The Homeschool Movement – With Tim Lambert: Are parents qualified to raise their own children? Have you heard about the homeschool explosion taking place? Are you interested in homeschooling, but don’t want to go it alone? Where can you find the help you need to have the homeschool journey you desire? Tune in to hear Tim Lambert from the Texas Homeschool Coalition answer these questions and more!

Air Date: 09/01/2021

Guest:Tim Lambert

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.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live. We are talking about the hot topics of the day from a biblical, constitutional, and historical perspective. We say that every day, right, when we do the program, we start the program the same way every day.

Have you ever thought much about those three things? How do you get a biblical perspective on an issue? How do you get a constitutional perspective? 

How do you learn the right history? How do you learn true history, right, with today, with so much fake history out there just like the fake news? How do you get those three perspectives on the hot issues of the day? 

Well, the best way to do it is listen to WallBuilders Live every day. We’re going to bring you whatever those subjects are. And we’re going to look and say, okay, what’s the Bible say about it? 

We’re going to study, is our constitutional perspective on this? You know, does it address that? Or is it totally up to the states to deal with that? 

Is there a historical perspective we can find? Has it happened before in history? I mean, you know, Solomon said nothing new under the sun. And so we want to address every issue of the day from that perspective.

And I am actually excited about the renewed interest in all three of those things. People are finally turning to the Bible and saying, wait a minute, this is the instruction manual. God gave us all the answers in this book. 

Why have we tossed it aside and not been applying it to our lives? Whether that’s family business, whatever it might be, but certainly, to the culture in our society.

So, biblical perspective has got just a new, a renewed interest in our culture. And same with the constitutional, historical perspective, we get more questions, and more people asking about what the Constitution says, or what’s happened in history with regard to all of these things that are happening in our nation right now than ever before. I mean, it is phenomenal the resurgence of interest in those things.

Constitution Classes

So I am thrilled that WallBuilders Live, you know, we’ve been doing this, I don’t know, 16, 17 years and, and that’s always been our approach, biblical, historical, constitutional, always bringing those three things to the forefront of whatever the hot topic was of the day. And I’m just thrilled that the exponential growth is happening in our audience and with our constitution classes. 

I mean, we’re going to we’re approaching 10,000 coaches around the country that are saying, hey, I’ll step up here am I, send me, you know, Lord, I’ll host a class, I’ll invite people over to my living room or at my church, and we’ll pop in the DVDs or stream the videos of the Constitution classes that take us into the WallBuilders library and take us to Independence Hall and all these historical locations.

And I’m just thrilled so many people are stepping up and classes are happening all over the nation. We have put 50,000 people through the Constitution classes, and mainly that’s the Biblical Citizenship in Modern America class just this year. So just in the last really seven months, 50,000 people have been trained in what does the Bible say about how to be a good citizen, and how does our Constitution work, how can I be a good citizen in our nation in America, the way that our system was designed, that should encourage you, that is huge. And it’s just exponentially growing.

And you can be a part of that. You can be a coach. You can be the one that invites people over. You don’t have to know anything about any of this stuff. 

You just got to get people in the room and hit play, and let the videos do the work for you and then have a discussion. And as we’ll be talking about a little later today, fellowship is so important right now. It is so critical to get with other people, to have that iron sharpening iron so that we can sharpen each other’s countenance and just have that fellowship. But it’s just we’ve been missing it big time for the last two years, and finally getting back to it.

By the way, we’re already a few minutes in here. I’m Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator. I’m America’s Constitution coach.

Check Out the Archives

And absolutely thrilled to be able to host this program with David Barton, who is America’s premier historian, and the founder of WallBuilders, and also with Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. You can find out more about all three of us at our website wallbuilderslive.com, that’s got archives of the programs. You can go back and listen in the previous weeks.

If you missed any shows, or maybe you’re a first-time listener today, if you’re listening for the first time, I’ll tell you what to expect. When you look at our weekly programming lineup, Monday through Wednesday, we typically have a guest. an expert in some area, somebody that may be a US Senator, maybe somebody that’s arguing before the Supreme Court, maybe is running some sort of grassroots organization or just ran for the school board, whatever it might be. Typically, that’s the type of interviews we have Monday through Wednesday.

And then Thursdays we have what we call Foundations of Freedom Thursday. And that’s where you get to ask the questions. And you can actually go and send those in now [email protected], that’s [email protected] 

And on Thursday, we answer those questions, that can be about the Founding Fathers, about the Constitution about how to apply the biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective to some particular issue that maybe we haven’t covered and you’d like us to cover or whatever it might be, send those questions in. And on Thursdays, we dive into those foundational questions about how the system should work.

