This Golden Hour
In this podcast, we specifically serve new homeschool families through engaging conversations with homeschool parents and families at all levels of experience and expertise. Listeners will increase their confidence and assurance about their children's education and future while diminishing their fears. This podcast helps you know how to begin homeschooling, navigate challenges, and answer questions for all stages of the journey.
The name “This Golden Hour” has meaning. First, this name refers to the years parents have to raise and teach their children from birth to when they leave home to be on their own. As parents, we have a golden opportunity to teach and learn alongside our children during these formative and essential years of growth and development. Second, “This Golden Hour” points to this same period of childhood as the children’s chance to read, explore nature, and enjoy an inspiring atmosphere of family, love, and learning.
This Golden Hour
37. Steve Lambert and Five in a Row
In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Steve Lambert from Kansas City, Missouri. Steve is a homeschool father of two, grandfather of 7, all of whom have graduated from homeschooling. Steve is the publisher of the famous Five in a Row curriculum, and he's the husband of Jane Lambert who created Five in a Row. The Lambert's started homeschooling in 1981. After more than a decade of homeschooling, Jane started creating engaging lessons from the books she had vetted for her children, and began sharing her lessons with other homeschool mothers. In 1994, Five in a Row officially began as a curriculum, and for nearly 30 years it has been used by more than 600,000 children in all 50 states, every Canadian province, and more than 60 countries. Five in a Row is based on great books that are read five days in a row with a specific emphasis each day. The books used in Five in a Row must meet 3 essential criterion: beautiful illustration, rich diversity of content, and they must be soul-stirring and leave a lifelong impression. Throughout our interview, Steve shares countless wise insights and engaging experiences that illustrate the fundamental principles and keys of homeschooling. Perhaps the most profound realization from this episode is that the best education takes place when snuggling with our children while reading a great book on a comfy sofa.
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https://fiveinarow.com/
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if you've been called to do this if you believe that in your heart, this is something that you're supposed to be doing your family, then you'll find. The tools and the resources and the success that you'd hoped for. And anybody can do this. You don't have to be a college graduate. You don't even have to be a high school graduate. And in fact, lots of homeschool parents learn along with their children every day. And in fact, on any given day, the person who learns probably the most in the homeschool setting is probably not the student, but the teacher. helping our children figure out their purpose on this planet, why you're here, what you're good at, and what you can do to make a difference in this world. It's maybe the most important thing that we can do, and a parent is probably the most qualified person to do that, and the test tube in which that, experiment is performed. Is on the living room sofa.
Timmy Eaton:Hi, I'm Timmy Eaton, homeschool father of six and doctor of education. We've been homeschooling for more than 15 years and have watched our children go from birth to university successfully and completely without the school system. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling. And homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today and enjoy this episode of this Golden Hour Podcast as you exercise, drive, clean, or just chill. You're listening to this golden hour podcast. In today's episode, we get to spend time with Steve Lambert from Kansas City, Missouri. Steve is a homeschool father of two grandfather of seven, all of whom have graduated from homeschooling. Steve is the publisher of the famous five in a row curriculum, and he's the husband of Jane Lambert, who created five in a row. The Lamberts started homeschooling in 1981. After more than a decade of homeschooling, Jane started creating engaging lessons from the books she had vetted for her children and began sharing her lessons with other homeschool mothers. In 1994, five in a row officially began as a curriculum, and for nearly 30 years, it has been used by more than 600, 000 children in all 50 states, every Canadian province, and more than 60 countries. Five in a Row is based on great books that are read five days in a row, with a specific emphasis each day. The books used in five in a row must meet three essential criterion, beautiful illustration, rich diversity of content, and they must be soul stirring and leave a lifelong impression. Throughout our interview, Steve shares countless wise insights and engaging experiences. that illustrate the fundamental principles and keys of homeschooling. Perhaps the most profound realization from this episode is that the best education takes place when snuggling with our children while reading a great book on a comfy sofa. Welcome to this golden hour podcast today we have with us Steve Lambert coming from Missouri and Steve is a homeschool father and grandfather of seven I believe, and he is also the publisher of five in a row, and the husband. Of the creator of five in a row, Jane Clare Lambert. And so we're so grateful to have him with us. He wanted to make sure that I said that he was handsome and wonderful and brilliant. And and I have no doubt about that. So Steve, if you're good with it maybe give us a brief bio of yourself or, or a long bio, whichever you want.
