Kevin Freeman: The next generation will wield technology that dwarves anything we've imagined

Kevin Freeman: You know the next generation will determine our nation's future. That's always true, of course, but never before in human history as next generation held so much potential for either good or evil. Our next generation will wield technology that dwarves anything we've ever built or imagined. And it can be used to bring a future full of blessings or a dystopian nightmare worse than any imagination. Who will have such power? That, my friends, is up to us. We've been given the privilege of educating the most powerful generation the world will ever know. The good news is that we can take steps to ensure that the future is a bright one. With the help of God and his eternal word, we can bring truth, light and hope. Joining me to discuss the future of education is my bride, my best friend, the mother of our darling children, and the other co host of Pirate Money Radio. The other, it's Mike Carty. But this one is Marnie Freeman. My sweetheart, redhead. Welcome, Marnie.

Marnie Freeman: Thank you. I love being here with you.

Kevin Freeman: I love it, too.

Marnie is a home educator who has two daughters through education

Hey, you're uniquely qualified today. I want to start with a mom who has birthed, raised and educated two wonderful daughters, a home educator, tried everything but public school, school chaplain, as a part of your career, and work with me on the board of the school where our girls graduated. Marnie, I remember we're going to have kids. And you just almost immediately said, what will we do for education? What did we try?

Marnie Freeman: Well, what you said was you came out one day from time of prayer and said, I think we need a homeschool. And I was petrified. And I actually said, no, no. But I've since changed my mind. And we've, I mean, we have kids that are in, their 20s now, so it worked.

Kevin Freeman: It did work.

What were your top priorities in education? What did you need

All right. So what were you looking for in education? What was your top priorities? What did you need?

Marnie Freeman: Christian worldview, number one. Number one, okay. by far, because it's about training the heart, it's about raising them up in the way that they should go so that when they're older, they won't depart from it.

Kevin Freeman: So Marnie says Christian worldview, Kevan says, it needs to be affordable. Please let it be affordable. and what, what were other values we were looking for?

Marnie Freeman: Well, we didn't want to lose the ability to spe into their lives when they were gone for so long. Whether it was public, Christian, full time, whatever. And I'm not saying those things are Bad because you have to find what fits your child. But, just keeping the time with them when they're younger to submit that you only have 18 summers. That's not long.

Kevin Freeman: Right. And the first three they don't remember and the last three they're off going, you know, whatever way. But we wanted something that would keep our family together, to be respectful to family and parents. And you know, sometimes public, school strips parents of rights. Particularly in California where the minute they enter the schoolroom door, they don't belong to the parents, they belong to the.

Marnie Freeman: State, you know, and that's legally. Honestly, they don't. And then some schools are fine in other states. I mean, public school was started with the intention of educating children to read so that they would be able to read the Bible.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah, that was Tim Barton, the basis. Tim Barton shared that with us on.

Marnie Freeman: I think we've gotten away from that a little bit.

Kevin Freeman: Sadly true. And ah, we want them to get. We wanted our daughters to have a quality education so they could get into college if they wanted to. Wasn't necessary. But if they wanted to and actually learn something. Not just waste time.

Marnie Freeman: No. I mean, and in some of the schools that are more full time, there is a lot of wasting of time. Changing classrooms, doing all the things. it's a lot of time that they are wasting when you can actually adjust that time to what you need to what they need. if you have to stop and go to a doctor's appointment, you can just throw them in the car, those type of things. we took them all the way around the country on, some homeschooling ventures around your meetings or my meetings.

Kevin Freeman: It needs to be doable.

Marnie Freeman: Doable.

Kevin Freeman: Something that we could work into our schedule. But also not so overwhelming. I mean, there were times in their school career where I'm up at three in the morning helping them get an assignment finished and I had time or two. And you had times and times again doing that. and it just felt like we were going through school again.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah, well, that wasn't even really. That was part. That was a program that was part homeschooling, part school, that they attended. And so we were a little bit at the mercy of those teachers. And so some of that was a little bit more difficult because I couldn't control it and cancel a project if I needed to.

Kevin Freeman: Yep. But it needed to be doable. Something we do. And then we wanted socialization and friendships for them. Most kids get most of their friendship relationships out of school. That's where the, you know, that's where the, oh, I went to school with him or whatever. That's where the bonding happens. What else, anything else were we looking for?

Marnie Freeman: well, I mean like you said, the friendship. So, and then the ability to do, sports or whatever they were interested in, we could control that a little bit better. you know, we could send them for times with their, family, other family members, those type of things if, you know, find them mentors if you're in full time school. And again, I don't have things against that, but we can control, mentorships. We can control those type of things, those influences. We wanted them not to be exposed as early to, sex, drugs, pornography, gender identity, those type of things. and I think they were, give.

Kevin Freeman: Them a chance to mature before they had to deal with those real world issues. All right, so we explored a bunch of different options. Let's walk through the pluses and minuses. For example, we pretty much out ruled out public school for our family.

