Episode 8: Secular homeschooling in an election year
In this podcast episode, we discuss the challenges of homeschooling during election season in the U.S. We emphasize the importance of teaching critical thinking and understanding the U.S. government to raise informed voters. We explore the significance of analyzing party platforms, engaging in local politics, and spotting misleading information, plus some of our favorite strategies and resources for homeschooling politics.
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We use an automatic transcription app for our podcast, which makes it possible for us to include transcripts for our podcast episodes — but it does sometimes make weird errors! We do edit it, but I’m sure we miss things sometimes.
[00:00:00] Amy: Hello and welcome to Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy, brought to you by Sea Homeschoolers and home.school.life. I’m Amy.
[00:00:08] Blair: And I’m Blair.
[00:00:09] Amy: And today we’re talking about something that I know is on all of our homeschool minds right now as we move into the summer, which is homeschooling through the election season in the United States.
[00:00:24] Blair: Yeah, so we want to apologize ahead of time because obviously this is going to be U.S.-centric. However, what we’re going to talk about is valid for an election season in any country if we have any listeners outside of the U.S.
[00:00:41] Amy: And before we get started, I feel like it’s important to say that in the past 15 years, elections have become incredibly fraught and emotional.
It is hard in the United States to follow the elections sometimes. It is hard sometimes to listen to things that some of the politicians say. And I think that you have to put your mental health first. I think you have to talk about this with your kids. And you have to educate your kids about the political process and what’s happening.
But I think you also have to take care of yourself. And I know that if you are a queer person, or a person of color, or a person who has family that’s immigrated to the United States, and listening to some of the political talking points that affect your actual existence and not just some theoretical idea of politics, if that is harmful to you, you have to take care of yourself.
So I can’t tell you how to do that, I’m not the boss of how you take care of yourself, but like I just want you to know that if election issues are hard for you and harmful to you, Blair and I see you. We’re here and we see you, and if you need to not listen to this episode to take care of yourself, please do that.
Because that is important.
[00:01:59] Blair: Oh yeah. Especially for people in the southeastern part of the United States, this is a triggering issue. Most of our listeners, I’m assuming, are fairly liberal, centrist to liberal. If you are in an area that is very red, it can be triggering right now, and so we understand.
I’m gonna switch gears, though. I am by no means a scholar familiar with. But this is something I wanted to get right and I got right. And so you can really get this right. And I think it’s important to get right, if you care about raising a voter. And an informed voter. Along those lines, I think that the start of homeschooling during an election season does not start with thinking about politics, necessarily. I think you start by front loading two things, a course on critical thinking and a course that teaches the American government.
[00:03:09] Amy: Yeah, I actually really agree with this because I think that you can’t — one of the problems I think with politics in the 21st century is that people have stopped talking about things and started talking around things. And so a lot of people in the government even don’t know how the government actually works They don’t know what the government actually does and what it doesn’t do and how it’s set up And so I think it’s really important for us to teach our kids how the government works — and then, of course, every single subject, but maybe no subject more than politics, critical thinking, and especially understanding fallacies and bad reasoning.
[00:03:53] Blair: Because we live in an age of Trumpism, if you are going to talk about the critical thinking component, American government might be the perfect course to pair, even better than science, and y’all know how I feel about science with regard to that, better than science because there is so much language right now from the Trump camp, about the rights of a president, and they’re just not even true, and people don’t even recognize some of the lies that are being told.
They don’t understand. Why does it matter? Why does it really matter that we’ve politicized the judicial branch, right? A branch that was supposed to not be political in a three branch system now is. How and why it’s a problem that two justices who, who I really don’t like — just telling y’all I did always believe Anita Hill — that these people are being paid. By the wealthiest individuals in our country, and when a president starts to focus on appointing justices in positions all across the country, why that’s a problem. You have to really understand, have a firm grounding in American government.
[00:05:21] Amy: Yeah, and you have to read the Constitution because some things like — one that drives me crazy, Blair, one that absolutely drives me crazy is when people talk about free speech and don’t understand what they’re talking about.
