Transcription
What if I told you it doesn't take 13 years to educate a child? It takes closer to 90 hours, and everything else is just noise. Well, today I'm going to be sitting down with a mom of 15, an OG homeschooler of nearly 40 years of experience. And we're unpacking what children really need to learn and what might be completely unnecessary.
Hello, my name is Ginny Daniels. I'm a wife and mother of six and a former middle school teacher turned homeschool mom. Are you thinking of pulling your kids from the school system like I did, but you are scared to death and don't know what to do next? Well, my friends, I felt the same way, and you have come to the right place. I am here to help your family leave the school system so that you can take the hearts and minds of your children back. Welcome to the School to Home School podcast.
Hello, my friends, and welcome back. I am so excited to have today's guest on. She is a podcast host and a YouTuber and a very, very, very, very long-time OG homeschooler with 15 children. Her name is Sherry Hayes, and she hosts the YouTube channel and podcast at Mom Delights. Is that correct?
That's right. Mom Delights. Sherry, thank you so much for coming on today.
Sure, I love your channel. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. I love your channel as well.
So [laughter] So, will you just share a little bit about your story? Cuz you've got you've got 15 kids, and you are an OG homeschooler who's been who homeschooled for 35 years.
Oh, actually, it's coming up to 37.
Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Let's I want you to tell your story of what made you decide to homeschool, um, when it wasn't a quite a thing yet.
Yeah, definitely not. Okay, so, um, I learned about homeschooling. I was in the United States Army. I enlisted when I was 18 cuz I wanted to earn college money. And I met my husband when I was on delayed entry, and then I went through basic training. And I figured, wow, I've been through basic training is crazy. So, if you can do basic training in the army, you can probably do anything else in your life [laughter] And it's a breeze. No, anyway. So, anyway, I I met my husband and I went through all my training stuff, and you know, I had to learn to speak the Czech language cuz I was a military intelligence during the Cold War. And, um, so, when I was in California, I met this Christian couple, and the the wife kind of mentored me. I got pregnant. I had my first baby, and she mentored me the whole time. And I was a believer, but I really didn't know how to live the Christian life. And I had to rely on other believers to show me how to be a mother because I was kind of taught to be a feminist. And so, I didn't really know what in the world I could do with a baby [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. But you know, God blessed me and I went through that. And, um, as my, and when I was overseas without my baby, my husband was in the states, and I had to go to Germany and be without her for a couple months, and I thought I was going to die cuz I I just I missed her so terribly. And I, and these other, this, this couple got stationed the same place I was. So, I would go over their house. And when I was over their house one day, she said, "Oh, we're going to homeschool our kids." And I thought, you are crazy. Okay. [laughter] This was in 1984. All right? So, I had never heard about homeschooling until she told me. No one had ever heard about homeschooling. It was not when it like, everybody goes to school. You didn't even think about it. And I thought, you are nuts. I thought, and I argued, I, I was in her kitchen, and I argued with her. I said, "Your kids are not going to know how to deal with the real world. They're going to be so backwards. There's no way you can teach them what they need to know." And I argued with her for like an hour. And she was still my friend. [laughter]
So, um, and then I got pregnant with our second child, and I left the military, and we came to the states. And I didn't think about it again until it was about time for me to put our first baby into school. This is our oldest daughter, and she's been on my podcast before. And I thought, "Oh, I just can't live without her." I just, I mean, I mean, I had the regular angst that every person has, you know, whether you homeschool or not, when they're 5 years old, and you're thinking, I don't know if I want to sub, you know, submit my child to that. I don't know if I can let her go and be under someone else's care. I, you know, I just spent so much time with her. I just love her. I can't help it. So, I looked into homeschooling. And I, and uh [laughter] This is 1980, let's see, she was born in '83. So, it's like 1988, '89. I'm looking into this. And fortunately, went to a church where all the ladies were homeschooling, you know, the the Christian ladies were all homeschooling. And so, I had a lot of mentors there too, and a lot of it. So, that's kind of basically how I started. And I started in like in a very conventional way, and I, I bought curriculum, and none of it worked [clears throat] and our first child was [laughter] That was us doing none of it worked, and there we are. You know, you would shell out a lot of money. And as we had more children, I thought, there's no way we're going to keep up with this, you know, like, you know, two or three hundred dollars a child per year. Back then, that's cheap today, I know. But back then, it was a lot of money. And, um, and she just was not catching on, no matter what we did, cuz she was she was a late bloomer. Of course, we had to label her because of all of our relatives who kept calling me, "Is she reading it? Is she reading it? Is she reading it?" And then they'd say, "Do you think she's lazy?" And they'd say, "Do you think she needs drugs?" You know, all those kind of things. [laughter]
You're like, "Thank you. Thanks, friends." Yeah, thank you so much. Um, anyway, [clears throat] and so it's so she had her own sense, like her her younger brothers and sisters were like already reading, and here she was having trouble. And I used Rod and Staff and taught them and used phonics and all that stuff, but she just wasn't catching on. Now, today she's grown up to do amazing things, and she understands her own children who have struggled. And so, it's just amazing the story. Okay, but back then, it was crazy. So, I went through all that kind of stuff. And at a certain point, I said, "I'm throwing out these." I, I got online. I'm really old. So, back then, what we did is we did email lists, and we would share things with each other over the internet, but it was via email lists, like you get these digests of everybody back and forth. And I learned about Charlotte Mason through one of these things. So, I looked her up, and I found out, I thought, wow, I don't have to do like all this curriculum stuff. I can do something different. So, I started branching out. And then I learned about unit studies, and I started doing those, putting my own together and doing different things. And then at a certain point, I was doing all this stuff, and we were going crazy. We had to have, and I did unschooling for a while. Yes, I confess. So, anyway, I have a daughter. [laughter] So, I did that for a while, and that was, oh, it was exciting and everything, but we're kind of missing on some basics, you know, but it didn't feel comfortable with that. So, anyway, so God, like in like 2007, '08, kind of in there, all of a sudden, I discovered the McGuffey Readers and the Ray's Arithmetic. And I don't remember how. I don't remember how. [laughter] And, um, I got connected with a fellow who does, it's called Dollar Homeschool. And he, at the time, he put out CDs with all these old books on it. Um, but I, and now they're digital downloads, I think. But during that time, that's what he was doing. And so, I, I connected with him, and I wrote the introductions for those things. So, I had to do research in McGuffey, you know, on his life and and Ray, Dr. Ray. I had to go into all that. I went to everything. It was a lot of fun cuz it gave me an excuse to do something creative, and I was making a little bit of money, and it was good.
But, and you're speaking my language with vintage curricula, you know, like I
Yes. I, I geek out over it. Anyway, I, I digress.