Marnie Freeman: We did.

Kevin Freeman: Although there are a lot of good school districts with Christian teachers in the school system, Christian administrators and so forth. I'll tell you a real big plus to public school is it doesn't cost any extra. It does not strain the family budget any extra.

Marnie Freeman: That's true. And they also have programs that, it's harder for a homeschooler to find out. Maybe some sports programs like football is a big one that we would have had to sought out if we had boys.

Kevin Freeman: Right. We had daughters and their athletics would be more aligned. Dancing and gymnastics and things like that. That's just what they were interested in.

Marnie Freeman: we saw Linda McMahon, Department of Education Secretary, and she's doing great work. We saw her the other night and what she's doing up there is hopeful.

Kevin Freeman: It is, it is, it is hopeful.

One of the places communism is infiltrated are the major teachers unions

But there's teachers unions and we've seen teachers unions that don't necessarily reflect what teachers think. They, we have next week coming Rod Martin, and we're talking about the long march to the institutions of communism. One of the places communism is infiltrated are the major teachers unions. They actually have, ah, transgender ideology, above educating students in some cases. and pro abortion and pro. A lot of things that we disagreed with.

Marnie Freeman: They actually, in some older policies and documents. I don't know if it exists today. It probably does. I just haven't researched it. Where they actually said, stated, we have to abolish homeschool, that's because they want to have your child all day long. You know, Five days a week. And after school.

Kevin Freeman: There are some nations that have, like Germany, I think, has abolished homeschooling. And it comes from, potentially Hitler's control of the youth in the school system. So, all right, public school, it's an option for people. Make sure that you've got teachers aligned with your values. private school, there are great options for private school in our area. And Marnie, you brought me two or three of them, and I'm like, they look fantastic. And then I saw the tuition bill and I'm like, I'm paying for college starting at kindergarten. so that's where we talked about homeschooling.

Marnie Freeman: Yes, well. And he felt like the Lord was leading us that way. And I, again, was petrified. But as time went on, I'm like, oh, I can do this. And even on the other side of it now, I would do it a million times over.

Kevin Freeman: I remember when we first talked to Mike Ferris and Mike mentioned homeschooling, and you looked at him like he had three horns or something. And you're like, ah, what are you talking about? He said, no, no, it's very easy. I don't have time for all this. I don't feel qualified to teach, and all of this. And he says, no, you get the right curricul. He turned out to be right on that.

Marnie Freeman: He was absolutely right. Mr. M. Home School Legal Defense himself.

Kevin Freeman: Yes. HLSDA. HSLDA. Homeschool Legal Defense association, which we, by the way, joined. And I got my teacher ID as a homeschool teacher.

Marnie Freeman: Oh, the discounts with those IDs are fabulous. So that should help everybody when they're buying books and all that. Even at, ah, like Barnes and Noble and all that. If you have that teacher ID and you have legal protections at hsdlda.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah. Now we'll just talk about a Home School legal defense association. HSLDA. probably.org I'm guessing.

Marnie Freeman: I don't know.

Kevin Freeman: We'll look it up.

We're talking with Marnie Freeman about homeschooling

All right, we're gonna take a break here in a second, but we're talking about homeschooling and how to educate your children affordably based on our experience and the things we've learned. And one of the moms who has researched this in depth and has helped other families deal with it is my dear wife, Marnie Freeman. She is a redhead. She's br. Brilliant and she's beautiful. So we're talking with Marnie Freeman about homeschooling. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about how you can do this in your home. We'll be right back.

Kevin Freeman: It's been almost 20 years since we started homeschooling

Mike Carter: Welcome back to Pirate Money Radio with your host, Kevan Freeman.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah. And I'm joined by Marnie Freeman. We're talking about decisions that we made. Gosh, it's been m. It's been almost 20 years ago that we were making.

Marnie Freeman: These decisions on the front end.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah. And 20 years ago, we were saying, how are we going to educate our kids?

Marnie Freeman: We're not that old.

Kevin Freeman: sometimes we feel that way. But no, by faith, we are young at heart. And we've got. You know, Moses was 80, when he led the children out of, Egypt.

Marnie Freeman: So I'm going for that program.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah, we'll be on the Moses program, but making decisions on homeschooling, private schooling or whatever. We looked at full time homeschooling, and we actually tried multiple different ways to do this. Do you want to talk a little bit about our journey there?

Marnie Freeman: Well, we, started out with a program that was three days in and two days out. We did Mother's Day before actual K12. Then we moved in. Three days, two days out. So like a NOMS school model or college prep model, we did that. Then we pulled them out and did full time homeschooling. We went all over the country. We were using museums and things like that, to educate them. And they loved it. They remember almost all of it. Then, we did some co ops. We did classical conversations, partial classical conversations.

Kevin Freeman: They learned through all of it.

