I explore going to church and what that means? And he was like, sure, and if you figure out what you want to do, I'll do it. Well, he did, and it took a lot of time, but anyway, so me being the academic I am, I was like, okay, well, how am I going to learn about Christianity without, like, committing? So I was like, I know. So I called the Jehovah Witnesses because I knew they sent out people And I called the Mormons because I knew they sent out people. And then I started reading the books Joni gave me, and I was just pursuing anybody and anybody that would just talk to me about being a Christian. And fortunately, Joni won, and I did give my life to Christ. And once again, because of my husband. It's really interesting just how couples are tied together when you don't even know how. So I had just done a lot of exploring, seeking, searching.
- [33:54]
Sean Ryan
Who was Joni with again?
- [33:56]
Robert Bortens
Joni Isaac was my neighbor. Just a neighbor.
- [33:58]
Sean Ryan
She was your neighbor.
- [33:59]
Robert Bortens
And she homeschools and she was in cc.
- [34:01]
Sean Ryan
Didn't go with the Jehovah's Witnesses.
- [34:02]
Robert Bortens
No, I went with the Protestants is who I went with. But, you know, God had me in his hands. It didn't matter, right. He knew what was going to happen and how it was going to go. So Joni was really smart and she paid for me to go to a Ken Ham conference on creationism. And she also paid for a friend's unbelieving husband to go also. So this man and I went on their dime and we enjoyed the conference a whole lot. And we left kind of mad that even though we didn't believe any of it, that we never heard any of it, that there was a whole nother body of science. So that kind of opened up our minds to what it could be. So I was reading a book from Josh McDowell, very famous evangelists from the 70s and 80s. And in the book he brings up C.S. lewis's logical option about Jesus, that he either is the Lord, he's a lunatic, or he's a liar. And we have to pick. And no one will believe me, but I'll just hear what I think is true. The Holy Spirit in the form of Jesus came into my kitchen in a blinding light, knocked me down. The book fell. My husband looks over and says, what happened? And I said, did you see that? And he said, no, but there was obviously something just happened to you. Well, it was the most terrifying thing in my life that that happened. And if you read through scripture, whenever an angel comes down, it's fear not, it is scary. So I didn't go to church for a year. I didn't read anything about scriptures, nothing. I was like, oh my gosh, I don't want that. So on John's third birthday, we're climbing Mount St. Helens. No, Mount Rainier. And we're at like that 9,000 foot level at this lake called Lake Eunice. This is why I remember the details. And so as we're Having his cupcakes and giving him little dinosaurs because he's three and Robert's there. Lake Eunice is frozen over, but it was melting, and there was fish. And, you know, you go through the National Park System and they talk about stocking fish and the various resources that are in the area. This was super high. And I looked at my husband and I said, how did fish get in this lake? Because it was so high. And he goes very flippantly. I don't know. Maybe God put him there and walked away. And at that moment, I knew that I was his forever. And whether he put those dang fish there or not is irrelevant. That he put me on this earth with a purpose, and it was to serve him. And so she who has sinned much is forgiven much. And my whole life since has just been to love him.
- [36:46]
Sean Ryan
Wow. Was it difficult raising your oldest two as Christians when your husband wasn't on board?
- [36:55]
Robert Bortens
So Rob was always very kind and accommodating. He just didn't believe himself.
- [37:00]
Sean Ryan
What about you growing up? How was that? You have a mother that's a believer and a father that thinks it's bs.
- [37:08]
Lee Bortens
I mean, my dad was kind. I mean, he didn't really, like, express that, but, you know, we were at church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. You know, if his church was open, we were there and he wasn't. And, you know, occasionally, like, praying for him and things like that. But he was always a good father and was a good man and treated us well. And so, I mean, I think, you know, as growing up, you probably don't take those things as seriously as you do as you're as an adult or know it as well. But, yeah, I always knew he loved him, and we were always praying for him, that he would come to know Jesus.
- [37:43]
Sean Ryan
Would you ever. Would you ever ask him, as growing up why he didn't believe?
- [37:48]
Lee Bortens
I have not. My dad is a very quiet man, so doesn't share a whole lot of those details. But when he does share things, that's very insightful. So maybe you're challenging me. I should ask him. Ask him more questions, especially before he dies.
- [38:04]
Robert Bortens
We need to ask him.
- [38:06]
Sean Ryan
Yeah. I'm just curious, you know, how that would be.
- [38:09]
Lee Bortens
Well, it's kind of, you know, I didn't know some of those things, but, you know, my wife was a public school teacher for 10 years, and I was the first homeschooler that she ever met. And of course, I was. You know, we were in our mid-20s, and so when we started getting serious, you know, I said I wasn't working for Classical Conversations yet, but was starting to inch that way, is that, you know, I was homeschooled. I enjoyed being homeschooled. If this thing gets any more serious, like, you need to have, you know, in the back of your mind that this is a possibility, I'm gonna homeschool my kids. And if you're not on board with that, then we probably shouldn't, you know, keep dating. And she started laughing. She said, I would never send my kids to these schools.
- [38:53]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [38:53]
Lee Bortens
She said. I mean, she was a public school teacher, grew up in the public school system, but, yeah, she had that same. She said, I didn't know what homeschooling was until I met you. And, yeah, I'm on board. So now we got three kids ourselves.
- [39:09]
Sean Ryan
Wow. So let's talk about the beginning, then. The beginning of your homeschool venture.
- [39:17]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. So he was hitting 12 years old, and like every other homeschooling parent, you get nervous about those older grades and what you can do and not do. And books on classical education had just started being released by Christians that were doing classical education in schools and some in homeschool. And so my husband, the whole time I'd been homeschooling him and John, So the first 12 years, he was always supportive, but he would say, but you're doing it wrong. And I'd be like, I don't know what you want me to do differently. So then I started reading this book on classical education, and I would read passages to him, and he. And he'd say, that's what I've been saying. One day I remember looking at him and going, well, not very well, because I didn't understand what you were talking about. And so I began to realize that because he was old enough, he'd actually gone to a grammar school. That's what they used to be called. I went to an elementary school. So there was that divide between what's a classical education and a modern education in our relationship. So I didn't know what he was saying. I didn't know what his words meant. So when I read these books in classical Education, I was like, yes, okay, I get it. This is what I want, too. But when you're working with the older children, you need to have what's called the dialectic and rhetorical experience, where there's lots of questioning and lots of presentations and argumentation and various dispositions and things like that.
- [40:36]
Sean Ryan
Critical thinking.
- [40:37]
Robert Bortens
Critical thinking, yes. And so I looked at him, I said, okay, this is going to be hard to do all by myself with Robert and John and you. And I had always run homeschool co ops and homeschool math classes and just various things. So we had looked around for a potentially classical Christian school to send them to and there just wasn't one at that time. And so after we interviewed a few headmasters, Rob looked at me and this very quiet, shiny Ann looked at me and said, well, you're just going to have to have people in the house and start it yourself. And so that's what we did. And that's when we had in 1997, 11 families join us and it was boys and girls. There was a mix, not just boys at that point. So once again my husband pushing me to look for a church, pushing me to homeschool better, pushing me to start classical conversations. So it really wasn't a surprise when he did become a Christian. And you knew it was going to happen because he was helping all of us get there.
- [41:36]
Sean Ryan
Interesting. So when I know we covered this a little at the beginning, but when, when did the public school system really start going off the rails? Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses. That's right, more than 40 free online courses. Learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the Book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College's free online courses. I've talked pretty openly about my return to faith on the show and Hillsdale offers some incredible courses to help discover the Bible's profound lessons about fatherhood, the nature of sin, and the consequences of sin on both a family and a nation. Their online courses are self paced so you can start whenever and wherever. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu Srs to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu Srs to enroll for free Hillsdale edusrs. I'm always looking for ways to make sure I feel comfortable in what I wear through the whole day. That's even more important when the weather is changing from winter to spring and True Classic helps make it easy. Their activewear is moisture wicking and quick drying and for spring they have short sleeve comfort knit button ups that look as good at the gym as they do in meetings. True Classic makes premium clothes at an affordable price with shirts designed for your best features with a perfect fit. Their best selling T shirts and more come in three, six and nine packs. The more you bundle, the more you save plus, you get free shipping on all orders, a hundred percent perfect fit guarantee and easy returns. So there's no risk, whether you're bundling up for the cold or getting ready for spring. Level up your style with the clothes that actually fit right. Just go to my exclusive link@truclassic.com SRS to save. That's trueclassic.com SRS shop now and elevate your wardrobe today.
- [43:55]
Robert Bortens
Which history do you want? Because you know, we have. You can start back at the founding fathers, where there was very little public education, but some up in Massachusetts. But when they say public education, what they really mean was the church was the church said, hey, you can use our building. We'll teach the Christian religion. And parents paid. Parents paid for all public schools that were in existence before the 1920s. So they were called public schools, but the parents had to pay for them.
- [44:25]
Sean Ryan
You mean paid directly, not through taxation.
- [44:27]
Robert Bortens
Right. They paid. They hired the. They might hire the teacher through a board and all pay the salary that way. Or they might every Friday give her 12 bucks or $2, whatever the amount was. But there was no control beyond the parents until the nineteen nineteen eighties. I mean, eighteen eighties is when it began to be more prolific. And Robert can tell you more about the history of why that happened. And then in the 1920s, think about what we used to call it. In the 1920s, almost every state had what's called compulsory education because no parent in their right mind would give their children over to the government for education. The civil government has no rights over your child's mind. That's something the family and the church does. So they had to make it a law because if. Because the only way to fund it was to make it part of the general welfare and make everybody be part of it. So the Catholics were very smart. And that's when they said, look, can we opt out? We'll pay the taxes, but we don't want to be in it. We want to have our parochial school system, which a lot of people are familiar with that. So they were smart right from the beginning. So from the 1920s on, it became more and more prevalent. But remember in the 1920s, it was only through eighth grade, and it wasn't nine months of the year. It was mostly three or four months of the year. And it wasn't all day long. So it wasn't nearly as influential on the family. And even me, I never went. Went to kindergarten. They didn't have kindergarten when I was a child. It wasn't until my brother, who was a Little bit younger came along that that was something we had in our country. So people don't always know the history of United States education. And when they talk about school choices, like, we've always had lots of choices. But every time the government added another year, another month, another grade, another service, we've had less and less choices. And so the decline in education has been because public schools destroy public education. Before the 1920s, the United States had a proficient literacy rate of 90%. Now we have one of 9%. We have 9%. Let me describe what my words mean. That's definitions. In classical education, someone who's proficiently literate can read multiple resources, hold their ideas, and once they've done, finished reading all of them, synthesize them and analyze it. That's someone who's proficiently literate. Only 9% of our population can do that now, but 90% used to do it when the only three resources they had in their home was the Bible, Shakespeare, and the local newspaper.
- [47:06]
Lee Bortens
I mean, a lot of people like to point, especially in Christians, when you get prayer back in school, right? And you hear that. But it's like, well, what set up the system to remove prayer from school? And a lot of people don't know before prayer was removed from school, you actually had to memorize the Christian catechisms to graduate from, like, third or fourth grade. And so I said, why stop at prayer? Why not go back to the catechisms? And so again, there's plenty of history. They've got the papers out there. Alex Newman, a buddy of mine, has done research.
- [47:38]
Sean Ryan
What is the catechism?
- [47:43]
Lee Bortens
I mean, catechism, basically it's a series of questions about the Bible and the Christian dogma and faith. So what is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
- [47:58]
Robert Bortens
So every child was memorized, and so.
- [47:59]
Lee Bortens
Every third grader had to memorize that answer. And there's. I don't know how many. There's like, well, there's over 100 on the full catechisms. But I imagine they had to memorize probably 15 or 20 of those answers. So I mean, literally, I mean, I mean, the system was designed from the beginning to get us where we are today. So it's. I mean, first they implemented the system and then they took over the teachers, colleges, and so you can have.
- [48:27]
Sean Ryan
Who implemented the system.
- [48:28]
Lee Bortens
Horace Mann is, was the primary evangelist for the public school system, and he was praising the Russian system, Prussian system, Germany, aka, and worked with them, got them to implement it. Over there and then brought it here into Massachusetts, started there, and then perforated it throughout the United States. And again, it was very minimal to start. But he saw that he wanted to get rid of Christianity and he wanted to get rid of individualism and capitalism. And he knew that if we could have a public education system, a system based on redistribution of wealth, that it might not be in his lifetime and might not be in his child's lifetime, but eventually the United States would bend its knee, would no longer become a post Christian society. Right now only 3% of Gen Z has a biblical worldview. Less than. And 9% of all society has a biblical worldview. I mean, so his efforts took almost 200 years to work, but it worked. And so it's. But he knew from the beginning that because society was Christian at the time that it wasn't going to. He couldn't say what his end goals were publicly, but he wrote them down in different documents.
- [49:50]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, there's lots in the UN since the 19th, 1930s, when it got to be big after the war, has the same agenda as Horace Mann. So back in 1970 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the first voucher programs, the UN and their cronies helped fund that. And when Milwaukee before the 70s, before they had the voucher program, had the same proficient literacy rate as everywhere else across our country, we were at like 70% at that point. And now, you know, it's just plummeted. And that was instituted by the Democrats, not the Republicans, because the UN wants this voucher system to occur because they knew with the shekels come the shackles. And let me add one more thing. What you said so two things made it so that because you said, who's they? Like who's this they. So two things happened. One, the Civil War. So after the Civil War, for the Southern states to be allowed back into the Federation of the United States, they had to rewrite their contract constitutions to include public education. Then when the immigration crisis occurred in the 1880s and there was all kinds of people who couldn't speak English, the Protestant church said, hey, let's get them to be English speaking Christians by making them go to public school. So it was a whole bunch of theys that made all this happen.
- [51:04]
Lee Bortens
Now this is a system inside of itself. But see, as Christians, we believe that God actually established three different forms of government. And so there's the family government that's headed up by the husband, there's the church government, and then there's the civil government. And then the Bible lays out Each of those things that they're responsible for. And the civil government is basically responsible for justice and to promote, not fund, not require, but to promote good. And the only way to do that is allow the family government to do what it does in the church government. And there's a verse in the Bible that I think is misunderstood, that we don't wager against flesh and blood, but we wage war against spiritual things. But the spiritual war is.
- [51:53]
Sean Ryan
Where does it say this in the Bible? About three governments?
- [51:56]
Robert Bortens
Oh, no, it's not like it's one verse.
- [51:59]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [51:59]
Robert Bortens
So you gotta go through Moses and the law. You've gotta go through Jesus and what he said about the law to the Pharisees. And you have to look at how the family described the whole way through all of it.
- [52:08]
Sean Ryan
Okay.
- [52:09]
Robert Bortens
So if a common saying is that the family, the church is the family of families.
- [52:14]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So the spiritual war is which unit is going to have the most power? And so that's why so many of these laws are. The spiritual warfare is they're trying to create laws that destroy the family. You saw how welfare has destroyed the black family over the last 30, 40 years. So ultimately, our spiritual war is the family unit actually has pretty much the most power in God's design for humanity. The government of the church is supposed to be there for when the family unit gets off to help the poor, the widows, people in bad situations. And the civil government's pretty much responsibility is to punish bad guys. And so when. When any human institution goes outside of its design, things tend to get really expensive and outcomes tend to get really bad.
- [53:08]
Sean Ryan
So it's bodies of influence. Basically. Family should have the most influence. Church second, civil government third.
- [53:18]
Robert Bortens
So every time they overstep, we have less need for fathers. And so we find ourselves now, it's been for decades now, less than 50% of boys live with their biological father. That's not since COVID or since dei. It's been that way for a long time. Really since the 80s. So 40 years now.
- [53:36]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [53:37]
Robert Bortens
So let's not repeat that. You know, when people say to me, well, I can't homeschool, because, you know, I wasn't educated very well, and I don't think, like, I can do that. And so my response is, well, don't send your kid to the same system that's going to do that to them too. Do something different. The definition of a fool is somebody who just, you know, keeps repeating the same thing, same mistake, over and over.
- [53:56]
Sean Ryan
Again without getting a different result. Really Expecting a different result.