And I'll tell you what, I used to take deep dives and I wouldn't come up for like weeks, and I'd be like, "You know, it was, wait a minute, there's more." But wait a minute, there's another layer. [laughter]
That's how I feel. Yeah. And so, that that's pretty much where I came to. And then I decided, well, how am I going to use these? And I started applying it. Well, part of it was I wanted to give everybody a Charlotte Mason education, but I had too many kids. I don't know if you, if you have, have you dealt with Charlotte Mason too much?
I'm, I'm very familiar. We do lots of Charlotte Mason principles. We do narration, dictation, copy work, and
Right. Yeah. And so, I thought, but you're supposed to like pull out original stuff every day for everybody to copy and everything. I do not have time. You know, like I had, like I might have a nursing infant and somebody who's in 10th or 12th grade, you know. How do I stretch myself that far to get all that together? And then when I looked at the McGuffey Readers, it's right there. I've got my. And and I know maybe pure Charlotte Mason people would say, well, it's kind of twaddle because you only get portions of books. And I know that's true. But for my kids, when they read the portion of the book in there, they went and they looked up and found the book. Yeah. And then they would read all of it. Yeah. So, it worked. Anyway. So, and that's, and I, so I developed, um, my lesson books that kind of have it already set out. So, I didn't have to like, well, at first, we were using composition books. Okay, during this this time, you know, you know, with the 2008, you know, dip in our economy, my husband lost his job. We didn't have money to spend on curriculum. And so, um, what I did was I just got a whole bunch of composition books, and I, and I just used them to the max. And I would have do that. I would have spaces for them to do all these different things, copy work, narration, dictation. Uh, we had, you know, the I would take, um, index cards. You know, they're lined on one side, they're blank on the other. So, we would glue them in to the composition book so they could draw in the composition book. And then I, I Yeah, and so for the primary lessons, you know, when they're just learning, you know, and you have to have, you know, where you put the lowercase letter in the, I used a highlighter. And so I would highlight every other line so that they would know to where how to write their letters. And so I, you know, I used composition books for everything. Science, we did a first, everything. We just used composition books. Because then I didn't have to print anything, and it, it was just there. And then I developed the lesson book so that a person has it already in front of them. They don't have to do the work, but it's open-ended. So, you can use it not only for the McGuffey Readers, but any other book. You can use it for, you know, Hop on Pop. [laughter] Or anything you want to do. But anyway, and so that's my story.
No, but but so I didn't really use the McGuffey Readers until, um, our our our sixth child was in his teens. That's when I discovered him. Because I didn't, I didn't, I wanted a way to where our kids were more grounded in, um, in the lang, you know, basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. When I was trying to give them as much freedom as I could to explore and do their own thing. I tell you, when my children went to college, the professors were always like, "Whoa, you know more than I do about this. Could I talk to you after class?" [laughter]
That is cool.
Yeah, because they had, they'd had time in their high school years to take whatever they were interested in, just go full bore into it. Yeah. So, cuz we didn't do like prom, and we didn't have, uh, you know, uh, we didn't have everybody spend an hour in an assembly, you [laughter] in the morning. They could just, you know, as as long as they did their chores and they were, you know, respectful and, you know, they could spend as much time as they wanted it on what they wanted to do. So, they pursued it to the max. To where when they got to college, and they were taking the classes on their their area of interest, the teachers were like, "Why don't you come up here and teach?" [laughter]
Which is so cool.
Yeah. And so, I mean, you know, I'm, I'm probably bragging a little bit.
Brag away. [laughter]
Um, but you know, I think that's part of the magic of being able to be freely homeschooling. As long as you can take the stuff that they require in school, is I've talked about before. Um, if you can hit your basics with something that's really potent, like the vintage materials, then when you go in, you go, you can the Okay, then when your children go on to higher learning or whatever, then they're grounded in that, plus they have the expertise they've built themselves over pursuing it at their at their own pace and at their own interest. Mhm. And they become experts in different areas.
Now, not every child, not every child has that kind of gumption, though.
Yeah, it's true. Um, sometimes they have to be encouraged. I, I hear from moms a lot. They're like, "Oh, my child can't figure out their their passions." I'm like, "Well, they're 10. They've got lots of time." [laughter] And and by the way, they might change their mind about 20 times, and that's okay. They'll end up where they need to be.
Well, and because we consider, I consider us eclectic unschoolers. Mhm. Um, I'm not a radical unschooler by any stretch, because I, I'm like, "No, they, they have to know how to read, write, and do arithmetic." Like, they have to know those things. But at the same time, I want them to understand rhetoric and logic. And I want them to, but I'm not going to do years and years of classes with them on that. And, and I don't love curricula necessarily all the time. But I do, we do study history, but most of the time they spend working on things that they're interested in. Yeah. So, I'm like, "We're eclectic, yes, unschoolers." But I, but I love the Charlotte Mason philosophy. I love pieces of the classical philosophy. I love pieces. My daughter goes to a Waldorf-inspired forest school once a week, you know, so
Wow, fun. Yeah, it's a, it's a blast. It's, and she has a great time.
You're like, near a forested area?
Yes. Yeah, we, we're very close to national forest, and we're in Colorado. So, so it works itself out, you know. Mhm. Yeah. We have lots of opportunity for nature, which is
You, what, that area especially is just so full of nature study stuff for free everywhere. It's just amazing. Well, and the nature study piece, when I learned about that, because I had never heard of nature study prior to homeschooling. And when I heard about it, I was like, "This is brilliant. This is beautiful." Like, the these, those are the pieces of Charlotte Mason that I, you know, the narration, dictation, copy work, and the nature study, and the handicrafts. I was like, "These are beautiful ideas, and what a great way to to pass that on." Yeah. Um, I, one of the things that I've loved in your YouTube channel, um, that's been very inspiring for me is your four pillars. Will you talk about your four pillars, how you got to that point where you develop, like where you're like, "I think that there's four pillars." And then talk about what they are.