Marnie Freeman: Oh, they learned through all of it. And we actually adjusted. I had a, homeschool mom who had gone before me, and she told me which was freeing. She said, find out what each child needs. Pray for each child for every year. And that's what we did. And that because they learn differently, they're different in their interests and the things that they want to do. And that helped a lot. It was actually freeing.

Kevin Freeman: we blended all of this, and I'll tell you, it worked. Our kids are brilliant. And they at the top of their classes. Dean's list, President's list, Magna cum laude, you know, great performance in college.

Marnie Freeman: Right.

Kevin Freeman: And that's one of the fears people will say, oh, no, you can't homeschool your kids. They'll never get into a good college. Well, they got into good colleges. And not only that, they performed well. They outperformed their students. But I will never forget, we took our girls on a trip to Washington, D.C. we drove across the country, and we'd stop at museums, like the Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri. I remember on the way back from a trip, and they'd done a lot of Smithsonians on this trip, a lot. And we got back and one of our daughters said, you know what? I forgot to buy presents for my friends because they were in a two day in m, three day out program at that point. Or three, three and two. I don't remember which, but I need to get presents. We gotta get them. I said, when we get home, we'll go buy them something. And I said, no, no, no, we have to buy them on the trip. You remember where we stopped, like a.

Marnie Freeman: Dollar, Dollar General?

Kevin Freeman: Yeah. We stopped at the dollar store of some kind. And on the way, home, they stopped and got pencils and notepads and things like that. But it was okay because it was on the. It was Texarkana, Arkansas. or maybe it was Texarkana, Texas, you know, that town. and we got them. And that was satisfying because we bought them on our trip.

Marnie Freeman: That was true. That was true. It was very fun. I enjoyed it.

Kevin Freeman: But how many Civil War museums? We went to Mount Vernon. We went to, where President Washington was. We went to Philadelphia, Valley Forge.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah, all of it.

Kevin Freeman: Gettysburg, Vicksburg. We went all over and taught them history. And they, you know what?

Marnie Freeman: That came to life.

Kevin Freeman: That became their favorite subject, both of them.

Marnie Freeman: It did. It did. They're really good at it. They love it. They love it.

Kevin Freeman: Yep. No, and there were times when we were having to, fax in assignment responses because they were, you know, some years we were full on homeschooling. Like when we went to California, I think, that long road trip, and went to Utah.

Marnie Freeman: We spoke all the way down through Utah.

Kevin Freeman: Right. and then I remember getting to San Francisco with the girls. And this isn't the same as at home. We taught them climate issues and overcrowding on the planet. When we asked them, as we're driving across West Texas, do you see too many people out here?

Homeschooling is less expensive than private school, but it's not free

Marnie Freeman: Or Utah or Wyoming or any of those places?

Kevin Freeman: This is so dumb. People think the planet's overcrowded. Look, there's all this space, all this land.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Freeman: No, it was fabulous. And we did it affordably, which was great. And we also did this university M model, college style preparatory hybrid, which turned out to be the one we did most prominently in their education experience. And they graduated from there and they got diplomas and it was accredited, right?

Marnie Freeman: It was accredited, yes. And I mean, homeschoolers, can get into, you know, collegiate sports and do all those things as well. If you end up being full time homeschool on the high school years, for us, we ended up being in like a university model and loved, you know, all that. And I will say there's pros and cons to all of it, but what worked for our family and what we loved the most was the university model. And you know, I think. Well, you, I think you're gonna ask me this, but what would you do differently? There's some things I would do differently. Like this sounds crazy, but I would even spend more time with my kids. You know, that's so, so crazy to hear. But that is one thing I would do a little bit more differently in the upper school years because they were off doing their sports. They were off doing, you know, they got busy.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah, they did. Kids do. but it was fun because, you know, because our family Cherokee heritage, one of our daughters took Cherokee as, and you had to research that to find how you can teach Cherokee to your child as her foreign language. Texas requires a foreign language for graduation. And, and she took Cherokee, which is kind of fun.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah. And the other one took Spanish. So they could choose. In our model at that time, they could choose. And in homeschool you could choose whatever you wanted.

Kevin Freeman: Right. So, as opposed to a private school, which I looked up, the average annual tuition for private school around the country is $12,790, but costs very significantly by location, school type and level, with average high school tuition about 15,344, and elite boarding schools costing $60,000 per year, which by the way is the equivalent of a full time salary in the United States for an average person. Costs depend on, factors like fees and supplies and everything. So the average overall, 12,790. Average high school, 15,344, average private elementary school, $7,630 per year. It's very expensive. You add that up for, for 12 years of schooling and you've put aside enough money to pay for college or give them a great start. It's very expensive.

Marnie Freeman: It's very expensive.

Kevin Freeman: But it's worth it if that's what your family needs.

Marnie Freeman: It depends on your goals. It depends on your child's abilities. It depends on a lot of factors. And mainly what is the Lord saying for each child.

Kevin Freeman: Yes, homeschooling is less expensive, but it's not free.