- [54:01]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. That's it. That's it. Together, we'll get the verse out.
- [54:06]
Lee Bortens
I mean, homeschooling, we say, redeems two educations at once. It redeems your education as an adult. And obviously, the child is getting a much more rigorous education than they would have outside of God's, designed for children and families. And so you don't have to be an expert. You just got to be one page ahead, one minute ahead of your kid. And one of the best things that my mom taught me growing up is, I don't know, let's go figure it out. And we drive to the library to have Wikipedia back then, or whatever. Drive to the library, go look it up, go, hey, Mr. Thompson at church, he does this for a living. Let's go talk to him. And. And showing me how to find out those things that she didn't know. And so it's an opportunity to be humble, but also to teach those skills, because as you know, you don't know everything until you learn how to ask good questions. And so, yeah, until you don't have to be an expert at anything. God trusts you with your kids, and he designed it for you to raise them and teach them the way they should go.
- [55:09]
Sean Ryan
Where do you tell kids where to go? Look things up? I mean, today with the Internet and there's so many false sources, you can't trust media. I mean, I have friends that have warehouses full of Bibles because they think that AI is going to manipulate the Bible and the Word. And so where do you send a kid who's in a homeschool program doing a research project? Where do they find their information?
- [55:37]
Robert Bortens
We do original source documents, and it's really important to know the authority of who wrote the document. So we train our children to ask questions about that. But we can't train our children to ask questions if we as the parents don't know the questions and what the resources are also. And that's why Classical Conversations focus is our parents, because parents need stuff real quick. Oh, yeah, I know what that is. Versus a child may not have ever heard of certain resources.
- [56:04]
Lee Bortens
So we think we don't read some woke professor's interpretation of the Federalist Papers. We have our students read the Federalist Papers. You know, we don't want our children to learn science. We want them to be scientists. And so we try to go back to, you know, and that's part of the benefit of a classical education is we're looking at what has stood the test of time, what has worked for 2000 years like a lot of what's going on in the public school is experiments that have never been tried before in human history. And we see what the results of that is. Depression at an all time high, Reading levels at an all time low, Expense on education at all time high. You know, fatherless homes at an all time high. So these modern experiences and experiments that they're doing on our kids and our families clearly isn't working. And so we say, you know, what is the best book about philosophy that's written in the past 3,000 years? What are the authors that influenced our founding fathers? And not just people that we agree with, even people that we disagree with, that we want people to be aware of. And so teaching them to don't believe the media's perception of something, go to the original source documents, go to the experts. So we're teaching them to be resilient against the media's propaganda, which is one of the reasons they hate homeschooling so much.
- [57:29]
Sean Ryan
Are there any efforts to end homeschooling.
- [57:35]
Lee Bortens
In Illinois right now as we're talking? They're trying to. For the last 75 years, every single new education law that affected homeschooling made us more free. The state of Illinois, for the first time in 75 years, and we'll see if it passes or not, is trying to add restrictions to the homeschooling experience.
- [57:55]
Sean Ryan
Are you kidding? What restrictions?
- [57:57]
Lee Bortens
Like making it so that you have to file more paperwork as a parent, that you have to demonstrate, you know, competencies. Competencies in certain areas. That you may even have to get credentialed one day to be able to raise your own kids. Stuff like that.
- [58:11]
Sean Ryan
And where does Illinois. Where does the Illinois education. Where does it stack up?
- [58:17]
Lee Bortens
Well, I'll tell you what.
- [58:18]
Sean Ryan
This states competitiveness with states. I'm just curious, where does.
- [58:22]
Robert Bortens
Where does their outcomes in education?
- [58:24]
Sean Ryan
You mean if, let's say, I don't know what Tennessee is, let's say Tennessee is number one. Where's Illinois?
- [58:30]
Lee Bortens
Let me just tell you this. Chicago has 40 schools where they spend over $20,000 a year per student, where they have zero students that can read at grade level or zero students that can perform math equations at grade level. That's how they are performing.
- [58:48]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [58:49]
Lee Bortens
And again, government funding, government managing it. Absolute disaster for the family. So.
- [58:57]
Robert Bortens
So something people say, like, you know, I went to public school and I'm okay. And I'm like, compared to what? Or I was highly schooled and I'm really educated. And I'm always like, but compared to what? Because where that came to hit me face to face was when I was trying to, when he was 14, to teach him what the Constitution said. And we got the actual constitution and we read it. And I read two or three sentences in and I said, I don't know what I just said to you, and I'm a highly schooled person, but I wasn't highly educated. I thought I was. So when I started looking at these organic documents from our founding fathers and the history of them that they were written for, the average newspaper reader who had a average 12 year old could read those and understand the arguments of Madison and the various names right in the federalist papers. And I, as a 25 year or as well as a 40 year old with all this education, couldn't read those same documents. In that same time period where we were looking at what classical education is and starting cc, I was like, this mama is not going to be stupid anymore. I am changing what we're doing.
- [60:05]
Lee Bortens
And you asked about homeschooling internationally. In Germany, it's illegal to homeschool. It's the only law left on the books that Hitler signed. In Sweden, in 1992, they started a revolutionary school choice bill passed by conservatives. Now Sweden's run by socialists. And 19 years later, they outlawed homeschooling because they told said, why does a parent need a homeschool when the state will fund your education?
- [60:31]
Robert Bortens
So, yes, and history's repeating itself. The immigration issue in Europe were countries that had really free homeschooling laws. They're starting to suppress them. They're saying, no, the immigrants, we can't trust them to teach their children to be patriots. And it's gonna undermine our nationalism. So they're using that as the pretext to say, then all parents are gonna be.
- [60:52]
Sean Ryan
They have no nationalism.
- [60:53]
Robert Bortens
Right, right, right.
- [60:55]
Sean Ryan
I was just there in 10 years. It's a totally.
- [60:59]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, yeah.
- [60:59]
Lee Bortens
The Crusades will probably. Our grandkids, kids will be fighting the Crusades.
- [61:03]
Robert Bortens
Crazy.
- [61:04]
Sean Ryan
It's like they lost all their culture. It's gone. It's. It is insane.
- [61:10]
Robert Bortens
So we want to recognize. So we don't want to preserve the culture of the 50s when there was still prayer in school. We want to preserve the culture that. That made Western civilization arise and be the great benefit it was to the whole world. So that means, you know, if you're on, if you're going the wrong way down to wherever you're headed and you realize it's wrong, you got to go back and then go forward. And so that's what we're encouraging people to do is to look at the great classical conversations of history where things succeeded. And let's go back and take the best of that while we in wisdom implement the newer things, the progressive things, the timely things.
- [61:47]
Lee Bortens
If you're on a train that's moving down a track and it's the wrong train, moving to the very back of it isn't going to get you any closer to what you need to do. You got to get. You got to jump off that train, get on a different one, heading a new direction.
- [62:01]
Sean Ryan
So there are efforts in Illinois and.
- [62:04]
Lee Bortens
Then internationally, Sweden, the UK right now, because they don't want the Muslims being Muslims.
- [62:10]
Robert Bortens
Well, France is really bad right now.
- [62:12]
Lee Bortens
France too. But yeah, Virginia is trying to pass laws.
- [62:16]
Sean Ryan
What's going on there that's irreversible? They're just.
- [62:19]
Lee Bortens
Well, Virginia Democrats in Virginia are trying to make it so that you can't. Each state's different. So in the state of Virginia, to homeschool, you can say that you want to do it for a number of different reasons. Academic health reasons or religious reasons. The Democrats in Virginia passed a law out of their education conference to make it so that you are no longer allowed to homeschool in the state of Virginia for religious reasons reasons.
- [62:48]
Robert Bortens
And for us, that's the only reason to educate anybody.
- [62:51]
Sean Ryan
What is that? What does that even. You have to have a reason to.
- [62:54]
Lee Bortens
Homeschool your kids in some states because.
- [62:57]
Sean Ryan
What does that mean? What do you have?
- [62:58]
Lee Bortens
You basically fill out a paperwork, check a box, fill it out, send it to some faceless bureaucrat. I mean, it's an automatically approval type process right now, but that doesn't mean it'll be that way in the future. We knew there were people in the 90s that were getting thrown in jail for homeschooling in the United States. There were people in the 80s getting thrown in jail, having their children removed from them removed from their household for homeschooling in the United States. This isn't a freedom.
- [63:24]
Sean Ryan
It doesn't surprise me. I mean, in Washington, they'll take your kid if you don't give them the gender surgery.
- [63:28]
Lee Bortens
Right.
- [63:29]
Sean Ryan
Just like that. We'll take that. We'll take your kid.
- [63:32]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. So in the 1980s, when HSLDA Home School legal Defense association was helping each of the state homeschool Oregon get developed so that we could lobby our senators and representatives so that we could have freedom and education. And the reason we did that is because we were tired of being fined. We were tired, like early homeschoolers. We Wouldn't let our kids out of the house before 3pm because we knew our neighbors would tattle and the truant officer would come. And it's the scariest thing for a woman to be home by herself with three or four kids behind the door and a lady in a suit and a police officers next to her, and they're knocking at your door. And that was a regular thing during that time period. And then the fines that came around, that and the children put in foster care. This is in the United States, when he was 4, 5, 6 years old, not that long ago. So when people wonder, like Lee, why are you so against getting money from the government? It's because they don't remember when we used to all get money from the government, how bad it was. And so we just said, leave us out of it. Go do all the dumb stuff you want, but leave us alone. And then by leaving us alone, what happened? We got really strong. And, you know, any type you have a business that does well, the government starts to say, oh, we want to do that. That looks good. And so our popularity has almost been our worst enemy, because now everybody wants to have a classical Christian education, but they don't want to pay for it.
- [64:59]
Lee Bortens
They don't want to put the work in.
- [65:01]
Robert Bortens
And so the government's making it possible for everybody to do that. But we'll give you $7,000 ahead for your kids. So if you have four kids, what.
- [65:08]
Sean Ryan
Do you think about the voucher program? Isn't Desantis in Florida trying to, like, implement some type of a voucher program?
- [65:14]
Lee Bortens
Very against it?
- [65:15]
Sean Ryan
You're very against it.
- [65:16]
Robert Bortens
And he spends a lot of time talking in these states. So you can explain some of the different ones that you're up against.
- [65:22]
Lee Bortens
Again, this is from just a perspective of the three governments. The civil government has no responsibility over the human mind. And so we don't think the civil government should pay for it. And we recognize as legislators, you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Basically, the only thing they can do is distribute money. So we understand why they're wanting to do it, and we're glad they want to get kids out of the public school system. But why is it a public school system? Because the public is paying for it with tax dollars. So they're not actually getting kids out of the public school system. They're actually turning private schools and homeschoolers into public school students.
- [65:55]
Sean Ryan
Students.
- [65:56]
Lee Bortens
And every single state that implements it, their budgets go way up. So now they have to increase taxes, which makes It. So fathers have to work harder to be able to provide for their students. And, you know, best case scenario, you're getting a temporary tax break, but you're going to be paying for that the rest of your life. Like, yeah, you might be getting some welfare checks from the government for 12 years while your kid is, you know, under the age of 18. But as soon as they turn 19, you got to start paying your taxes to cover those expenses. And so it's. I wish it was the truth. I wish it would work. But that's what they did in Sweden. They've got. All of Europe basically has some sort of voucher system. Their education is terrible.
- [66:35]
Sean Ryan
So I got a question. How much a year does Classical Conversations cost per student on average?
- [66:43]
Lee Bortens
So kindergarten through third grade, you're looking probably around a little bit less than $1,000. Third through sixth grade, probably about 1500. And then seventh through 12th grade, you're looking at 1500 to $2,000 a year.
- [67:00]
Robert Bortens
Not a month. A year?
- [67:01]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, maybe a little more than that.
- [67:03]
Sean Ryan
Wow. So it's a lot less than I thought.
- [67:06]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [67:06]
Sean Ryan
I was going to ask, well, what about. What about families that can't afford that?
- [67:11]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [67:12]
Robert Bortens
What's my job to help them afford it? As a member of the church, it's my job to help the poor. It's not the government's job.
- [67:19]
Lee Bortens
Has this civil government helping the poor made the poor less poor? Has it made their lives better?
- [67:23]
Sean Ryan
I'm not saying that, no.
- [67:26]
Lee Bortens
So, I mean, one of the things we do at Classical Conversations is we formed an ecosystem where you can actually make money to homeschool. It's not a lot of money, but if you tutor, you can pretty much pay for one or two of your kids to be in Classical Conversations. If you decide to run a community and it's a successful community, you can make 8, $10,000 a year homeschooling through that. And then we've got salespeople and leadership that are making more than that. So we have single moms whose husbands are not paying child support that are doing Classical Conversations and they're in leadership going through all sorts of things. We've had crackhead moms who found Jesus and have a fourth grade education, and they come join a community and, you know, one of the dads is paying for their tuition to be there, and the moms are trying to teach her how to be a mom because she never had it before. So we just want to be the hands and feet of God. But if the civil government takes over that responsibility, we know that the situation is going to be dire for everybody.
- [68:28]
Sean Ryan
Yeah, yeah. Now I do get it. I mean, one of the plans me and my wife came up with and we brought a bunch, not a bunch, we don't have a lot of friends. We brought the few friends that we do have together that have kids around our kids age and we had this idea where, like I said, we've been a little, we've been intimidated about the time commitment and we thought it might be good to share that time commitment with other like minded friends of ours who we think share similar or the same values. And so we thought it would be a good idea maybe if everybody put in an investment into a pool of money and we purchase a piece of property or rent a piece of property, but we thought purchase a piece of property because that would be, that would be a real estate investment, not opening a school, a real estate investment. Our kids go to school there, but we don't label it a school. We don't turn it into some type of educational business because once again, I don't, I don't want any involvement with any government. I don't want anybody I'm suing because they can't put their kid there. Like, sorry, your kid doesn't belong with me. We don't share the same values. And I don't. You go raise your kid however the hell you want, but not here. And so we thought it would be, we would do a real estate investment that just happens to be a place where education is happening, and then we would all pull in, hire a teacher, then we bring in each other's expertise. Financial guy, I'm a seal, CIA guy, podcaster, media, nurses, doctors. And everybody kind of brings their expertise and we really pour into our kids as a community now, you know, and then at the end of it, the real estate investment gets sold and all of the gains and everything gets proportionally sent back to, to each individual family.
- [70:48]
Lee Bortens
Brilliant.
- [70:49]
Sean Ryan
But you know, it never went anywhere. I think me and my wife are the only ones that were actually excited about it.
- [70:56]
Robert Bortens
We call that a cottage school where a few handfuls of family get together and do something like that. And then what I call is a cul de sac school because this was big in Covid, where five families get together and each family takes one day of the week. So you can divide it by time or you can divide it by income, hire a single teacher or two or three teachers and then add the expertise, like you said. So what people don't know is we have so much school choice because of the homeschoolers destroying the compulsory education laws in all 50 states. So anybody that wants to start almost any kind of school situation can register as a homeschooler in their state and then organize how you just described or whatever works best for you. So people don't understand that homeschooling wasn't just another option. Public school, private school, bring it all home. Homeschooling was people saying, no, we want to be free. We want to be able to choose what's best for our families and we want to be able to have what the First Amendment says, the right to assemble, the right for free speech. Why do I have to ask the government for permission to get together with to form a school? That's insane. And yet people just accept it. So. But you saying you're going to do a real estate thing, bravo.
- [72:04]
Lee Bortens
The time commitment thing, I think is something that, that people don't understand if you're homeschooling. So for my like, you know, ten year old, we're spending maybe three, three and a half, four hours a day max educating her. My eight year old, two, two and a half hours, my five year old, four and a half year old, maybe an hour a day. So a lot of the, that's the formal education part. There's not really a lot of time. I mean, I think other if you like, got a lot of reading or writing a paper or something, like most homeschoolers typically spend about three hours a day doing what you would consider formal education. And the rest of it's living life with their parents, which they're learning how to balance a checkbook, they're learning how to go grocery shopping, they're learning how.
- [72:48]
Robert Bortens
To fight with the insurance agent.