Well, one thing I think that homeschooling has, is the homeschooling movement has done is it has helped mommies and daddies to come out of our public school thinking. Because purposely, if you go back into the history, we've been purposely taught that things have specific, like, um, boxes that they fit in, and they don't touch each other. We've been up and taught to take all the information in and then analyze it and put it into a different structure that makes a cohesive whole out of everything. And so, what what happened to me since I've been homeschooling for so long, what happened to me is that it, it helped me to start, "Okay, wait a minute. Um, why do we have to do this?" Like, you, I have heard you ask that question on your interviews, like, "Why? Why are we doing this?" See, none of us have been taught to ask why. We're just like, "Well, this is what we do. You do this." Okay, and then you do this, and then you do this. But we don't think why. So, I was, you know, so I've been taking my kids through all of this education stuff, but I started saying, "But why am I doing this? And why did they do this? And why should my kids know this?" And, and I started taking all the pieces. And I love to do this in general. I'm, I'm a mom of 15. I don't have a whole long time to, you know, get through baloney. I need a, Okay, give me the, Okay, Yeah, keep me straight. Give it to me, cuz I don't have time for the, Okay, so anyway, so what I, what I did was I go, "I'm going to narrow this down. I'm tired of this. I need, I need some kind of structure because I hate floating around and not knowing what I'm doing. But I don't want it all with jargon and baloney." So, I said, "What I'm going to do is I'm going to take what do kids actually need to be educated?" You know, and I pray all the time. So, I know that the Lord is constantly downloading things into my mind. This, this doesn't necessarily mean that I got this originally. I mean, God, of course, was helping me through the whole thing. But I was going, you know, "What do they really, what do my kids need?" Because I had a lot, Yeah, I messed up a lot, okay? So, I had to go, "Okay, what, what do my kids really need to be educated? What do I want to?" Then I started going, "Well, they need to know about God, and they need to know how to relate to God, and they need to know about how to relate to people. That's important." Then I go, "But they need to know how to read, write, and do math, otherwise they're going to be lost, no matter what they do. And they need to know some basic things about history and about how the world works, and the natural world works, and and everything. So, they need to know that. And then they also need to know how to apply it, cuz it's one thing to have people know all kinds of facts, another thing to know how to live and apply and like how to how to fix a car, and if you come up to a problem, what do you do? Yeah. Right. So, or if you have an interpersonal relationship that you're working on, where, how do you know how to work through that? Like, where do you go to find it out? What are you know, how do you have an argument without killing each other? [laughter] Right, right. So, you know, all these different things that you have to take all this stuff and apply. You have to have real life experience. It's not just books. You know, we, we have decided in our education system that if you can take a test and ace the test, you know everything. [laughter] And it's not true. It's not true.
Especially cuz the next day you forget all the information that you studied the day before. That's right. And, and you know, when, when my, my husband actually, he went back to college cuz he was in some an unemployment stint. So, he went back to college on the VA bill cuz he's VA too. So, he went to school. And, and he, there were people in class with him that they couldn't draw a circle. But they have a multi- multimedia graphic design degree. But they can't even draw a circle because they took the tests and they passed the test. And that doesn't mean anything. Right? So, I didn't want my kids just to be able to, you know, be scholarly book brain people and not have know how to live life. So, that was the fourth pillar. So, anyway, that's how I came up with the four pillars. And I think that if we as homeschoolers could just adopt that, then everything else, every other decision we make, as long as we know we're building the each one of the four pillars, then that just simplifies things so much. It gives us structure without feeling like, you know, we are we are so, um, bogged down in the details that we lose it. Right, right.
Our focus. So, the four pillars again are, first, um, God, growing in favor, gaining, and man. Second is gaining the tools that you need, the reading, writing, arithmetic, so that you can learn other things. The third, then is learning stuff about the world, how it works, everything. And then the fourth pillar is gaining life skills. Is that correct?
Yeah, life application, absolutely. Boy, you've been studying well.
I have. I've watched so many of your, like, I was so inspired. I've been watching so many binge-watching your videos, going, she is just a wealth of knowledge. Y'all, those of you who are watching or listening, you need to check out her channel, okay? Just that's all I'm saying. You're going to love it. You're going to love it.
So then, what would a typical day in your family, in your homeschooling look like once you started incorporating the McGuffey Readers and Ray's, and then you also used Harvey's too. Is that correct?
Harvey's grammar. Uh-huh. And also Pinneo's is another one, but you have to kind of digital that one because it's not sold, it's not produced anymore. So you'd have to download and print it out and bind it.
What is it? Pinneo's?
Pinneo's. It's P-I-N-N-E-O, Pinneo. Pinneo. And it's part of the eclectic education series that was done in the 1880s.
Wow, okay. But it's actually some of my kids liked it better than Harvey's.
Really?
Yeah. Yeah, cuz I've loved Harvey's. I've been like, oh, this is so. Do you know what I love about the vintage curricula is the. By the way, I've been corrected so many times by people, they're like, if you are speaking of curriculum plural, it is curricula. And I'm like, except for I looked it up, and it's also curriculums. It is, it is. I know. I looked it up too. [laughter] Cuz I, I get so many comments with, "You are not saying it right." But what I've loved about the the vintage curriculums is that, um, is the simplicity. And I feel like we've lost that, certainly in the public school textbooks, because I, I still have some that I never turned back in. And also, as I've looked at a lot of the, and granted, I, I found out there's over 7,300 homeschooling curricula out there. But even amongst the the homeschooling curricula that I've had, a lot of it's great. It's not that it's not great, but sometimes it just feels like it's so full of extra. Fluff. Yeah, a lot of fluff. And, and for me, my brain doesn't work like, I, I need to get cut to the chase. Which is funny cuz I tend to ramble in my life, but in my brain, like I need to know what, what's the, what's the meat? I need to know what the meat and the potatoes are.
That's right. So, that's what I loved about them. I, I don't have time for that other stuff. And my kids don't. You know, we only have like, if you, if you look at your own kids, right? Really, your kids, maybe when you put them in school, this is a shorter amount of time. When you have them at home, your kids are going to look up to you and think that you would really have the answers until they're about 10. And then they go, "Oh, okay, Mom, well, I'll take that into consideration. I'll think about it." You know, and they're developing their own selves, okay? And that's right, and that's good. But we got to take the the most advantage we can of the first 10 years while we still have them in our influence. And if we are wasting our time with a whole bunch of baloney that doesn't, I mean, they're never going to remember it anyway. So, if we're wasting our time with that baloney, it's just not as effective. And when we're talking about it takes, okay, our curriculum in schools and our years are just so bloated. It's so bloated. I, if you listen to John Taylor Gatto, and he was a teacher. Yes. Have you, have you read?
I'll talk in a minute. He, he. All of it. To answer, I've read all of his stuff.
