The Great Parent Revolt In Education And More Today – With Jenn Tarbell – Parents are waking up to the atrocity of modern day education, and organizations are being started. ‘Moms For Liberty’ now has 65 chapters. Tune in for information about the great parent revolt and more today!

Air Date: 08/20/2021

Guest: Jenn Tarbell

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live, where we’re talking about the hot topics of the day, everything that affects policy, our backyards, our businesses, our families, education, you name it, we want to look at every one of those issues from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

We’re here with David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder here at WallBuilders, Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and I’m Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. Check us out at wallbuilderslive.com. Today is Good News Friday, you can find more good news there at our website wallbuilderslive.com by going into the archive section. That’s also the place there at wallbuilderslive.com, where you can make a contribution to help us continue speaking truth and impact the culture even more.

David and Tim, Good News Friday today, we’ll have a special guest later for one of our good news segments. But right now let’s just dive into your stack of good news. David, what’s first?

David:

Well, looking back over the last 18 months, we have seen some dramatic changes in education. First, it was shut the schools down and mask everybody, and let’s do everything from home, and let’s do it on line, and let’s not do it at all. And then a year later, we say okay, now let’s do it.

And by the way, now that you’re coming back, we need to let you know that whiteness is a really evil thing. And so if you’re not guilty for being white, and by the way, we don’t care what Martin Luther King Jr. said, it’s not about the content of your character, it is about the color your skin. I mean, suddenly everything blows up in this critical race theory stuff. And then on top of that, we now start seeing all the stuff that’s coming out with all this age inappropriate sex education. I mean, 10-year-olds being given abortion pills. Are you kidding, 10-year-olds?

And here in Texas, the movement to have 10-year-olds have the say in the age of sexual consent, so parents are saying, wait a minute, what’s happening in the schools? And then we get all this crazy stuff finding out that well, you know, the teachers are really not doing what they’re supposed to be doing in the way of teaching, and now my kids are taking online courses from the schools. This is a really incompetent stuff.

And so all of this has led to this article I just saw and I love the title of it is called “The Great Parent Revolt”. And so in “The Great Parent Revolt”, it talks about how that over the last 18 months, parents have just seen so much of the stuff and they had differed so much in education to their schools and their local communities and just assume that they were doing what we would do for our kids and they’re finding out no, our local schools, even in rural red areas of the country are doing crazy things. And so there’s all sorts of examples.

And one of the ones there was a lady who appeared, Elana Fishbein was from Pennsylvania, and she didn’t like what she saw in her kid’s curriculum. And so that her kids were taught that “whiteness is an entitlement to steal land, to garner riches, and to get special treatment on equity and race”, and that’s what our kids are being taught. And, you know, that’s opposite to what so many of us teach about equality and we’re finally getting close to what Martin Luther King wanted and now we’re reversing all that.

And so she objected what the school was teaching there in Pennsylvania, she ends up on Tucker Carlson. And when she did, boy, was she a vicarious voice for parents across the nation. I mean, they really lined up with her and she just got inundated with all sorts of support for that. And she’s now got an organization started, that after she was on that, they started what was called Moms for Liberty. Now they have 65 chapters across the nation, just based on her TV appearances on that program where other parents that, hey, that’s going on here, we want to do what you’re doing.

And then we’ve seen there was an 11 minute YouTube video that they hit over a million where that somebody was taken down a school board in New York for what they were doing with the kids there in New York. There’s another group that’s out there called “No Left Turn”, and “No Left Turn” is because of what’s happening with socialism, Marxism in the schools.

And now suddenly, in just a matter of weeks, they have 35 chapters across the country. And it’s just everywhere you turn, you see, and parents say, wait a minute, we want our schools back. This is not what we put our kids in schools for. And so addition to that, you’ve seen people run for school board, just numbers we’ve never seen focus on school boards. You’re seeing recall election of school board members that are doing really crazy things. You’ve just seen a lot of focus on that.