- [72:50]
Lee Bortens
Fight with insurance agent. There's so many things, you know, starting businesses like so many homeschool moms and dads are entrepreneurs. And so it's just about living life together as a family. So. So there's really not a lot of formal time commitment other than you don't have the government paying for someone to babysit your kid while you go and do stuff. But I mean, they could be downstairs right now doing some coloring books or talking to one of your assistants about social media or learning about cameras or something like that. And they would be getting an amazing education, but you wouldn't get that type of thing in public school. So the time commitment is really a limited part. I mean, and of course you can go eight hours a day.
- [73:36]
Sean Ryan
But we've thought a lot about this too. And I mean, I guess if you Cut all the bullshit out, the disruptions, the lines, the bathroom breaks, the recess, the lunches, the insert, whatever nonsense that you have to deal with in public school. I mean, just forming a line takes probably five minutes, you know, and all the other. The disruptions, the disciplining, like all that kind of stuff. I mean, then it cuts down hours and hours and hours worth of time.
- [74:05]
Lee Bortens
The government did a study that I saw about 10 or 12 years ago that showed in the average class period, which I'm assuming is about 55 minutes, there's actually only eight minutes of instruction.
- [74:14]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. Throughout the day. The study is that average child 8 minutes per hour.
- [74:18]
Lee Bortens
Per hour, yes.
- [74:19]
Robert Bortens
There's 26 minutes over the course of a day at school of education going on.
- [74:23]
Sean Ryan
Where was that study?
- [74:25]
Lee Bortens
The federal government did it about 12 years ago.
- [74:28]
Robert Bortens
Nheri has stuff like that, though. Natri is the national Home Education Research Institute. So they find out this data for us. But one of the things that made.
- [74:37]
Sean Ryan
A lot of people 8 minutes of instruction per hour.
- [74:40]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, we'll let you say that.
- [74:43]
Lee Bortens
Well, that was 12 years ago, so it's probably gotten better since then.
- [74:46]
Robert Bortens
Maybe now machine's doing it. Yeah. So one of the big moves towards homeschooling in the early or late 80s was a lot of teachers started home educating their kids because they were, like, working all day with these kids. And then they'd go home and they'd spend. Because they're good parents, they'd spend two or three hours doing homework with them. And we would say to them, why do you spend two or three hours doing homework when you can spend two or three hours and you should be done? And so they started to see the exchange of time with their family because they were already, if they were good parents, putting that much time in. But then, like, one father of eight children looked at me one day and said, look, I am not having eight women at some public school tell me how to run my life and my family. If they're all in school and we want to go on vacation or something happens, I have to go ask eight ladies for permission to be the dad and make the decision for them. I said, I'm not doing that. So there's other efficiencies that people aren't paying attention to.
- [75:41]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, you can go to Disney World where there's no lines.
- [75:46]
Sean Ryan
Yeah. Well, let's take a quick break. And we covered a lot there. And when we come back, I want to kind of. Kind of dig into the actual experience of kids K through 12. I have a ton of questions And I just want to see what the roadmap looks like. So perfect. And also when we come back, my wife Katie who you guys know has been sitting over there listening into this entire conversation. I know she probably some questions and she'd like to ask you guys those as well. So we'll see you after the break. When was the last time you checked on your home title? If you're like me, the answer is never. There's a growing real estate scam targeting American homeowners and their home equity criminals. Forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee and file with your county. Boom. Your home title has been transferred out of your name. Then they take out loans using your equity or even sell your property. You won't even know it's happened until you get a collection or a foreclosure notice. Stop what you're doing and find out today if you're already a victim. Use promo code srsometitlelock.com and you'll get a free title history report to find out if your title is still in your name when you sign up. You'll also receive a free 14 day trial of their million dollar triple lock protection. That's immediate 24,7 monitoring of your property's title, urgent alerts if there are ever any changes, and if fraud should happen, their US based restoration team will spend up to 1 million to fix the fraud and restore your title at no additional cost. Your satisfaction is guaranteed and you can cancel at any time. Get peace of mind now@hometitle lock.com promo code SRS or click the link in the description. Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a passcode on your phone. You're just making it insanely easy for anybody who steals your phone to also steal your whole digital life. Every time you connect to an unencrypted network like in a hotel, your online data is not secure and hackers on the same network and try to steal your personal data like your passwords. ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure tunnel between your device and the Internet. ExpressVPN is so easy to use and super secure you just need to fire up the app and click one button to get protected and it works on all devices, your phones, laptops, tablets and more. I know for me, helping to protect myself from hackers is a top priority and I really like that ExpressVPN can be used and trusted when I'm on the go or in the studio. Secure your online Data today by visiting expressvpn.comsrs that's E X P R E-S-S vpn.comsrs to find out how you can get up to four extra months for free. Expressvpn.comsrs rates have dropped, and it's time to take advantage. A lot of us are struggling to keep up with everyday bills, and you're reaching for the credit cards to pay for all of it. But homeowners, listen up. Interest rates have fallen into the fives. That's nearly a quarter of the average credit card rate. American Financing is helping homeowners like you save an average of $800 a month by tapping into your home's equity and wiping out high interest debt. And the best part is there are no upfront fees to get started. Credit card rates are insane. And if you're carrying a balance every month, you're stuck in an endless cycle. Break free today. Call American Financing and see how much you can save. And if you start now, you may even delay the next two mortgage payments. Call American Financing today at 866-781-8900. That's 866-781-8900. Or go to americanfinancing.net SRS.
- [79:51]
D
Okay, so like, if you.
- [79:54]
Robert Bortens
How would it work?
- [79:56]
D
Cause as you're like, you know, talking to Sean about all this stuff, I have my questions over there, but I'm like, how would this work for a family that has to have a dual income? Or like you mentioned, like single moms, like, how do, how do you, how do they do it? You know what I mean? Like. Right. Like you could be a stay at home mom. And I'm assuming your husband was working.
- [80:16]
Robert Bortens
We've always both worked. Oh, okay. So that's the misnomer. But not full time. We've always had flexibility, flexible schedules. So when his schedule was full time, not flexible, I didn't work very much at all. And then whenever we started, cece started to grow. He quit, and I worked full time and he homeschooled. And then as things kind of leveled out, we both had our hands in it. And that's what most people don't understand is that almost every homeschooling mom has to work at least part time because the economy has forced that. Right. And then when they are really career minded or have professional degrees or things like that, like we have a lot of doctors that homeschool and what they'll do is they'll do clinics on the weekend or they work second shift if they're nurses. Like, well, there's a will, there's a way. Yeah, it's just seeing that way because you don't know a lot of families doing it to see all the ways to practice different things.
- [81:04]
Lee Bortens
I mean, you have to be willing to get off the consumerism hamster wheel that, you know, I think they, you work for a company, you don't like doing something you don't want to buy stuff you don't need. Right, right. And so, but we're so used to that. And also you get, you know, you kind of have this situation now in the United States where people are having kids older and older in life, and so they've gotten used to a certain lifestyle and certain things that aren't necessary to live the good life. But you know, they have a house that's too big and used to vacations that are too extravagant and cars that cost too much money. And they don't want to take a step back from a lifestyle perspective. And the government will pay for their kids to get an education. And so they went through that same system. And even though that system's changed a lot, that's just what they know. And so, I mean, there is financial sacrifice, but what good things in life have we ever achieved without sacrifice? And I mean, I think it creates kind of this like me mentality that we see that's so, you know, selfish orientation that we see in our culture today because we're not having the ability to, you know, really make ourselves less to make other people more. And I mean, we're the wealthiest country that this, this world has ever seen. Like, if you're not home for our children, if you're not home, if you're not homeless with like a mental issue, you're like in the top 1% that's ever walked this planet. And for the first 80% of humanity, they all homeschooled their kids. So to think that we've suddenly become so wealthy that we can't afford to homeschool our kids, but a lot of it is lifestyle driven. And you have to decide do you want to go on these types of vacations and live this type of lifestyle, or do you want to live a homeschooling, family centered lifestyle? And because the family's broken up so much, it's hard for people to see that difference. And I mean, obviously there's situations that make it more difficult or life decisions that make it harder. And that's when the church is supposed to jump in or community. And like, you know, we have an Older gentleman at church, you know, him and his wife didn't have any kids. There's a single mom. And you know, he helps pay for those kids education because he didn't have kids education that he had to pay for himself. And he wants to make sure they have a Christian education. And so when humans have the opportunity to help humans, we see good results. But when the civil government steps in, it screws everything up. And so the problem is the civil government has expanded so much that most of us, you know, we're conditioned the environment that we're in, and we know no better. And so when someone has been eating mud cakes their entire life and you offer them an apple pie, they say, why would I ever want to do that? I got these free mud cakes. And you're like, apple pie so good, you know, but you can't. You can't describe it to them. Their taste buds have been numbed by just the life that they've lived. And so we're trying to say, you know, throw away the world's wisdom, follow God's wisdom, and it's gonna look like you're crazy. But guess what? It works out better for you in.
- [84:04]
Robert Bortens
The end because people can't separate daycare as an issue from education because they put it together. And I think that's like, when people ask that question, they're trying to figure out, how do I logistically do this with the expectations I have at this point. So Robert's trying to help people see the change your expectations. But meanwhile, I call that like a Monday problem. You're still gonna wake up Monday and try to figure out, what in the world am I doing? And one of the places I think Classical Conversations is helpful compared to other, like homeschool co ops is all of us are in that same boat. And what you'll find over time is that CC moms like, I got to work, my husband's sick. I get it. We help each other. Bring the kids to my house. I'll take them today. The sense of community within us is so different than what most churches provide because we're looking out for each other because we know we're doing and something so hard.
- [84:53]
Lee Bortens
This will be relevant to the voucher question. So we have a friend, Rachel, who's in Arizona. She's one of our leaders, and one of her friends who's in Classical Conversations took the voucher. Now Rachel has bazillion kids. They're giving up like $56,000 a year in vouchers. They're not taking the money and her friend, who was, I guess she was working part time, they were having conversations. She was trying to convince Rachel that what she was doing was a good thing. And she said, rachel, remember before I got the vouchers, I had to work part time. And when I had to go work, my aunt had to come and watch the kids so I could go work two days a week to make enough money for us to homeschool. But now I don't have to do that. And Rachel said, let me make sure I understand what you're saying. You used to work on, you used to rely on your family and hard work, and now you rely on the government.
- [85:52]
D
Wow.
- [85:52]
Robert Bortens
Right. Because it sounds like it's a good thing, right? Because it's an easy thing.
- [85:58]
Lee Bortens
Nothing good is easy.
- [86:00]
D
Jeez. Like, as you guys were talking to Sean, I like, I like I got emotional over there because I just felt like this, like, Holy Spirit in here. And then on the break, like everyone downstairs felt it too. And it was just like so bizarre. But it's really, it's a lifestyle. It's bringing it back to God and his way of life and just like, and taking a village and relying on other people and it.
- [86:25]
Robert Bortens
We're trying to be the body of Christ. We are trying to be the body of Christ, not enslaved to another non believing organization.
- [86:33]
D
Right?
- [86:33]
Robert Bortens
And Christians still can't grasp that somehow.
- [86:37]
Lee Bortens
I mean, when we're. One of the things, like when you become a Christian, there's no such thing as being a part time Christian. Like you're in full time, right? And so one of the things that Christ told us is now we're ambassadors to heaven. We are ambassadors to Christ. We're brothers and sisters in Christ. And so when you're an ambassador to some other country, right, the other country doesn't pay your bills, right. You're relying on the country that you came from, the king that you serve, right. And when you're there, you don't adopt their laws, you adopt the laws of the king that you serve. And so, I mean, we have very few people that are ambassadors. So you don't necessarily know those things about how a US Ambassador in Germany's treated or how a German ambassador here is treated. Right. And whose laws you affirm. And you don't rely on the government that you're going to visit or be an ambassador to to take care of you. And so if our Father in heaven has cattle on a thousand hills, why would we want the crumbs from the enemy's table? Right?
- [87:39]
D
Yeah.
- [87:40]
Robert Bortens
That's how we see it.
- [87:41]
Lee Bortens
That's how we see it.
- [87:42]
D
Yeah, it's so true.
- [87:44]
Robert Bortens
But Monday shows up, right? And it's hard and we got the.
- [87:49]
Lee Bortens
Flesh and we're sinners and we live.
- [87:50]
Robert Bortens
In America and make bad decisions. We self harm.
- [87:54]
D
Right. But it's that cycle. It's that keeping up with like the whole Joneses type thing and. Yeah. Consuming things and wanting those great vacations and at what cost, though?
- [88:05]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, one of the things, like homeschooling gives you 16,000 hours back with your kids.
- [88:11]
D
Wow.
- [88:12]
Lee Bortens
How can you afford. No one can. How much would you Pay to get 16,000 hours with your family or someone that you love?
- [88:19]
D
Right. Yeah, there's no.
- [88:21]
Lee Bortens
There's no money.
- [88:22]
D
No money in the world.
- [88:23]
Lee Bortens
Right. I mean, who lies on their deathbed and says, I wish I had spent more time in the corporate office?
- [88:29]
D
Oh, I know. I always say that. I know. I always say that.
- [88:33]
Lee Bortens
Spend too much time with my kids. I just wish I had been there with my work husband, you know, I.
- [88:39]
D
Always say that to Sean. I'm like, no, you're never gonna look back on your life, like on your deathbed and be like, God, I wish I could just check Instagram one more time. You know what I mean? Like, things like that. Like, come on, let's be real.
- [88:49]
Robert Bortens
So what are your other questions? That was long winded.
- [88:52]
D
So, yeah, basically. So that was really my thing, like, how do people do this? You know what I mean? So you answered that perfectly. But my other one is I've heard a lot about classical conversations and classical education, and I've heard you mentioned it both up here too. So what is the difference between classical conversations and classical education? Because I also know there's like a classical school here in Franklin, and I think it was like, founded by one of the founding fathers of classical education.
- [89:27]
Robert Bortens
Probably George Grant or something. Did that one. Yes. Yeah. So classical education is what all of us are about. That's like the ideology of education, but we all go about doing it a little differently. And so Classical Conversations is just one organization helping people with classical education.
- [89:43]
D
Okay.
- [89:43]
Robert Bortens
And so our model is to not chase the children, which what schools do. Our model is to support the parents. We have a different consumer mindset than a school would have. And then there's other co ops who have like. So we're super structured. There's other co ops who are like, they're doing a good job, but you never know next semester who's teaching or what it will offer. So the consistency isn't as strong. And we're not against those. We think parents should do what they want to do. So what Classical Conversations model is, we assure you that if you pick up and move to Italy next year, you can join that CC community and all your curriculum is going to work.
- [90:19]
D
Got it?
- [90:20]
Robert Bortens
We're very.
- [90:21]
Lee Bortens
The military loves our curriculum because it's whether you're in Mozambique or Michigan or Tennessee, that if it's week five of the semester, you're doing the exact same thing all around the world. And so we get, you know, college. We have history songs that we teach the kindergartners through sixth grade, and they memorize those. And so, you know, we hear stories all the time about, you know, they're at some college and some history professor says something that triggers some kid's mind. You know that song they said? He starts humming it, and then his neighbor looks at him, goes, did you go to Classical Conversations too?
- [90:58]
Robert Bortens
And so we hear it a lot, that story. That's really cool because a lot of them, we got really big later. So if you're in college now, you may not have gone through CC the whole way, but your little siblings are. And so they'll go, my brother won't stop singing that song. You know, I've heard it before, so it's just kind of fun. That's neat. So does that answer your question? So I was hoping with Sean, we can go through exactly what cece is and our differentiation from other programs.
- [91:25]
D
And I think you guys are going to take him through, like right now, starting our son basically, like at what age and what to expect, that type thing.
- [91:34]
Robert Bortens
But it's really hard in a first time conversation because people still have. They still have school in their mind and they try to fit what we say into school, and it doesn't work. But it's the best you can do because it's all, you know. So we're hoping that we can go slowly through that. I make the analogy that, like, if I was gonna go learn cricket and they have a battery, well, I would bring baseball and I would have the hardest time figuring out. The batter rules till I could say, no. This is a different paradigm. The batter doesn't do the same thing except hold a stick, Right. So that's the place we find ourselves with classical education.