So, he was New York City Teacher of the Year and New York State Teacher of the Year. And he had great success with kids who were the get in the ghetto schools. And so, what he says is like, it takes like 90, he calls it 90 contact hours to teach a child to read, write, and do the basic basic arithmetic with competence so that they can learn everything else. 90 contact hours. Now, that doesn't mean 90 hours when they're working on their own. That's 90 contact hours with an instructor. Mhm. Total. Okay? Yeah. Total. What are we doing with 13 plus years? Right. Right. What, what, what are we doing that for? It's babysitting and it's indoctrination. Those are the only two possibilities. And when you go through and you go to the Prussian idea of schooling, and you read about what's his, his name, last name is Fichte. Fichte is the guy who worked for, um, you know, the Prussian Frederick the Great, I think it was. And he stood up and he gave this rousing speech to the Prussian people, and he said, "This is what we're going to be about. This is what you're going to do." It was totalitarian. It was, it was like it was Hitler, only like maybe 100 years earlier. Basically, that's where Hitler got his inspiration was from Fichte, in the this this Prussian idea, right? And so, it's, and the Prussian system took away people's volition. It, it was run in a military way. Uh, Frederick the Great, or either he or his father were really militaristic. I mean, they would wear a military uniform for fun, you know? [laughter] And so, they wanted their whole country to run like an army. And they actually, at a certain point, they, they told women that they would tell people who they would marry, how many children they were to have. They required that women would register their menses with. Yeah. And so, that's where that's Horace Mann and his ilk. That's where they got their ideas. Horace Mann went over to Prussia. And that's where he got his ideas for our current public school system.
Well, do you know what I think is is fascinating about that? Because at the same time, it from the same area of Prussia, we also get Karl Marx and Nietzsche. Because it was when Horace Mann, it was in the 1852, may I want to say it was May 1852 that they we adopted the first compulsory education law, which you already know that. Um, and I want to say Communist Manifesto came out either 1852 or 1854. It was like it was it was right about the same time. But Horace Mann, you, I've, I've wondered, like, did he, he must have come, he may not have come in contact with Karl Marx or Nietzsche or any of these others, but that that was certainly a hotbed at the time. In the same area, and it, like it's all, it's all festering in the same little area. It's like we broke away from the European idea, you know, the Europeans had this elitist idea that there were certain persons that were born to be leaders, they were born with, you know, were brighter than the rest. And, you know, and so God made them to where they could rule over others. They didn't really regard the regular person as having any worth. Yeah. You know, you can hear it in their, in the way they talk about people. Even in, like, I was listening to the some soldiers talk about being British soldiers. They were from Britain. And the, and I think it was in World War, they didn't regard their soldiers and the the the officers didn't regard the enlisted soldiers as really anything but just to be used up. They were just cannon fodder. They, they, they thought that. So, we broke away from that pagan thinking. We came to America, we established a Christian nation where Jesus died for every individual. The individual, you know, it were made in the image of God. We broke away. We started this country, and people educated themselves. They educated their children because they had a say in the government. They had a say in what happened in their country. Because they were regarded as being important, as being valuable. Why in the world did we listen to somebody who went back to the old country, learned the opposite, brought it into our country, and made us it made us slaves ever since? Why? That's the question.
What the other question I've, I've had as well is, if this system was so great, why didn't Horace Mann put his kids in it? Why did he keep them out?
I didn't even know that. Mhm. He didn't, he didn't put his kids into public into the common schools. So, if it's so great, why? Cuz see, that's in that elitist attitude again, isn't it? Mhm. You know, while I, you know, we are a little cut above, but, you know, you poor peasants, you need to be, you know, we need to like keep you under, we need to keep you kind of dumb so we can tell you how to live, cuz you can't do it on your own. You know, that's totally the opposite of the American spirit.
Well, I mean, we see this still today though. Like, I look at the tech giants where they're like, "Oh, here's cell phones, and get your kids cell phones and whatnot." And then you find out Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and all the others don't allow their kids to have technology. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg was sending his kids to a Waldorf school, which doesn't allow any technology. You know, and so it's like, "Oh, so, you know, everything for you, but not for me." You know, I'm going to live by a different standard than I expect you to live by, which.
I think there's an economic strata then in America that more than like, you don't by lineage. It's more by economic strata. Although we're finding if you, you know, if you go into conspiratorial circles, we're finding that a lot of these people that are the tech giants may have been connected before they were even born. And so maybe that's partly why they rose to the top. Now, I don't know 100%, but some people suggested that. Some people have suggested that. So anyway, it may be, and they supposedly they have ties to the UK. Not the UK, but anyway, conspiracy stuff.
You said so going back, which I want to get back into here in a second, into like what your day would look like. But I, I before we get back into that, I want to talk a little bit, just briefly, back to the vintage curricula. Um, I have found like, like I get leery of curriculum that is past 1890. I, I mean, there's some beautiful stuff, the Strayer Upton, and some really cool, cool books that I've been collecting. But but I found that, um, I get leery once we start getting the progressive educators and John Dewey and Elwood Cubberley and Ross and some of these others coming in, because of their secular humanist natures, wanting to take God out, uh, bringing in the social sciences as opposed to having history, you know. Um, what have you found with the with all of the vintage curricula that you use? Um, have you found that it's better when it's pre-1890? Or like, talk about, talk about that a little bit.
So, what happened, okay? So, in America, um, this is what some people have said. And this makes kind of sense, but I don't, I think it's more nuanced than what they they've decided. But supposedly, you know, we have the first and second Great Awakenings, and then, um, we were primarily a Presbyterian evangelical country. And then there were there was a great influx of different migrants from, um, from countries that were primarily Catholic, okay? And so, you know, when we, when we read in the Constitution, freedom of religion and everything, it was just assumed that everybody was Christians, just different types. Mhm. Okay? Yeah. And so, um, so there, there's supposed to be freedom of religion, and then we had this influx of Catholics. Now, a lot of Presbyterians didn't consider Catholics to be Christians. Okay? And so, the unfortunate reality is that when they came in at first, they were trying to fight against that by homogenizing everything. So, that's where the common school movement came out of. They were trying to take all these different persons coming from all these different countries and and trying to make them into a homogenized American kind of a a culture. And so, that's what the common school, that's primarily what it was for. It wasn't really about educating children, it was about building a consensus. And so, when they had the materials in the schools, when they redid the McGuffey's in the 1880s, what they wanted to do is they wanted to make them as ecumenical as they could. That's why a lot of the things that, um, McGuffey put in his, such as, you know, it be sorry to God for your sins and confess them and, you know, talked about asking, says exactly the phrase, "ask Jesus into your heart," but it's basically that in his original readers. Okay, so the 1880s have nothing like that in them. Now, there are people have said they're totally secularized. They are not. They have passages of the Bible in there, they have poems about God, they have prayers in there, everything, but it's not as overt as the original McGuffey's. Okay? And so, that's why we still consider them, I mean, they're still better than the junk we have today. In the 1880s, so they're still valuable. However, the, the, there were revisions after the 1880s, and those are the totally secular ones. They just took God totally out of the picture and, you know, and God doesn't have anything to do with anything. [laughter]
Well, I, I think because progress became the new God. You know, what, what, that's, that's the God that we're going to worship is we're going to worship progress. Yeah. You know, that's a good point. I, that's a good point. That's the progressive movement. Why didn't I get that before? You're good. Anyway, so, um, yeah, because progress, you know, it didn't really matter what it looked like, and the social gospel was really big during that time. It wasn't so much that you preach the gospel that you're you're sinner, you need to worship God and Jesus, you know. It was more of just be really good to people and do good things and be a good Samaritan and, you know. So, yeah, so they didn't really. It was, and past that point, it kind of gets nutty. Past that, it was Horace Mann introduced things like the whole word approach, that was totally unnecessary, okay? And he, people don't know that Horace Mann was, he, I don't know, I guess he had a certain Christian, I don't want to judge him. I don't know what his relationship with God was really about, but he didn't really promote God as much as he promoted phrenology. Although he did want to keep the Bible as the center in the classroom, which I, that surprised me when I learned that. I was like, oh.