Steve Lambert:Thank you. Appreciate that, Tim. Yeah. Jane and I have been married now for we've been together, started dating when we were 16 years old. So we've been together coming up on 57 years. We've been married for 52 plus. And that's probably our greatest accomplishment. Definitely. And along the way, we had two amazing daughters and we began homeschooling in 1981. And if most of your listeners, if I could see them and ask them to raise your hand, if you weren't yet born in 1981. My guess is 98 percent of your listeners hands are up in the air right now. So we were homeschooling before most of your listeners were born. It was a different time and a different world. And at one point we were required to hire an attorney to defend our rights to homeschool and confrontation with social workers and the school district. And thank God that this is a different time and a different era and the freedoms to homeschool have been expanded greatly. Conscious of that and aware of that and continue to protect those rights. But that's a different world. And of our two daughters, they've given us seven grandchildren. The oldest just got married. She's 24, just turned 24. The youngest is seven. All seven of them were homeschooled or are being homeschooled all the way through high school, just as our daughters were, and that's the, uh. I think if your kids want to continue the homeschool tradition, it's not the only test, but I think that's a good marker that they had a positive experience that that it was good for them if they're excited about continuing that tradition. So I'm excited for them. I'll also add that Jane began writing really for some girlfriends some lesson plans back in the early nineties and we, Printed an early edition of five in a row for the first time in 1994. So we're coming up on 30 years and we now have had more than 600, 000 children in all 50 States and 60 different countries who've used five in a row and all the provinces across Canada, and it continues to thrive today, 30 years later, and my youngest daughter and her husband. Are in the process. In fact, I have a meeting with his attorney tomorrow to for them to take over the company. Jane and I are 73 years old. And so we're not able to get out on the road and speak and do some of the things that we were able to do for so many years and meet face to face with homeschoolers across the country.
Timmy Eaton:Wow. That was an excellent introduction. Thank you so much. First of all, congratulations, like you said, for being faithfully married for 52 years. That's, like you said, that is, and I would attest, that is the greatest accomplishment of anything else, pales compared to that. So that's amazing. And then congratulations. For five in a row and all of the success that has come with that, that's, this is amazing timing that I get to talk with you right before it changes hands or not change his hands, but shifts at least a little bit. Cause I know all those hands are involved.
Steve Lambert:BoTh of my daughters have actually written some of the material in more recent years and the data operations have rested in the lap of my younger daughter now for a couple of years, but we're in the process of tying up some of the legal loose ends. So that the future moves ahead. They've revamped and updated much of the product, added new product. We now have, I don't even know how many, 13 or 14 different volumes of five in a row available, plus 25 or more mini units that people can buy online and download and. So there's far more to it than the meager little booklet that we started with.
Timmy Eaton:So did your so you guys had been homeschooling for about 13 years before she started to formally, make those lesson plans into what became five in a row.
Steve Lambert:Yeah, that's right. She had evolved her own methodology back in the eighties, there really wasn't. Much available in terms of curriculum and Christian book publishers Refused to sell us their materials because it put at risk their bread and butter which were Christian schools And so the Christian schools, I think it dictated to them to say, you know Don't sell the homeschoolers because then they don't need us So we just went to yard sales and garage sales. I think the first history book was published in 1943 and we got to the end of that and it just left you hanging. We didn't know who'd won the world war two because it just, there wasn't any more information in the book after that. So we made do, but over time. As an early pioneer of homeschooling, Jane developed her own methodologies, which really revolved around snuggling with kids on the couch and reading great books together. And then out of those books came the opportunity to talk about language arts and creative writing and history and geography and foreign culture and human relationships and art from the illustrator's works. And, so that became the springboard for making a very engaging, heartwarming approach to homeschool, which ended, for the most part, the tears that had accompanied a couple of those early years of homeschooling. Yes. When I would come home and find my wife in our bedroom crying, and my Daughters in their room crying. Others have experienced that if they've been at this for more than a few weeks.
Timmy Eaton:Yes, indeed. So that, so was this all happening in Missouri? Like where you guys live now?
Steve Lambert:Yeah, neither of us have gone far. We, I live within 15 miles of where I was born. Yeah, we were here in Kansas City and so what happened, which I think this is interesting for your listeners to understand the way you sell a product is by solving a problem. And if you can't find a problem, then you create one and much of what is out there today, much of it's wonderful, but a lot of what's out there today in the realm of curriculum. Was developed by people who've never actually homeschooled, never experienced tutorial education, have no idea what the pressures are like or what it's like to sit down with your own children and try to get them out of the cereal bowl and get out of their pajamas and get ready to start their day. And the secret for many of those products, if you go to their workshops or you read their literature, you go to their website is To convince you that without their product, you're going to fail miserably and your children will never be employable and probably never be able to leave home. But if you go buy their product, then everything will be great. Yeah. Yeah. Just the opposite conviction that if you've been called to do this if you believe that in your heart, this is something that you're supposed to be doing your family, then you'll find. The tools and the resources and the success that you'd hoped for. And anybody can do this. You don't have to be a college graduate. You don't even have to be a high school graduate. And in fact, lots of homeschool parents learn along with their children every day. And in fact, on any given day, the person who learns probably the most in the homeschool setting is probably not the student, but the teacher. And so Jane had a number of girlfriends who came to her who said, you. Got this thing lined out. You've been doing this 13 years. Your oldest is graduating. And so what's your secret? And so she said I sit down and I read them books. And out of those books, we talk about the world around us. And they were like, yeah, I don't get that. Give us an example. So she wrote a couple of lesson plans and said this is what I do with this book, and this is what I do with that book. And one thing led to another, and she wrote down enough to get several girlfriends started. And that presents a whole different paradigm for our customer base, because what we created was not a product to try to get market penetration in the rapidly growing homeschool movement, but rather a heartfelt answer to the prayers and needs of girlfriends who were struggling trying to make homeschool experience something enjoyable, something that both they and their kids enjoyed. And so when you start with a different premise, which is I'm not trying to sell product, I'm trying to help friends. You end up with a different type of customer experience. And I think that's why five in a row has been a beloved curriculum. It's won every, reader award and whatever now for 30 years at one time or another. And so many of our. Customers are exactly like my wife's friends back in those days. They're homeschoolers who have bought a box curriculum or a big stack of textbooks and workbooks and ended up in their rooms crying and thought there has to be a better way to do this. And a veteran homeschool mom pulled alongside them and said, have you ever heard of five in a row? And they're like, no, I never heard of that. And I said our kids used to cry and we used to have a hard time. But then an older veteran homeschool mom told me about five in a row. And so I'm telling you about, and so we get a lot of people after one to two years of difficult experience who finally discovered the joy of homeschooling, which I would add parenthetically. We place the emphasis all too often on the schooling part of that term, but the emphasis really is on the home part of that. Amen. That's what it's about.