And for me, this is super, super healthy. When parents start getting to the point that they want to take their local schools back and say we want to go back to education, not indoctrination. You’re not really concerned about science or math or reading for our kids. You’re more concerned about these philosophical things that go with protesting our government or not liking America, anti-American history or whatever. So I really see this as the rise of something really good in America. We’ll see how long it lasts, and how deep it goes and whether people stay in it because it’s going to take a good while to turn this around. But at least right now this is more activity we’ve seen of parents in trying to get good education to their communities than we’ve seen in the last decade, I would say.

Rick:

It is super, super encouraging. And I mean every time there’s another viral video of a parent speaking to the school board and really saying all the things that millions of Americans have been thinking during all this chaos, it is a healthy, healthy thing, like you said. And you know, they’re not just speaking to meetings or running for office.

I saw today a former NFL quarterback in Tennessee is looking at running in 2024 thinking that far ahead. He said, that’s the next chance I’ve got it running for school board. This nonsense has got to stop. So I mean there’s…

Tim:

Now Rick, that’s in my Good News Friday stack. Don’t be jumping ahead. Don’t be jumping ahead.

Rick:

I’m clairvoyant today, I’m reading Tim’s stack. It’s just such good stuff. So let’s just jump right over there, Tim. So I didn’t recognize this guy’s name I just saw he’s looking that far ahead.

Tim:

Yeah. Okay. No. Jay Cutler. So…

David:

What, you don’t recognize Jay Cutler?

Tim:

First of all, let’s pause. Rick is much more familiar with baseball than any other sport. And…

Rick:

There’s only two seasons. There’s the baseball season and the offseason. That’s it. I don’t know what this football and basketball thing as you guys keep talking about. But go ahead.

David:

Well, someday when baseball becomes a sport, you’ll have a better feel for what we’re talking about.

Rick:

Wait a minute, stop being woke, I’ll actually start watching MLB again, but not for a while. Anyway, go ahead…

Tim:

Well, yeah, I was just saying in fairness, right, we haven’t seen sports, generally speaking in a couple years, because of all the wokeness. And nonetheless, I mean, guys, you were pointing out we’re now seeing prominent people getting involved. We’ve actually seen, Rick, you mentioned some viral videos, we’ve seen different individuals from Hollywood, different actors and actresses, you’ve seen some very significant and prominent names who have come out speaking out against some of what’s happening in these schools. And it’s not just schools. We talked about the school boards, which are very important, obviously, in cities and city councils. We’re seeing a lot of pushback on the same way.

This first piece of good news in the top of my stack is “Standing ovation given as St. Louis County Council repeals mask mandate”. And this was a scenario where the city council said we’re going to ask everybody up. That’s what we’re going to do. We think it’s safer, etc, etc. And the people in town said, we’re done with this…

David:

Wait a minute. Not St. Louis, but St. Louis County?

Tim:

So okay, if we want to play the game real quick, where is St. Louis County?

David:

That’s what I was going to ask you. I have no clue. Where’s St. Louis County?

Tim:

Rick, what do you think?

Rick:

You know, I would love to take the cheap answer and say, Missouri, but it’s got to be wrong, or you wouldn’t be asking me. So…

Tim:

Well, so I’m going to give you the good news. You only have to choose from 50 states, not like the 57 that other presidents think we had. So, it’s actually from Minnesota, and…

David:

Never would have got it.

Tim:

No, I have to look up a few things about this as well in the article. But what’s interesting is the city council said we’re masking everybody up again in…

David:

Wait a minute. Minnesota?

Tim:

In Minnesota.

David:

Okay.

Tim:

Which, yeah, well, there’s other things I want to say along the way, I’m going to let it go. In Minnesota, they want to bring the mask up again, and the city council and had passed whatever initiative that they’re going to have everybody mask up and the people got so involved. They went to the city council meeting, and the city council had a second vote. And the second vote came back 5-2 to repeal the initial mandate after hearing from the citizens. And there were Republicans and Democrats, both who were on the council.