- [92:09]
D
That makes perfect sense. Yeah, because it is. I keep thinking back to school, you.
- [92:13]
Robert Bortens
Know, and you have to. The Lord made it that way. That's your grammar. That's what you know. And it just takes time to break that for something new. So it's kind of like if you've always done a certain knitting stitch as a left hander because that's what your grandma taught you. And then you try to go do it right handed. It's hard. I don't want to do it anyway.
- [92:36]
D
What do you think the biggest struggle for parents in the community is in our code, in your co? Yeah.
- [92:46]
Lee Bortens
I'd say parents in general, the biggest problem is they all have wizard of Oz syndrome.
- [92:52]
D
What do you mean by that?
- [92:53]
Lee Bortens
So in the wizard of Oz, you had a lion that, you know, needed courage and a tin man that needed a heart and the strawman that needed a brain. And at the end of the movie, at least they find out they had it all at the same time. And so they need the wizard.
- [93:10]
D
Right. Okay.
- [93:11]
Lee Bortens
Because of our accreditation system and our expertise system that we've established here in the United States that has corrupted everything that is touched. We have parents who have everything right inside of them that they need and can rely on other parents and grandparents and other people that have a year or two ahead of them to give them advice and, and they don't need any of those accreditation ideas. But we have a lot. My wife was obviously a public school teacher for 10 years, and the first year she was homeschooling our kids formally. She spent all summer preparing all the documents and papers and the worksheets and all that stuff. And I knew that if I had said anything that it was not going to be received by her. So I let her do all that. And then about middle of October, she just threw it all away. She said, why'd you let me do all that? Because that's what she knew. And I was like, I couldn't, I couldn't have told, you know, if I had told you that all that was a waste of time, you would have not listened to me. But a lot of times, because there is a lot of public school teachers or private school teachers at home school with our program. Like they basically say the first year or two of homeschooling, they're just trying to unlearned to be deprogrammed from everything that the teachers, colleges have taught them. I think it was my wife's second or third year homeschooling our kid. She goes, I went to school for four years, I got a master's degree, I taught for 10 years. And not once did they teach me how to pass on knowledge to the next generation.
- [94:50]
D
That's a really good point. Wow.
- [94:53]
Lee Bortens
Because I mean, you gotta manage a classroom of 30 people. That's not natural.
- [94:59]
Robert Bortens
30 children.
- [95:00]
Lee Bortens
30 children. I mean, in business, the goal is one manager for seven or eight employees. And those people are trained and paid every two weeks to be there. Jesus had his disciples and one of them betrayed them. And we expect our public school teachers to teach 30 kids.
- [95:19]
D
That's a really good point.
- [95:22]
Robert Bortens
Which is why we're not. We're for public education, but we're against public school because the very industrial model of it breaks everything that's natural about children. And people don't think about children the way we used to because there aren't very many of them anymore. Right.
- [95:43]
D
Yeah. This has just been like mind blowing to hear it all.
- [95:46]
Robert Bortens
So for me, for classical conversations, the parents, we have parents who've been in the program 20 years or more because they've had so many kids and our average is getting higher and higher. And about six, seven years in, they start to say, I thought I was here for my kids. Turned out I was here for me. I needed the women of the body of Christ to love on me and to teach me to be more like him.
- [96:08]
D
That's amazing. I love that.
- [96:11]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. But, you know, but people want to hear about the education and like, of who. Right? It's the parents that need educated because we have been shortchanged.
- [96:22]
D
And that was one of the things that surprised me too. When we first met downstairs and you were like, right away, you were like, it's all about the parents. And, you know, giving knowledge to the parents and the community that way. I was under the assumption you're gonna come in and be like, do this with your kid and do this with your. And like, make it all about the kids. But it's not, it's about the parents, which makes total sense, you know, And I mean, I'm a stay at home mom for our kids. And our three year old, he memorized how to spell our last name. How like our phone. My phone number. Because I'm like, I must be on the phone with a lot of receptionists because I'm always repeating these things. And he says it exactly the way I say it to a receptionist. So I'm just like, oh, my gosh. But it's like what you said about, you know, fighting insurance companies or whatever. Like they're picking up on all of those things, you know, so.
- [97:17]
Robert Bortens
And the hard thing is real life experiences.
- [97:19]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [97:20]
D
But I'm like, it's great. He knows, like last name and phone number, so.
- [97:24]
Robert Bortens
But as he gets older, he will do something very sinful and you'll go, oh, my God. He learned that from me. Oh, the mirrors Both ways.
- [97:32]
D
Oh, gosh. Yeah, yeah, that's already happening. Yeah. Shawn's gotten in trouble with a few words that have slipped out. Yeah. One of his first words he ever said was duck. And so you know where that led. Quickly.
- [97:51]
Robert Bortens
We're enjoying your wife. She's very smart.
- [97:54]
Sean Ryan
Get your questions.
- [97:56]
D
I'm all set for now. Till the next break. I'll have more.
- [98:00]
Sean Ryan
All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed my wife there for a minute. She had a couple questions that she wanted to get answered. So thank you guys for that, but I want to move into. So what's it like starting from. Do we start in preschool or is.
- [98:16]
Robert Bortens
It K you start when you're pregnant? You mean with our community at CC?
- [98:21]
Sean Ryan
I mean with classical conversations.
- [98:23]
Lee Bortens
Kindergarten. K4 kindergarten.
- [98:26]
Sean Ryan
So how does it work? Just start walking me through. What's the process? What's it like all the way through grade 12?
- [98:37]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So we have three programs. The foundations program is our K through 12, K through sixth grade program. And it's in the mornings from 9:00am to noon. So it's once a week. And we go through, you know, all the subjects. They're memorizing about seven facts a week in math, history, geography, science, grammar, Latin. Inside community. They are doing public speaking. So they start kindergarten. Kindergartner. They do public speaking.
- [99:13]
Robert Bortens
It's really cute. They have eyeballs and when they stand in front of the room, they say, everybody looking. We teach them to look at their audience and then they put it down. And when they're done, all the four year olds say, are there any questions? And then in between, they tell you about their teddy bear or Walmart trip.
- [99:30]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [99:30]
Robert Bortens
But they're four and they can do that.
- [99:32]
Sean Ryan
How many, how often do they do that?
- [99:34]
Lee Bortens
Once a week.
- [99:35]
Sean Ryan
Once a week they're given some type of a public presentation in front of their class.
- [99:42]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So they'll have done hundreds, maybe close to.
- [99:46]
Robert Bortens
They'll do about almost 200 by the time they get on the challenge.
- [99:50]
Lee Bortens
Yes. So they'll do probably close to that.
- [99:52]
Robert Bortens
6 through 12 year old.
- [99:55]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So looking at your eye and talking to you. They'll do science experiments. We try to do that Community day art experiments. Things that you wouldn't necessarily want to do at home that you can do. Some people, of course, love to do that stuff at home, but you're basically the K through 6 Foundations program.
- [100:13]
Sean Ryan
Let's break it down a little bit more.
- [100:15]
Lee Bortens
So you're learning this.
- [100:16]
Sean Ryan
My wife and I next year are going to. I mean, we've got to make sure decision within the next two years.
- [100:21]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [100:21]
Sean Ryan
And so what, what, what, what does that look like? What do we get? Where do we sign up? What can we expect as parents?
- [100:31]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So you'd go to classicalconversations.com, put in your zip code. It's going to show you a list of communities, and you say, oh, that community is close to us. Let me click on that. That local director would call you, invite you to an open house or an information meeting, let you meet the other families there, learn about the Classical Conversations curriculum. You would buy the Foundations guide, which is. Is good. All the students are learning the same things, K through 6th grade, but just going deeper into it each year. And then we have what's called three cycles, so it changes a little bit based on world history and some different things, geography each time. And so you're going to the community each week and we're going to demonstrate at Community. You're going to have the eight kids, a tutor and the parents around it. And the tutor is going to demonstrate how to teach these things at home as well as doing those public presentations, science experiments, art history, music history, stuff like that.
- [101:28]
Sean Ryan
So are the kids there at the community too?
- [101:30]
Lee Bortens
Yep, the kids are there.
- [101:31]
Sean Ryan
So it's like a live. Is it like a live class that the.
- [101:34]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, it's like a live demonstration. Flesh to flesh, eye to eye.
- [101:37]
Robert Bortens
The parents come together and practice together. So then when they go home, they know what to do.
- [101:41]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. If suddenly, oh, little Johnny's having this issue or whatever, you can call another parent in the community. How did you handle this? What worked? What didn't work? And so, yeah, so you're doing that for 12 weeks in the fall, 12 weeks in the spring. You know, basically, you know, for a kindergartner, you're probably working, you know, like I said, 30 minutes to an hour at home with that stuff. Working on handwriting, learning to read, you know, doing some math as well.
- [102:09]
Robert Bortens
Math and phonics.
- [102:10]
Sean Ryan
So kindergarten's about an. At max an hour a day.
- [102:14]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So you're gonna go to community three hours once a week, and then about an hour per day. And then. And you typically add about 20 minutes or so of formal education at home, every single kind of grade level until you get to about three, four hours a day.
- [102:29]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [102:30]
Lee Bortens
And then. So the nice thing, how many people.
- [102:31]
Sean Ryan
Are Community, did you say?
- [102:32]
Lee Bortens
It's broken up into eight families, eight persons per classroom. Our average community size is about 50 students, so about 20 to 30 families, depending on student size.
- [102:43]
Sean Ryan
Where does community take place?
- [102:45]
Lee Bortens
Typically, they're at the church is the general place where they're housed. And so, you know, Tuesday and Thursday are most popular community days, but there's ones on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as well. And occasionally they have ones on the weekends.
- [102:59]
Robert Bortens
So there's 2,000, there's over 2,700 churches that sponsor these around the world, around the U.S. so it's almost one per zip code. So that's why we. So we believe very much in touching each other while you learn and why it's geographically based with the churches.
- [103:17]
Sean Ryan
Can any church sign up to do this or is that also. Is there like a selection process or.
- [103:23]
Lee Bortens
So we don't work through the churches. We work through the community leaders and we help them identify and find churches. And so it's up to them because.
- [103:31]
Robert Bortens
We need five or six school rooms, Sunday school.
- [103:33]
Lee Bortens
The churches do reach out to us and say, hey, we would like to have a CC community. And like, all right, let's see if we can find a local leader to lead one in your, in your facility.
- [103:42]
Robert Bortens
So, but even maybe backing up before that. So let's say Katie wanted to be one of our licensed directors. So she would contact us and say, hey, I want to help the community and I have two or three kids. How do I get licensed? How do I get trained? And so we have a whole process where we spend a lot of time with her explaining on how you can start your own business doing this. And then we'd say, Katie, find two or three friends that you think would be amazing tutors and would be willing to do the work and want to also understand what Christian classical education is. So then Katie brings her friends to our training and things and we. And she works with them so that, you know, you might have one director and two or three tutors the first year, you might only have eight to 16, 20 kids. And then they grow.
- [104:23]
Sean Ryan
Did you just say start your own business?
- [104:26]
Robert Bortens
The directors with license all run their own business.
- [104:29]
Sean Ryan
How is, how does that work?
- [104:32]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, so I mean, this kind of a part time income they're probably bringing in, depending on the community side, you know, $30,000 a year in revenue, like 8 to $10,000 in profit once they get, you know, fully, fully full size. But they're just a small LLC or S Corp and they license our materials, they collect tuition payments and pay out tutors and stuff like that, and then pay us a licensing fee based on the number of students that they have.
- [104:57]
Robert Bortens
Because when homeschooling mamas stay home, they lose the opportunity to continue in their business. And Leadership skills and they lose the opportunity to make as much money. So I wanted them to look at them and say, look, you help other people do what you want to do anyway with your own children and all theirs. There, see, nobody needs daycare and let's practice it together. And so entrepreneurship is part of our training for our leadership.
- [105:22]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So we help 2300 women plus have a run a small business every single year.
- [105:29]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [105:31]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So the nice thing about our kindergarten through sixth grade program, because homeschoolers tend to have a lot of kids, they're actually memorizing the same information for each year. So my three kids, my ten year old, my eight year old, and my four and a half year old, they're all learning and being presented that same material each week. And so they're learning the same math facts, the same history facts. And then obviously the older kids are maybe writing a paper about it or going to read a book about it, versus the four year old is just memorizing the quadratic equation or Latin noun endings or something like that, and he doesn't know anything. But kids are sponges. And so God designed their minds at that age to love learning and love memorization. And so we're teaching you how to, you know, learn the multiplication tables by doing jumping jacks or push ups, or, you know, learn the history timeline song by marching around your room, or, you know, just different things. And the kids really enjoy it. And they memorize over a thousand facts each year.
- [106:36]
Robert Bortens
Wow. And it's not the memorization of a thousand facts that matters. What matters is we need to build our children's ability to memorize. Memorize. And we need to build their vocabulary. The people in the room that seem the smartest are the ones with the most copious vocabulary. They can use big words even if they don't know what they're saying. And so we help our children because they're totally capable of using the correct terminology when they're 4, 5, 6 years old. And so the memorization is just an expansion of what a parent's doing at home. You started with your children going, no, hot. Well, we've expanded that whole parental natural way of teaching your children to include science subjects, history subjects, math subjects. And we help the parents expand their vocabulary while they're helping their children.
- [107:23]
Sean Ryan
What about discipline? How does that work in the communities?
- [107:30]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, because the parents are there. They're responsible for the discipline. And so if a kid's acting up, you know, most of the time the parents just see that they're acting up and Pull them out to have a conversation with them. But, you know, if you have multiple kids in multiple different classrooms, you can't be with them all at once. And so, I mean, typically if you're aware of a kid who has different challenges or something, you know, the tutor is aware of it and there's having conversations ahead of time on how to handle that. And before community gets started each year we have a parent orientation, and part of that is an agreement on how we plan on handling any sort of conflict and try to use the biblical model and best practices.
- [108:10]
Robert Bortens
Matthew 18 is what we do everything off of.
- [108:13]
Sean Ryan
Okay, I guess, I guess what I'm getting at is, you know, one of the distractions in public school is class clown. You know, somebody that's picking on other kids, bullies, all that stuff. And so I guess what I'm kind of asking is, I mean, occasionally to deal with that. And what happens if you do have a student that's a continuous disruption to the class?
- [108:33]
Robert Bortens
So what you're not picturing because you're bringing school into your mind is, remember he said there's a tutor and a bunch of parents in the room. The kids don't get out of hand, except on rare occasion. Because if you're a dad and your 4 year old's acting up and I'm a mom in there with my 4, 5, 6 year old, I'm gonna say, can I help you? I will help with your children. You don't seem to know how to help disable. Okay, we're there to help each other. It's the parents that are there to learn.
- [109:02]
Sean Ryan
Okay, so it's one teacher and at least one parent. This isn't so community. Am I saying this right? Community?
- [109:11]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [109:12]
Sean Ryan
So community isn't we ditch our kids for the day, Classical conversations and Nope. Okay.
- [109:19]
Robert Bortens
And then because we have a wide group of ages and then our facilities only have so many rooms, you may have the 4, 5 and 6 year olds in one room and the 7, 8, 9 year olds in a room and the 10, 11, 12 year olds in a room. So if you're a parent that has one in each of those, you kind of have to bounce around to see what's going on with them. But you can only fit if you got 60 kids. You can't put them in one room. We've got to divide them. So we divide them up in groups of eight as the biggest class size. And then that generally ensures that most parents might only have two classrooms unless they have a whole lot of kids, because there's A range of ages in those. So most parents then will say, you know what? I'm gonna stay with my child who needs me the most. It might be your little one is very well behaved, so you end up staying with your older one who's got learning issues, and then you peek your head in and look and see how the other one's doing, and we become a team. So, like, I had a mom one year whose child had severe issues, and she was an excellent tutor. And as a tutor, she couldn't watch them because she's tutoring. So I took it on myself and I arranged every time we had the kids started to act up, a different mother would walk him around the school building. He just needed to walk. And then he'd come back and he was fine for another hour. Right. We get to know each other's kids and love on them and take care of them and see what their deficiencies are and see what the parents issues are and. And help each other. This is Christian education. This is not modern education. So it's a hard paradigm to explain to people.