Timmy Eaton:And it's the environment. It's the, it's, I don't know how many times we've said on this, on these episodes, like it's the environment over the curriculum and they're both important. But man, if you had to choose the environment. I love what you said earlier about. liKe just the idea of snuggling with your kids. And that is the magic that happens when you sit down with a child your kid or your grandkid or somebody else's they just naturally get closer to you. They listen, they want to talk about it. And if they've been nurtured that way from the beginning, it isn't this, I know that some people really struggle, like you said the one friend did later on in life, but really. Even through their youth years, these read alouds that my wife is doing with our, we have six kids and it's amazing what that does. Was she, was Jane familiar with Charlotte Mason or did she follow a particular mentor or philosopher or was she just doing her own
Steve Lambert:methodology? Yeah, she discovered Charlotte Mason after the fact and discovered that they had much in common. Yes. Shared the same values and perspective on education, not so much the narration part but the nature and the reading and the quality of books part of Charlotte's methodology. I don't know, Jane and I come at this from a Christian worldview, and that may be Good news to some of your listeners and maybe annoying to some of your listeners, but it is what it is. Yes. And it would be unfair of me to tell you our story without telling you that part of it. But when Jane was at her lowest point in those first few months of struggling, she she felt like she asked the Lord, how can I make this an experience that we enjoy? I don't want to be at war with my children every day. Demanding that they finish their workbooks and then, and them crying and saying they won't do it. And the Lord said, why don't you read to your children? And she said I do that. I do read to them, but how do I teach them? And she felt like the Lord said, why don't you read to your children? And she said, I know I do. But how do I teach school? And he said, why don't you read to your children? And that's all he said. And so she began to read more intentionally with greater purpose and discovered that out of that reading time came natural conversations about what was going on in the book, which led them to talk about everything from the history of slavery to the Roman Empire, to how to bake an apple pie, to where did the spices come from that we use in our kitchen, to what's the difference between a watercolor and a gouache, and how can we tell when we look at the illustrator's work? And somebody said a couple of my favorite quotes. Somebody said, if you want to make the single greatest improvement in your homeschool experience, buy a more comfortable sofa. Somebody else said the only two things that you really need to be successful as a homeschooler are a comfortable sofa and a library card. And I think that there's a lot of truth to that. Yes, it is. I tell, sometimes people are like I don't feel qualified to do this. And I'm like if you and your child were dropped on a desert island, could you teach them to read? yEah, what would you do? I'd take a stick and make an A in the end. Huh. Exactly. Could you teach them math? Yeah, I could take one coconut and set it beside two coconuts and okay, this is not rocket science. You can do this.
Timmy Eaton:I agree. And again, these are such, I love that you're bringing these up. These are such common themes that emerge in these discussions. And that's why I enjoy them so much because it is I think a lot of my audience, like you said here in, I'm in, so I'm in Alberta, Canada, and. I was just talking to the HSLDA arm of, on the Canadian side and since COVID, there has been a legitimate doubling. So we went from around 100, 000 to 200, 000 homeschool families in Canada. And a lot of those come in are in Ontario, but there's quite a bit here in Alberta as well. And one of the points was that so again, I guess what I'm saying is a lot of the audience are new homeschoolers just because it's growing so quickly, like you mentioned. And so a lot of them are intimidated by that, which was, which kind of. Was the impetus for some of our rationale of starting this podcast was to help them with that because we have 15 plus years experience. And it's been so amazing to talk to people with way more experience like you and Jane to find out just more principles and helpful tips for people who are starting now. You mentioned that Jane was like struggling in those. What was the main struggle in her early days? And a couple of years of homeschooling her kids, it sounds almost like she was trying to transfer what happened at school to the home, which is very common still, but what was it? Do you, can you remember, does she remember what was it that was causing her, so much struggle and tears, like you said.
