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I came to you when I saw John Oliver's segment on homeschooling because I knew you were the perfect to say is this true I would say first of all that he throws in a few facts and figures but he's most you know mostly appealing to emotions of people welcome to the Christy Faith show where we share gamechanging ideas with intentional parents like you I'm your host christe Faith experienced educational adviser and homeschool enthusiast together we'll explore ways to enrich and transform both your life and the lives of your children recently the comedian John Oliver did a segment on homeschooling where he went over the pros and a lot of the cons of this choice that many millions of American parents make for their own children I'm joined today by Dr Brian Ray a leading researcher in homeschooling to delve into this important conversation as many of you may know I had a past role as a certified Child Abuse Prevention instructor in the schools and this issue that John Oliver highlights in his 20 or so minute long segment really hit home for me as a lot of us do want to protect children thank you so much Dr Brian Ray for joining us today Dr Brian D Ray is the president of the national home education Research Institute known for its research on homeschooling he has published many peer-review articles books and chapters in books across 38 years Dr Brian Ray holds a BS in biology from the University of Puget Sound and Ms in Zoology from Ohio University and a PhD in Science Education from Oregon State University he serves as an expert witness in courts and legislatures is a former professor of Science and education at the undergraduate and graduate levels and has taught in public schools private schools and his own eight children with his wife of 45 years thank you thank you Dr Ray for being here today before we begin can you explain in a little more detail the work that you do for homeschooling and are you currently working on a project and if so what is it so thank you Christie we've been around I've been involved in research on homeschooling for about 38 years and ner the national home education Research Institute does basic research Gathering statistics and Publishing It In Articles and books uh We Gather research by other people Scholars all over the world and then we disseminate it to journalists parents legislators Scholars anybody all things homeschool research that's what we do and right now we're doing a new Nationwide study it's the first one to like it in over 14 years it's really important to get new updated data and so we want every parent who homeschools a child and gave him a standardized test during the past year to be involved in this study it might be the last time you get to do this if your children are older so that's what we're working at a big Nationwide study on academic achievement white people homeschool and other aspects of The Homeschool Community thank you so much and I went ahead and inputed all of my kids scores and their information to help give the data that we need to preserve homeschooling freedoms across our nation we're so thankful for your research and a lot of parents don't realize that homeschooling rights and freedoms were fervently fought for in the past decades by legislators and researchers like you we need current data on a regular basis so that we can keep these freedoms can you explain a little bit about how that data helps the homeschooling cause yeah so at the at the foundation research is supposed to be about truth right I mean every researcher has some kind of worldview but we want factual empirical evidence people want to know they wanted to know 40 years ago and they still want to know does homeschooling work did children learn academically are they doing okay socially and emotionally how do they do an adulthood and you know homeschoolers are doing a good thing overall and they should not be afraid at all they want the facts the truth to get out so we want everybody involved whether you think your child's scoring low or high whatever anybody and everybody I think that's wonderful and I have always been a seeker of Truth myself and nar's research before I had even met you was a big contributor in my personal deconstruction and choosing to leave the system where we our bread and butter our business was the system and go down the path of researching home education I was one of those naysayers honestly initially while I was in the schools myself teaching kids from K to college training teachers I even thought homeschooling is great temporarily so we can you know until we matriculate the kid in the next year or so and we did that at our Center but your research was a pivotal part of the decision of wait a minute these kids do great and wait wait they're happy they're they feel socially healthy so I am excited about what you are doing and we're we are going to put in the show notes the link to the study so we will absolutely do that at the end but I came to you when I saw John Oliver's segment on homeschooling because I knew you were the perfect to say is this true John Oliver made some huge assumptions not just one many many and they are the common arguments that I personally hear every day on my social media channels from homeschooling naysayers what I will say is I think John Oliver the naysayers and all of us we all want to protect children the question is ultimately is homeschooling dangerous or not we're going to dive right into the first clip from John Oliver's segment on his show it's clip one and we're going to watch the clip together and then afterwards I'm going to ask you to respond based on the research of what you have found is this grounded in any truth or not and how do we respond to it and we're not scared of anything on this show I know you