Free speech doesn’t mean that nobody’s ever going to get mad at you for saying some stupid racist thing. People have every right to get mad at you for saying a stupid racist thing. They have every right to ask you to leave their house or their Twitter platform for continuing to do that. Free speech just means that if you criticize something, then you can’t be punished by the government for it.
That’s really all free speech is giving you.
[00:06:00] Blair: It’s ridiculous. It happens numerous times during the year where someone will get into SEA, our private Facebook group and make comments that are counter to our rules, and they accused us of violating their free speech. We have actually had a curriculum company that is not secular, Acellus, threatened to sue us because we called them nonsecular.
[00:06:30] Amy: That is crazy.
[00:06:31] Blair: They are crazy. Somehow they got my phone number and they started calling me to tell me they were going to sue me personally for violating their free speech. So I’m telling you right now, you shouldn’t be using a course that says they’re an accredited high school course that doesn’t know how to define correctly the freedom of speech. So what were you going to say? How do you know they’re crazy, Amy?
[00:06:54] Amy: Oh because for the same reason, I belong to a lot of homeschooling groups. And there was a while there where every time someone would say something that wasn’t 100 percent positive about Acellus, they would jump in and start lambasting people publicly in their messages.
I yeah, I would be wary of a company like that. That’s just my opinion. I — it’s not really related to what we’re talking about — but they, but I am not, I’m horrified, but not surprised that they would call you at home because they really, that seems to be their method is to shut down the competition by just exhausting them.
[00:07:30] Blair: We’re not really the competition. Or not,
[00:07:32] Amy: yeah, shut down people who don’t think that they’re the best,
[00:07:36] Blair: They’re not secular. They’re not. As those of you who’ve been following our podcast know, Amy and I take issue with people who say they’re secular because they removed a few things. But then they didn’t add back in the theories, the understandings, as would be recommended by practicing experts in a field. Okay, but let’s not get sidetracked there. Other than Amy and I do not think you should be using curriculum from people who don’t know what free speech is, especially if it’s curriculum where they tell you they’re teaching your kids history.
I actually did use an American government course that I liked, but it was so long ago. I used it the year Trump first got elected. So they didn’t have a bunch of things in there in that regard. I’m leery about recommending anything now. Do you have anything that you would recommend that’s current or do you just write your own?
[00:08:30] Amy: I would not even recommend my own right now because I am in the process of big time revising it because so much has changed. I would think that every single U.S. government curriculum maker should be going over their curriculum because the world has changed a lot and since the last, even since the last election.
And I think it’s, we’ve got a real responsibility to make sure with government more than maybe any other subject that we are up to date. So there’s not really anything that I would recommend. I will say, I think the National Archives has some good stuff about the presidential election and the electoral process.
And so if you are looking for resources to get you going, you could certainly pull some of those together.
[00:09:16] Blair: I’ll tell you what I used, it’s not a secret. I used Thinkwell honors American government course. I learned more using it than I learned in all the years at school, and I don’t think it’s because I didn’t pay enough attention. It was a pretty challenging course for my son. But it was a really good course, like Amy said, look to see when they last updated. But you’re going to need a curriculum unless this is an area where you have expertise.
Okay, so if you’re homeschooled during election season, I think you should front load. In other words, teach before you really get too into the election, critical thinking paired with American government. Then after that, learn about the party platforms. He knew what political party, my husband and I belong to, but I told him that I wanted him to choose his own political party after reading the different platforms. The Republican party platform is interesting. One of their platform issues is that we should legally be able to hunt wolves
[00:10:23] Amy: I actually didn’t know — that’s fascinating
[00:10:28] Blair: At least it was about four years ago when I last looked. It can be really interesting to look at the party platforms You think to yourself, who, why is this a platform issue?
I would have to think with the changes in the Republican party with them getting rid of Rona McDaniels and now it’s one of Trump’s daughters who is the chair. I would be thinking that platform is getting some major updates. that would be pretty interesting.
[00:11:00] Amy: That’s an interesting point if they, if the Republican Party in its current state stopped publishing platforms altogether because they, I mean they don’t, it often seems that they’re not really interested in following the conventions of the political process. It seems they think that people should vote for them based on the person who’s running and not on any politics that the party supports.