Steve Lambert:Yeah, you're exactly right. It was the attempt because it was a new. A new experience to us unfamiliar. We were in uncharted territory, homeschooling. And so she was attempting to replicate the classroom experience. I remember going to yard sales and garage sales, trying to find desks that had little right hand arms on them. And I, I finally found two that were probably made. in The late forties somewhere. And I bought those and I bought a flag stand with a flag on it. And I bought a pull down world map that was outdated. You were
Timmy Eaton:bringing the whole
Steve Lambert:school home. We brought the whole school home. And that was a disaster because in a classroom education is an adversarial relationship. The teacher's desk faces to the south, and all the children's desks faces to the north, and it's a daily battle of you will, I won't, you can't make me, yes I can, I'll send a note home to your parents, I don't care, I don't want to do it, and What we discovered was that this is not an adversary relationship. It's a partnership involved in learning and everything you can do to get around and sit on the same side of the desk, or in our case, the sofa with your children or is it the Chesterfield? I'm not sure what it is.
Timmy Eaton:They all work,
Steve Lambert:bY sitting on the same side. It's a learning adventure that you go on together rather than you feeling the need to force facts and information into the heads of your children. And so I've traveled to most of the 50 states and several of the provinces. I spoke in Red Deer some years ago at a homeschool conference there, probably, maybe 15 years ago. I can't
Timmy Eaton:remember now. I'm heading up there in two days, so yeah, I'll say hi to it for you. Good, please
Steve Lambert:do. We had a lovely time there. But our experience in traveling and speaking over the years was that most people had that adversarial relationship with their children. And there are times when that happens. You have to do spelling, and there's no way to get around that. It may require simply rote memorization. But most of the parents who felt inadequate if you ask them what do you think about this methodology of reading together and talking? And after a moment's thought, most people will say that sounds lovely, but won't there be big gaps in my children's education? What are the odds that I can cover everything? And my answer, of course, is you can't, there's no possible way you can cover everything. What you need is the most fundamental lessons you can teach your child, especially from preschool through elementary grades, fall in love with learning and fall in love with books. And if they, if you accomplish that, then they're largely self starters for the rest of their life. Amen. Accomplish that, then you're going to be standing over them with a stick and a carrot until the day they go to university. And and then they'll probably drop out. Our oldest daughter, I know when she went to college, she was actually, it just turned 16 when she started to college and that was in 19 91, she was the youngest student on campus at 16 out of 32, 000 students. She was, as far as I know, the only home school student. And he had gone through the assessment process. And they were remarked, Oh my goodness, you're homeschooler. We've heard about that, but you're the first one we've met. And so when she went to her first prereq class as an incoming freshman, it was public speaking. Every student had to do public speaking. And she was horrified to discover that. Her teacher was the person who'd done her placement counseling, and so she was found out, she was outed before even the first five minutes of class had gone by. And he said, I want everybody to be prepared to give a five minute speech beginning this Monday on, is the United States a global police force or something like that, except, he said, for you, Ms. Lambert. And I'd like for you to give a five minute speech on what it was like to be homeschooled and her heart sunk and she shrunk and her face was embarrassed, and she said, dad, what am I going to do? And I said you're going to get up and talk about it. So she did. And she said, we had returning GI veterans from the desert storm war. We had returning empty nest moms who were in their fifties going back to finish college. We had students there on athletic scholarships, cheerleaders, pre med students, pre law students, everybody had to take public speaking. And she said, as far as I could tell, by the end of the semester, every student in that class had found me somewhere on campus in the cafeteria or in the parking lot and said in their own way, I'm so envious that your parents cared enough to be involved in your education. And she said, but the one that killed me was the girl who told me 4 years ago when I started high school, my goal was to be valedictorian in my graduating class. And I've been in AP classes all the way through and I had a 4. 79. grAde point average and it came down to the last question. The last test, she said, I've never been on a date. I've never been to a sleep slumber party. I've never been to a sleepover. I've never gone to anything. I've studied and studied for 4 years and on the last test of the last class of the last semester, my dream came true and I beat this other student who had been neck and neck. And so last May, I was able to deliver the commencement address, the valedictorian speech to 4000 of my peers, their parents, civic leaders. And pastors in the football stadium and both of my parents were too busy to attend. And I am so envious that your parents cared enough to be involved in the process of your education. And she said, I just didn't know what to say. And I said, there's not much to say. No, but she had learned to love learning and she couldn't help but comment on I don't know why most of my peers are here. They're not interested in learning anything. And and I started to talk about gaps in their education and she came home one day and she said, There's a gap in my education. I thought, oh my word, did we forget to teach fractions or what? And I said, what? And she said, Alcatraz. I said, what? She said, Alcatraz. I said, are you talking about the prison out in San Francisco Bay? And she goes, yeah, you never taught me about that. I said, yeah, I don't guess we did. It just never came up in the course of our conversation. She said, yeah, I said, so what did you do? She said it came up in class and I just kept my mouth shut because I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. I said, Good, that's smart. She said, but at lunch, I went to the library and she said, I began to research. She said, did you know that there were 600 and some odd employees there and all of their children had to take a ferry boat to the mainland to go to school every day because there wasn't a school on Alcatraz Island? Did you know that the last 13 years, it was only one prisoner there in the Birdman of Alcatraz. Do you know that in the history of the island, no one ever escaped? Now there was one guy that they thought might've escaped, but they actually come to believe that he drowned trying to swim across the bay. Did you know that? And I said, It sounds like you fill in the gap. Yeah. Because you love learning. You know how to learn. You know how to learn. She said yeah, I guess I did. But still, you should have taught me,