aren't either we are like-minded in that way if homeschoolers are doing something wrong we also want to address it protecting children is our utmost priority and what John Oliver failed to mention which a lot of parents this is their motivation for homeschooling is we are homeschooling to protect our children and we'll get into that later in the show but first let's go to clip number one the point is the ceiling of how good homeschooling can be is admittedly very high but the flaw of how bad it can get is basically non-existent because to an extent that you may not realize in many parts of the country homeschooling is essentially unregulated ated which can result in enormous damage so given that tonight let's take a look at homeschooling and let's start with the fact there is a lot that we don't know about homeschooled kids from exactly how many there are to what they are learning when I said there are around two million of them the reason that's an estimate is that depending on the state homeschool families might not have to report what they are doing at all in these 26 States Dr Brian Ray how would you respond to that clip I would say first of all that he throws in a few facts and figures but he's most you know mostly appealing to emotions of people that's what he's doing here he's not a scholar he's not a researcher in the first point is that in a free Nation we do not believe in the government trying to control everybody in private education like Catholic schools Muslim schools secular um monory schools that's just not what we do in a free nation and we don't result in damage you don't go to Catholic schools and uh monaster schools and secular Independent Schools and say because because they don't have the government controlling them there's damage there's no evidence for that claim Public Schools Christy Faith are controlled by Myriad multiple laws controls regulations and all these factors at the same time that they're controlled by all of that 69% of eth graders are below proficient in reading and 74% of eth graders are below proficient in mathematics according to US Department of Ed Education data so he's implying that if you could just control everybody more everybody would learn more that is a false assumption that is absolutely correct and that statistic is actually from the government talking about its own schools correct yeah and we can put the source for that hey hey if you're enjoying the show and don't want to miss out on future episodes hit that like And subscribe button and show us some love with your reviews those five-star ratings really do help us reach more people I look at nation's report card on a regular basis and it's quite devastating there's been research done that if kids are not reading it a proficient level by fourth grade it starts to decline further that fourth grade around that age Benchmark is where kids stop learning to read and they start reading to learn and if they aren't there the studies show that they do fall farther and farther behind I've never met a homeschooler who can't read personally and if yeah I mean John Oliver has to go and look at every single nook and cranny in 50 different states to find a few of those exactly and we do have parents who homeschool their children for the reason that they have special needs and their needs are not met in the school but those parents and I have them in my community we are damming back and forth we are in office hours I am directing them towards Specialists they are pulling their kids out so that they have the time and resources to go to the ends of the Earth to get their kids kid to where they need to be whether it be reading or in any other area these are the most motivated moms I have ever personally met let's move on to the next clip Dr Ray it was usually just walking around the block um and then the whole entire rest of the list is chores and cleaning tasks it's true most of her lessons just involve chores and just look at that list that is a lot of cleaning demon who was her parent this guy I mean don't get me wrong he's an absolute zad would will and I'll take seconds but as hot as he makes doing ches seem is not an adequate alternative to education is it Dr Ray how do you respond to adults who were homeschooled who experienced abuse and or NE educational neglect in their homes children who basically weren't taught anything but grew up doing chores and often what is combined with this is being indoctrinated with fundamental Conservative Christian beliefs I have friends who did grow up with this type of homeschooling how should we respond today first thing I think is some children do have bad experiences in homeschooling just just admit it but we also know that millions of children have bad experiences in public schools and in some private schools so the second thing is I just think logically although he can be funny Mr Oliver let's look at this in a very empirical balanced way if you find some millions of children in public schools and by the way we have data on this who are depressed they're bored they're tired whatever they don't want to be there at all is Mr Oliver recommending that the government compel those children to be homeschooled you know so that they can have a change of pace he never does that it doesn't make any sense let's go ahead and move on to the next clip we are so deeply invested into making sure sure that that child becomes a wonderful Nazi homeschooling we're going to get that done well I found that clip extremely upsetting heaven forbid there are parents at home turning their kids into Nazis let's talk about indoctrination a minute because homeschoolers are accused of this often I have yet to see it personally in fact most of my homeschooling circles one of the bedrocks of our home education is logic and rhetoric training and