And then Fridays, you don’t want to miss. That’s Good News Friday around here at WallBuilders Live and it’s my favorite day of the week. Because I don’t know about you, sometimes I need to pick me up, I need to know that the principles still work and that when you apply them, you get good results, right.

And that’s what we do on Friday. We get a ton of good news stories. David and Tim, just, I mean, it’s rapid-fire, they get in as many of those stories as they can in one program. You don’t want to miss it. 

And if you’ve never heard Good News Friday, go to wallbuilderslive.com, click on the archive section, and then go look at some of those Friday programs. And you will absolutely I promise you, it’ll give you a pick me up because you’ll hear all these great victories happening in the culture where people have applied a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

Our Special Guest

Alright, we’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, we’ve got Tim Lambert with us. Tim is the head of the Texas Homeschool Coalition. Just a fantastic guy, one of my mentor’s great impact on my life, and just doing a phenomenal job of helping, kind of shepherd this massive growth in homeschooling that’s happening all over the nation. 

It’s incredible how many people are choosing this and saying enough of the chaos in the public schools and the masking and the transgender and all the stuff that they’re doing, and taking control of their children’s education. And it’s just great to see so many people coming alongside them. And Tim is really helping to lead that charge, not just in Texas but nationally. So we want to catch up with him on that. Stay with us, we’ll be right back with Tim Lambert on WallBuilders.

AMERICAN HISTORY

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Alexis de Tocqueville, a political official from France, traveled to the United States in 1831 and penned his observations in the now famous book “Democracy in America”. Being from France, what he found in America was completely unexpected to him.

He reported “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. And the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this. In France, I’d almost always seen the spirit of religion in the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America, I found that they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.”

De Tocqueville recognized that it was biblical Christianity and the morals that produced that made America great. For more information about Alexia Tocqueville and the positive influence of Christianity in early America, go to wallbuilders.com.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. So, good to have Tim Lambert back with us from Texas Homeschool Coalition. Tim, thanks for joining me, man.

Welcome Tim Lambert

Tim:

My pleasure, Rick, great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Rick:

Well, it is, man, just explosion time for homeschooling all across the country. And I mean, people that have never even considered homeschooling are beginning to homeschool now as they see the chaos in the public schools and they’re just tired of the nonsense, and now they’re discovering the extra time with their kids. I mean, there’s just so many, so many positives. 

You’ve been on the forefront of this for decades and a great mentor to me, and just in so many ways, I’m just thankful for your leadership on the homeschooling issues. And not just Texas, I mean, I know you run the Texas Homeschool Coalition, but you’ve helped so many other associations out there across the country. So you’ve got a real finger on the pulse of what’s happening. 

Have you ever seen this kind of exponential growth in homeschooling? I mean, I know it’s steadily grown, but right now just seems like an explosion.

Tim:

Yeah, Rick, we haven’t ever seen anything like this. You know, back in the 80s when we were being prosecuted, and we sued the state of Texas in a class-action suit, we kind of won that in the mid-80s, and then we got a Supreme Court decision in 1994. We saw a big surge after that, but nothing like this. And, Rick, I thought last year was amazing. You know, we had this huge surge, we had a record number, so I thought we would probably never see anything like that again.

And as you probably know, the Census Bureau started tracking homeschooling last spring, and in April, in May last year, they determined that there were like 5% of the students in the country are being homeschooled. In October, it was 11%. And in Texas, we went from 4.5% or 4.3-12.3%. And Rick, I thought that was great. And I found it in Alaska, is 28% of the students being homeschooled, and north of the Red River here in Oklahoma, 20%.

The Homeschool Explosion

So, man, I just didn’t think we’d ever see anything like that. But I’m telling you, Rick, this year’s numbers are blowing all that out of the water. Last year at our peak, we had about 1,000 contacts in a week. 

And two weeks ago, we had almost 5,000 contacts. Last week, we had 3,700. So we tripled in August what we did last August in terms of people who were reaching out to us.

And Rick, you’re exactly right, a lot of these folks, AP did a story just a few weeks ago where they interviewed a bunch of these families. And over and over, it was the same story. I never would have done this, had it not been for the pandemic. 

And it is the best thing that we’ve ever done. And one online curriculum company did a survey of 2,000 people families that started homeschooling after January of last year. 72% said they were going to keep doing it. And a lot of mentioned exactly what you just said, you know, it’s not just the academics. It’s time with my family. It’s being able to work on our schedule rather than some institutions. And it’s a great, great for relationships.