[00:11:28] Blair: Yeah, for those of you who don’t know, I have a daughter-in-law who’s Ukrainian, so I lean pretty heavily in that direction. She is here. Her kids are here, but her family, who we know and are close to, are all in the Ukraine. I find it horrifying how some of those decisions are really similar to the sort of decisions that someone like Putin makes where it’s really hard to get the information on the party’s positions and stance and how it’s all this identity politics. But anyway, this is supposed to be how to teach it?
[00:12:08] Amy: Yes, I think that this is, we, I think we are getting to the root of why it’s really important to focus on the structures and the critical thinking is because when we talk about politics today is virtually impossible to not have strong feelings about it.
We are smart educated human beings who care about the world. I’m assuming that if you listen to this podcast you are an educated person who cares about the world and the people in it, and it is really hard. Politics are really hard right now because it does feel very much like that’s, there’s half the country or that doesn’t matter and you can really easily get distracted by your own feelings as Blair and I do.
I don’t know. So that’s why critical thinking and processes are a great place to start because they are neutral and not in the creepy neutral way that some science curriculums are, but genuinely neutral in the sense of there are facts and — there are facts and there are definitions.
[00:13:09] Blair: One of the things I like about the party platforms is that it gives you a place to apply critical thinking tools. First of all, why is this issue even there? Obviously, they want, I don’t know, keep the wolf hunters in Alaska, I have no idea why the wolf hunting thing was in there. But why issues are in there, how the issues are presented, because a lot of the issues, as somebody who has read party platforms four years ago, of some of the way some of the languages around the issues is confusing, and when you really think about it, it is designed to obfuscate, not to make their position clear.
It tells you the party, so the party platform is the document that you can think of it as the party’s mission statement. And I think that’s really good for kids to understand the platform, and I agree with Amy, after studying the Constitution, which is really the mission statement of our country, and then have your child choose the platform issues they think are the most important.
And when we did that, we wouldn’t tell our son what platform issues that we think are the most important, and interestingly enough, at the time, everyone, when we finally then got together and all said what our platform issues we thought were the most important, my son’s was income inequality. I want you to think about this.
This is a 10th grader. Who is literate enough on the platform issues to think income inequality is the most important issue. And whether you agree or not, pretty sophisticated position for a 10th grader, and then, based on his views on the issues with income inequality, he chose a candidate and the party that he felt was most consistent. My husband, I can’t exactly remember his driving issue. Mine was what it has been since I was a kid, the separation of church and state. So, shouldn’t be as surprised that I formed this large secular group. But that issue for many years when I would tell people, they thought I was nuts. All I’m going to say is I don’t look so crazy now.
[00:15:33] Amy: You definitely don’t look crazy now. No, I think you were like, you were ahead of the time. You knew. Yeah, I think looking at platforms is great. And I would say one thing that I think is super helpful, especially with little kids is, or younger students, is don’t just look at the presidential election.
It’s really tempting to feel like the president is the only election that matters, but you can get involved at a grassroots level in your local elections and in local politics, and you can see firsthand. I remember my — this is a silly story, but my Girl Scout troop, I ran a homeschool Girl Scout troop when my daughter was little, and it was in this little suburb of Atlanta.
It’s called Dunwoody. And my daughter and her friends, there was a law in Dunwoody where I live that you couldn’t have chickens in your backyard. It was against the law to raise chickens inside the city limits of Dunwoody. And so my daughter and her friends really liked chickens and really wanted to have chickens.
And so they were able to get a meeting with the mayor of Dunwoody. Who — Dunwoody is like a little city, so my husband tutored the mayor’s kids, so I’m sure that helped. But they were able to get a meeting, they were able to present a proposal. And I don’t think it’s just because of my daughter’s Girl Scout troop, but it is now legal to have chickens within the city limits of Dunwoody.
And so that was just like, a political issue that they cared about. It was. It seems like a small, silly issue, but they genuinely cared about it, and they figured out a way to act on it, and they did, and they felt really good about their participation. That’s something that you don’t get to do with a presidential election, unless you’re like, super rich, and you’re a super donator or something.