But I think that's because of the pressure at the time. I don't think that's personal to him. See, he wouldn't have been able to to have anybody, he wouldn't have been able to influence anyone to vote his way unless he made it look really Christian.
I guess that's true. That's true. Right? That's true. Because he was big into phrenology. I mean, I think the fellow who's like the the most, um, experienced phrenologist in America, he like learned under him. And, and I.
Talk about what phrenology is for just a second.
Okay. Phrenology was a pseudoscience where they would study the different, the shape and the different bumps on a person's skull and decide that this would determine like if they were going to be, uh, uh, a criminal, if they were going to go and do good things, um, it would determine their character and their ability to learn. So, what they would do is, and if this actually did happen, a lot of classrooms during that time, believe it or not. They had would have a phrenologist come in at the beginning of school, of the school year, and he would touch the kids' heads, and he, then they would take the kids that he deemed that were going to be slow, and they would put them in the slow group. And those were going to be just the workers. And the the kids who had the good heads, then he put them in a higher group, and they would be learning higher things, and they would be the the thinkers. And they actually, they actually would do that, and that's what Horace Mann wanted in all the schools.
Unbelievable. I did not know that. That's unbelievable.
Mhm. Yeah. You can look it up. It's, it's spelled with a P-H. So, it's P-H-R-E-N-O-L-O-G-Y. Phrenology. Phrenology. Holy cow. So, he brought up whole language, um, which was replacing, replaced phonics for a very long time. But anyway.
Yes. And it got worse in the '80s, '70s and '80s. I know that.
Oh, yeah. Well, my, actually, my husband was taught whole word, whole word originally in the '50s, the late '50s. He, yeah, he's 70. So, he was taught whole language, and he couldn't get it. I mean, it just didn't make any sense to him. So, um, when he was 9 years old, they had a special tutor for him, and he went in, and he, she offered him a big Hunk candy bar. [laughter] And he, just, he, oh, he loves Big Hunks to this day. And so, yeah, and, and she took, and she taught him phonics. And that's how he learned to read. And he loves to read. Oh, he reads, he reads better than I do. He reads all the time. Anyway. Um, and so, anyway, so, yeah, and, and during that time, it was still about. I see people, they, they go, "Oh, when I was a kid, things were much better." Well, maybe, but do you know really how good they used to be? Yeah. Do you, my my grandmother told me that she didn't go to school till she was 7 or 8, and that most kids went to school, they could read already. But they were taught by their parents. And she went to a one-room schoolhouse, and this was in the late, I think this is in the late 1920s. She was still in a one-room schoolhouse, and she loved it. She told me how all the older kids would help the little kids, and they learned how to be mature because they were told, you know, these little kids are looking up to you. You have a lot of responsibility. And they would help the teacher, they would help each other. She said it was totally a different atmosphere than what we have today. So, my husband's grandmother is still alive, and she is 102. She will turn 103 in a few months, and her wits are totally still about her. Like to explain, like she's, the other day we were visiting her, and she, they, the doctor said she has to start using a walker. So, she's like, "Fine." But we got there, and she's like, "Jason," that's my husband. She said, "Jason, I need you to come and help me make the bed because now I have to use the walker, and it's easier if there's two people making the bed than one." And she turned in her driver's license because she said she's a great driver. That's the crazy part. And she said, "I know that if there's an accident, even if I'm not, it's not my fault, I know I'm going to get blamed for it because of my age." So, rather than taking that risk, I'm just going to go ahead and turn it in. Like, that's very sharp as a tack. So, I asked her about her school, and it was again, she was 1930s, late '20s, early '30s. She was in the one-room schoolhouse. And I think one of the, the things that has been so detrimental to us, and it seems so normal, but I think that it's actually really quite damning, uh, for us, is this notion that kids should be in grades. Because it takes away that the older kids helping the younger children. Yes. And I, and I use the term damning because I, as that I'm stopping progress, like stopping the progression of what you do.
A dam on a river.
Like a dam on a river, yeah. Um, because it, it prevents, it prevents kids from helping younger kids. It ha, it prevents younger kids from, uh, looking at, okay, this is how I'm supposed to mature. And then, at the same time, the kids that are at more advanced, when they already come in, you know, they, they need to be able to move forward. And, and other kids who might need more help, the age shouldn't matter. That shouldn't make a difference. No. So, but she was in a one-room schoolhouse, and, and they had started instituting high school. And so, she ended up going to the town high school. And I thought, she graduated at 18. And she's like, "Oh, no, I think I was 16 when I, I finished." And I was like, "Really?" And she's like, "Yeah, cuz that's when I started working." She started working as a Rosie the Riveter. Okay.
Like, really, like riveting?
[laughter] Like, she put, she put the rivets on. She was literally a riveter. You know, so, um, but, and I said, "Oh." And she's like, "But I graduated." You know, so, I, I don't know. I think that that, and even adding high school, because that was a new thing. Yeah, it was a very new thing. And I think that's also contributed to this idea of children being more oriented to their peers than to their parents. And, and causing a lot of, um, just a lot of problems with that. Where, where it's causing, it's causing a breakdown of the family unit. It's causing a breakdown of parents and child.
Girl, we could have a good time. You and I, we could do something together. I tell you what, I think that if we took our entire education system, if we're going to have one, right? Because not everybody wants to homeschool their kids. And there's so, if we took the whole thing and we put it back to the one-room schoolhouse, we could probably solve most of the the behavioral problems, most, you know, juvenile delinquency would go way down. It would cause parents to have to be a little more involved because, you know, if you're going to be, you're going to know this teacher, cuz your kids are all going to be have this teacher their whole, their whole, our whole school. They, you know, it's going to be one teacher, right? Unless that teacher, like, goes on something. But it's, you're going to be interacting with all the different parents because you're going to make decisions together. I mean, it would it would bind communities together. It would be so. I've.