Timmy Eaton:so you were rebuked, but then she was conveying, she was conveying the magic of your methodology there, exactly. But
Steve Lambert:When parents raise that question about, this is such a lovely idea of just reading books and all that sort of thing. Won't there be gaps in my children's education? I say, there are gaps in your education. I say, let's just take your fifth grade social studies test. Who was the Norman Conqueror? When did the Norman Conquest take place? Who signed the Magna Carta? When was it signed? When was the Spanish Armada sunk? And they're like, I remember learning of that stuff, but I don't have any idea. You know why? Because you just learned it long enough to pass a test on Friday. And you'd forgotten it within 30 days, but the things that you learned for yourself out of a book, whether it was quilting or canning or making sourdough bread or home decorating or whatever it is. You could talk for hours about that because you dug in and you learned it for yourself and they're like, oh wow, you're right
Timmy Eaton:I guess well when I say it often on these episodes I wrote a dissertation about five years ago on homeschooling and basically how home secondary homeschool students prepare for post secondary learning And one of the findings was that like around ninth grade freshman year students are self directed and they're learning. And so they've learned how to learn. So when they get to university or college or whatever they're, whatever it is, when they leave home, they've already honed those skills and cultivated and developed that in the same way that you would learn on your own. And so that is a, that's a huge benefit for the homeschool situation. And that's common. Like maybe it doesn't apply to everyone, but it is common. So I'm just wondering like when, like night, like you said, you guys are like truly pioneers to the homeschool movement, things were just coming out. It was very fringe looked upon. So I want to know like what were your how did you guys get exposed to it? How did you know about it? And what were your main motivations when you guys started you and Jane?
Steve Lambert:We lived in the same school district that Jane and I had gone to school in. In fact, we lived in a house on the same street that Jane had lived on as a little girl and our daughter, our oldest daughter went to the same grade school that my wife had gone to, and it was an excellent school in a beautiful suburban neighborhood, quality teachers. And you'd think that would be a recipe for. Delightful success and passing on the tradition to the next generation. But what we found was first of all, and I think this is key. We simply missed our daughter, not having her at home. Um, I'm spending time with our children and still do today. My, my oldest is what is she now? 48 years old and my youngest is 43 and we love spending time with them just as much today as we did when they were three and eight, but number two. We had a certain worldview and a certain set of values and we quickly discovered that the values of their peers took precedence over the values of their parents and their family. And so if we didn't want them to see a Freddy Krueger flash flick. They probably got the more dramatic addition in the telling from some of their peers who parents let them see it. And we thought, five and six years old is awfully young to be losing control of the agenda for your children. And of course, it only works there. So our oldest daughter went to a public school in kindergarten, first grade, went to a private school for the first semester of second grade. And then my wife said to me, as many of your listeners have said to their husband or their wife, Hypothetically, I'm just thinking out loud. What would you, if we homeschooled? And I of course said, do what? That can't even be legal. What about socialization? I didn't even know that word. I said, what about friends? How will my kids have, and we became. What I call an accidental homeschool family and I think 90 percent of your listeners are probably accidental homeschoolers This was nothing that was on their radar when they were in school and when their high school counselor asked What do you want to do with your life? Very few young 16 year old women say I want to live in a two income world on a single income and stay locked up with my toddlers all day and have my mother on think I'm crazy. That just doesn't occur to most people,
Timmy Eaton:16
Steve Lambert:years old, especially at 16, but something. There's a pull in our hearts love is a powerful motivator, things that we won't do, even because it makes good sense we'll live for love, and for the love of our children, we'll make great sacrifices, including living in a two income world on a single income many times, and so that's, that was our story, we, Jane said, what would you think of it, and I don't know where she'd heard of it, we didn't know any homeschoolers, I'd never met a homeschooler, I'd never even heard of homeschooling, but as we prayed about it, talked about it, discussed it, it seemed like a good idea. Now, what we didn't count on was opposition even from some family members. Now, her mother had been a career elementary school teacher, and she was very supportive because she saw, even back in 1981, what was happening in public schools. But our involvement with legal protection and legal defense stemmed from a family member who turned us in for educational neglect. Really child abuse under the category of educational black thinking, I'm sure in hindsight that she was doing us a great favor by helping us come to our senses and putting our children in a classroom. But it was a very lonely adventure at the beginning. And as in the first couple of years, we began to meet here and there a handful of other Kansas City families who homeschooled.