[00:17:23] Blair: That was one of the things that I did with my son. I think it’s really important. If you want to raise a voter, it’s really important that you focus on your local and state issues. That’s important because you have a much bigger impact.
I live in a suburb of San Diego called Escondido, it is an incorporated city. Four years ago, the mayor won by four votes. It flipped blue by four votes. Your vote can really make a difference. And, even though our kids are homeschooled, school board elections can be really fraught.
Many years ago when I was still teaching college, I was tapped to run for a school board, I was going through divorce at the time, so I didn’t do that. But a very conservative group had managed to elect a slate to the school board. Nobody was paying any attention to that. And they managed to have a recall election and the Democrats were a shoe-in to replace them. You really want to pay attention to those issues because things like school board issues, even if they don’t impact you, they can have a huge effect on the local library. You owe it to your community to pay attention to those smaller local issues, and it’s, as Amy said, you can make a real impact locally, if you care about something.
[00:18:56] Amy: Which is awesome. I would say, if you have a high schooler volunteering with the political process, either as I don’t know — In Georgia, it’s a page. You can volunteer as a page with the Georgia Senate during the season that they’re meeting or you can volunteer for to work on an election campaign. I have had a lot of students over the years who have actually started out as volunteers and ended up getting full-on internships because they participated, and some of them have even gotten to go to Washington as part of that, which is really exciting and an awesome experience. And because they’re homeschoolers, they’re able to do it. They’re able to just pick up and go to Washington for a couple of months and get this amazing experience in politics.
So if you have a kid who’s interested in politics, that can be a great route to take. Everyone needs volunteers during election season. No one is going to turn away a volunteer during election season.
[00:19:54] Blair: Volunteering can be really exciting. You can meet some pretty cool people. A lot of people, they’re trying to change the world. That can be really exciting for your child to see people who are trying to be the change they want in the world.
[00:20:10] Amy: Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. And I think that it really does inspire kids to not just care about politics theoretically, but to want to be active in it.
[00:20:22] Blair: Amy, not everybody can volunteer, though. And even if they do, we’ve got some other learning strategies. One of the things I recommend is that you watch candidates’ speeches. Now, I’m very familiar with the candidates speeches right now because my husband, he is a news junkie. There’s some crazy speeches happening. What do you think? Watch candidate speeches for sure, and then use your critical thinking.
[00:20:52] Amy: Read the speeches, right? If you watch them, also read them. Because so much changes in delivery. So much changes in delivery. And if you are looking at the actual words that people are saying, and I actually think that this applies across the board, oftentimes.
People sound like they’re saying a lot, but they’re actually not really saying anything. And I think that is, when you read it, that’s very clear in a way that isn’t always when you’re pulled along by the excitement of speaking.
[00:21:23] Blair: And no matter how much you like a candidate, they all do that.
[00:21:26] Amy: Yeah, a hundred percent.
[00:21:29] Blair: Yeah. And then, I think it’s important, especially with kids, that you have a conversation about what was heard in a way, and this can be hard, in a way that you’ve got to support their viewpoint. And question anything if you think the sources might not be valid.
But if your child doesn’t agree 100 percent with your position, especially in this kind of crazy election season. A, some they’ll mature, but B, raising a voter, if you really want to raise a voter, in my opinion, you do it in a way that makes sure they understand the importance of voting, but doesn’t indoctrinate because I don’t think that necessarily is effective as a long term strategy for a voter.
I think you just need to raise somebody that understands why their opinion matters and how voting is one of the only ways that their opinion can make a difference.
[00:22:31] Amy: I also think it’s so important and so hard to teach your kids that before you can argue with a position, you need to understand it. And I’m just, I’m going to name names here because I don’t know, it’s just easier. Sometimes whatever Donald Trump says makes me mad.
He could say the sky is blue and I would be annoyed about it because I have really, I feel, I have really strong feelings about him as a person. And I think it can be that way in politics. You hear somebody saying something that you disagree with and you immediately want to argue, but good critical thinking does mean you have to understand what the person is saying before you argue.