Actually, I had this idea that we could take the regular schools and we could turn them all into one-room schools. Are you with me?
I would so be with you. Well, I've I've even thought about like, wouldn't it be cool to turn, um, the schools into like community type centers where different classes could be taught based on interest? Like, you'd have the that yes, people need to learn the the reading, writing, and arithmetic, but then there's also the fiber arts classes for those that want to do fiber arts and artisan type classes, and then there's also trades type classes, but then there's also if you want to learn philosophy and music and, you know, all of these different things. Like, could we use the resources much more efficiently and effectively?
I hadn't thought of that part. I think that if like, maybe for the the the the the pillar where we're learning the tools of learning and that the third one where that we're learning the basic content, that could be like the one-room schoolhouse thing where we community building and we're knowing each other, we're knowing the teachers. And then for the rest of the school building that is shouldn't, you know, shouldn't be going to waste, we could do like what you said. We could have like wood- like [clears throat] you said, woodworking, automotive, excuse me, tech. Every- we could use it for everything. And we would still use those buildings and we could still maybe have funding, but it you also have to take the funding for such thing and you have to make it local. You cannot have >> I agree. Yeah, agreed. You you can't. Yeah, go ahead.
Well, I was going to say, as I've been studying, I've been reading, um, Lawrence Cremin's books, uh, the history. What is it? History of American education. Okay. >> And it's three volumes and it's been like reading has been like watching paint dry. But, um, like, could you at least have made it a little bit more interesting when you were writing it? Just like, I don't know. Well, that's your that's your job. See, you've got to take that book and you've got to write something so the rest of us can read it. So, [laughter] it's interesting. But what That was what happened. I mean, when we look at the American Revolution and after, that's what they had. These little community schools that met the needs of the community. And that the parents were involved. And I I love I've brought this up multiple times in this podcast, Alexis de Tocqueville talking about that they were the most educated people who he expected to be so ignorant and they were so educated. And that's all they had. But yet by the time they're 14, by golly, you're an adult and you figure out what you're going to do with your life. That's right. But up until then, yeah.
My great grandmother only gradu- only went to eighth grade. I I I have the census record. Okay? So, my great grandmother only went to eighth grade. That was and my my great grandfather was only third grade educated. And yet he was the best farmer. He My grandmother tells me that he was one of the most successful farmers in his region. My great grandmother, um, they came across one day, uh, some someone had been transporting the barrels of books that they had gotten from a sh- a library that shut down. And these barrels had tumbled over and they never they never retrieved them. They were just on the bank of this river and my grandfa- my great grandfather found these. He put them in his in his, I guess it was a horse and buggy. He put them in there. He brought them home. My grandmother when she grew up, they had their own library in their house. And my great grandmother would spend nights, you know, during the Great Depression when, you know, they didn't own a radio but and because my grand- my great grandfather wouldn't go into debt. So, they she would just read poetry and read prose to her kids. And she only had an eighth grade education. But you see, you don't have to have all the crap. No. You If you know how to read and you know how to do, you know, write an essay and you can do basic math, you can do anything else you need to do.
It's true. I look at my my grandfather. Okay, so my parents are from the they both passed a few months ago. Um, but they're from the silent generation. So, >> Okay. my grandfathers but on both sides were born born in the early, I think my one was born in 1905 and the other 1908. >> Okay. >> And the my grandmother on my mother's my grandfather on my mother's side, um, also didn't go past eighth grade, which was typical. Yeah, it was typical. Very typical. But by the time he was by the time he was 14, he was running multiple companies. Um, he started a dis- a distillery. As a matter of fact, this is kind of a funny family story. Um, days of prohibition were approaching and, um, the police officer, as the family story is told, came riding up on his horse on the sidewalk and he said, "George Ronald, there's been a bootlegger around here and I I need help finding him." And he said, "Yes, sir. Good luck in finding him. I'll keep my eyes open." It was him. And right above the officer in the tree in his treehouse was his distilling machine. [laughter] And so, anyway, but then but then he ended up having nine patents. If you have a stain- if you have a double-sided stainless steel sink, that is my grandfather's patent who only had an eighth grade education.
Yeah, exactly. Because an eighth grade education, like like I've shared in my my video on my podcast, um, that I have an 1853 McGuffey's Reader and it's the fourth reader and it would have been like eighth grade age. And I I mean, I have trouble following it. >> [laughter] >> The sentence complexity, the vocabulary, it's like it it blows me away that they were able to to do that in that little one-room schoolhouse, no tech, uh, no oversight from some big conglom- some big, you know, a a I want to say a a boardroom where they're doing all the statistics and saying that we need and no teachers colleges. Yeah. No teachers colleges to teach us how to teach, okay? Because teaching is so simple. I'd keep telling you that, "You know, you don't need all the theories. You don't You just need to know your child and say, 'You know, I want my child to know this. I wonder how I can approach this.'" You can look it up. It's okay to get tips and tricks, but I'm saying it's just such an intuitive art. You know, anybody who's ever tu- Like if you have like I used to tutor people in high school. Even when I was a high school student, other high school students who struggled, I would tutor them. I didn't have any teaching degree. I didn't You know, I don't have to go to. You can do it. You can do it because it's in you because God put that in us. It is part of who we are. We teach.
Yeah. I love that. Okay, I want to I want you to share. And I love that you say it's simple because you're you're right. And then I want to get to what you did. Um, because I I hear that all the time like, "Well, but do do people have teaching certificates and are they the experts?" Which is a very progressive early 20th century ideology is this this idea that experts know more and are smarter and are better. And yet we see what happened in 2020 with the quote experts. And I I think there's now a an an a rising distrust of people or is it mistrust? Uh, there we are starting to not trust people. That the experts that tell us stuff. But but you bring up an important point that Joseph Ray, what he was 16 when he started teaching, you know, and he didn't have a teaching degree. He just happened to be a little bit farther ahead than his pupils. Mhm. So, um, okay, let's just I want you to share. Are Are we good with time? We're good. Okay. Um, what a day would look like for you? And I'm sure it's changed with the last one now that you just got one at home, you know.