- [110:49]
Lee Bortens
Like, a couple years ago, we had a high school student in one of our classes come out as transgender.
- [110:54]
Robert Bortens
Right?
- [110:55]
Lee Bortens
I mean, we have people that join, you know, just. Cause it happens, it happens. And the community was. And the parents knew that there was an issue. They weren't supporting, you know, that idea in their child's head. And they just came together as a community and decided that they wanted to support this student the right way. And so all the kids said, we're not using your new pronouns. We're going to use the pronouns God gave you. And they allowed the student to stay in the program. And about 12 weeks later, they said, you guys are right. Thank you. Thank you for loving me. And gave up those pronouns and started identifying as God identified them. And so, you know, we're sinners. Situations happen. I mean, occasionally kids get asked not to return because of behavior issues or things like that. But since it's not, again, it's not like the parents aren't aware of the situation and going on and having conversations and working through these, trying to work through these things in a godly way ahead of time, that we're usually able to head them off or get them back on the right track. So.
- [112:01]
Robert Bortens
And you're asking these questions because the age of your children, which is good, but we do have middle school and high school programs too. So that's what he's referring to as a high school child did this. But the same thing. They're in Groups that we go up to 12 is the most at the high school program. And there's usually less parents in those rooms because those parents normally have to go be with the little kids. And so then it's on the director or the tutor's part to say to the mom, hey, kid did great in logic this week. Or you guys, you need to do a little bit more math. But I don't go home and do it with you. I tell the parent what happened and give them some feedback to encourage them and their child. Because we can't all see everything and even when we're in the same room with our children. I remember I was tutoring my fourth born, and this woman kept popping her head into the classroom, and this is when he was 14 every week. And I finally looked at her and said, why do you just keep looking in my classroom? You don't come in or talk or say anything. And she said, oh, I'm just watching David grow. And I was like, what? And that was the year. He grew 12 inches in one year. And I was trying to figure out why I was having so many discipline issues with him. Well, your body can't. If your body's growing that fast, your mind is not growing. And so her just noticing that made me go, no wonder my kid and I are struggling. He's probably in pain. Well, I wasn't noticing that. Why? Because I see him every day, but she saw him once a week. So we're a team trying to say our children are body, soul, spirit and mind, not just academics.
- [113:29]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So we have, typically, not the younger students, but the older students will have what we call a memory Master. And that's when it's. They'll. They'll basically recite from memory all 1200 or so facts. They do it to their parents and then the tutor and the director, and so they. That's a kind of a highlight opportunity. You don't have to do that. My kids haven't done that yet, but they will as they get older. And we actually have a competition every year called the National Memory Master where they have to memorize all these things and do it in front of like a elimination competition. And they have to not just give the facts forward, but also backwards. And so we'll give them like a history, timeline, sentence and tell them to go backwards or tell them to, hey, give us the 15 times table, starting at 15. But. And so they have to start with 15 times 15 and then do 15 times 14, et cetera. But yeah, I mean, my kindergarten old kid knows 1 times 1 through 15 times 15 at the end of the year.
- [114:31]
Sean Ryan
Your kindergartener knows that.
- [114:32]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, he can recite it. He doesn't understand it. Right. But the understanding can come quicker because it's in his head.
- [114:40]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [114:41]
Lee Bortens
We haven't memorized things like the quadratic equation. Basically, a timeline from the beginning of history to today.
- [114:50]
Robert Bortens
160 points on the timeline. They memorize each year over and over again. The same 160 so that by the sixth year they've got it down. And then they can go backwards, not just forward or start in the middle.
- [115:01]
Lee Bortens
They memorize every country and every capital, not just of the United States, but the whole world. And Donald Trump said no one's heard of that country before. Every single classical conversation student can point on a map where it is.
- [115:17]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [115:18]
Robert Bortens
So like when they get to challenge.
- [115:19]
Sean Ryan
A, when does that start?
- [115:21]
Lee Bortens
Well, I mean, it takes a while for them to be. To do that. But challenge A, which is our middle school. The first year of middle school, they. At the end of the year, they have to draw. They have an hour to draw the whole entire world. They get a big piece of paper and a pencil and an eraser, and they have to draw the entire world. Rivers, capitals, countries, oceans. Label all of them.
- [115:45]
Robert Bortens
So, yeah, so they're labeling almost 600 locations at the end of the hour and process. And they do it as fast as they can. And we say, be sloppy, just get it down. It's not because you're better than anybody else. We want you to prove to yourself what you know and what you don't know.
- [116:01]
Lee Bortens
So starting in fourth grade, we have our Centrals program.
- [116:04]
Sean Ryan
So that's what's on the historic timeline.
- [116:06]
Robert Bortens
What kind of Centrals creation. The fall can enable the flood, Tower of Babel. And then we go into.
- [116:12]
Sean Ryan
Is it all biblical?
- [116:13]
Robert Bortens
No, but the early five or six events are. And then we get into things like.
- [116:20]
Lee Bortens
The rise and fall of Israel, Jesus Christ, modern history, World War II.
- [116:26]
Robert Bortens
But that's all still biblical.
- [116:27]
Sean Ryan
They got things like independence, stuff like.
- [116:29]
Robert Bortens
This, the war between the States. There's all kinds of things. Yeah. Elizabeth Henry, all the kings.
- [116:36]
Sean Ryan
And so it's a world timeline.
- [116:38]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, it's a world timeline. Yeah. So they have like transcontinental railroad and then the first train in London. There's just all kinds of things that they memorize.
- [116:46]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [116:48]
Robert Bortens
So they don't know what they're doing at first. I remember a mom texted me. She said my two year old just named our new puppy Amenhotep the fourth. Right. Because we're building this copious vocabulary around the kids and it's fun, but that's only one of the things we have. Review and new on the memory work. But they always do a science experiment together and they always do art projects together and they always do a presentation in front of the group. So those are the five what we call topics that we use with the little kids.
- [117:19]
Sean Ryan
What about as a parent? What about testing?
- [117:23]
Robert Bortens
What about testing?
- [117:24]
Sean Ryan
Do we submit any tests? Do we.
- [117:26]
Lee Bortens
I mean, each state's different. So like in the state of North Carolina, we have to do an end of grade test, but we just keep the results. You just have to do it.
- [117:35]
Robert Bortens
Nobody checks on you unless there's a.
- [117:37]
Lee Bortens
I don't know the rules in Tennessee. Tennessee's pretty, I think a pretty free state. So I don't. Some states do testing every other year. Some states have no testing requirements. So some states, like Florida, you can either do an end of grade test or have a teacher evaluate your kid at the end of the year. So each state's different. So I can't necessarily answer that.
- [117:58]
Robert Bortens
So like Texas has nothing, right? Texas has always allowed you to just do whatever you want. And so do you hear the words I just said Texas has allowed you. Fathers shouldn't be letting a state tell them what they're allowed or not allowed to do. But we do have to. And we help families in the states that have testing. We have resources to help with that.
- [118:19]
Lee Bortens
But we do a lot of assessing, assessing inside of classical conversations like that four year old, after they give their presentation for the day, they'll ask what's one thing he did well and what's one thing he can improve for next time?
- [118:37]
Robert Bortens
And that gets more sophisticated as they get older.
- [118:39]
Sean Ryan
The question we ask them, what about, you know, big. You know, I think one of the biggest topics that people talk about when it comes to homeschooling is socialization. And so I mean, how do you guys see kids socially who aren't around classmates every day? It sounds like it's one day a week, it's eight kids. Do you see those? I mean, how did just go into the socialization?
- [119:11]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, I mean for. Yeah, yeah. I mean a big obviously question over the years. I mean the driver of that original question, like we told you earlier, like parents were getting thrown into jail for homeschooling their kids. So we weren't socialized because we didn't want to go to jail. But nowadays that's not the case. But like for us, we'll have friends over and they'll do some classical conversations, work together outside of those community days, obviously you got a lot of, you know, socialization, whatever going on there. Church, sports, you know, all of these different activities that kids are involved in. I mean, all the statistics show the government, like tracks it and as adults, you know, says homeschoolers are more active in civilization than any other peers. Voting, you know, being involved in their community, etc. So when. This is what I tell people, when. Sean, I don't know how old you are. When do you. Are you in a room with 30 people your exact same age from your exact same zip code as an adult? Never.
- [120:14]
Sean Ryan
No.
- [120:15]
Lee Bortens
Right. So we're not modeling anything in a public school or private school setting that exists in real life. It's all artificial. And so socialization for my kid is going to the grocery store and talking to the clerk and asking where the pancake batter is. It's going to the mechanic shop with my wife and asking how much an oil change is gonna be.
- [120:36]
Sean Ryan
I think what I'm getting at more is like, I'm not talking about ages, I'm just talking about. I think a lot of. I just think people get worried that their kid is going to be socially awkward and not.
- [120:50]
Lee Bortens
Thank God, like not. Sorry, they're not trans.
- [120:54]
Sean Ryan
Not. Not being able to resolve. Resolve conflicts. Social conflicts and, and not being able to. To. To. To make friends and stuff. I think that's kind of what more. More of what I'm talking about. It doesn't have to be our own.
- [121:10]
Lee Bortens
People, but sure, I mean, their own.
- [121:11]
Robert Bortens
Age talked about the limp handshakes and they don't look in your eye and they went to public school. I mean, that's the one thing about homeschoolers that adults always comment on. They look you in the eye, they talk to you and ask questions. They care about you. So socialization is very different. I mean, everybody socialized somehow. It's just. What is the outcome of that socialization? So we're trying to raise our children to be brothers and sisters in Christ. We're not trying to raise them to be another 12 year old or to be a janitor or an engineer. We're trying to raise brothers and sisters in Christ and that means they have to learn how to serve the world. So the socialization comes in, I think, and there are opportunities to serve other people. And most homeschoolers do that on purpose. So we're still the ones visiting senior homes. Go ahead and call the local drama society here and ask them who's showing up for the Community theater to be in there. It's homeschoolers. We're the ones that are out doing all the community activities because the kids have been in a box for the whole day. They come home and they, you know, and then they have sports. They're tired, they're weary. Our kids are full energy.
- [122:20]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. I mean, it's just such a. I mean, I know why people ask the question, but it's just so nonsensical at this point for us. I mean, it's just.
- [122:28]
Sean Ryan
It is for you, but it's not for somebody on the outside looking in.
- [122:32]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [122:32]
Sean Ryan
So somebody on the outside looking in thinks they're with. They're with mom or dad all day long. They never leave the house. They don't get involved in extra. In extracurricular sports. They're not going to be able to be in intramural sports. There's not going to be school dances. Is my son going to be able to talk to a woman because he's not around him? Like, that's. That's from the outs. That's the perspective from the outside looking in.
- [122:58]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. And like I said, the reason that that was the perspective was because homeschoolers did have to hide because we didn't want to get arrested early on. But nowadays we can move her about freely. And so, yeah, I mean, I know we have top 10 draft picks. We've got four kids in North Carolina that got D1 scholarships on golf teams. Like, look at almost every single Olympian in this individual sport. They're all homeschooled. So it's just the opportunities out there. It's not provided to you by the civil government. You have to go find it. But there's homeschool sports clubs, there's homeschool debate clubs, there's science clubs, there's, you know, starting going to work. I started working full, almost full time when I was 16 years old for an engineering company. So there's life. Life's out there. You're not. Are there parents who might not do what they ought to do? Sure. I mean, that's in any situation. Right. But the majority of homeschool parents, I mean, that's a concern for them too. Right. They want to have grand. They're not staying at home with their kid if they don't want to have grandchildren. Right. So they want little Jimmy or Jane to be able to find a good mate that's going to take care of them and stuff. So do you see the kids that.
- [124:10]
Sean Ryan
Are involved in community together? The eight kids do they generally become is that their social circle?
- [124:18]
Robert Bortens
Well, it can be. So the thing that most people don't know is that a third of all children in the United States move every year. That's for all demographics. And so what happens is that they become close to one another but then they move and they're in a different CC community. So that's one thing that happens. The other thing though that happens is because of the growth CC has had, every couple years, most communities split in half to go start another one. And so those children now have those friends and new friends that have come in in order to grow. Our model because it's very mission based, we're telling parents you don't have to go to Africa to be a missionary. You can just go down to the next zip code and start a new CC community and teach folks about Christianity. So the children go right along with them. But we have one thing, something I think is very wonderful, but that might sound like not to you, is how many CC students are married to each other and they aren't necessarily from the same community. They might have found each other when they went to college and and get married. There's a lot of them.
- [125:24]
Lee Bortens
I mean like for our household. My oldest tent daughter's 10. She's one of the top five gymnasts in the state of North Carolina. She trains 12 hours a week. My wife coaches. So we have like our homeschool classical conversations friends and we have her gymnastics friends and sometimes we have neighborhood friends. Yes. Sleepovers with mixture of groups or individual one or other. And she have friends that go to public school and private school and all sorts of things. And you know, my eight year old son plays, you know, rec baseball and rec basketball and did some combatives and so again just kind of interacting with people of all demographics and in different sort of activities. He does a robotics camp where they learn to program robots and do them out of Legos and stuff like that. We have a guy named Bernie Carbo at our church, he's a Hall of Famer for the Boston Red Sox. And I take my 4 year old and 8 year old at 10am during the week once a week to go get baseball hitting practice from a Hall of Fame baseball player. Charges me 20 bucks.
- [126:29]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [126:30]
Lee Bortens
And then he gives them also the gospel of Jesus Christ and tells them about how he loves Jesus and his background. And so yeah, there's all sorts of opportunities when you're not stuck in a box eight hours a day for 180 days a week.
- [126:43]
Robert Bortens
So think about it from the military perspective. There's only been two cultures that have been successful at having public education that the government fully controlled, and that was ancient Sparta and modern Prussia. And neither one of those organizations, those groups of schooling situations, thought it was a smart idea for teenage men to be sitting in a school building. They made them right. They got their academics and they went into soldiering. We're the only culture it's been the last hundred years, and we made it global, where we said to young men, you need to sit down all day long and not train them to go out and serve the community and get a skill set that will make it so they are employable as well as just situationally aware. Situational awareness is what you're describing when they look down and don't shake your hand. And as a soldier, you know that's probably the most important skill to give your children is that. And so we focus on that a lot as homeschoolers. Are you paying attention to who's in the room with you? How are you going to serve them? You need to be kind. I don't care if you like Latin. Your classmate does. You better do a good job so that she'll be happy. Like it's. It's paying attention to the rest of the world is what we're trying to accomplish. The people want us just to bring. See, think about when you're with your little ones that you have, they're smaller than you, so God designed them to have to look up. They look up to you. They look up to their wife. They look up to the stars in the sky. You're the first face of God that they've ever seen, and we all have to look up to him. Why will your son one day be taller than your wife? Because if a mother can't look up to her son, who else is going to? So God in his natural order, has made it so that we should know the natural way for children to be raised. But what do school books do in the classroom? They all look down. That's painfully wrong to do to a child, let alone a really energetic young man. There are women who love that school setting, and there's a few men that love school settings. But that's not what we were designed to do for the majority of our childhood. We were designed to work our butts off all day long like they did in early colonial America. And then when it started to get dark at night, you pull out your Bible, you pull out your instrument, you pull out your history book because you're too darn tired to go work anymore. And then you study the academics. But we have it all flipped around.
- [129:11]
Lee Bortens
So for like practical, practical stuff. What we do at our house is the night before I put out handwriting and so the kids wake up, they go downstairs, do about 10 minutes of handwriting, then they'll go like my 4 year old, that's all he does, you know, and then we'll do. My 8 year old will then go do a math lesson. My 10 year old will work on a paper that she's writing and then after, then I'll serve him breakfast and I'll go to work. Then my wife will come in and do about 30 minutes of memory work where she's reviewing some of the past memory work from the previous weeks and then spending time on the current memory work and getting them to parrot back, parrot that, back that to her. And then basically doing a reading lesson with each. And that's pretty much our day from an education standpoint, a formal education standpoint.