Now, this isn’t the same thing as seeing both sides of the issue, which, we all — you already know. I think there are some things where there are not both sides. Slavery was bad period. I’m not, I don’t care if you think there’s another side. You’re wrong. It’s basically where I am on that. But I think it’s different to make sure that you understand what somebody is saying.
You want to make sure that you are clear on exactly what they’re saying, and then you can argue with it all you want to, but you have to, you can’t just jump into arguing without understanding. Or honestly, you are as bad as the people who are just using hollow words, because you haven’t, you don’t have a foundation.
[00:23:53] Blair: A good strategy for that is to actually say to someone, this is what I’m hearing you say. Am I correct? And one of the reasons to have a discussion with your kids about this is it is really important that when you feel strongly about a position, that you’re able to articulate it. By reading, or watching, or coming to understand what other people are saying, and then having a discussion that doesn’t get turned into an argument can lead to helping people articulate their stance on important issues.
While you’re doing this, I think a really fun game that I did with my son, is to make a game out of spotting misleading information.
[00:24:44] Amy: Ooh, I love this! This is genius.
[00:24:48] Blair: We went out to lunch yesterday. Sean was facing the screen that had soccer on it. Jim was facing the screen that had women’s basketball on it. I was facing the screen that had four news channels and the weather channel.
So I was able to watch, at the same time, CNN. MSNBC, Fox, and BBC News, and it was a really interesting. The jobs report was actually really good that came out yesterday, and the way Fox was dealing with the good job report was they were attacking Joe Biden as a person. The news is good, so how can we make it bad? I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could read the headline that’s Joe Biden flakes out or something.
[00:25:30] Amy: When I was a teenager, and my parents would say I couldn’t do something, and I would immediately say, you never let me do anything!
[00:25:38] Blair: Yeah, claiming a single event will inevitably give rise to a chain of future events. And this is interesting because, if the event is good, then they claim way beyond. And if it’s bad… You might not realize it, but if you watch Fox News, you would, the United States is going through an apocalyptic event.
Joe Biden, if he’s reelected, it’s going to be an apocalyptic event and the U.S. will be like you’ve never known it. But with really ominous music playing. That was their argument four years ago and it hasn’t happened. The problem with that is there’s this feeling that it’s never going to be a problem, the United States is going to keep being what it is, but I think that’s why people like my husband, even the word Trump just triggers them, which I want to take issue with. Totally ruined a perfectly good word.
[00:26:38] Amy: It’s such a useful word. A lovely word. No, I think that you’re right. I think that about when I was a kid and our arguments were about, it felt like every political season, one of the big issues was gay marriage was the big issue.
And I remember people, like my teachers, people at football games that I went to arguing that, if, once you allowed gay marriage, people would be marrying dogs, right? That was the next step. And we’ve had gay marriage for a while now, and I don’t know anyone who’s married to a dog.
My dog is really great, I am, like, I do, I am really fond of my dog. But this does not seem like it’s actually gonna become an issue. I, I think, yeah I think that we are really prone to more — That’s not an argument that we need to give respect to, right? That’s not a real argument. That’s not, that doesn’t deserve our thought and respect. It’s ridiculous.
[00:27:38] Blair: It’s ridiculous, but something that isn’t as ridiculous that people do is they say that gay marriage is going to lead to pedophilia. And the reason I don’t think that’s as ridiculous is that what it does is it connects pedophilia with the LGBTQ+ community. And it’s really unfair. But that’s also been pretty effective.
[00:28:05] Amy: It’s really — smart feels like the wrong word, but like it is a very smart strategy to link something that you want people to think is bad with something that people know is bad.
And to compare them so often that they start to feel like the same thing. That’s great. That is a really good propaganda technique.
[00:28:26] Blair: This conservative movement that has pervaded education, it’s one of the reasons that you and I decided to have this podcast actually, was because this is a very effective strategy. These strategies that you see happening, whether it’s gay marriage, or whether it is, educational issues. These are really effective strategies. This right wing Christian conservative movement is at the leadership at the top, even if you can’t figure out why they’re doing something, they’re brilliant.