One of the Democrats said that he’s very displeased with the decision, because as elected officials, we can’t stand by, I mean really, it’s so silly, as he’s saying, essentially, we can’t stand by and let the people have a voice. We know better than them. That’s not quite what he said but it’s that tone. He says we can’t stand by and let the Delta variant rack up more and more victims each and every day. Mask will help us slow the spread of the virus while we continue to vaccinate as many people as we can, etc. Obviously, this will have disputed science on that. We’re not getting into that right now.

What’s interesting, though, is you see, as people get involved, it does make a difference and things are changing. We’re seeing that with schools. We’re seeing that in city councils. And we’re seeing more and more Americans getting involved in the process. And guys, we’ve talked for years. One of the things that in the midst of kind of a revival or Great Awakening, you see a groundswell of people getting involved. And one of the things is you can go and you can reclaim some of the things that have been taken, whether it be a school board, whether it be a school district, whether it be a city council, you can get involved and turn those things in the right direction.

But we’ve also seen a lot of parents say, we think the system is just really too broken in some areas. And so we’ve actually seen a growth of the homeschooling community unprecedented over the last couple of years, which is also some good news for the future of the nation having kids that are not being sent to these indoctrination camps.

Rick:

Yeah. I mean, it’s not just like a little bit of an increase, right. I mean, it’s a massive increase, both homeschool and private school. But I mean, in the homeschool world, every state association person that I’ve talked to over the last year said they are overwhelmed in a good way. Like they are flooded with questions of how do I do this? And they’re plugging into these associations. The great news is you have that kind of help that’s out there. It’s not like you’re on your own, you’re just is trying to figure it out.

And so we really encourage people. If they’re thinking about this, you know, just type in the name of your state, and then homeschool association and something’s going to come up for your particular state. There are groups all over the country. And these are people that have been doing this for decades, and they want to help you. So it’s really, really cool to see it happen. And in fact, our special guest for Good News Friday this week, coming back, when we come back from the break, Jenn Tarbell has been watching these numbers and it really is phenomenal how big the growth is and why that’s good for society at large, not just for that individual family. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live. It’s Good News Friday.

AMERICAN HISTORY

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court decided that voluntary Bible reading could no longer be part of the school day. Founding Father Benjamin Rush known as the “Father of Public Schools” under the Constitution pointedly warned that the Bible should be read in schools in reference to all other books. He specifically warned that if America ever ceased promoting biblical principles in schools, then we would waste so much time and money and punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them. He was right.

We now have 7 million Americans in prison on probation or on parole, and the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Sadly, this was unnecessary, but is the result of no longer teaching the morals of the Bible in schools.

For more information about the Founding Fathers’ views on the positive impact of the Bible in schools, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Jenn Tarbell is with us, author of “$4.83”. You can get it at jenntarbell.com or Amazon or wherever Jenn recommends? Jenn, thanks for coming on.

Jenn:

Thanks for having me on, Rick, appreciate it.

Rick:

So we saw last summer, I was so excited actually in May, I mean just two months into this ridiculous COVID crackdown thing just millions of families suddenly thrust into homeschooling. Never done it before, scared to death of it, all of a sudden respect for homeschool moms went through the roof. We started doing crash courses online, thousands of people just asking for help and how to be a part of this. But a lot of people that were thrust into it fell in love with it. What do you think about what’s happening in homeschooling right now?

Jenn:

Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. I mean, the numbers are pretty staggering. We’re up like, I mean, homeschooling numbers literally doubled over the past year. And so like you said, millions, I mean, some study say, in additional 2 million, some say in additional up to like 5 or 6 million have gone into the homeschooling ranks.