also teaching children how to think and write really well this is mainly due to the classical movement that has been on the rise in our nation for the last 20 or so years how would you respond to the accusation that homeschoolers simply homeschool to indoctrinate their kids with right-wing or Nazi religious beliefs the first thing I'd tell people whether I'm talking to Scholars or moms and dads or people like Mr Oliver every form of schooling whether it's public schooling private schooling or homeschooling teaches children values and beliefs that's just the reality of Education that's the nature of Education we could argue all day you know Public Schools generally teach a secular humanistic worldview that's just what they do you know I'm not saying that's bad or good second it's really sad that any parents and there are some who are public school parents some private school parents a tiny few that I've ever heard of homeschool parents who teach their children to be racist or bigots or aggressors but that happens third I would say to this Mr Oliver anybody who's thinking like he is the the Southern Poverty Law Center tells us there are about 62 Neo-Nazi hate groups in America I don't know whether that's true but let's say there are 62 Mr Oliver go poll these groups and find out what percent of them went to Public Schools that's a very interesting point that you make there and I I want to go a little bit deeper here because his argument hinges on that higher regulations will save more children that's really what he is saying ultimately in these 20 minutes let's go into this next clip here listen to what he has to say and respond as a lobbying group it's been astonishingly successful in four decades its efforts have be credited with rolling back existing laws governing homeschooling in state after State and the argument that it will always make against any regulation is you're just punishing all the parents doing things right to address a handful who are doing it wrong and in theory Sure but when you've got some parents running The Homeschool Institute of dishwashing and others running Lil Nazis R Us it seems maybe the Reigns have gotten a little loose and Dr R how do you feel about tightening up regulations for homeschoolers is there any evidence that this actually works in order to prevent abuse it sounds reasonable right you would be an awful person to say say no to this wouldn't you that's the implication but the fact again here is that Mr Oliver is basically free of research and evidence and he's full of emotion we have studies now one study shows zero correlation that means no connection no mathematical connection between more government control of homeschooling and anything better for homeschoolers like no more better academic achievement no less abuse and neglect just zero evidence of anything so we do not even have evidence of a problem second of all what he's basically saying is what I don't like to throw around labels but some are just accurate he is a statist who thinks more laws and more controls laying on people parents children makes us all be nicer to our neighbors well life doesn't really work that way and that's not the nature of a free Society so it doesn't work there's no evidence it there there's no evidence of a problem in The Homeschool community and there's no evidence that the government controlling homeschooling anymore would do any good about anything so those are the two key things here there's another point and it's this using uh Mr Oliver's logic police should profile people okay so let's look for people with a certain skin color a certain type of hair and then we pull them all over presume they're probably doing something bad we got to control them more before maybe they do something bad we do not do that in the United States of America and even if it means protecting children that's what the reality is so here let's go a little bit further that really pulls at people's emotion strings yes to do that logically this is what we would have to do say okay look at this public school and private school parents have their children for two whole weeks at christmaswinter holiday and they have their children home for almost three months during the summer let's be really blunt Christy faith that is plenty time to do evil things to your children harm them in all kinds of ways which is a horrible thing to think about so using Mr Oliver's logic we really need to ahead of time have the government observe question and give a license to anybody that is the road you're going down when you talk about what he's talking about let's take a moment to discuss our schools I often receive comments on social media as asserting that having our kids in traditional schools is better because as one person put it last week in one of my comment section there are more eyes on them to potentially detect and Report any signs of abuse this perspective hinges on the belief that schools are inherently safer environments for children what data do we know about the schools and how safe the schools actually are the first thing about this is it's really a sad Concept in America we used to say that schools were about teaching Reading Writing and arithmetic and some science and some history what in the world happened to People's mind frame that schools were a place to police parents that's a horrible concept and it's not an American Freedom loving concept secondly uh Christie we now have some decent research evidence and Dr Denise Shaquil and I got to do a big study that we published about a year ago we had a representative sample nationally of people who were home educated and who also went to institutional schools we now know that once you statistically control for demographics like income level the P parents growing up and the family number of years in foster