Marnie Freeman: No, it's not free.

Kevin Freeman: You have, curriculum costs.

Marnie Freeman: Curriculum, you know, field trips, things like that, and then sports. You get generally free in the, public school setting. But you don't. You have to pay for school sitting.

Kevin Freeman: And then you have the lost work. Because if you're staying home with your kids, you're not out in the workforce.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah.

Kevin Freeman: Is it worth it?

Marnie Freeman: Oh, my gosh, absolutely. But I will say this. You probably had some lost work moments, because in our homeschool, we called it Freeman Academy. We established authority. I'm like, I'm the teacher, and your dad is the principal, and if things go awry, we are going to call on the principal. And they did every once in a while, so we had to drag you in. And it was funny because they got to be like, don't go get the principal.

Kevin Freeman: That's great. Getting sent to the principal's office, not a fun thing. But it's dad's study is what it is.

Rod Martin: Home education has taken off in recent years

all right. It sometimes comes down to money, and you're gonna have to make these decisions. Whatever is best for your family. But there are three things you can do with your money. You can give it, you can spend it, or you can invest it. At Pirate Money Radio, we work to explain solutions that support all three areas in a way that promotes liberty, security, and values. Patriot Mobile, a, mobile phone company, supports the Pirate Money radio program. Patriot Mobile uses US carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T Mobile, and operates on both Apple and Android phones. More information about the economic war room and Patriot Mobile is [email protected] AFR that's PirateMoneyRadio.com AFR you know, cell phone bills aren't something that anybody thought about 30, 40 years ago. Nobody even thought, what's a cell phone bill? nobody thought really about, home education very much.

Marnie Freeman: 34 years ago they did, but there just wasn't as much curriculum and as much help back then. I mean, it's been around for a while, a long, long, long while.

Kevin Freeman: And there wasn't as much pandemic which exposed the parents to what some of the public schools were teaching. Can you imagine the horrifying findings when parents step into a classroom that's online and they see that their kids are being indoctrinated? That's why homeschooling, I think, has taken off the past few years.

Marnie Freeman: That has definitely contributed. I mean, we've seen, what's in books, what's in their videos that these schools have provided, and they're sickening. Sickening.

Kevin Freeman: Yep. No, it is frightening, because that is the intention. That's according to plan, like in my book, according to Plan, so our response, and we even were you, you got us ahead of this curve, more than two decades ago. And we've tried it all pure homeschooling, Classical Conversations, which by the way, we know Lee, the founder of Classical Conversations, have nothing but positive things. And our kids still remember the songs that they learn. They can name every president because they can sing it in a song.

Marnie Freeman: That's right.

Kevin Freeman: the average public school student I doubt could name more than 10 presidents.

Marnie Freeman: Everything was to song in Classical Conversations in the earlier years. And they remember all of that.

Kevin Freeman: Yep. We did co ops where we brought a group of homeschooling families together and we taught music or different things. We worked with the center for Home Education, which in, Dallas Fort Worth area is a phenomenal resource with a bookstore and classes that they could take. They could take a one off class. and then we tried hybrid, which would be the two or three day a week in the classrooms. All right, big questions for you, Marnie. We'll probably have to carry these on after the break. but you were scared when we started. Is it doable? Can ordinary Americans, are they qualified to teach their children?

Marnie Freeman: Well, you're their parents, so you're automatically qualified because the Bible tells you you're qualified. So there's that. But I was petrified to teach math and all the things but I learned in public school. I did not learn math very well. I actually was left behind. My dad was an engineer, very frustrated with me. Why couldn't I learn math? Well, as I started teaching my kids, I was realized, oh, I could have learned math, it was easy. I just wasn't taught the correct way. But I.

Kevin Freeman: Well, and there's not one correct way either.

Marnie Freeman: There's not. It's learning style.

Kevin Freeman: Put, one of our daughters into mental math, which is a Chinese based math formula. At least she had a Chinese teacher. And she was using her fingers and hands and then eventually she was doing complex equations in her head.

Marnie Freeman: Absolutely.

Kevin Freeman: After they were told, oh, she's failing math, she's two grades behind, we're going to have to hold her back. And all of a sudden she just leapfrogged them with mental math.

Marnie Freeman: Well, Matt, she was her top subject and she got behind a little bit in that and they couldn't adjust for that. The teacher left her behind.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah, well, they left behind with Common Core, which taught strange, weird concepts like, it would tell you certain numbers and then it'd tell you to count the tens and she'd come up with the right answer. And be told she was wrong because.

Marnie Freeman: She didn't do it in that exact way that they asked her. Weird way weird way. And, she got in trouble for it.

Kevin Freeman: Next week we'll be talking about this with Rod Martin, how two plus two equals five according, to the communists. Anyway, we're talking homeschooling. I've got Marnie Freeman, my beautiful wife, here with us and we're going to be telling you how you can do this if you want to do it for your kids or your grandkids. We'll be right back.