And I think a lot of people experienced a lot of the benefits of it. They’re able to see that their kids, they’re able to match their kids pace, they’re able to address special needs, they’re able to provide a more holistic curriculum, and they’re able to have a little bit more control over what their kids are learning.

And a lot of them are actually seeing that their kids are far more capable of learning more and at a faster pace than if they were in the public education system.

Rick:

And it wasn’t just COVID, right? I mean, it was kind of like this convergence of a lot of things that had been happening in public schools for decades that we’ve screamed about for years, but all of a sudden, it came to the forefront, all the critical race theory, all the hate each other things that they were teaching, the transgender stuff. I mean, all that stuff seemed to happen at once and it was almost just like overwhelm. All of a sudden, these parents, their eyes wide open said, wait a minute, I didn’t realize that was happening in my school district. I thought that was like some school district in some blue state. But it’s happening in rural areas in red states. And it was like this mass awakening suddenly happened.

Jenn:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think a lot of parents just assume everything is, you know, my kids go to public schools, [inaudible 13:40] and you don’t question it. It’s a system that’s worked. And it’s worked for ages. And then all of a sudden, like you said, you can kind of like open up the curtain, peel back the blanket a little bit, and it’s like, oh, wait a second, what’s under here, and they’re starting to hear what their teachers are saying, or read the curriculum with their kids. And they’re like, wait a second, I don’t actually agree with it. So this is totally counter to the values that we teach in our own home. Wait!

And so they started to kind of question and dig a little bit deeper. And you’re seeing that more and more now, as more and more parents are going presenting to their school boards or getting into legal cases or whatever it might be, because they’re starting to ask questions, and they’re starting to challenge things and take ownership of their kid’s education, which I think is so crucial.

Rick:

Well, and that’s part of the topic in your book “$4.83” and the whole idea of the value of education and why parents have to take ownership in this at this point. I think, frankly, to be blunt, the government has failed us, government schools are failing us at this point, and so parents have to do this. And I mean, it’s one of the most important things you’re going to do. This is going to direct the upbringing of your child, their worldview. This is what sets them on their course. So parents have got to take this serious.

Jenn:

Yeah. As we talked about a little bit and in fact, I mean, that’s the thing, we do with this little formula, parents plus opportunity equals kids win. And there’s going to be no buddy that’s better suited or more or more highly motivated than their parents. And that’s true for just about any area of life, right? And I think it’s same as true education. And so when you give a parent like the opportunity empowerment to look at hey, what’s best for my kid, and they realize what’s happening, particularly in school system, as you’re talking about, this might not actually be best: they’re going to be motivated to be in a position where they’re like, okay, well, what is best for my kid?

And as we talked about, a lot of parents are seeing well, it’s best if I’m the one taking the reins and playing teacher or ensuring that they’re being exposed to the curriculum that I want them to be exposed to. The parents are the ones who are going to take care of the kids best needs far better than the government’s ever going to do, far better than teaches ever going to do, far better than public education is ever going to do. It’s going to be the parents.

Rick:

You talk about the strength and stability of the family, and how really, I mean that’ll tell you a lot about that particular society, the health of that particular country. How do you measure America right now?

Jenn:

You know, we can so easily be hopeful or hopeless. I think so, it really is. I choose to try and default to the hopeful side. And I am very hopeful. I think the numbers that we’re seeing as it relates to homeschool and education, I’m very hopeful, I’m very hopeful that, you know, actually the greatest number when you look at different demographics, the greatest increase is actually amongst black families. That’s been the greatest rise in homeschooling from 3.3-16.1%. And so it’s so fascinating to look at that.

And I think I’m hopeful, I’m hopeful that more and more communities, more and more families are getting involved in things that maybe they should have been involved with all along. I mean, I think we’re all learning, right? So I’m hopeful, I’m hopeful that families are going to be able to figure out different norms. I mean, right, like, who knew that everyone will be working from home and ordering their groceries online and doing school from home for the last almost two years?