care ethnicity race all those basic demographics there's no connection between having been homeschooled having gone to institutional school and more or less abuse or neglect no difference secondly which is really fascinating is for the insignificantly more or less in other words no significant difference in abuse of the homeschooled children the abuse and neglect was not happening at home not by the parents it was happening outside of the home so it's a major study and again there is no empirical evidence of a problem that people imply so when there's no problem there's no reason for the government to try to control the people anymore there's a third thing I think about and this is a really sad thing to think about the best research evidence we have right now is that 10% of public school students that's about five million today will be sexually Mal treated by Public School Employees by the time these children graduate now that's something people are not talking very much it's not something we want to talk about but that is what's happening so we have no evidence that all these government controls and regulations are stopping these children from being harmed and when I was doing a little bit of research for my book I also found that teachers in the classrooms account for a very small per percentage of the people who are doing the mandated reporting what that meant or what I interpreted that to mean and please clarify me if I read that study wrong is that that's 15% the rest of the population who are mandated reporters neighbors other people are doing the majority of reporting for child abuse not teachers remember teachers are in a classroom of 30 kids often bruises are HID you don't know if a kid is in your classroom hungry or not always don't think for one second that teachers are catching everything and that's why every kid needs to go there because teachers are not catching everything yeah it's a it's a really difficult topic and you're right it's there only one portion of who's reporting abuse another thing that people need to remember is that this doesn't solve the problem but the vast majority of abuse and neglect is of children before their school age so again yes Mr Mr Oliver's reasoning is we've got to have the government license you to anybody to be a parent it's it's an absur Concept in a free Nation absolutely before we continue I want to share with you a program that has been a GameChanger for our home school at our Learning Center we instructed and helped kids through pretty much every math program on the market and we know firsthand how important a solid math Foundation is for our kids Futures finding the right homeschool math program that didn't compromise academic Excellence but also one that didn't put me or my kids through the ringer was a challenge until one day I tried CTC math you guys the rest was history first off it's a Mastery based program which means your child gets a solid grasp of the material it's also loaded with mixed reviews ensuring that kids never forget what they've learned the questions are adaptive too which keep students confident and progressing at their own pace but the best part all the teaching grading and testing done for you with CTC math there's no compromise on Excellence your child gets a top-notch education and you just made your homeschool life easier visit CTC math to start your free trial today I want to watch this next clip and hear how you would respond to this a lot of child abuse gets reported through our schools teachers and school administrators are mandated reporters so you know if a child comes to school with bruises or emaciated that is a very common way that it gets reported how would you respond to that I would say we're glad any time a church leader or a scout leader or a school teacher or a neighbor reports abuse that is my first answer second of all I don't have the exact statistic but a minority of reporting of child abuse and neglect is public school teachers so we need to quit pushing this concept Mr Oliver that the public school is the bright shining place that saves all children it's just not true then my next point is the vast majority of abuse and neglect is happening before school age so all of his controls and regulations on public schools and homeschooling is not going to stop any of that uh the last point I want to make is that in 2016 according to Federal data there were 266 child abuse fatalities amongst institutional school children and only five amongst homeschooled children so that's 98.2% of schooled children and only 1.8% of homeschooled which is disproportionately High amongst institutional school children so if you want to just look at one statistic you might say Mr Oliver perhaps there's something about homeschooling that's actually a safer place and I certainly think so among all of the ladies and gentlemen and fathers and mothers and Aunts Uncles and grandparents who are homeschooling and participating in the homeschooling of their children they are making sacrifices in order to provide the best possible education for their children so it's hard and yes of course May Justice be done and may these criminals be punished every single one of them and at the same time vilifying homeschooling as the dangerous thing is just not accurate let's go into this next clip because he does a great job at honoring teachers because they really do have a hard job I started my career in the classroom myself and let me tell you it was not easy let's go ahead and hear what he has to say since last period and they do all of that while also trying to teach long division teachers our superheroes who should make a million a year so you can and though I appreciated him honoring the many teachers in our country who do this job because they care they get into the profession because