- [130:10]
Robert Bortens
Little kids, so if they were older children, they'd spend more time doing math and probably an hour in the afternoon doing some research and writing. And then they'd read two or three hours at night before they went to bed instead of watching a movie.
- [130:24]
Sean Ryan
What are they reading?
- [130:25]
Robert Bortens
Oh, I have a whole list. They read from challenge a, which is 12 year olds up through 18 year olds. In challenge four, they read 80 novels and write 80 papers, essays on those novels and then they read. So that's just in the literature strand. And then in the history strand, they read all kinds of original source documents about, you know, like the Magna Carta and the Federalist papers and things like that and write papers on them. And then the science strand, they work on writing science textbooks and learning how to do research and pulling it together and doing presentations and abstracts. So they're writing again. So by the time our students graduated challenge four, they've read a couple hundred books and they've written a couple hundred papers. And that is unheard of in even Christian education, but that's what they do. So a couple of children in the early days came to me at the end of challenge four and said, Mrs. Borens, we just realized what classical education is and you tricked us. If we just did math for an hour a day and read a book for a couple, couple hours a day and wrote a paper for an hour a day, we would be so educated. I said, wasn't that what you just did? And they're like, yeah, that's why we realized that we're educated. And what they're realizing is so the mother and father become facilitators. Sure, I'll get that book for you. Oh, yeah. I remember as a child, I used that resource. Let's go see if we can talk to that person or get it for you. You become a facilitator more than you become their teacher as you teach them to become autodidactic and teach them themselves. And that's what people who don't go through homeschooling, through high school don't ever get to see is that beauty of becoming your child's mentor. Facilitator. Right. Because you want all kinds of mentors for your children. But isn't it wonderful when you can be one of them?
- [132:10]
Lee Bortens
Usually by the sophomore year, the kids are doing 75 to 90% of the work on their own, and the parents are just holding them accountable and helping them out when they get stuck and helping them research or answer questions. I mean, they read books like Driving.
- [132:24]
Robert Bortens
Them to soccer, driving them to archery.
- [132:27]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. I mean, books like, you know, Johnny Tremaine, the Iliad, the Odyssey, some Chronicles of Narnia books. I mean, we. Each of our. Starting in middle school through high school, each of our years has a different theme, and all of our literature and history books revolve around that theme. And the final year, your senior year, is all about leadership. And so we're building all the core blocks to develop the next group of leaders in our country. And so the things our seniors do, a lot of people won't do unless they get a master's degree.
- [133:04]
Sean Ryan
We'll get to there.
- [133:05]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [133:06]
Sean Ryan
What about attendance? What happens? I have a lot of friends that do homeschool, and they. They travel a lot. They get an RV and they go across the country, or they do a tour in Europe or they go to Asia or whatever. And they. Jokingly, but not jokingly, they're like, yeah, this is homeschool. We're on vacation. This is education. They're seeing the world. They're seeing the Grand Canyon. They're seeing the Coliseum. They're seeing Gettysburg, you know, and so it's like. It's like a double benefit there. But so what happens if they're missing?
- [133:51]
Lee Bortens
I mean, like, even our family, because of our travels and work and stuff, like, we'll miss a couple. Couple weeks. So, I mean, obviously that's allowable. We're not forcing yet to get there. But you want to be a good neighbor, right, to people that are expecting you to be there. So, I mean, the fees are. If you miss, you still pay the same fees. But yeah, for us, like a lot of times if we're going somewhere else, we can actually reach out and find out if there's a local community there. And we've gone to other communities on weeks that we've missed.
- [134:22]
Sean Ryan
Oh, okay.
- [134:22]
Lee Bortens
And there's 52 weeks a year. We're talking about 24 of them and not even 24 full weeks, but 24 Tuesdays or 24 Thursdays. So a lot of times you, you can work around it and then, you know, we'll do a spring break and a fall break and stuff like that. So, you know, there's, you know, you have to work pretty hard to miss a significant amount of time. But I mean, there's definitely people who say, you know, we're going to wherever for a month and you know, they take off and say goodbye and say hello. But that's one of the benefits of our model is you can do that and you can know exactly what's going on while you're gone. So they'll take, take their books with them and they know what the, you know, assignments are going to be and what's, what's expected of them. And for the younger ages, they're going to see all the material twice in those six years. And so if you miss it one time, you'll pick it up the next time. So yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if you were going to RV school for 52 weeks, it's probably classical conversations probably won't work that lifestyle for you that year. But people come in and out and take long vacations and like our community ends the week before Thanksgiving and doesn't start till the second week of January. So that's a six week period right there. You can go take off and do something.
- [135:39]
Robert Bortens
Because we don't meet as many weeks as the school does. That's the thing. And that was designed on my part because we traveled a lot and I was like, we're not gonna be stopped the whole year.
- [135:47]
Sean Ryan
With this group in community, are all the kids, the eight kids, are they.
- [135:52]
Lee Bortens
All in the same grade and our bigger ones? Yeah. And the younger one and our smaller ones? Not necessarily, but they're usually again paired up by ages. So like my 4 year olds in a group of 4 and 5 year olds, my 8 year olds with just 8 year olds, my 10 year olds with 10 and 11 year olds.
- [136:10]
Sean Ryan
Okay, so is it individualized then if the grades are different, so each.
- [136:18]
Lee Bortens
Within that community day, they're gonna present to the level of the kids. So the group of fifth and sixth Graders who are being presented the same base materials that the kindergartners are being presented. Their experience that community day is going to look different than that based on their longevity and age groups.
- [136:40]
Robert Bortens
So yeah, so let's say they're doing a science experiment with the 4 and 5 year olds. 4 and 5 year olds just play, but the 12 and 13 year olds will do the same project, but they'll have to write a research paper or they'll have to do a scientific method or they'll have to do something with it. Then that way mama at home goes, okay, all you guys did the same thing in general. I'm going to go home and see. Oh, the next thing we're going to do at home is maybe we're going to do a bird study. And now I know how to grade it. I know how to help the little ones be involved while the bigger ones have more work to do. So that's what we're modeling is that each age can do a little bit more than the younger ones can, but we can still work on the same material because it's not the material that matters, it's the practicing the skills of learning that matter.
- [137:26]
Sean Ryan
Okay, interesting.
- [137:27]
Robert Bortens
Does that make sense? So if they're studying George Washington, you can do it at any level?
- [137:32]
Sean Ryan
It does.
- [137:32]
Robert Bortens
Does. Makes sense. So our curriculum's written to help the parents scale and our tutors model how to scale it so a parent can go, I see what you're doing now. I can do that.
- [137:43]
Sean Ryan
Okay, okay.
- [137:44]
Robert Bortens
Because we don't. One time a grandfather said to me, I want my daughter to home school, but she's got four kids. And if she does four kids and six subjects, how is she gonna do 24 hours a day? And I was like, you're bringing school home. Nobody does that. We combine our children together and we all do math at the same time. We all do science at the same same time. Because we need to be efficient at what we're doing too. So it teaches parents how to juggle and be parents of many aged children instead of like, I just can't handle you. There's too many of you. So we model being a parent of large families.
- [138:18]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So like my, you know, if we're learning about George Washington, maybe my wife's given them the George Washington history sentence that they're going to memorize. My four year old's coloring a picture of George Washington. My eight year old, you know, he's gonna color a picture and then go play with Legos for 55 minutes. My 8 year old's gonna, you know, color the picture and write a few sentences about him and go play Legos with her younger, his younger brother for the next 35 minutes. And then my 10 year old will write a paragraph about George Washington and I walk a five minute YouTube video on them or something like that. And so they all learned about George Washington and all at the same time. And so that's one of the benefits of classical conversations versus other homeschool programs, all integrated by age level. And so what we're teaching them and having them memorize as a four year old, they're going to see again when they turn 13 and 16 and 18. And so one of the problems in America with our math and why we're so bad at math is they're trying to learn algebra and they don't know addition or subtraction or multiplication. And so they're trying to learn algebra and multiplication at the same time. Versus we've taught our kids at a very young age how to do multiplication even though they don't understand it. But when they get to the algebraic level, well, they have that to fall back on and they're just learning, you know, why is there an A in here or B in here and stuff like that. So it's, it's really providing what's called the foundations program, a foundation for your student to be able to learn everything else at a much deeper level. And so that's one of the things that classical education is different from modern education. Classical education teaches you how to go deep in a very few subject matters so that you have those skills to do that anywhere that you want to as an adult. Versus modern education just teaches you that first inch, you know, a mile wide and an inch deep. And so you might survey a lot of information, but you don't exactly dive down into understanding it. And so it's a very deep education versus a very surface level education.
- [140:24]
Robert Bortens
The other thing is I want to just qualify some definitions. So we've said challenge A a couple of times. So we call our under 12 students foundation students because they're all doing the same thing and moms and dad are very active. Then challenge A hits. So we called them because there's a challenge, there's an A challenge, a B challenge. There's a challenge for each of them. So even though we have six traditional looking subjects in challenge A, their main challenge is called ownership. We learn to own your responsibilities then. Challenge B's challenge is to become disciplined. If you're going to own that, you're going to have to work at it. Challenge one, which is at our high school level, challenges freedom. You were becoming an adult. Do you want to be a free adult or enslaved adult? So all the literature they read that year is about enslaved and free cultures and talk about that. Then if you're going to be free in challenge two, you're going to learn and discuss choices. Freedom comes. With freedom comes choices. And then in challenge three, we go, but you know what? Choices have consequences. So all the curriculum is based around the literature and history, around the consequences of decisions people have made in the past. And then in challenge four, like Robert said, it's leadership. So if you are free to make good choices and bear the responsibility of your own consequences, you have an opportunity to be a leader. That's our grades. We don't say 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade. We say what the challenge is for each.
- [141:51]
Lee Bortens
So our history's around it, our literature is around it, even our math, geography, everything.
- [141:57]
Robert Bortens
So you may read like Amos Fortune Freeman in challenge one, who was a tanner. And while you're doing that, you're also in science, learning about biology and tanning. And then the math equations are such that you're beginning to understand how to apply the grammar, the memory work to actually to actual algorithms so people can process in a factory or plant. Everything is super intentionally integrated so that we're working on the whole child and not bifurcating everything that they do.
- [142:29]
Lee Bortens
One of the differences between Classical Conversations and other programs is because of that large age gap between my. My brother and I and the youngest two is Classical Conversations got started after my mom had basically, you know, homeschooled us through high school and saw the. Saw what she did. And the results, if you think about a scientific experiment, said, what should we do differently? And so foundations and then essentials and even the earlier challenge levels were actually designed around. This is what we did. This is the outcome that we had. How do we make it so that that outcome is even stronger versus your typical Christian school or private school? Right? They say, okay, let's do a kindergarten, and then they do a first grade because everyone liked it in a second grade and a third grade, and eventually they have a graduating class. But they get great results compared to the public school. But they didn't, you know, 13 years ago have the wisdom of saying, what is the steps that we need to take to make sure that we have a whole person who is a leader and free versus what Classical Conversations was? It's kind of like the Oregon Trail. I don't know if you played The Oregon Trail growing up, right, you picked a guide like Classical Conversations. We got to Oregon and said, well, that was a bad way of doing it. We should have done it much differently. And then we went back to the east coast, rerouted all the lines, figured out what the right trails were, and now we're just taking people metaphorically along the Oregon Trail. And so that's kind of how Classical Conversations is different. As we said, we got to the end of the journey and said, this worked. This didn't work. We want to help you. We want to tell you what works and what doesn't work. Work for our family. What we've seen work and doesn't work for other families. Take those, you know, hundreds of thousands of families over the last, you know, 29 years or 27 years, however long it's been, and give all that best practices to you. And we do that. We deliver in community.
- [144:26]
Sean Ryan
Oh, God. Okay, well, let's. Let's take one more break, and then we'll pick up. I hate to say it, but we called it fourth grade, but we'll pick up there and wrap it up.
- [144:37]
Lee Bortens
All right, sounds good.
- [144:38]
Sean Ryan
Perfect. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite, Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show, and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits, like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live, zoom calls with me, exclusive merch and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com vigilance elite. That's patreon.com vigilance elite. Thank you for listening to the Shawn Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to itunes, and leave the Sean Ryan show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, guys, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to pick up 4th grade. Ish. But, you know, I just. We had a. I mean, I can tell me and my wife were chatting down there right before I came up, and, I mean, I can definitely tell a difference. And the kids nowadays that are homeschooled versus not homeschooled, and you guys have brought up the fact that, you know, they're zinging questions at you. They're not just. They're not just listening. They're engaged they're, they're asking questions and like pepper and they're intelligent questions. And I noticed it with Jeremy's kids, my producer, and pretty much everybody's kids. They just seem more engaged, sharper, more confident and able to hold adult conversations. Like, it's impressive, man. It's impressive. And so I want to get into, I want to get into the fourth grade stuff, but I also want to get into how, like, how does that happen? How's that developed? How do you, how are you bringing that critical thinking and like the confidence to pepper an adult with questions into these kids?
- [146:58]
Lee Bortens
A lot of it's just lifestyle development, like the intentionality behind the program from those, you know, weekly presentations, teaching the kids how to do that, just having them be interested in life, having the parents that they look up to asking them good questions, not letting them just, you know, ask a question and not answer it, but actually go, maybe go look at it, look it up if they don't know it, and teaching them to go ask other adults questions. I mean, that's the thing that I think homeschoolers do more. Something that you can't get in private school is you just, in public school and private school, you have one teacher and that's the person that you go ask questions about in homeschooling, like I mentioned earlier, like if you have a question about something, you go ask the scientists in your church, or you go find an expert that teaches that subject locally, or go find a local business owners that's doing that thing and go have a conversation with them. And so I think just that that level of intentional behavior that parents are developing with their kids, it's just interesting.
- [148:04]
Sean Ryan
Because in public school, when I went, it's probably even worse now. I mean, people are embarrassed to ask a question. They don't. You see it, you see it in adult rooms. You know what I mean?
- [148:14]
Robert Bortens
They don't want to raise their hand or talk to you.
- [148:16]
Sean Ryan
They don't want to. Exactly. They don't want to raise the hand. They don't want to ask the question. They're embarrassed to ask the question. But what I notice about homeschool kids is they are not embarrassed to ask questions. And they can ask some pretty tough questions.
- [148:29]
Lee Bortens
Well, I think classical education is all about learning to ask good questions. And so it's the exact opposite of a lecture based education where you're just supposed to listen to some expert at the front of the room and write down everything you can and then regurgitate it. A classical education is all about learning to Ask good questions, learning who the experts are, where the source materials are. And so the kids just naturally grow up in a situation where they're more inquisitive than other people and they think it's a good. They've been trained that that's a good thing to do versus right. If someone's lecturing and you stop, I didn't get that last thing. Can you repeat that? Right. That's an interruption in their. In their space. And so that's frowned upon. Right? That's. So it's the exact, exact opposite. Just the mentality that homeschool parents have with a education, like, oh, the sun rises from the east to the west. Why is that? You know, oh, the ripples are forming on the ocean. Like, why is it. Why is that? Why is it low tide? Why is it high tide? You know? And you're just asking kids questions all day to see what they know or what they think. And since you're mentoring them in that manner, that's the same way that they're going to grow up and go, so.
- [149:42]
Robert Bortens
I have a friend who's 20 years older than me that was one of my mentors, and she always reminds us the scriptures say that a student will be like their teacher. And so if your teacher is somebody that you have just for a couple hours a week and there's new ones the next year, you don't even get to fall in love and know what they think. And then today, with all the online education, she. She says, do parents want their children to be like a plastic box? The homeschoolers that are intentional, they just spend the time with the children. So the children, that's their model. That's what they're going to be like. So if you're a curious parent, you're going to have curious kids. If you're not a curious parent, you might luck out and get some curious kids, but that's not going to be the intention that you have with them. So something else, though, is that.