Rick:

It’s incredible. And a lot of those people that had a fear of even trying this, because you’re kind of in the culture, it’s pounded into the American parent, you’ve got to get your kids into the best schools, and you’ve got to get your kids to the best college, and it’s always about handing them over to some expert. And so we’re just kind of trained and brainwashed to think like that. 

And so then when all of a sudden, you’re going wait a minute, I’m going to do this, am I qualified to do this, and all of those concerns come up and having an association that they can dial into and connect with an organization like yours, and thank the good Lord there’s one in every state and just growing like crazy.

So I want to tell people out there all across the country that are listening right now. All you need to do is type in homeschooling in your state, and maybe the word “Association”, and it’ll come up, whatever it is. They got different names in every state. It’s not always called the same thing. But these are people that have been doing it for decades, and they want to come alongside you and they want to help you.

So Many Options

And they’re great at it. And there’s so many options out there, so many curriculum, so many… Anyway, just Google, not google it, DuckDuckGo it, we don’t do Google it anymore. We DuckDuckGo it, so DuckDuckGo it, and find the association in your state.

Tim:

To add to you, we got a website called homeeducator.com in which we have stuff that’s in we have a link to a lot of the state associations across the country.

Rick:

Also, kind of a one-stop shop where you get started even if you’re not in Texas?

Tim:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Rick:

Oh, good. Good. Give that website again, Tim?

Tim:

Homeeducator.com.

Rick:

Home educator.com. Alright, I know we’ve got listeners out there that have been on the fence. It’s right at that moment right now, where schools just starting, and maybe their kids have already started in some states and gone first couple of days or first week, maybe they’re still doing the insane mask orders, or whatever it is, and they’re thinking, oh, I need another option. I’ve got to look at other ways to do this.

And Tim, of course, you know, guys like us, we did it because the faith element was the most important to us. We wanted our kids to not be in an environment where the very things we’re teaching at home were being torn down at school, and we wanted the opportunity to instill those things in an even stronger way. Lots of other positive reasons to do it. But I know that was a big motivation for you and a big motivation for me.

Tim:

Well, Rick, that’s exactly right. But some of the old-timers don’t recall so often is we did this, I don’t know about you all, but we said, you know what, we’ll do this year, we’ll see what it’s like. And we’ll do it next year and see what it’s like. 

You know, and after a while it goes, you know what, we can do this. And Rick, the issue when we started in the 80s was how do you find curriculum, people will sell you curriculum? And today the issue is, man, how do I choose what’s available out there? So many resources, so much stuff online, it’s just truly amazing.

HomeEducator.com

Rick:

And that also gives you the ability to learn from the best of the best. I mean, you get to pick up from all these different curriculums. It’s incredible what’s out there. And that website is homeeducator.com, homeeducator.com

Check it out today and get some good resources, and it’ll link you to your local association in your state that is just I mean, it’s incalculable. You can’t add up with the value of being able to come alongside people that have been doing this for decades. And the benefits are outrageous.

I’m so thankful for the experience that we had with our kids, the time we had with our kids, just the direction and all of those things, and just encourage people to be part of that exponential explosion in homeschooling that’s taking place right now. Tim, you said something earlier that I really want to point out. You talked about the thousands of contacts that are coming in for you all right now and people asking for help. 

And you know, that takes staff, that takes revenue, that takes a team to be able to deal with that and deal with it professionally and effectively and help these folks. And so I want to encourage everybody out there right now, regardless of what state you’re in, you know, you can go to homeeducator.com, I also want to encourage you to go to thsc.org, that’s texashomeschoolcoalition.org and Tim’s got a banquet coming up, their annual gala and fundraiser. They couldn’t find a decent speaker, so they invited me instead. And so…

Tim:

No, actually, we went straight to the top and said we want the best guy in the country. Oh yeah, that’s Rick Green. Let’s bring him.

Rick:

I am honored and super, super excited about going, but you can sponsor that dinner or just make a general donation. And the reason that’s so important, I mean, it takes dollars to do these things. And the reason homeschooling is so inexpensive, I mean, it’s so much less than what the public school spend, or almost every private school out there is because of associations like this that help those parents for free. 

The Gala

I mean, you can become a member and you get all kinds of benefits with that as well. But I just want to encourage everybody. If you want to see patriots raised up across this country, if you want to see families be strong, we need to help these associations be strong as well.

And so you can either donate to sponsor the gala that’s coming up, is going to be October 9th. And if you’re in Texas, or actually, if you’re out of Texas, you’re welcome to come to God’s country for the weekend and enjoy a weekend with us in the Houston area. It’s in the woodlands. It’s October 9th. Tim, I think, now I know you do a silent auction and all that. Will there be online opportunities to bid on that stuff or is only going to be at the event?