Mike Carter: Pirate Money Radio, helping you give, spend, ah, and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values.

9 million Americans have experienced being homeschooled at some point

Welcome back with your host, Kevan Freeman.

Kevin Freeman: And I'm joined by Homeschooler of the Year. I'm just going to designate that for Pirate Money Radio, my fabulous wife Marnie. And I'm looking, Marnie, at some statistics that come from the National Home education research institute. N h e r I.org and homeschooling in the 70s when I was, when I was right in the middle of my, school career, I was in middle school in 1973 there were only 13,000, 13,000 total across America, home educated individuals. by 1997 there were a million that were home educated. 1990 was 275,000 and a million in 1997. And so when we started having kids, 1.4 million. And now, as recently as 2021 it was 3.75 million. So we've seen a, it's going to.

Marnie Freeman: Be way dramatic increase, going to be way higher now.

Kevin Freeman: And when you look at that and you think about the growth of homeschooling, I remember when we were traveling before our girls were school age and we were traveling early on I was speaking, we'd go into a town, we'd stop at McDonald's because our preschool kids wanted, to get the apple slices and chicken nuggets and so forth at McDonald's. We'd stop there and you and I'd look over and we'd see just the brightest, the best behaved, everything kids over there. And we'd always ask them the one question, what will we ask? No, you go ahead, where do you go to school? And what did they say?

Marnie Freeman: I don't. I'm home schooled.

Kevin Freeman: Yes, home educated.

Marnie Freeman: Home educated, yeah.

Kevin Freeman: We use the term homeschooling, broadly, but we really mean home educated. And we decided that's part of what motivated us to go to, with home education.

Marnie Freeman: They'd look you in the eyes, they were really smart. They would in, they would talk with.

Kevin Freeman: Adults, shake your hand.

Marnie Freeman: They were different.

Kevin Freeman: They were different. They stood out in a good way.

Marnie Freeman: I didn't meet a lot of quirky, weird ones. Yeah, I know you hear that. But I didn't really meet a lot of quirky, weird homeschoolers.

Kevin Freeman: No. No. And yet that is what the education system will try and tell. Oh, yeah, no, they're not socialized and they don't know how to talk to people and all that. It couldn't be further from the truth. So I'm looking at this statistic. There's over 3 million homeschool students or home educated students, grades K through 12, and that is through 2022. It's probably higher today. But that was only 6% of school age children. 94% are still in some kind of institutional setting. are they all white? No. 41% of homeschool families are non white, non Hispanic. So that's, they're pretty diverse in terms of background, demographically. And 9 million Americans have experienced being homeschooled at some point in their career. 9 million as of February 2020. So this isn't a fad. This is something that's real and growing.

Marnie Freeman: I don't think it's going to go away. I think it's important because again, I think it cements and bonds the family in their relationships, but also their worldview or, you know, if people are Christian, then they're definitely going to be able to train according to that. And it's just, it's just beautiful. And people who are actually remain in homes, in public school settings, things like that. There are, a lot of resources there now that they have as in after school clubs like ffa. there's students standing strong. There is a lot of after school, fellowship with Christian athletes where they can get that incorporated into their career.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah, well, and some of the best and the brightest, I'm thinking some of my sister's kids, her youngest, actually got super high SAT scores got super high and she did an online curriculum from home that was fabulous.

Marnie Freeman: Oh, and ah, there's a lot of that. There's Liberty University, there's what she had, did that may have been Veritas Press, a lot of availability to do that. Even individual colleges will do that. And people can walk out with an associate's degree from high school, from high school, and it saves time and money when they go on to further their education in college.

Kevin Freeman: So you can knock out half of your college pretty Much taking high school. That's dual credit.

Marnie Freeman: Well, yeah, a lot of dual.

Kevin Freeman: Credit, which is phenomenal. I mean, if you're, if you're thinking you're budget conscious and you want your kids to have a great college education, but you don't want to spend the hundred or two hundred or however many hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs these days. One of the ways to do that is dual credit where they're getting incredible. Hillsdale college curriculum, Liberty University curriculum.

Marnie Freeman: I was just going to say Hillsdale. They offer fabulous free classes now. Hillsdale turning point, USA. We actually had Dr. Hutz Hertzberg in here, in the, well, in economic war room and pirate money, I think. But he told us what they were doing at Turning Point, which is helping teachers. they're building K12 academies. Hillsdale's got a K12 academy. A lot of stuff is online. Hillsdale has online free classes in history, the Constitution, all of these things that a, lot of resources available out there. If you decide to homeschool or not, you have a never ending plethora of curriculum and resources.