Timmy Eaton:Wow. That like in, in all genuineness, thank you for doing that because Like you said today we did, we started 15 plus years and, even today there's still people that are very ignorant of homeschooling and, but the research is just, if anybody looks into it, they would just, they wouldn't. They wouldn't have that same feeling, at least, even if they don't like it themselves, they would at least see it. And I think more and more people are accepting of it and open to it and aware of it. But it's because of you and many like you who started and made it so much easier for so many of us. And seriously, thank you for that. And Today, it's just growing so fast. I just read an article on on a website that said that the, that homeschooling is by far the fastest growing education movement in the United States. And then at a rate of 50 percent increase. And then there, the next closest one was private schools at 7 percent and that public schools on actually decrease of a negative 4%. And so I was just thinking, man, it has come so far. And and I've been saying this a lot that the term homeschooling doesn't always work. It's like you said, you're just being with your family and you're just learning together and reading. And I love that. I love that it's, it really is that simple because people do haven't you listened? If somebody with your experience. Like when you listen to these podcasts or news or see articles where people are talking about a new charter school coming out and knew this, do you ever have the I, I have this feeling and I'm wondering if you do where you're just going, those things are all good, but you could simplify this just by, you don't need all those crazy Educational methodologies and philosophies. You can just bring your kids home and read to them, get outside, love each other and people listening might go that's too simple man Like that's not really but your children are evidence of that are they not and I know mine are I've got two that have graduated and Anyway, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah,
Steve Lambert:no I agree with you completely. And, people act as if homeschooling is this brand new educational experiment. It's actually the entire history of education. It's public education. That's the new experiment. It's only been around for a couple of hundred years. Up until then, through all human history, you taught your own children. Yep. And if for some reason you didn't feel able to do that, you collectively got together with a few other parents and hired a tutor for your children. And that was called the private school. But somewhere along the line came this concept of public education, and that's been the new experiment. And frankly, it's been largely a failure. And you don't have to look far at what's happening in today's college graduates and so forth to realize. I Met with a director of human resources of a major Fortune 100 company several years ago who heard me speak, and it was in May of that year. And I said, So you're You must have recruiters out. He said, we have 260, 000 employees. And I said, you must have recruiters out on college campuses. He said, I have six teams out right now. They're there'll be out for three months on the road, crisscrossing America and interviewing potential new hires. And I said, so you're obviously looking for the highest GPA highest grade of a graduating class position. He said, no, I said, no. He said, no. I said, your highest IQ, highest. Something I said, why? And he said, because that's irrelevant. And I said, wait, explain that. He said, every new hire costs us approximately 70, 000. And whatever you learn in college is not how we do it, whether it was accounting or quality control or marketing or sales or advertising, we're going to teach you how we do it when you get here. And if you don't make it at least three years in our company, we will lose money. It takes three years for us to break even on every new hire. And so I have one of the most important jobs in the country because if we don't hire the right people, we will go belly up soon. And I said if it's not great point average and it's not IQ and it's not graduating class position, then you must just throw darts at resumes. He said, Oh no. He said human resources is becoming a pretty clearly defined science. He said, we can tell who'll be successful in our company and who won't. I said if those aren't the things you're looking for, then what do you look for? And he said by far and away, number one is the ability to work well with others. He said, because if you can't, you'll get crossways with an employee or your boss that either can get fired or quit. Number two, the ability to work unsupervised and finish a project on time. And number three, the ability to work within the constraints of a budget. And I, and he said, I said are you finding high college graduates today who can do the work that you need? And he said, I, he said, some of these are the best, brightest. Most well educated men and women i've ever seen he said I can find thousands who can do the work But I can only find a handful Who will do the work? They want to be on social media on my time. They want to do personal banking on my time They want to go to the starbucks on my time He said I find it difficult to get four hours work for eight hours paid ahead of today's college graduates And I thought you know, we spend so much time making our children memorize names and dates for the Peloponnesian Wars, when probably what we ought to do is be giving them the liberty and the opportunity to, to self manage some tasks and give them budgets for some projects and give them some deadlines and let them learn project management skills, and if I'm going to be finished with it by a week from Friday, then I better have this part done by this Friday, and those kinds of things come naturally in a home environment that are so often alien in a classroom.
Timmy Eaton:tHe term I've used, I love that example that you just gave. The term I've been using is the economy of the home. I think in the simple economy of the home, so many of those principles are learned. I don't think that people should minimize and reduce the importance of having a set chore that you become expert at. at Some point switch those up. But like you said, and that there are expectations and that they accompany mom, they see mom and dad in, in all those different realms, just in the simple economy of the home, running the home, running to the bank, running to the store finances, talking about mortgages. I just find that, and not that again, not that only homeschoolers do that but that you just have that much time to have those discussions and they have that exposure. That's really good. You, your first daughter did not, she did high school in high school. Is that right?