they want to make the world a better place my I want to hear what you have to say but my heart sank a little bit because every day in my membership I am on Zoom office hours and talking to Mamas and in meetings we're talking about how to manage such a difficult task that we have taken on to home educate our own children as well as doing the housekeeping the cleaning the laundry the meals and all of that and a lot of us do have supportive families many of us do not and my heart kind of sank because although teachers should be H many of them are great some are not I've done social media content on this as well and I never throw teachers under the bus but I do feel like he neglected to truly see the sacrifices I know families who have moved States in order to live in a more affordable place in order to homeschool I have known families that have gone to single income and have had to adjust tremendously in order to do this for their children what would you say to a homeschool mom who sees this clip you're so correct Christy Faith homeschool moms and dads are heroes they work hard they think hard they're intentional they give up a lot of things and I think many of them do not think of it as a sacrifice they think of it as an expression of love and care and concern for their children and people say how do you do that well hey you know what some of them will say rather than have two nicer cars we'll have one decent car and one that barely gets us around they'll say things like well rather than one or two vacations per year maybe we'll do one per year which is car camping I'm being really blunt here rather than all these kinds of things that maybe some people think are the American dream we'll do without it to spend more time with our children give them more one-on-one attention to help guide them in their peer relationships to help Shield them from bullying that hurts them and harms them that gives them a better academic education than on average going to get in a public school yeah we'll do that so you have somebody Mr Oliver trying to find some little tiny crack somewhere where there are a few homeschooled parents doing bad things but there's an entire organization that's pointing out what's going on so again this is not an attack on teachers in general but it's just saying that this is going on at a rate that most people will they do not want to recognize it how many parents want to accept the fact that this is happening to children in public school they don't want to accept it so it's really important to think about this and and consider this and you're right in what you said and what I think has happened in our society this has certainly happened with bullying and I also think with sexual maltreatment uh particularly with girls you had stated earlier that that statistic is 50% I grew up in the system and these types of behaviors that happened every day to me and other statements that were made and things like that that were by most by peers to us growing up in the school system if I was in a therapist office today and re and told those memories those things would be labeled as sexual harassment they would be lab you know they would there's names for what goes on I think what happens in our schools is because it has become so normal normalized and I want to use the right word here because it has maybe a better word is to say because it has become such a standard experience for most kids growing up in our Public Schools we are we're desensitized to what it actually is which is trauma childhood trauma and I don't think parents realize that enough so when I get comments on social media your kid needs to be in school to toughen up I'm thinking to myself what to be bullied every day because be careful what you say be careful what you mean by toughening up because we are not launching healthy emotionally healthy individuals into the world if they have suffered of trauma every single day growing up for 12 years in school that is a person who has trauma who needs help who needs therapy and who's going to have issues later in life truthfully is that if we're going to go with this kind of government control over homeschool parents because they might do something wrong what we need to do do is every year during the summer and during two weeks during the winter break we have to have random Home Inspections of children and parents all of them in the United States of America that's the logic if people think that's good then they're not thinking like Americans if they think that's bad I'm glad because that is not life in a free Nation that's prior restraint it's unconstitutional it's unamerican are there are there some categories of regulations around homeschooling that you would support that you don't think of as an invasion or a takeover Dr Ray would you please explain to my audience what prior restraint is that is the concept that the state or the government would control your behavior or try to control your behavior because you might do something bad that's the opposite of what we do in a free Nation a constitutional Nation like the United States of America where we allow people to do whatever they choose to do as long as they don't harm anybody else then if they harm somebody else they go through a due process with the government and the justice system to find out whether they actually harm somebody and then they are punished that's the concept in a free Nation Mr Oliver gets traction with his audience with some people because he's using the emotional appeal about children but but again if we're going to have a free Nation we do not put preemptive drag Nets and laws and rules on all adults because all adults might do something bad to children or to middle-aged people or to adult people we do not do that in a free Nation creating a streamlined successful home