- [150:29]
Lee Bortens
I think you mentioned at the very beginning about how parents are nervous. Like, can I do this, can I do that? And can I do a good job? And I think that motivates them and propels them to do a good job. Like, how do I know I'm a good parent? Well, you care. The fact that you ask that question indicates that you are on a pathway to being a good parent. And so how do I know? How can I educate my kids? Just the fact that you have that question and are willing to ask it means that you got A really good chance of doing a really good job.
- [151:04]
Sean Ryan
Well, you guys have my wife fully on board, and the interview is not even over yet, so. And really, I mean, me too. But let's. Unless something drastic changes in the last half of this interview here, but let's pick up at the fourth grade level.
- [151:22]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So in fourth grade, we have what's called our Essentials program and the Essentials of the English language. And that's when we start teaching them how to write and how to write well. And we use this program by Andrew Poodewa called iew, and it really just again, it's a model. So we take some of the best writings through history and start having our fourth graders and fifth graders and sixth graders modeling it. And then at the end of the year, they do what's called Faces of History, where they pick a character out of history and write a three page or three paragraph or longer, depending on the age group presentation on them. And then at the end of the year, we would do a big capstone, is what we call them in classical conversations, where they present their faces of history. And so they go, you know, you've got 15 kids, eight to 15 kids, depending on how many classrooms you have of that. And they're all presenting on different historical people. And so it's a very intentional writing program is really what Essentials is about.
- [152:24]
Robert Bortens
In the Faces of Histories, the audience is supposed to guess who they are based on the presentation. So they can't say the name of who they are. So it gives them a little bit of a, like, will they trick the parents or won't they trick the parents?
- [152:37]
Sean Ryan
And so the audience asks the student questions. And the audience is the parents.
- [152:43]
Lee Bortens
The audience is the parents and grandparents, you know, people like that. And so they'll go, and they'll, you know, if they're talking about, you know, George Washington, they'll probably, you know, dress up and be like, you know, I was a general in the war. I got shot six times. Or, you know, all those details and, you know, tell about some facts and some stories. And then, you know, they'll say, all right, who do you think I am at the end? And then the parents will guess. So we're practicing their presentation skills, practicing having, having them look people in the eye, practicing their stage presence. And so they'll do that 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, along with diving deeper into that memory work that they're doing. And then they'll head off into the Challenge program, which is, as my mom was describing earlier, those six challenges where we Put all the building blocks together for leadership and go back through history and read, you know, who struggled with what, you know, what were those things going on? Reading about Booker T. Washington and learning about, you know, slavery, the truth about that stuff. Not some woke version and not some whitewashed version, but what was actually going on in, in people's minds doing each, each year has a special event at the end of it. So they do things like Challenge A's. They do a science fair. So that's a big focus along with drawing the map from memory. Challenge B is mock trial, which they'll go and they. We have a case person dies on a work site. So there's prosecutors, defenders, witnesses, judges. And we typically have those in courtrooms with real judges. A lot of times they say that our seventh graders do better than the second year law students they see doing the same sort of presentations.
- [154:34]
Robert Bortens
You can go see one. So if you want to find out where the challenge because what happens one Challenge B and another challenge be from near zip codes. We'll meet at the courthouse and try each other. Both will prosecute and both will defend. And the public's welcome to see that. And for me, like the best story out of that was when I ran David mock trial. The judge said, you know what, he was a juvenile district judge and he said, I was going to quit being a judge. This was the end. I wasn't going to go do it anymore because all I hear is this horrible stuff from juveniles every single day. It's my job. He said, I'm not going to quit now because I just met you 12 students and I know it can be better.
- [155:16]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [155:17]
Robert Bortens
You know, so we hear those kind of things all the time. So to have the way that works is we do take a true case and we've had it, had it scripted or not scripted, but researched kind of at the student level. And then the children write the script based on their roles and they write it as a team. And then they meet this other team they've never met before and they go against each other and they wear suits and ties and they speak really well and they're all of 13 years old. So our expectations are just really high in those middle school years versus most school situations. Treat them middle school kind of as a waiting ground. They're not children who are fun at school. They aren't able to do what a high school student does. But we say no. They are dialectic. They will ask questions. They will rise to the occasion. So let's give them occasions to rise too. And so through the essentials and challenge A and B, that's kind of the focus. And as you can hear, it's a language, words and just getting their speaking skills sharpened.
- [156:15]
Lee Bortens
Tell them about the other capstones in the challenge levels.
- [156:18]
Robert Bortens
Sure. So challenge one is policy debate, which is you don't get to pick a side. And it's two on two. Huh.
- [156:27]
Sean Ryan
What age is this policy debate?
- [156:29]
Robert Bortens
14 year olds.
- [156:30]
Sean Ryan
14 year olds debating policy.
- [156:32]
Robert Bortens
And so the students pick the policy. The first, the first time they ever debate. We give our tutors ideas and help with directing the children. And then after that they could start picking what they want to debate on.
- [156:44]
Sean Ryan
What do they. Do they have a list to pick from or do they?
- [156:46]
Robert Bortens
Yes. Going on in society. Yes. So should the government fund the arts to death penalty? Death penalty, abortion rights. I mean, this heavy subjects that they get into.
- [156:59]
Sean Ryan
So do you see excitement out of these kids to do this?
- [157:02]
Robert Bortens
Not at first, but eventually, yeah.
- [157:05]
Lee Bortens
And they have to learn to defend both sides. So if you're pro death penalty, you have to learn how to defend. Want anti death penalty, you're removing it from the civil government's jurisdiction.
- [157:16]
Robert Bortens
So the public's welcome to come watch that capstone event. And that's that challenge one, freedom ship level. And then challenge two choices, they end the year with.
- [157:27]
Lee Bortens
Poetry.
- [157:28]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. No, that's challenge three. What is challenge two?
- [157:31]
Lee Bortens
The protocol.
- [157:32]
Robert Bortens
Oh, protocol. So at the end of challenge two, they go to protocol where they dress up and suits and ties, sometimes tucks and gowns. And instead of having a prom, which would be more traditional or modern, they go to the opera or they go to some symphony orchestra. But it's called protocol because beforehand we do instructions so that when they go to a very nice five course meal, the boys seat the girls and they know where the silverware goes and things like that. So then they get to. Because challenge two has a lot to do with art in our choices and how art reveals the choices of a culture. So we thought the capstone event should center around culture. So that's what they do.
- [158:11]
Lee Bortens
And they do an art grant that you're.
- [158:13]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, they write an art grant trying to understand how things get funded.
- [158:16]
Lee Bortens
We should have had them send it to usaid.
- [158:19]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, they were going to the wrong place.
- [158:21]
Lee Bortens
We were going to the wrong places.
- [158:23]
Robert Bortens
And then challenge three is what we have called the poetry Cafe. And the children spend the whole year in the literature seminars, reading ancient poets, modern poets, Shakespeare, and then writing their own poetry. And so they just like the faces of history for the little kids and the Parents the poetry cafes where they share the poetry they wrote that year with the bigger audience. And the thing that's really special to me is that poetry is very personal. It's like writing music. And to see children willing to share their poetry, which is not cool, in a public setting. And I've even seen them start, I've seen the audience cry because the poetry is so beautiful and that these children share their hearts. And the reason they're willing to do that versus not even ask a question in public school is they've been with the same about a dozen kids for the last few years with all the same parents around helping. They trust us, they're willing to reveal their heart because nobody's going to mock them. One of the best things I've ever heard in all of classical conversations was this mother of a 12 year old came to me in tears and her daughter was in one of my seminars and she said, you know my daughter and she's highly autistic and very strange. In all the years that she was in public school, she never had a friend. And since September and us joining classical conversations, she's gone to three sleepovers. And girls call her all the time. They don't care that she's different. That's what we're trying to do, is show that we can be kind to one another. So schools talk about it and regulate it. We help our children to live it. But they're modeling those adults who look you in the eye and try to help you. They're not modeling their peers who don't know what they're doing. They're little kids.
- [160:10]
Lee Bortens
That's the thing about private schools and public schools is because there's only one teacher to 30 students or 20 students, the students learn to model each other's behavior. And that's why you got cliques and these different behavioral issues, because they don't have the mentor mentee. You know, it's too big, it's too many. And so, and then they see a different teacher every single year. And so all it does is conditioned them. That adult in their life is going to leave them the next year. And their father, you know, if they're from a broken home, their father's left them, their mother's left them. They go to this school, they have a teacher that they like and then other teachers left them, but their buddies are with them. And so that's a lot of reasons why we have these behavior issues in public schools. Because the only people that they can trust to be around is, you know, their Five or six friends that have done all the things with them. And that's why you see a lot of these, you know, behavior issues that, that are there. But to mom's decision. The stories we hear from community, there was this little girl, she was disabled, in a wheelchair and would always watch the kids at recess go play baseball or whatever they were doing. And one week the boys were out there, 10, 11, 12 year old boys with this seven year old girl. And they saw her and so they stopped their game and they went in and got her and helped her hit the ball.
- [161:32]
Robert Bortens
Damn.
- [161:32]
Lee Bortens
And then wheeled her around for a home run.
- [161:35]
Sean Ryan
No kidding.
- [161:36]
Lee Bortens
Nope. No adult told him to do it. No adult was, you know, there was adult, you know, monitoring them, you know, for safety and stuff. But they just saw that this little girl was always watching them play and wasn't able to do that. And so they've had it modeled by their parents. A helping, loving other people system. And so I think that's a big, a big difference. When you have a community, especially, you know, you know, not 30 kids, but 8, 8 to 12 kids per age group and you know, siblings playing with siblings, different age groups playing with different age groups. I mean that's real. It's not socialization, it's creating civilization. It's creating a community and environment to uplift people and not tear people down. I mean, people always talk about peer pressure in a negative way because that's how most of us experience it. But in our communities it's the opposite. We help people rise. And I mean that's, you know, when the Bible says is going on a journey with a friend is good because when you fall down, they can pick you up. And that's why, you know, being in a homeschool community and not loan schooling is so important. And then we have our final capstone in challenge four.
- [162:45]
Robert Bortens
So that's the one that, I mean, the students actually really like to do this one. It's called their senior thesis. And they do the same thing you used to have to do to get your PhD. They write a 30 page paper on a topic of their choice and then they pick people from the community to come judge them. And then we invite the community to a church or a bingo hall or somewhere that has a stage. And the students present their thesis and in front of everybody, the judges criticize them and question them and try to get them to defend their thesis. So they show that they really did the work and they understand it. And that's what you used to have to do to get your Doctorate.
- [163:20]
Sean Ryan
Who are the judges?
- [163:21]
Robert Bortens
People from the community. The kids get to invite pastors and business owners and fathers that are senators or congressmen. Anybody can come do it. But the kids invite the people they want to judge them because they're not kids anymore, they're adults. And they need to know that assessments going to come from all kinds of people in all kinds of fields. And you know, most people don't want to public speak. And when that child has spoken for 15 minutes presenting their paper and then another 15 minutes answering questions, they feel like they can do anything.
- [163:52]
Sean Ryan
Yeah, I'll bet. How many people is it are they speaking to?
- [163:57]
Robert Bortens
Usually there's a few dozen to 50.
- [163:59]
Lee Bortens
It's not the three or four people.
- [164:01]
Robert Bortens
But three or four kids.
- [164:02]
Lee Bortens
No, three or four people are judging them.
- [164:04]
Robert Bortens
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Three or four judges.
- [164:06]
Sean Ryan
But they're also speaking to an audience, not just the Judges. Up to 50 people.
- [164:10]
Robert Bortens
Sure. Because it's a really popular event and we like every parent who's not there yet wants to come see what it looks like. So they'll be ready when their child's working on it.
- [164:19]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [164:22]
Lee Bortens
We want to start collecting those and publishing them and sending them. Yeah, because I mean, it's just amazing the research and stuff that. That these kids do.
- [164:30]
Robert Bortens
A lot of them are doing AI the last two years. So our group, I think is ahead of the curve with all the AI papers we've been seeing.
- [164:36]
Sean Ryan
Do you guys do any? I mean, what are the core subjects again?
- [164:41]
Robert Bortens
So we call them grammar, dialectic. Rhetoric, debate, research and logic are what we call them. They translate roughly to language like English and Latin for grammar, dialectic is just lost my mind.
- [165:01]
Lee Bortens
We got geography, history, science.
- [165:04]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, with the little guys. So we have.
- [165:06]
Lee Bortens
Yes, we do that.
- [165:07]
Robert Bortens
The older kids here. I'll do it the way you would know. So we do Latin math. So algebra for the older kids, Latin math, science, history, debate, and rhetoric, where rhetoric's a catch all. Presentation skills, reasoning, logic. They do six semesters of pure logic from challenge A on. They do a course in philosophy or theology for a semester at every challenge. And they do a course in formal logic and every challenge also. So that gives them three years of logic, which very few universities require anymore.
- [165:45]
Sean Ryan
Wow. Wow. Is there any, you know, is society kind of evolves in the tech world? Is there any. Is there anything that. Like coding or anything like that?
- [165:59]
Lee Bortens
Well, we don't do it specifically in our program, but as like we teach them how language is modeled, which is part of coding. We teach them math and logic, which is Part of coding. So they have all the building, you know, building blocks to do well at. And, and we see a lot of students go on to do that at university or even just skipping university and going right into the workforce. And like our CIO at work, he has, he knows 40 different coding languages and there's new coding languages coming out every couple years. And so it's better to, we teach them how to learn coding languages. So whatever the next coding language is, they can be the forefront of programs and designers and things like that. So it wouldn't surprise me at all to have a lot of classical conversation students doing this AI programming. So, and then the kids, because we work hard for a short period of time, we don't go the full length of a school school semester. So typically in starting middle school and high school, you've actually got an additional six weeks of school left to do at home that's not related at all to classical conversation. So a lot of times people are diving into those sorts of, you know, timely specifics for their family in those time periods. And like, for me, I thought I was going to be a computer engineer. I actually wrote some of the first websites for politicians in North Carolina. But I went and actually at the age of 16, worked full time for a coding company and realized that's not, not what I wanted. I didn't want to sit behind a computer all day. But those type of opportunities are there. So many of our students, you know, when they're 15, 16 years old, go and get almost full time jobs doing what they think they want to do the rest of their lives and they sometimes find out that it is, and sometimes they find out that it's not and they want to go do something else. And homeschooling kind of gives you that, that freedom.
- [167:58]
Sean Ryan
So are they using any technology for their, for their homework? Are they using computers, iPads, anything like.
- [168:06]
Robert Bortens
That they can do? We don't go home with them, so sure they can, but we don't allow that within our seminar days when they come to community.
- [168:13]
Sean Ryan
Okay.
- [168:14]
Robert Bortens
And we don't even let the tutors bring in PowerPoints or slides or anything. Our motto is stick in the sand. If the Lord loves some poor Indian woman who has no husband and seven kids and wants her to acquire, equip them to serve him for the rest of his life and she has no resources, well, we can do it too. So we try not to have an American education or an unachievable wealthy education. We try to have an education anybody can achieve.
- [168:38]
Sean Ryan
Okay. Okay. How do I mean, how does, how do the older students do on ACT SAT scores?
- [168:49]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, I'd have to. I mean, we have them on our website, but yeah, I mean, they typically are two to three points on ACT ahead of your homeschoolers, one or two points ahead of your average. Like Classical Christian School. I think about 70% of our students get academic scholarships to college.
- [169:09]
Sean Ryan
70%?
- [169:10]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [169:11]
Robert Bortens
But recognize not all of them want to go to college. So that's a pretty high number. We have universities that give scholarships just for our students.