I mean, everyone’s trying to figure out this new normal. And I’m really hopeful that that part of the upside of this is that there’s going to be some new norms, and the way that we approach things like education and things like family and things like work and work-life balance. And so I’m hopeful, hopeful that things will change.

Rick:

If I were trying to design, Jenn, a system that would tear down the family, and create chaos in the home, and not have strength and stability, so the opposite of what we actually need for a healthy society, I would probably keep them away from the parents for 8 or 10 hours a day and teach them the opposite of what the parents are teaching at home and sow discord, and then tell them not to tell their parents what they’re learning at home.

All of those things are, frankly, what’s happening at too many of these public schools. So we’re doing the opposite of that strength and stability in that route. And so I think that’s why it’s so cool to see these parents wake up and go, no, not my kid, I’m done. I’m not going to hand them off to you anymore and let you sow discord in my home. And they’re taking ownership in this education process.

Jenn:

Exactly. Yeah, there’s been this kind of unintentional empowerment that’s happened and I’m am such a believer in empowerment, you know, whether it’s been, as we talked about in our book, the concept of microfinance and giving somebody a hand up rather than a handout. And I think the same it applies to education. And when you empower a parent to take ownership there, they’re going to step up because they’re going to recognize, wow, this is not serving my kid, my family, my society. Like you said, this is sowing discord, this is tearing down the family unit. We got to make some changes here. And again, the best people to do that are the parents.

Rick:

Yeah. You know, I always tell people look, it’s in no false hope and not going to sugarcoat it. It’s hard to do these things. But man, it’s worth it. All the benefits are just incredible, that extra time with your kids, all the things you talked about, I mean, just being able to direct that curriculum and the special moments that happen that you would have missed if they were gone 8 or 10 hours a day and the impactful ways that you’re going to be able to influence your kids.

So we certainly encourage parents out there to pursue this idea of homeschooling. Love the fact that it’s doubled, and just exploding in this way. Jenntarbell.com is the website. That’s two Ls in Tarbell. Jenn, God bless you. Thank you for coming on today. “$4.83” is the book. Appreciate your time today.

Jenn:

Thanks so much, Rick. Take care.

Rick:

Stay with us. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

PATRIOT ACADEMY

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Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Thanks to Jenn Tarbell for joining us today and talking about the explosion in homeschool. And it’s not just an increase, it’s an explosion. And of course, David, Tim, you know, we’ve been advocating for homeschooling? Well, Tim, your whole life, almost my whole life, and David, most of your life, so that’s pretty good.

David:

Well, I’ve been advocating for parental empowerment, and homeschooling is one of those ways. And so whether it’s Christian schools or public schools, or whatever parents have got to be involved. And the fact that parents are getting involved at the rate they are and the fact they’re choosing homeschooling, that thrills me. And what I have heard in talking to parents just in recent months is you know, I was really scared to homeschooling. But I didn’t like what I saw with my kid and watching over the shoulders on what the school was doing and how incompetent they were.

And so I had one just last week, say, you know, I was really scared to try this. And the kid was there with her, she said, but we tried it, and man, he’s having a blast, and I’m having a blast. And just last year, we went through two and a half years of science because he was having such fun learning it and the setting. And that’s what I’ve seen is kids are responding really well, parents are really getting encouraged. It’s not what they thought it was going to be. It is so much easier. And yeah, there’s some difficulties there and you have to accommodate it. But the kids are so much hungrier for knowledge. And when they get away from all the social indoctrination stuff and all the kind of drama that often goes with their peers, it’s just really good.

So seeing that, and then also seeing the fact that as Jenn pointed out that with black families, the homeschooling has gone from 3.3-16.1%. Are you kidding? That’s great, and that really is impactful to me. Because when you look at what’s happening with school choice, very often with Milwaukee or with New Orleans, or with Washington, DC, or whatever, the families who so badly want to take school choice and do something with it is often black families, because they’re often with schools that are very inferior. Those urban schools where they often are is very, very bad. And so the fact that black families are having a choice and being able to choose better education for their kids, that is super, super good. So just lots and lots of good news there.