school can be hard the pressure is high and the weight of the responsibility often leads to self-doubt second guessing and feeling overwhelmed with the excessive amount of advice and options out there we love our kids at the same time the stakes are high we don't want to mess this up so how do we build a homeschool our kids will thank us for when they're adults the first step to pulling this off is joining Thrive homeschool Community where you learn the eight-step plan to build an undeniably successful homeschool each year and each kid presents us with Uncharted Territory but with the right plan you can rest in the security and confidence that you are doing a great job the path is easy join Thrive say a quick hello to all your new friends start The eight-step Homeschool success framework and kiss anxiety goodbye it's risk-free no contracts you can cancel any time go to Christy faith.com that's CHR s t- fi.com enter promo code podcast at checkout for $10 off your first month see you inside this next clip I found interesting that's it and there were quotes about how awful this bill was and to an attack on homeschooling and you know they want to move the the goalpost that's what you do in politics but always thought maybe protecting children you wouldn't actually go about that right Dr Ray what is ry's law that they were discussing why are organizations like hsld opposed to it as an attack on homeschoolers what you've got going on here is another appeal to emotion and it pushes you into the fallacy of false Choice it's like I'll be blunt it's like walking up to a man and saying when did you stop beating your wife you're not giving them a choice and you're putting everybody into an emotional state of thinking because well this man must have done something wrong but again if there is no evidence of a problem a significant problem within a certain group of people you do not put that prior restraint on them you do not say hey if only you would let us in your house to watch you all the time and put cameras in all of your bedrooms then we would get to find out the bad things you're doing and if you're innocent why would you be opposed to that that's anti- Freedom that's anti-liberty that is anti-constitutional and everybody in America needs to recognize that way of thinking absolutely and we enjoy freedoms that we have and our very quick when we are given emotional arguments with these awful stories of horrendous crimes against children and we naturally human beings ask ourselves how can we stop this how can we stop these atrocities and so what human beings I think naturally do is they look to government they look to laws and they look to regulations because they think that these will safeguard and prevent from happening these atrocities from happening without realizing one that they actually don't and two that they are whittling away the freedoms of the of in a society that they enjoy very much for themselves so it's it's definitely a slippery go ahead this really comes down and and I believe Christy Faith you know this this comes down to a philosophical and a social problem a government making a bunch of laws does not stop people from doing bad things although it can deter some bad things I I agree with that but what we're really talking about is a change of heart you could call it spiritual you could call it emotional you could call it communitarian it's a change of thinking in the people and right now we have some degradation in the thinking of people when we are accepting the cruddy grest yucky stuff that's just how I'll say it but I could say stronger things in music the parents allow their children to listen to in music that public school teachers approve and will post on their own social media music that degrades women music that degrades men all those things are a bad vicious cycle that affect hearts and minds and affect the behaviors of people and a government law is not going to stop that absolutely so listen folks if you tested your child last year with a standardized tests please go to the link in the show notes and carve out 15 minutes grab a coffee I did it myself and it's a great way to participate and help the homeschooling cause if your finances are tight this is something really powerful that will make a difference for years to come if you just take a little bit of time out of your day to participate in the study for those of you who did not test your kids last year you can't take the study but you can send this to friends who did send it to your send the link to your Co-op leaders your email contacts anybody you know that homeschoolers that you think may have tested their kids last year there isn't too many you can get right the more participants you have the better correct Dr Ray yes that's right and Christie I want to emphasize for all the homeschool families and the negative critics who are watching this or might want to attack research for whatever reason we want everybody involved like I said number of times whether you think your child is doing well academically or poorly we want you in the study no matter your ethnic background no matter your religious beliefs no matter your income level we want the best variety of homeschoolers involved as we can get because ultimately what you are looking for is how are homeschoolers doing in America and even if the results are not what we hope we want to know so we can make changes for ourselves absolutely I love the work that you're doing Dr Ray you were tremendous in our family's decision to homeschool I appreciate all of your efforts with your nonprofit to conduct the research all of the links of everything we talked about today will be in the show notes for everyone to click on I appreciate your time and your expertise thank you so much for being here welcome and thank you for having me