- [169:18]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, there's at least a handful of them. They'll give you an academic scholarship just because you graduated from Classical Conversations because they believe in our students and their abilities so much. We hear from college students all the time who are like English 101. And the professor after like a month goes, you've got an A. If you'll help me grade all of your peers paperwork, there's nothing I'm going to be able to teach you. And, and I need the help getting your peers up to the level. So we have a partnership with the college in Florida Southeastern, where our students can actually get college credit for their classes and they're in such a way where they're transferable to other universities and things like that. So a lot of times, I mean, they could technically graduate with an AA if they did everything. But most of the time students are going to be graduating with 9 to 12 hours of college coursework finished. And that's actually a pretty good sweet spot in order to still get scholarships and stuff like that. And yeah, we had a student he was interviewing at Baylor and they invited him to his scholarship week and basically they gave him their scholarship assignment was, you've got 30 minutes. Here's, you know, here's a subject, here's three papers to read on it. Give us a one minute speech on it afterwards. And he had done that about 100 times in classical Conversations. And so he got a full $250,000 scholarship to Baylor because of all the work that he'd done. And I mean, that's one particular student that I know of, but that happens all the time over and over again.
- [171:03]
Robert Bortens
One of my first students, after only two years of being in challenge because we were just getting going, she got a Rhodes scholar to Oxford and then scholarship and then joined the FBI. So they, it doesn't take long to change the, you know, a child's abilities because they're fresh and they're young.
- [171:23]
Sean Ryan
Wow.
- [171:24]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, we much, I mean, we don't really lead with those type of Stats because we're much a seek first the kingdom of God and everything's going to be added. And the more we seek first the kingdom of God, the more that seems to be added. And so, you know, not, not doing it perfectly by any means, but it's quite remarkable. And even like special needs students are in our programs and we hear from parents all the time that, you know, the doctor said they're never going to be able to do this.
- [171:49]
Sean Ryan
You guys have special needs kids too?
- [171:51]
Robert Bortens
Oh yeah. A lot of people homeschool because of special needs because the school can't meet any of the needs.
- [171:58]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So it's. Yes, you gotta meet all sorts of people in classical conversations.
- [172:04]
Robert Bortens
Yeah. We've had whole communities that specialize in special needs. We don't like make that a policy or sanction it because as we've said before, the director kind of gets her own tutors together and finds the parents in that local community. So every now and then there's enough of them of interest that they'll get together with that. But that's not our standard by any means. Usually they're all integrated because they're coming with siblings and so there's usually a healthy sibling with maybe a child who's struggling. So we try to bring them into like that whole idea of mainstreaming them into the general population. We definitely do that because we don't think like, I don't know, Sean, I'm pretty sure I'm brain damaged. Every person has some things that they need to work on and so we just look at them and is somebody we have to help?
- [172:51]
Sean Ryan
I think the last thing with the. It sounds like we pretty much covered the curriculum.
- [172:55]
Lee Bortens
Yeah.
- [172:55]
Sean Ryan
And so.
- [172:57]
Robert Bortens
Oh, I wanted one part. Can I. The master's program. So one thing that we noticed, that's.
- [173:04]
Sean Ryan
Where I was going. Oh, is this the Master's program for parents? Yes, yes. That's where I was going next.
- [173:09]
Robert Bortens
What's your question? Perfect.
- [173:10]
Sean Ryan
Just.
- [173:11]
Robert Bortens
I can go. So we noticed 10, 15 years into CC that these parents who are teaching six different subjects to six different kids over 20 to 30 years were becoming very, very smart. And yet when their children were empty nesting, they had no credentials. And the world still wants credentials. So we got with SEU Southeastern University in Florida and we put together a Master's of Classical Studies through seu. And if you're in our challenge program doing the assignments with your children, which is the majority of parents do, you actually can earn your masters while you're homeschooling your own children. So we wanted to have a way to recognize how hard these especially mamas were working.
- [173:53]
Lee Bortens
Because we'd have the smartest, we have the smartest clientele in the world. And then they'd go work like minimum wage at the library because they hadn't worked in 12 years. But they're smarter than most, probably almost 90% of the professors in our college system. So why not make it so that they can teach college courses? And it's just normal moms and dads doing the work alongside their kids. And so it's an opt in opportunity.
- [174:19]
Sean Ryan
Yeah. So let's just go into that a little bit more. I mean, so do they get the masters for teaching?
- [174:26]
Robert Bortens
No. While they're teaching.
- [174:28]
Sean Ryan
While they're teaching.
- [174:29]
Robert Bortens
So in other words, let's say you work on an essay on the Iliad or some book from home or with your child. Well, you're, and you're taking the English course for this classical studies. So you get in with your master's cohort and you show the work that you did with your child and then there's a little bit of additional work to bring it up to the master's level that you'd complete. So you're doing it well with your children. Yes, because we're trying to show that the family can build community together. And so there are adult activities, there are children's activities, but mostly they're going to work together.
- [175:06]
Sean Ryan
Man.
- [175:08]
Robert Bortens
So we were just really fortunate because SCU had had so many of our students. They were like, what are you doing? Why are they such great kids? And we're like, well, because of their parents. And they right away were like, yes, we're going to help you make this master's program. Because now when these parents empty nest, we want them teaching at Christian school schools across the globe. So we want them already ready to go, not empty nest, then spend four or five more years afterwards before they can teach.
- [175:34]
Lee Bortens
Yeah. So we try to set it up. I mean, if they want to. We have about 100 people in the program. So it's the largest classical masters in arts in the world. Was the day we opened up registration. Yeah. So you can basically do this and come out with a 60, 60, $70,000 a year job or more if you want to. And so you can use all those years of homeschooling and expertise to shape more young minds. And so we, God said, honor your father and mother. And we have the audacity to believe it.
- [176:09]
Sean Ryan
Where do you, where are you guys heading next? What's the goal? What's the next, The Next benchmark you're trying to reach?
- [176:18]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we're higher education in college, trying to see what we can do there to influence even more, whether it might be starting our own or partnering with more colleges. So I think that's the next thing is because you got these parents are doing a great job with these kids, but universities, quite frankly, don't know what to do with them. A lot of them, you know, until they reach a junior or senior level, they've already done harder work in our program than they're doing at, at university level. And so it's kind of wasting their time. So we want to see if we can fill that gap. And I think now that we have so many alumni and parents who are alumni, how can we help them connect, create an alumni network and just continue to foster that community and take over the world?
- [177:05]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, I mean, we have, you know, we know that we have dozens of alumni producing podcasts and we need to find out who they are so I can be on them all.
- [177:15]
Sean Ryan
Good call, good call.
- [177:17]
Lee Bortens
But yeah, I think just be faithful to the Lord, what he has for us. And it's his business, we're his, you know, we answer to him, nobody else. So our goal is to hear the well done faithful servant. When we get to the bema seat.
- [177:32]
Sean Ryan
What does actually I do. So one over one. Is there any type of a graduation?
- [177:37]
Lee Bortens
Yes.
- [177:38]
Sean Ryan
What's that like?
- [177:39]
Lee Bortens
It's awesome. A lot of people just graduate, you know, locally, and they'll do it at their local church and stuff like that.
- [177:46]
Robert Bortens
Like their community will have an event for just them.
- [177:50]
Lee Bortens
But we do a graduation at the home office with Lee and I and about 5, 10% of our students come to that every single year. But we're actually going to, going to be moving that starting next year to going on a cruise, which we used.
- [178:08]
Robert Bortens
To do before COVID Which used to.
- [178:09]
Lee Bortens
Do before COVID So we're going back cruising. So it's a, you know, it'll be like a four night cruise or something like that. And one of the evenings we'll have a big graduation ceremony and party. So maybe you can be, come and be a kid.
- [178:23]
Robert Bortens
Yeah, we should invite him for that.
- [178:25]
Sean Ryan
Let me know.
- [178:25]
Lee Bortens
All right.
- [178:26]
Sean Ryan
Love to do it.
- [178:27]
Robert Bortens
It's just the greatest thing is that you get this 150 students from challenge four across the globe who've never met each other before. And in 10 seconds they're best friends because they've read the same books, they love the same God, they know the same world. They have this unity of people who just love books. You know, how they get together and talk about the same books. People who love classical Christian education love talking to one another. And I remember two graduations ago, our youngest son was there and he had been around for a while because he was in college and various things. And afterwards he came up to me, he said, mom, are all the graduates this happy? Because they were doing back flips and high fiving each other and just, you know, really enjoying the time together. And they had just met each other that day.
- [179:11]
Sean Ryan
Wow, that's really cool. That's really cool. So I think we're wrapping up the interview. Maybe I should have asked this at the beginning, but in both of yours I'd like both of your definitions. What is a classical education?
- [179:29]
Lee Bortens
Let my mom go first because she'll have the better answer.
- [179:32]
Robert Bortens
Do you want me to follow up with yours? So practically a classical education is one where instead of handing a child a whole lot of paperwork and asking them to fill it in mobile choice complete, the answer is instead you hand them a blank piece of paper and you say, tell me what you know about and you give them the topic because then they can assess do I know or do I not know? Because anybody can learn patterns to filling in the blank and multiple choice questions. So that's the difference between classical and traditional or modern education. But in general, what a classical education is is the trivium of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric. And that is why it's accessible to anybody. Because grammar really means all the words and ideas and images and things you put into your brain using your senses. And everybody has senses. That's grammar. The dialectic is everyone's got a brain. What are you thinking about? All those things that your senses told you about the world. And then, oh, I have a thought, I'm going to go do something. That's the rhetoric. And so no matter how brain damaged or handicapped you are, we all have that ability. And so folks who like are learning welding, they need to know the language of welding, they need to think about what am I going to use when I weld. And then eventually they may become an artist in welding. And people will say, you're really good at this. And how do I know it's because of what I showed you. So that's true with all of language also. So I'm good at. If you're good at learning language, you usually become good at thinking about language. And then hopefully if you practice, you become good at teaching or speaking or presenting things through language. So what that does in education is as a parent, if my child's frustrated or not progressing in an academic subject, I can say, okay, is it because I've not given them enough time to bring in the information? Is that all it is? Or you've had that experience where somebody, you go, yeah, I know he knows it. How come he can't explain it to me? We've gone over it. Well, maybe they've got the information, but they haven't thought about it enough to know how to express it. So, like, a really good example to me is when you watch a toddler and they're kicking their feet and they're frustrated, it's because they know they want to say something and they don't have the words for it. So the grammar, dialectic, rhetoric. The rhetoric is they're kicking their feet. You know, they know something, but they don't got the words. So the worst case was whenever we have war, especially when young men are bored and no one will listen to them and they don't have the words to describe what the problem is that they're trying to or that's frustrating them. And so we as parents are trying to say, there's not subjects we know. You have these senses. What can I do to teach you how to learn? What can I do to teach you how to think? What can I do to teach you how to express your thoughts? And it reduces it from all these university options and choices to a parent having just three responsibilities. And so that's what the classical model is. And I had said maybe earlier today, what we want our children to be able to do is to name like Adam, ask questions like Jesus, and persuade like Paul. That's to me, what the classical model does for us. And it doesn't matter whether it's in warfare or if it's in knitting.
- [182:57]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, I just add on to it. I mean, it's basically the way you learn anything. It's a process that you go through. And so for a classical education, what we're trying to do is pick the best materials that the human mind and God inspired has produced over the last 4,000 years, present that to the students, and have them go through the process of really learning those things well, so that whatever God gives them to do, or however the economy changes or whatever happens in their future life, they know how to address the challenge and overcome it. And so, you know, for people, you know, grammar, like, I like the story of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan, you know, at the height of his career, reporter said, you know, I'd Love to see how you practice. And Jordan says, well, get there at 5am and I'll be practicing. And so the reporter gets there at like 5am and Jordan's just all sweaty. And the reporter goes, you told me to get here at 5. What have you been doing? He's like, oh, I've just been dribbling the last hour. And so dribbling is actually a grammatical stage of learning how to play basketball. You know, that's what I teach. I teach you basketball with my kids. We teach the kids how to dribble and hopefully keep their head up. That's the grammar stage. So Jordan, even at the height of his career, was still practicing the grammar of basketball. And so the dialectic stage is when you cross someone over and the rhetorical stage is when you hit that game winning three to send your team to the NBA championship. And so sports and music never lost the classical model because the only way to be good at either of those things is, is to, is to do the use the classical model. So if you've been an athlete or a musician, you've not known what that's what you're doing, but that's the process that you were going through. Probably the same thing in the military, I would suspect, when they're teaching people, I know my brother was going through a gun course and they were teaching them the names of all the parts of the guns and what they did. Right. That's the grammar of the guns and then you're breaking it apart and that's the dialectic. And then hopefully you're shooting bad guns. And that's the rhetoric. So.
- [185:04]
Sean Ryan
So it's the fundamentals of learning.
- [185:06]
Lee Bortens
Yeah, it's the fundamentals of learning. And it's just practicing it over and over again with copious amounts of good materials and people that love you.
- [185:15]
Robert Bortens
Wow.
- [185:16]
Sean Ryan
I wonder, I'm just. How many of these kids become entrepreneurs a lot.
- [185:24]
Robert Bortens
All my sons are.
- [185:25]
Sean Ryan
I'll bet, I'll bet there's a lot of entrepreneurs coming out of there.
- [185:30]
Lee Bortens
We don't. That's the hardest part about homeschooling, I would say that's the one weak thing about homeschooling. We do not like to sit in a cubicle eight hours a day.
- [185:38]
Robert Bortens
I remember when my friend empty nested and I saw her a few days later and she'd gone back to work and she, I said, how's work going? She goes, they think I should sit in that chair all day long because none of us had ever done that. Right.
- [185:51]
Sean Ryan
Wow. So the classical conversations kids Start businesses and hire all the public school and private school people to work for them.
- [186:00]
Lee Bortens
Nice.
- [186:02]
Sean Ryan
Genius. But. Well, you know, to me, I mean, it sounds like. I mean, it sounds like it's a perfecting the fundamentals of learning so that you can go anywhere and learn anything you want and makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. And on top of that, I mean, me and my wife were talking downstairs about it right before this last segment, and, you know, just. It's a lifestyle, it's not a curriculum. And it seems like the premise for adults is giving your kids to have the tools to be better than you were and to just create, you know, to give the gener, the next generation the tools that need to be good people, have great values, succeed in life and. Yeah, man, I mean, that's all any good parent wants, I think.
- [187:01]
Robert Bortens
Can I give a definition of homeschooling?
- [187:04]
Sean Ryan
Sure.
- [187:05]
Robert Bortens
So most people think it's like I said earlier, is they bring in school home, and that's not it at all. What homeschool education is, is a husband and wife have children. And while they work on their marriage and they build their business and they build their home and they serve their community and they build their government and they build their church, they do all that construction work with their children around their feet. That's home education.
- [187:29]
Sean Ryan
I love that. I think about that all the time, you know, about teaching my kids all the things that go into. I mean, I really, really want my kids to be critical thinkers and to be able to. To question, you know, ask questions and know how to grow a business out of nothing. And that stuff's all really important to me because then you can go anywhere in the world and find success.
- [187:57]
Lee Bortens
Make.
- [187:57]
Sean Ryan
Not find success, make success. And. And I'm always just thinking about how I'm going to do it. How am I going to. How am I going to do that? And this model so sounds really like the perfect way. So thank you so. Well, Lee and Robert, I just. It was an honor to interview you guys and I love what you're doing. And I just want to say thank you again for coming. This is going to answer a lot of questions for a lot of people, and it's just amazing, like what you guys have built. So thank you.
- [188:35]
Robert Bortens
Well, we appreciate the opportunity.
- [188:37]
Sean Ryan
My pleasure.
- [188:38]
Lee Bortens
It was fun.
- [188:39]
Robert Bortens
It was fun. Yeah. We had good time with you even during the breaks. What a fun guy you are, Sean. Yeah.
- [188:45]
Sean Ryan
Well, God bless and I hope to see you guys again. Yeah, absolutely.
- [188:48]
Robert Bortens
Thanks.
- [189:03]
Sean Ryan
NBA veteran Jim Jackson takes you on the court. You get a chance to dig into my 14 year career in the NBA and also get the input from the people that will be joining.
- [189:12]
Lee Bortens
Charles Barkley.
- [189:13]
Sean Ryan
I'm excited to be on your podcast, man. It's an honor. Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner, Nixon. Now you see, I got you. But also how sports, brings life, passion, music, all of this together. The Jim Jackson show, part of the.
- [189:28]
Lee Bortens
Rich Eisen Podcast Network.
- [189:30]
Sean Ryan
Follow and listen on your favorite platform.