Tim:

Yeah, both. So yes, with an online opportunities, you go to thsc.org/gala, I say gala, you say gala, you know, it’s okay, but thsc.org/gala, and all lots of information there. And man, we were going to have the Attorney General of Texas is going to be there for us. We think lieutenant governor, a lot of Texas officials, a lot of good friends that we have who are elected officials in Texas, so it’s going to be a wonderful time.

Rick:

You know, and you mentioned that I think that’s important for people all over the country to know you have to fight for this stuff, homeschooling and the parental rights to make the decisions about the upbringing of your kids, the medical things, all that stuff, you have to fight at the legislature on a consistent basis, the price of freedoms, eternal vigilance. And you know, THSC has such respect at the Texas Capitol that you’ve been able to beat back efforts to regulate homeschool and all these other things. 

You had a great victory this last session that man, we’ve been working on that for 20 years, and there it is, you now homeschool kids. If they want, can compete in UIL, which for folks outside of Texas may not know what that means, that means go play for the local football team or participate in the band or whatever it might be. So congrats on that, man. You’ve been working on that one for a long time. That’s a big victory.

Tim:

Well, thanks, Rick, we have been. And you know, what an amazing thing. Back in the 80s, we had an Attorney General in Texas, who basically said publicly, he didn’t believe parents were qualified to raise their kids, much less to teach them at home. 

Victories

And today, we have an Attorney General who actually homeschooled his kids. So yeah, amazing times. And you’re right, and none of those victories, I think of the quote from, I think it was Churchill who said that success is not final, failure is seldom fatal, the courage to continue is what counts. And that is true in every area of life, but especially in homeschooling.

Rick:

Yeah. And Lord knows I had plenty of not success, and then plenty of failure, right, even as a parent and raising the kids and trying to do it alright. And I mean, I think that’s one of the beauties of where we are right now in the culture. 

We’re finally kind of getting away from this kind of, you got to be perfect at everything before you do it, and saying, you know, I’ll take sloppy success over perfect nothing. And so we’re getting parents to be willing to take that leap. And it’s so encouraging to have people come around us and help us and that’s what Texas Homeschool Coalition is all about.

Tim, I just thank you, man, for being in the trenches all these years, for fighting for these freedoms for parents in so many different areas, not just education. It’s across the board. And I really want to encourage people support you guys and help us keep doing what we’re doing. It’s thsc.org. You can make just a general donation there.

 If you go forward slash gala, gala, tomato, tomato, and you can sponsor the dinner as well. We’d love to have you with us. I know we’ve got a ton of listeners in Texas.

So you know, come on down to the woodlands and enjoy the weekend with us. Come down, October 9th is the dinner, you can stay right there at the woodlands resort and enjoy your weekend. Tim, it’s going to be good fellowship. 

And I don’t know about you. But man, I’ve missed that so much over the last 18 months. And when we get together with people, I mean, they tear up. I mean, it’s like finally getting to have, you know, it’s why God told us not to forsake the fellowship.

Tim:

Amen. Amen. Well, Rick, I appreciate you a lot, brother. You know, it’s great to get together with friends and have fellowship and work with folks you’ve been working with for many, many years. So we’re looking forward to having you.

Rick:

Well, we love supporting you guys, and looking forward to having a lot of other folks there as well. Tim, keep up the great work and we’ll see in a few weeks.

Tim:

Alright, thank you, my friend.

Rick:

Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back on WallBuilders Live.

THE AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have here at WallBuilders called The American Story. For years, people have been asking us to do a history book, and we finally done it. We start with Christopher Columbus and go roughly through Abraham Lincoln. And one of the things that that so often we hear today are about the imperfections of America, or how so many people in America that used to be celebrated or honored really aren’t good or honorable people.

One of the things we acknowledge quickly in the book is that the entire world is full of people who are sinful and need a savior because the Bible even tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet what we see through history, and certainly is evident in America is how a perfect God uses imperfect people and does great things through them. 

The story of America is not the story of perfect people. But you see time and time again how God got involved in the process and use these imperfect people to do great things that impacted the entire world from America. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and check out The American Story.

Rick:

Welcome back to WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us today. Special thanks to Tim Lambert for joining us. Be sure again, to go to that website homeeducator.com, homeeducator.com, wherever you are in the country, help redirect you to your local association, get you a lot of great tools. 

You know, last summer when we really had started seeing this significant explosion, I say summer, is really May, April and May, about a month and a half into the pandemic and the school shutting down and so much growth, we did kind of a crash course online and help parents to go through some history items, and other things and we saw that exponential growth coming.