Kevin Freeman: Now this is really important from a worldview perspective. I wrote the book according to plan, part of the plan to destroy the United States as we know it. The liberty, security and values. And turn us into work. You'll own nothing and be happy about it. Turn us into drones. Where our rights come from government, not from God. That sort of thing. They feel, they look at the public school, and I don't mean every public school, but they look at the whole public schooling effort and say, this is our chance to indoctrinate kids. This is how we take over. Now, you pointed out Linda McMahon. We saw her, with Glenn Beck, Ah. just recently, and she's working to dismantle some of that, which, praise God, thank God for doing that. But, the teachers unions and a lot of others see schooling, we're just one generation. You know, we hear freedom is only one generation away from extinction, from Reagan. And that's our challenge to preserve it. There's the other side that says freedom is only one generation away from extinction. Extinction.

People are talking about school vouchers and ways to give back taxpayer money

Let's knock it out. Let's blow out that candle and make it gone and take us into a thousand years of darkness where the elites run and rule everything and the rest of us are just kind of mindless, worker beasts.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah, no, that's true. I still think they have so much influence there. And so if you are in public schools or even private schools to some degree, you'll have to combat that. And you have to be just as intentional as a homeschooling parent would be. You have to really, really keep tabs on your kids. We indoctrinated our kids. And I just, I'll just call it indoctrinating. We put them in summer camps like Worldview Academy. There's also Summit Ministries. There's Patriot Academy, American Journey Experience, those type of places. with glenn beck's mercury one, what's.

Kevin Freeman: The one chick fil a has?

Marnie Freeman: I360. I think it's called i360. so there's a lot of places to go. There's Tim and Barton, Tim and David Barton, wall builders. Bill Federer has the American Minute. There's Prageru Christians engaged. There's all kinds of places where you can still pull, on those resources and just use them and enjoy them.

Kevin Freeman: Right. No, it's ready made and easy. Easy to go with. And you're actually preserving liberty, security and values. Whereas the school system is purposely, in many cases, not in every case. I mean there's, there are a lot good school districts that are run by good Christian people that don't want to take over. Indoctrinate your kids. Don't want to do anything to harm America. But when you see young people coming out and they're. I mean, it shocks me the anti Semitic nature that you see after we had World War II and we fought a war against Nazi tyranny that said that all our problems were caused by the Jews. And then you see that popping up even in some conservative circles. That's frightening to me. And it goes back to, did you educate, did you teach history? Our kids had to go to the Holocaust Museum. That was one of their requirements.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah, I mean, we didn't really hide much from them. We taught them age appropriately, we taught them about life issues, gender issues, the Holocaust, all of those things as it was appropriate timing for them. But they didn't go out into the world blind. They were probably a little over educated and all that, but they were told the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and they were told the truth in history. And so when they get out in the real world, they're critical thinkers and they can discern truth from a lie pretty quickly. Yep.

Kevin Freeman: you know, it's interesting. Taxpayers spend an average of $16,446 per pupil annually in public schools plus capital expenditures. Now then you stop and you think about, that and you realize that private school average tuition is below that. We're actually paying more for less. Quality education in many places. And that is socialism, and that is a problem. you know, that's economic warfare. And the average. If you have 3.1 million homeschool students, we are saving taxpayers $51 billion.

Marnie Freeman: That's insanity.

Kevin Freeman: That's a lot of money. Now, could we give that money back? People are talking about voucher systems and ways to give that back. What are your thoughts on that?

Marnie Freeman: So I. I have pros and cons thoughts about it. I think it's great that someone could move to a place that would serve them better or to the home that might serve them better.

Kevin Freeman: however, if 100% agree with school choice, if you've got a parent. If you're a parent, you've got a child and you're in. And your child is in a failing school, you should have that choice, and you should not have to pay twice. But you have reservations.

Marnie Freeman: My reservation is having the government tell me what I can do or what I can teach or all that. So it could open the door or the camel's nose could get under the tent a little bit. So that's where my hesitation is. But I love the concept of it. If we can carry out and make. Put some fences or some boundaries on it.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah. Oklahoma is done a little bit differently. And I'm trying to remember what Senator Bullard told us that they were doing in Oklahoma that's different than just a check or vouchers. No, it did seem to work, and it seemed to give. Empower the parents. I'm going to look that up here while we're talking and see if I can see, how they're doing school choice, because he was very, very vocal in saying they've thought through it's tax credit. Is that it's. Yeah. Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Program. A refundable income tax credit between 5,000, 7,500 is allowed for eligible Oklahoma taxpayers who pay or expect to pay qualified expenses such as tuition. So that's an interesting way to do it. Is it tax credits?

Marnie Freeman: Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Freeman: So.

Marnie Freeman: And they said it has been working.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah. No, whatever it is, we believe for all of human history up until the last hundred and some years, parents, educated children, and then we decided we're going to shove them into a system that the state runs for hours, and then we take God out of that classroom setting. And the net result of it is that we've declined as a society. We've lost morality and so forth. We need to get back to the principles God had. Which parents are the ones God's Chosen to educate their children.

Marnie Freeman: Get back to the Ten Commandments, prayer and all that in the school.