Rick:

Alright, guys, that’s a lot of good news on the education front. Tim, you’ve got the next piece of good news, still in education or something else?

Tim:

Well, it’s a kind of education. It’s a different kind of education, and what we’ve been discussing on a formal level that’s actually deals with a police officer and a couple of kids. And this happened up in Indiana, and this was toward the end of the summer, actually, a couple weeks ago is when this took place, there was an officer from the Fisher’s Police Department, Sergeant Rodriguez. And he was out on patrol and he was going through a neighborhood and saw two young boys out by a pond and there was nobody around them. It was an evening. And he just watched for a little bit and saw they kept bending over and standing up and these boys were young. When he ends up going and talking to him, they end up only being six and seven-years-old, and there’s nobody else around.

And so he’s just a little concerned, he said they weren’t doing anything wrong. They didn’t seem to be getting into trouble. He said I was just concerned of wanting to know what was happening. So we walked over to them, and he said when he made contact, he asked, hey, boys, what are you doing? And as he walked up, he noticed one of them had a big bag of white like plastic bag, and it had some weight to it. And they said, well, we’re cleaning out the pond. We’re picking trash out of the pond. We heard that trash and ponds can kill fish, and we’d like fish in here, and we don’t want the fish to get hurt. So they started reaching down and picking up trash. And they were shown on the trash they got.

And he was so impressed. He stopped and just talked to them for a while. He said that he had some young kids who were around the same age, and in the midst of that, and this is where the education part comes in, he said he was so impressed that parents had instilled in this six and seven-year-old, this notion of responsibility that when this is a beautiful evening, and this is coming up close to when school is going to start and instead of these boys out playing and riding their bikes and going and doing something, they were picking up trash and he was so impressed.

And eventually, the parents came out and you can only imagine, right, how the parents must have felt when they see a police officer talking to their young kids and they came out and assured the officer hey, our kids are good swimmers, you know, we weren’t being irresponsible. And he said no, it’s good. He said I was just checking on them and I’m just so impressed with them.

But guys, in the midst of so many conversations that happened on social media and our news media where there are so many interactions with police officers, the media wants to highlight and show being bad interactions. We’ve talked about the fact that we have so many, I’m going to say countless, it’s not countless, we probably could count them, I just don’t know what the number is. We have so many examples of police officers doing things that are heroic, that are above and beyond the normal call of duty that they’re out there trying to serve people and trying to make things better.

And here’s a police officer just checking on a couple of kids. And he got so impressed by the six and seven-year-old. And guys, in the midst of the craziness and culture around us in the midst of the craziness in the world around us, and we’re feeling some of the repercussions from decisions, from leadership or inflation, and we can go through the list of problems in America, it’s still encouraging looking and seeing that there are parents actively involved in teaching and training their kids basic responsibility, doing things to try to leave whatever in this case, your pond better than you found it, right, but just making a difference, positive impact and interaction where police officer’s just looking out for two kids, finding out they’re doing a very good thing.

So there are a lot of good things happening out there. There are a lot of good people out there and there is reason for us to be hopeful going forward.

Rick:

No, I love it, man. Lots of good news today, as it’s always good to see the big kind of macro numbers of all of these homeschoolers out there, but then the individual stories like that just lifts your spirit. So, so much good news, I know you guys didn’t get close to finish it out, so we’ll get to more good news next Friday.

And for those of you that are listening, if you just didn’t get quite enough in today’s Good News Friday programming, you want more good news, and you can’t wait till next week, wallbuilderslive.com. Go to the website, click on the archive section and grab some of those previous Friday programs. And while you’re there on the website, please consider making that one-time or monthly contribution. We appreciate all of you across the country that continue to donate and make it possible for us to expand this voice of truth. Thanks so much for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.