Well, I'll I'll try to give you a picture when I had like little ones and big ones all together. Okay. Because that'd be great. I think [snorts] that would be easier to do. So, um, well, for this is I also I want to put in there that just because I might talk about having homeschooling in the morning or our our table time or whatever you want to call it. In the morning, at for a time, my husband worked the night shift and we had it in the evening after dinner. And so it, you know, whenever you have to do it. So, if we're doing in the morning, we wake up, you know, we have the little babies and everything. Everybody has to eat, everybody has to have their bodies cleaned. I know everybody talks about like, "Well, we homeschool so we stay in our pajamas till 4:00." >> Yeah, I don't know if I can do that. No, I can't do that. >> So, [snorts] I mean, if if something happened and we had to do that, we could do that. But the goal is to raise children who know how to clean themselves. And, you know, so anyway, so we get up, we have chores. We were very My husband and I, we both are kind of neat nicks. So, we like to have our house clean. I don't feel good about like having a dirty house and then doing doing whatever school we do. I call it school. I know it's not really technically school. I know people hate that word. But that's what I call it. We call it schoolies. That's what we call it. So, anyway. So, what we would do is we would wake up, get everybody clean, get the breakfast done. We do morning chores, make sure the house is neat and clean before we start. Then I would sit down and I would do like the morning basket. I I used to call it the morning basket. But I used to call it my learning basket. Not really morning basket. A long time ago, long before morning basket A even came about. So, I would have books in my basket. Like I would have maybe maybe we're working through some poetry. So, I'd have a poetry book maybe. I might We might be and I'd always have a read aloud. And usually it was historical, um, a historical fiction or something like that. And so I'd or a classic and I would read that aloud. Then we might we might sing some hymns. We like to sing hymns together a cappella. Or, you know, something like that. And then we get through that and then my the older kids would have their own work that they would be doing that I would not have to like nurse them through the whole thing. >> [laughter] >> You know, they have to go a little autopilot and that they had assignments and I would have an assignment sheet where everybody knew what they were supposed to do each day of the week. Okay, so they would be sitting there doing that. Then I would take the youngest that I was teaching and they would be first because they get antsy and they got to go do something else. So, I would sit with them and then I would be either teaching them their basic reading, maybe we'd do do some some little math flash cards or something with the tiniest ones. And, you know, I'd always have like a baby nursing or toddler playing at the same time. And so they would be sometimes, you know, flushing things down the toilet or whatever. And so we'd all See, you know this, that when you have a large family, everybody helps take care of everybody. So, we had a million eye pairs of eyes looking and seeing what the little kids are doing. So, they didn't give us get into as much mischief as you think. But but I would be distracted doing something with someone and the other kids while they were doing their stuff, they would kind of keep an eye on the little kids. Anyway, so I'd be sitting there and we do some flash card work like teaching basic numbers, number recognition. I like to use a hundreds board. I used like to use manipulatives or whatever. And I like spend 15 minutes with maybe some phonics flash cards, some basic stuff with the the youngest person I'm teaching. Then they can go off and play. Then that's that's their time. They've had enough learning for the day because when you're not little, you don't need a lot of everything. You know, you don't have to hold the whole program and, you know, you just have fun with them just for a few minutes and then be available for them to ask questions, to cuddle, to, you know, to be empathetic with them and just let them play, right? So, then then if there was someone else that I needed, let's say that I needed, then I would sit at the table and I would preside over what's happening. We used We had this huge table. I mean, this thing was like 10 ft long, you know. And I would sit there at the head and then everybody would be I have pictures of this. And people would be sitting there and they'd be doing their separate work. Now, that meant that I was answering, fielding questions. I was making sure people were staying on track. I was if they needed some correction. Usually the types of materials I had to I did not correct everybody's work all the time. I could not have done that and still had a brain at the end of the day. So, the stuff that we used was self-correcting for the most part. Now, if there was a writing assignment, I would go over that. I I love writing. I love teaching writing. So, I I was fine with that. And, you know, and the math, I would often have have to ask, you know, answer questions about math because, you know, it takes a lot sometimes to overcome certain things. So, I was mostly available for fielding questions. And then as soon as the people, you know, we'd get off on rabbit trails, too. >> [laughter] >> Okay. Someone ask a question and we just like throw everything to the wind and we just dive into whatever that was. Like, "Mom, when you were reading this morning about World War II, I noticed that you that the Japanese did this. Well, let's look this up." So, then for the next 3 hours we're doing that. And lunch comes and so going, "Oh, we got to make lunch." And then so we're eating lunch, maybe we're eating it outside at the table. And then usually we would wrap things up about 1:00. And then we would clean and then everybody would have quiet time in the afternoon. That was an institution in my family to have quiet time in the afternoon. And people could didn't have to go to sleep, but they could like read a book. They could, you know, do play with Legos quietly, whatever. And that's when our older kids really spend a lot of time in their personal pursuits in the afternoons. And then we'd have the little kids would play and then we'd have a clean up before dinner. We'd eat dinner, then we clean up after that and then family time in the evening. And that's how we did every day, pretty much.