Steve Lambert:She did kindergarten, first grade in public school. She did one semester of second grade in a private school and then she homeschooled from there on. Oh, okay. But she actually started to college at 16, which in hindsight, I would not recommend for a variety of reasons. She was academically great. She had a four point, whatever. Grade point average, did grade, was top student in her class, in several classes, blah, blah, blah. Socially, she probably was not ready to handle some of that. Although, she lived at home when, when she was going to a college, a local university. But, we betrayed ourselves because we missed two more years of time one on one with our daughter. And that was, in hindsight, more important than anything else that we got out of it. And then our second daughter, actually, she started college at 17, but she she was homeschooled all the way through from kindergarten on.
Timmy Eaton:And in light of your, just the discussion you just had about the, that that fortune 100 leader, what is the rush, what is the rush when we can, because especially when, not everybody sees college and university and getting and gaining a degree the same way, like we used to, if you're doing it with a really clear purpose and it, it's required for a certain career or vocation by all means. But if not then be more deliberate about the course you're going to take and what you're going to do with your education. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah.
Steve Lambert:If we've learned anything in 2023, probably it's that. coLlege is not for everyone and sometimes produces unintended results that not only did we not see coming, but we didn't want. Yeah.
Timmy Eaton:And certainly economic with the economic problem sometimes or other I dunno, like sometimes it's not worth it for somebody to, to have gone to school if that's not what they're going to pursue.
Steve Lambert:I have a granddaughter who graduated from homeschool this past May. She turned 18 in April. She graduated in May during her last year. In addition to her regular studies, she studied to become an EMT. And like the day after she graduated I was actually, truthfully, I think it was two or three weeks before she graduated. She began riding on an ambulance as an EMT and she's making far more than most. A new college graduates make, and she only works nine days a month and she has no, no debt. She's still living at home, so she's rattling money to become a paramedic. And it's just a whole different experience than a lot of kids who spend, go 300, 000 in debt for a college degree and start out at a 32, 000 a year job somewhere in corporate America or corporate Canada. And and we'll never ever get out of that unless their student debt is forgiven by some president sometime. Yeah,
Timmy Eaton:tHat's an interesting thing to think about is just your role. How did your what was your role? You guys are unique in that your wife and you actually had a curriculum that you developed, but what is your, what, aside from that huge. Piece of the puzzle. What what was your role as a grandparent in the homeschooling of your grandchildren? What role were you, how did, how were you utilized for them? And,
Steve Lambert:Honestly, not much. Both of my daughters are very competent, capable young women who who having come up through the homeschooling experience have done a great job and I, neither of us really has a significant active role other than just cheerleaders and supporters and taking an active interest in our grandchildren. And, I read a, an article. Not long ago, and they had done a survey of classroom teachers in both public and private schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. And they asked, how much time do you spend with each of your students? Making sure that they actually understand the information and answering any questions that they might have about the material. The national average in the United States was less than 15 seconds per day. Now, if you stop and think about that, if you're a kindergarten teacher and you have 20 students, it's probably two or three or four minutes per day for your 20 students. If you're a high school teacher and you have seven class periods and you have 40 students in each class period, it's probably one or two seconds per day over the course of a year. When you homeschool, if you start with a four year old or a five year old at nine o'clock in the morning, by the time you take a lunch break at 11, you've already spent more one on one time with them than they would have received in a year in a classroom. I often tell parents, even if you're terrible at this, your kids are going to do okay because the deck is stacked. Tutorial education, one. One teacher to a handful of children is so inherently efficient that you're going to do great, and so are your kids. And I don't want to interfere with that process. My grandkids are having a wonderful time, are bright and capable. And, when I grew up, I don't recall ever having a conversation with my parents about, Son, you're really good at this. Or have you ever considered maybe doing that? Or, son this clearly is not your thing, or whatever. I just wandered off, went to college went to an employment agency when I got out of college, said I'm looking for a job. They stuck me in a job in sales and I did that for a few years. And in hindsight, that's crazy. That's nuts because we, with our children and now with our grandchildren, while our children are doing with our grandchildren, it's figuring out, helping them figure out, what are you good at? What are you gifted for? What do you love doing? What stirs your soul? What do people say? Wow, you're really good at that. What areas make you crazy? If you've got a seven year old boy and he's outside constantly and he never has clothes on, I can't say for sure, but he's probably not going to go to law school. He's probably going to want to be a forest ranger or a lineman or a something, we had a fellow homeschool speaker when we used to be out on the homeschool circuit traveling. And she said, when my son was three or four, she said he discovered looking at his bedroom window that a truck came by about five o'clock in the morning and threw something in our driveway. And so after we got up, he went out to see what it was. And it was a newspaper. And he spread it out on the floor and just could not get enough of looking at that pouring over even though he couldn't read. And she said that began a lifelong battle. And every day he'd get the newspaper and then he learned to read and then he wanted to read the newspaper. And every day I said, You can't do the newspaper until after you finish school. And she said, I fought him for all those years. She said, you know what he does now? She said, he's the editor of a major newspaper in New York, and he's the most dummy editor of the New York Times. She goes, he knew from the day he was born what he was created to do, and I fought him the whole time. But helping our children figure out their purpose on this planet, why you're here, what you're good at, and what you can do to make a difference in this world. It's maybe the most important thing that we can do, and a parent is probably the most qualified person to do that, and the test tube in which that, experiment is performed. Is on the living room sofa.