Marnie Freeman talks about homeschooling on Pirate Money Radio

God in the school.

Kevin Freeman: Yep. All right, so we're talking about that. We've got Ten Commandments going back into school thanks to Patriot Mobile and others. but we're going to cover more of this. We've got one more segment with Marnie Freeman talking about homeschooling. And we will be right back.

Marnie Freeman: M.

Mike Carter: Pirate Money Radio, helping you give, spend and invest in ways that align with liberty, security and values.

Kevin Freeman: Mississippi recently ranked number one in education improvement

Welcome back with your host, Kevan Freeman.

Kevin Freeman: And joined by Marnie Freeman. We're talking homeschooling because, she was the person in our home education program that not only, shepherded our daughters in a beautiful way, but also then reached out to a co op. That's not a co op.

Marnie Freeman: it's a fully accredited school. They were two days in educated, and then we homeschooled three days.

Kevin Freeman: Hybrid is the word I was looking for.

Marnie Freeman: Now, there's charter schools, too, which some of them are great.

Kevin Freeman: Charter schools are another alternative.

Marnie Freeman: But we did hybrid.

Kevin Freeman: We did a hybrid. All right, and how did the school students turn out? Does homeschooling work or does it turn out people that are ignorant? And, you know, I'm picturing some of these TV shows, backwater TV shows, picturing, the worst of the worst in, South America, also known as Alabama or Louisiana.

Marnie Freeman: Oh, my God.

Kevin Freeman: You know, which have actually. Did you know that Mississippi has recently been ranked number one in education improvement? Mississippi, which was at the bottom. It's moved to the top, particularly when dealing with black Americans.

Marnie Freeman: I think that's great.

Kevin Freeman: And you know who's the worst is those schools in the Northeast. The ones that consider themselves so liberal and so progressive and so advanced. They're the ones that are performing the poorest. And number one is Mississippi, which is.

Marnie Freeman: I think there's probably some woke ideology or something inserted into their curriculum or things like that.

Kevin Freeman: No doubt. All right, so, but if you homeschool, home educate, do they underperform their peers, who go to public school?

Marnie Freeman: No, they outperform. and we saw it with our own two kids and, they went. They literally had to teach their peers in college how to write, how to read, how to take notes, how to research, how to do their time, how to plan, out their time for. And it was amazing. And I actually finally had to tell our youngest, okay, you're just going to have to create a little club, like a study club and a tutor club, because she Was doing it one off individually.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah. No, everybody would come to her and say, how do I write this? What do I do here? No, they were a leg ahead. And it's interesting because, at the Worldview Academy or Worldview at the Abbey, our eldest daughter who went there, she led. I was so super proud of her. She's like, yeah, she had her competitor that she went and he academically performed brilliantly, went off to Hillsdale, great college and everything else. But she would regularly beat in exams. I was so proud of her.

Home educated students typically score above average on standardized tests, studies show

All right. Home educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public school students on standardized academic tests. And there's a bunch of studies on this from, Ray and Jose. and the 2015 figure found black homeschool students to be scoring 23 to 42 percentile above black public school students. 78% of peer reviewed studies on academic achievement show homeschool students performing statistically significantly better than those in institutional schools. They score better on achievement tests regardless of their parents level of education or the family household income. Whether the parents are certified or teachers. Certified, as teachers is not relevant. The degree of state control and regulation of homeschooling is not related to academic achievement. So the school, the state interfering in home education doesn't make it better. Home educated students typically score above average on the SAT and ACT tests. And they're increasingly being actively recruited by colleges.

Marnie Freeman: So I actually want to add some thoughts to that. Well, why is that? Okay, so scientifically, boys and girls, we know that, and I don't have a lot of time to go into all the research, but their brains are physically different. So if you see a lot of boys, they're like hyper and they're like labeled adhd. Even girls in some cases, they move around. Literally, it's proven they have to move around to get all those brain cells firing and doing all the things. or you have ADHD or you have things like this, you have the ability at home to address that without labeling. Because a lot of times they get labeled as bad kids. They're too talkative, they do these things wrong. there's. So then they start labeling themselves as stupid. And so I think that is one aspect you can deal with out of the home. And in our case, one of our kids, okay, our youngest was, she'd like to be on her head upside down, running around, twisting things, playing with toys as I'm trying to teach. And it was frustrating to me.

Kevin Freeman: She is a dancer now, by the way.

Marnie Freeman: She's A dancer now, but yes. And the other one just sat there and would like and like to do, you know, be really still and do things.

Kevin Freeman: Beautiful. But she's one's. One is a brainiac in terms of how she learns sit and read and so forth. And the other one is, I want to be moving. And she learns kinetically.

Marnie Freeman: Yeah. And I had a teacher tell me she is taken in, she's absorbing everything you're saying. And I didn't realize that. And we tested her several times throughout and she had learned everything. Could repeat back everything I said, but.

Kevin Freeman: If you tied her down to her chair, she couldn't learn.