I love that. Okay. >> [snorts] >> You might You probably do the same thing. It's similar. This This year has been a little bit different for us because they have enrichment programs all on different days. And it used to be I had them all on the same day and that was not possible this year. So, we only have two days when everybody is together. Right. >> And so that's when I'm like, "Okay, this is in the mornings and it's morning time for us." So, it's like, "Okay, everyone gets their chores done and then we focus on the the reading, the writing, the arithmetic." And then I'll pull in, um, depending on the season. Right now we're we're heavily looking at the American Revolution. Mhm. And because because of, you know, our country's birthday. And so we're reading a lot of books about that. I don't have a set curriculum cuz people are like, "What's your curriculum?" But I'm like, "We're just reading books and watching documentaries and >> Yes. How fun. No, why would you Why would you want to limit it with some stupid book that you're bored with? Right. And you always You'll always forget everything. Like you Like why not just watch like a reenactment of like, you know, the Gettysburg battle or something. You know what I'm saying? Why do you have to like read about it? Well, the Gettysburg battle happened in that. Yeah, yeah, but they but that that doesn't they don't internalize that though. They don't internalize it unless it's presented in a story or in a way that makes it compelling and makes it personal for them. So, So, we'll we'll do things like that, you know, depending. And right now again, the focus is the American Revolution. And and sometimes we'll bring in I like I've been using more and more the Socratic method and just asking questions and we always do a read aloud. Yes. >> reading a short one today. We're reading A Year of Miss Agnes, which I've never read. So, I'm like, "Guys, we're going to read this." And we're almost done and it's taken like 5 minutes because it's such a little book. But yeah, and so and so that's what the two days that we have. But my daughter brought up, she said, "Mom, the 10-year-old said, 'Since our enrichment programs have been on different days this year, we haven't gotten to go on many field trips and that's where my heart is.'" Aw. So, I said, "Well, next year you're all almost on the same day again. So, we'll we'll do more and we'll do something in summer." But it's Sometimes I think that, uh, partly I don't know. Not everybody's the same. But we get so into the public school mindset that we have to prove to others that we're doing it right. Yeah. That we can actually um work ourselves out of actually enjoying the the best parts of homeschooling because we're trying to prove to everybody else that we're doing it right. So, in other words, we have to have all the the extracurriculars. Sorry, extracurriculars and all that stuff in there because other people have to see that we're really okay like everybody else. Instead of being confident in Well, maybe we're not like everybody else, but I think we're doing great. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I've got Yeah, my kids are happy and they're thriving and they're doing well and they can read and write. You know, I I at a certain point see I don't have anything to prove anymore. You know, I have 15 children. Just shut up. Anyway, [laughter] um, but but the thing of it is is that at a certain point though I had to go I don't really care what anybody thinks. I know what goes on here every day and the proof is in the pudding and I think you you can I mean, I might have one or two kids that really struggle, but not, you know, in certain areas, but in general my kids, they contribute. Yeah. They are not leeches on society. They are not, you know, they're the ones that are called in when all the other people are are um flaking off. My kids are the ones that hold it up. I love that. And so I don't really care what you think about whether or not my kids, you know, took gymnastics. Yeah. Okay? I don't care. Yeah. Because I know what we did was foundational for the rest of their lives and it's helped them to be better parents. It's helped them to be better spouses. It's helped them. They pay their taxes, you know, and I don't really and I and they're paying for your social security and so. No, I'm kidding. >> [laughter] >> Anyway, [gasps] I go on. So I think I was thinking about this because prior to homeschooling my kids were in all of the things. They were in the they were in gymnastics. My daughter was in gymnastics and dance and soccer. My kids were all in soccer and T-ball and there was one other sport that I had them do, basketball. So we did all all of the sports and I remember being so frazzled and and resenting going to. I remember sitting there at a T-ball game resenting being there and I thought, oh, I just hate this. Mhm. And and I did slow down a little bit when you I was like, we're just going to do it one semester cuz I just can't I can't do it. The other. But then I I pulled way back when we started homeschooling and I'm so glad we did. You know, not that we don't ever do extracurricular. My my 13-year-old said, "Mom, I I really would like to run." And so on Monday he'll start running track with the public school, you know, cuz he's like, "I I really would like to do this." I'm like, "Yeah, then let's make it happen." But but I'm not going to just put him in. Our neighbors are the most wonderful they're most wonderful neighbors and they're great and but my daughter came home and she's like, "They can't play again. They just got home from school." I'm like, "Why not?" And she's like, "Well, cuz they have basketball and then after that they have piano or they have this and then they have this and it's and they and then it's dinner time and then it's bedtime and then they do it all over again and and she's like, "Why do they have to be so busy?" And I said, "Well, that's just that's how their family's chosen to do things, you know, but but it's okay." She's like, "Is it okay that we're not busy like that?" And I said, "100%." Yes. Cuz I wouldn't make it. >> [laughter] >> So la- what what advice uh okay, well, before I ask that. Um, what's one thing that we haven't talked about and I haven't asked you about that you wish I would have?
Hm. I don't know. I think I've had a great time talking my head off. >> [laughter] >> Likewise. This has been so fun. Um, I can't really think of anything. I think that we've covered all the basic things. Um, uh, one I think that I I really want to emphasize that, um, it's important that as we come from our own home school background, I'm sorry, public school backgrounds and as we forge ahead into new territories, things that we haven't experienced before, we're used to having being bolstered up by a system, by people's opinions, uh, you know, the whole culture is I'm sorry, the whole culture is set up to in- to bolster. Did I say this is bolster twice? To bolster the, uh, conventional compulsory education system. And we are have been trained like a bunch of cattle going through and, you know, doing what they say where, you know, they funnel us in these different, you know, avenues. This is this is what you're going to do. And we're so used to it that it's like a bird. Like if you have a parakeet and that parakeet's been in its cage its whole life and you open the door and you allow that parakeet to fly, they don't know what to do with themselves. They get all freaky because they don't have any bars as their security. Mhm. And when you homeschool, you are removing a lot of the underpinnings that you have been depending on your whole life. And it's a totally new thing to have freedom. You don't know what to do with it at first and it's okay. If you need to do curriculum or whatever you need to do so that you're you're still on the path, but you have some things that are making you feel a little more secure, totally understandable. But just know this that once you get out of that cage and you have that taste of freedom and you start flying, you'll never want to go back in. And you'll find out that there's more support out there than you realize and sometimes, uh, you you you start making your own support. You'll start finding making things happen. And that's how the culture changes. That's how society changes. That's how we start putting in place the things that God instituted. The the family and the church. Those are the institutions. They wanted to replace it with education. They openly stated it million, you know, hundreds of times since Horace Mann. They have openly stated that they have wanted to replace the family and the church with the state and with education. The the compulsory education system, but there is something better.
I love that. Um, last word of advice for brand new homeschooling moms, what would you say?
I would say the best best most important thing to do is just to enjoy your children. Because your kids only have a few short years with you and if you are so worried about living up to someone else's standards or what everybody else is expecting of you and you start focusing that is what what you're putting on your child, you're never going to know who they are just for them. So what So you have to pull back. You're going to discover yourself again. We if you can pull out of the system and decompress and just maybe take however long, like six months, even, and just read, start go to the library, check out all the fun books that you like to read. Read aloud for hours and hours. Go to the park and just play. Go in nature and explore nature together and cuddle and sit on the couch and just hold each other while you read. Just enjoy everything about that child and that child will start to trust you and they'll start to open up to you and then when you do teach them, maybe, you know, the hard things like like complex multiplication, they are going to be more open to what you have to say. And you're going to have be less frustrated with them because you're going to have this relationship because education should be built on relationship, not on systems. And so that I think that's the best advice I could give.
That is and that is perfect advice. Thank you. What is the best way if somebody wants to get a hold of you or find you, where can they find you?
Okay. Um, I am on YouTube as Mom Delights. I'm on Substack as Mom Delights. I have a I have a website momdelights.com and I have a contact page on on my website. I think it's under the about. It's a contact and so people can email me. I don't share my email address for obvious reasons. >> [laughter] >> But they can contact me via email and on Substack and, you know, in the comment section on, uh, my YouTube channel as well. And I try to I try to respond almost 100%. I'm not 100%, but I'm almost 100% on all my comments on YouTube. I try to respond in some way.
That's fantastic. Well, Sherry, thank you so much. Um, Amen to all of it to everything that you've said. You are so precious. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Mama's and papa's, grandma's and grandpa's, you are doing so much better than you think you are. You have got this. We will talk next week. Okay.