I mean, you could just tell that last April, and May when parents were thrust into this, that they were loving it, that all those fears that they had about it were overcome because they had to do it, right, you were forced into it. And you know, initially, I said about two weeks to all the chaos, I said the homeschool moms of the last 10 years, respect for them just went through the roof–

The Texas Homeschool Coalition

Because all of these other families that had never done this were thrust into it without any training, without any help. I mean, it was crazy. And so we tried to come alongside as many people as we can and we pointed them to Texas Homeschool Coalition and the other associations around the country.

And I just thank the Lord for those groups, man. They stepped up and knocked it out of the park and created websites like this homeeducator.com and resources and help these parents. And as Tim was saying, a huge chunk of them said, even when the school’s open up said I’m just going to keep homeschooling, I love it. I love this extra time with my kids. I love being able to direct their upbringing. I love being able to make sure the worldview is consistent with what we’re teaching at home.

And you can still get involved in other things in the community. I’m meant to talk to Tim about that, but you know, I just think it’s important for people to know if you’re thinking oh, I don’t want my kid to never be around anybody else, and all that good stuff, we plays baseball and all kinds of other things in our community, we were very involved in our community and our kids got to know a lot of other people, other kids and hang out with them, public school, private school, homeschool, all that good stuff. But it was different.

I mean, it was better, believe me, much better, because you had the ability to still, you know, if you want to take your kids on a two-week vacation around the country and go visit battlefields and, and historical sites, or just wanting to go visit family or whatever, you could still school on the road and go. I mean, it’s just that freedom and that flexibility, believe me, outweighs any of the concerns that you have, and potential negatives that you’re thinking might exist as a result of homeschooling.

And in a lot of states now, I forget how many, I know was 20 away at one point, I think it’s probably more than that. But what Tim was talking about with Texas, and now being able to have your kid compete for the local public school, now you have the best of all worlds.

Because again, you get to pick the curriculum, the schedule, all of those things. But if your kid wants to play baseball, or wants to be on the debate team or whatever at the local school, they can, if that’s something you want to participate in. Absolutely, you don’t have to, and you don’t have to subject to any regulation or anything. It still protects the right of homeschooling and the parental rights that are so important to defend.

Raising Patriots

But I’m just thrilled, I am thrilled to see this growth. And the real reason is this. It’s not just that parents are going to have this great experience of families are going to be able to spend more time together and kids are going to get better educated based on all the testing, there’s no question when you homeschool, you get a better education,

But also the fact I’m thinking down the road, I know what kind of patriots, what kind of citizens are raised in homeschooling families. And so the more people that are homeschooled, the better for our country, the better for your community, and for your neighborhood, for your state. I’m telling you. The more people that homeschool, the better for our nation. You will have better citizens. You will have a higher percentage.

I know it’s a numbers game and all that good stuff. I’m not saying if you go to public school, you’re not going to be a good citizen. I’m just saying that in terms of what you see in the culture, there’s a definite higher percentage of good citizens coming out of homeschooling than out of public schools. 

And that’s, I mean, we could go And all that it’s pretty obvious actually. I mean, our public schools now tear down America, the curriculum is nothing like what it used to be. The environment, the teacher unions, all of those things are doing damage to the citizens that we’re raising up, and they’re teaching them, I mean, just look at the critical race theory, I mean, it teaches kids to hate their nation, to hate each other, and to hate themselves.

And if you don’t want your kid involved in any of that, and exposed to all of that, get involved in your local school board, make sure they’re not doing that at your local school, and homeschool your own kids. You can do both. I’m a homeschool dad. I still get very involved in school board races in my area. 

The Homeschool Movement – With Tim Lambert

And I encourage you to do the exact same. There’s so many good things happening in education because parents are getting back involved and they’re taking control of their kids’ education. You can do the same thing. I hope you’ll check out those websites today.

And I hope you’ll join us for this gala, it’s going to be a great time, October 9th. If you’re anywhere near the Houston area, you want to just travel in and be a part of it, then check that out at thsc.org/gala. It’s October 9th. And you can donate regardless, and that’s going to help them to take those phone calls and to equip and help parents around the country, and that’s going to help you because then all those families are going to be raising up good citizens. 

So be sure to sponsor that dinner. Despite the fact that they dug out of the bottom of the barrel and got me as their keynote speaker, we’re going to have a great time. I’m looking forward to it. And I hope you can join us there, links today at wallbuilderslive.com.

Be sure and tune in on a daily basis. And if you miss a show, you can get the archives there at the website wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks so much for listening today to WallBuilders Live.