I’m not saying Trump is brilliant. He’s their stooge, and he’s a very effective spokesperson. There are people behind him that are directing this narrative. It’s scary. I don’t want to scare everybody and I don’t think I’d go there with an educational issue with my kids but they know what they’re doing. Look at how they finally were able to overturn Roe v. Wade
[00:29:28] Amy: Okay, I think that’s the thing that’s worth talking about especially with your middle school and high school students. I see a lot of students. I see a lot of teenagers who genuinely feel helpless about the state of the world and who feel, because of that helplessness, who become apathetic about it, who feel like, and —
[00:29:49] Blair: don’t vote, they don’t vote because of that. That’s a strategy as well, Amy. Amy.
[00:29:54] Amy: Yes. Yes. And so I think that is a really important piece of talking about politics and studying the election process with your kid is showing them all the ways that vote do make a difference, that you can look at the long picture of history. I always go back to reconstruction because I feel like reconstruction is, it’s so parallel to that situation that we’re living in right down to the impeached, almost impeached president.
Right? Where it’s like you’ve made this tremendous social, political, progressive change and the people who benefited from all the things that existed before that change are pushing back so hard against it, right? And so it’s like you’re taking steps backwards. But if you look at that, you can see that in the aftermath of Reconstruction, we saw the Progressive Reform Movement, which made great strides in making the world a better place for lots of people.
And the Civil Rights Movement, and the Gay Rights Movement, and the Latinx Rights Movement, and the Women’s Rights Movement. And so I feel like we’re right now at that stage where people are pushing back, but this is the time when those movements can start to form and grow and build and make a big difference.
And I think we really need to give our kids that, that too, right? That possibility, that hope for the future, that hope for change, is historically accurate.
[00:31:18] Blair: I’m smiling. You can’t see it, but Amy can, because you’re basically describing two steps forward and one step back.
We’re in the one step back period right now, everybody, but that means that we’re about to experience two steps forward, which is —
[00:31:36] Amy: so good, which, yay hooray. So —
[00:31:40] Blair: Barack Obama was two steps forward, and it tore the covers off of all the racists. Oh yeah, and then a woman. Okay, those of you who didn’t know where Amy and I were politically now know a lot more.
The other two things that I think is really important, and especially one of the things you can do, no matter how old your children are, is to have them see you vote, and to talk with them about the choices you are making. Talk to your kids as a family unit. That’s really good when your kids hear you having those kinds of conversations.
[00:32:21] Amy: I have two things. One thing is a really fun way to get involved in local politics is to sign up to work voter registration drive. They’re really fun here in Georgia, our Women’s Democratic League runs them and you go around or you man a table and you help people register to vote, and it feels very empowering and kids are welcome and I, I think that’s great. You’re not registering people to vote for anybody specific, you are just registering people to vote. So so that is a very cool thing to participate in.
And I just finished reading such a fun mystery, if you are an old school mystery fan, like a golden age of mystery fan, and you grew up on Agatha Christie And Sherlock Holmes mysteries and all of that, there is a writer, Benjamin Stevenson, he has two mystery books out now in this series.
One is Everybody in My Family is a Murderer. And the other is Everyone on this Train is a Murderer. And they are very fun because they play with all the conventions of the detective genre. The writer is very, okay, so now I am going to do this because that’s what happens at this stage of the detective novel. But it’s still like very twisty and fun and surprising. So if you’re looking for a fun mystery read, highly recommend Benjamin Stevenson and his two books.
[00:33:42] Blair: I will have to look those up.
[00:33:44] Amy: They’re very entertaining.
[00:33:47] Blair: All right, everyone. If you have any questions, any comments, we are always happy to entertain those.
[00:33:54] Amy: Yes, leave us questions. Please leave comments. It makes us feel like we’re not floating alone in the podcasting world.
[00:34:01] Blair: We haven’t heard that much. We were a little surprised when we went and looked at our subscriber numbers I think we were pleasantly surprised.
[00:34:09] Amy: So thanks for listening We appreciate you so much, and I guess that is a wrap for this episode of Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy, brought to you by SEA Homeschoolers and home.school.life.
We’ll see you soon.
[00:34:24] Blair: Bye
