H4, Segment 2 - Callers and Charlie debate homeschooling benefits versus public education.

What this episode covers

Transcript Charlie James: All right, welcome back to the program. Let's go to the phones and talk to Melissa in Travelers Rest. How you doing, Melissa? Melissa: Great! I just wanted to talk about the socialization part that people always want to harp on on homeschooled kids. Like homeschooled kids, you know, they're not socializing, not socializing. Well, that's that's untrue, first off. And there's a book—if anybody has ever thinking about, "Hey, I think I'm going to homeschool my kids," there's a book by John Taylor Gatto, G-A-T-T-O. He has a book called Weapons of Mass Instruction. It will change your mind on the way school systems are set up to make your child a weirdo. The reason kid—homeschool kids can talk to anybody is because they are around such diverse ages. The kids that go to public school are around kids their ages all day long. Charlie James: All the way through—all the way through school. Melissa: Yeah. Yeah, he—in that book, he talks about this. He talks about, he said, "They realized the school system, if they put anybody slightly older in a class, all the other younger kids would start to imitate the older guy. They would start to start to ask him questions, kind of getting knowledge." And they realized, "This is bad because they're starting to advance faster than we are teaching them." I mean, I tell—it's spoken in that book. You know, homeschool kids, they are—they see a diverse group of—they can talk to their 67-year-old neighbor, they can talk to the people at church of all different ages, they can talk to the grocery store clerk. They can talk to anybody, and they can look them in their eyes. And public school kids, they don't know how to talk to anyone older than them other than their teachers, and their teachers are weird, too, because they push all these weird ideologies on them, first off. And it's just—the book, I recommend that book to anybody. Weapons of Mass Instruction, it will change your mind. He also has another book—I haven't read that one. But it's—I was homeschooled, and as soon as I wanted to—I wanted a job, my mom was like, "Okay, go get a job." I was a—I just—I bagged groceries. And I—I remember thinking like, all these public school kids, they are so awkward. Like, they cannot—someone comes up to them and says, "Hey, how are you?" I mean, they're, "Oh, good, fine," you know, and they don't look them in their eyes. And, you know, it's just like, I just didn't have a problem with—with socializing, and I was homeschooled all the way through. I never stepped foot in a public school, and I am so thankful my parents never did that because, God Almighty, I mean, can you imagine the stuff that—I mean, that was, you know, 15, 20 years ago. So, I mean, but I just—I have nieces and nephews who are in public school right now, and they truly are so chronically online. They cannot—they can't hold a conversation with you that actually sounds like words, first off. They don't read books. I met a 19-year-old who said she had never read a book before, and I said, "What do you mean?" I said, "What did you do for school?" And she said, "Oh, I just Googled just all the stuff I needed for the tests." She legit said she had never read a book. Charlie James: Wow. Melissa: And she went to public school. And she went to—she was from like New Hampshire, too. So like, some place where I'm sure they had really good schools, you know? I mean, I'm—I'm not saying the South doesn't have good schools, but I mean, she—she—yes, she had never read a book before because I was asking her like about books I was reading, and she's like, "Yeah, I've never read one." And I'm like, "This is insane." Like, this—you cannot tell me you went all the way through public school without reading a book, and then the teachers just don't care because they're just trying to pass them. I mean, who cares if they never read a book, you know? But it's like, as a parent, if you value your kid's education, then—then them pushing through ...

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