Marnie Freeman: And so she was able to deal better. That. And then secondly is labels again. Labeling these kids, you know where. And it's not character, they're not character issues, they're not character problems. They're labeling. For instance, a lot of people were speaking over my kids, oh, you're more stem, you're more, science, math, all that. Or you're more creative, you're more, ah, artsy or whatever.

Kevin Freeman: Left brain, right brain, left brain, right brain.

Marnie Freeman: And the Lord spoke to my heart very clearly. It was a mic drop moment for me. your kids have the mind of Christ. I am not half brained, therefore they are not half brained.

Kevin Freeman: Oh, that's good.

Marnie Freeman: So, and I said, you get a.

Kevin Freeman: Chocolate for that one.

Marnie Freeman: I know. I stopped labeling and I didn't let other people speak over them that way. And I started praying according that they have the mind of Christ, they use their whole brain. Are they supposed to do all the things? Maybe? Not necessarily. Are they called to do all the things? Not necessarily. They are going to be drawn naturally and by God's gifting to them to certain things. But by gosh, they use their entire brains. And their professors, teachers, other their bosses now have pointed that out to me.

Kevin Freeman: Yeah, they use both left and right hemispheres of their brain. They're brilliant. but I think of this, you encourage them in that. And if you are not an encourager, maybe home education is not for you if you have to do this and if you're overly disciplined, it's good to be disciplined.

Marnie Freeman: I started out that way because I thought that's what you had to do. And that's what I saw in the schools and all that. And I just had to do it this way. I had to unlearn so much and then I had to learn to have.

Kevin Freeman: Fun and be an encourager. Yeah, you did have fun. I remember we had, you, you took the shredding out of my shredder. And you had shred fights and marshmallow fights. The shred fights got me. And I'm like, it's a little. All that dust from the paper and everything.

Marnie Freeman: You told me it'd break our vacuum.

Kevin Freeman: It did.

Marnie Freeman: It actually did.

Kevin Freeman: It did. It clogged up the vacuum. We had to get a new vacuum cleaner. But you did shaving cream. But you had fun with them, and that was great.

I remember my public school days and middle school very well

I remember my public school days and middle school. You've heard me tell the stories. I'm not entirely fond of middle school. I was the same smallest kid in the school. I, as a ninth grader, was shorter than the shortest seventh grader that was in the school. Even girls. My sister was two or three years younger and she was taller than me. And because of my height, I got put and I God forbid that you would do this, but there were some, students there that had autism and some other mental challenges. Well, they were called the retard kids. And that's just what they called then. And it's wrong and it's terrible. But I, in gym class, was stuck with them and told because I was too small, they were worried I'd get run over by somebody much larger than me. And I remember just the devastating impact on my self esteem at that. I hated.

Marnie Freeman: There's so much of that that goes on because they don't have an outlet to talk to someone about it.

Kevin Freeman: And they're not dealing with individuals who could be geniuses. And because they're not taking their strengths and building on their strengths, they're stuffing them into standardization.

Marnie Freeman: I mean, part of it is they don't have time. They don't have time and they can't teach to all the different learning styles. I mean, it'd be unusual if they could,

Kevin Freeman: Yeah, no, it would be hard.

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Studies show homeschool students perform significantly better than those in conventional schools

All right, we're looking at the academic achievement, percentile ranks for homeschool is greater than that for state school. But here's the big one. We've got about a minute left. but won't your kids be the nerdy little kids that can't interact with their peers? They won't be socialized. You can't do that to them.

Marnie Freeman: No, my kids will be the kind that thump your kids. Just kidding. They are going to do great. And anyone can homeschool. They just have to have fun and enjoy and reach out for resources.

Kevin Freeman: And they do get socialized. They absolutely do. They get it at church, they get it at playtimes, they get it with other homeschool kids. Their actual socialization by. According to studies, 87% of peer reviewed studies on social, emotional and psychological development show homeschool students perform statistically significantly better than those in conventional schools. All right, there's so much to explore with homeschooling. We'll have to do another one of these Pirate Money Radio. But take a look. Go to Homeschool Legal Defense association and look at it as an option for your kids or for your grandkids or for your great grandkids. Homeschooling is something that is a way to bring the love of Christ into school.

Kevin Freeman asks you to pray for Pirate Money Radio

All right, Pray for us. Pray for our nation. Pray for our future. Listen wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify and so forth. This is Kevan Freeman joined by Marnie Freeman for Pirate Money Radio.

Discover practical, budget-aware paths to educate children with a strong Christian worldview, from full-time homeschooling to university-model hybrids. Kevin and Marnie share 20+ years of lessons, resources, travel-based learning, and outcomes that outperformed traditional schools. They cover costs, curricula, legal protections, socialization myths, and why homeschoolers excel on standardized tests and in college. Get actionable tools: HSLDA, Classical Conversations, co-ops, dual credit, Hillsdale, Turning Point, and more.