Timmy Eaton:Yes. Excellent. Excellent. Oh I love that. And I love that just like the common sense way of looking at that. Just like you said, the tutorial relationship between us and, and the other thing is, and that was just the bottom rung, like as far as the benefit of homeschooling your kids because you have their best interest at heart. You really care. You have an invested interest. And then like you said, you have that one on one conversation constantly. We are constantly, I can't believe what my kids have experienced compared to my own experience going to a public school in the suburbs of Chicago. It was fine, but man, that kind of. One on one customization that my wife has provided for my kids has been like, I don't think they don't know any different, so they don't know to be like, thanks mom. And I think sometimes she's, feels under thanked but but she's she knows she sees the future of it. And so it's worth it. Yeah, maybe before we transition to talk a little bit about five in a row what would you say to new homeschool families? You have, such vast experience and if you were to just come down to you see this overwhelmed new family at any stage of the homeschool journey and they're going, man, what do we do like this? There's so much stuff out there. Like you said, some people make products that are helpful and some that really don't. And the fact is, if you've got books and you love your kids, you're probably good. What counsel would you, I can almost guess, but what would you say to these families?
Steve Lambert:First I'd say that there, this is a marathon, not a sprint and there's no prize for finishing first. We we have a certain built in anxiety about life performance in every area, but it's no place more. dramatic than in the case of our own Children, because we have this burden to do the best for them and this fear that we're gonna fail them. And nobody is more aware of our inadequacies than we are. And so we're traumatized, paralyzed with fear that if I don't get this right and I gotta get it right now you don't. You've got time. You've got lots of time. You may have a bad week of homeschooling. You may have a bad month of homeschooling. You may have two years of difficult times when your mother in law has cancer and she comes to live with you and your husband's out of work, got laid off and it's a difficult time and you're pregnant and you've got morning sickness and you can't get out of bed. You know what? God's the author of time and it's all going to work out in the end and you're going to be able to teach them lessons during this season that you couldn't have taught them during any other season. And I appreciated what you said earlier. Most of what children take away is not the facts and the dates and the names, but an approach to life. And that's generally caught, not taught. They're not listening to much that you say, but they're watching everything that you do. And that's where they're taking their cues. What do we do when we're in times of financial stress? What do we do? When one of us is sick, what do we do when, whatever is going on in our lives? And how you model that is how they're going to Approach life themselves. And so just the process of living together is a wonderful Classroom in itself, even if you don't feel like you're doing much academically on that particular day. So number one, it's not a race No prize for first. It's a marathon. Not a sprint number two Stay off of Pinterest, stay off of social media because comparison is the death of contentment and and that goes for talking to your sister in law or your next door neighbor. My son's four and he already speaks Spanish on a ninth grade level. And we're starting Latin, and you're like, Oh my gosh, my kid is six and can't even read yet. You know what? Some kids don't read till they're six, or seven, or eight, or nine in some cases. If you've got a child who's struggling and is six years old and not reading, go get some testing done. They may have a vision problem. They may have a processing problem. There are solutions to this problem. So go get some testing, but just know. That children develop at different, on different time schedules, on personal schedules, and one child may not accomplish until they're 12, what another child can do at 8. If you've got identical twins, you can testify that one was way ahead in science, the other was way ahead in language, and were not. We're not identical in any way. So don't compare with anybody else. Don't be in a rash and don't, particularly if you're a firstborn, don't impose your type A personality on your children. This is not boxes to be checked off. It's lives to be nurtured and In our stress and our anxiety we want to tick off all these boxes and say, man, we covered everything. If you did it at the expense of the relationship with your child and you were in tears and they were in tears and they don't remember most of what you covered, then there's nothing successful about that journey. Even if you got all the way through chapter 39 of the history book this year and completed all the worksheets and tests. You may have been a complete failure if you did it in a way that That broke your relationship with them and the children didn't really learn anything So give yourself grace to make mistakes know that this is a new rhythm Probably will take you at least two years to begin to get the rhythm of homeschooling Nobody picks it up the first month and is great at it like any new skill I mean you go out and try to play golf don't expect to join the pga tour your first month out there, you know after you fail I've forgotten some story I read the other day and the guy came to the expert and he said I tried this and I failed and it doesn't work And he said we'll go try it another hundred thousand times and then come back and talk to me and so So those are the things that I convey, yeah, I get it. It's it's overwhelming Paralysis and fear and it's overwhelming but trust the science if you dare say that as you said earlier The data is overwhelming that it is kids who are homeschooled typically test 20 to 22 ahead of public school peers They continue annually to dumb down public education standards to the point now that in what I think in just oregon They just voted or washington maybe that you do not have to be able to read Or do any math in order to graduate high school? You don't have to read at all. I read somewhere that in america The definition of functional literacy is the ability to read well enough to fill out a social security card application. And the ability to do math well enough to balance a personal checkbook. More than a third of graduating high school seniors can't do either.
Timmy Eaton:That's scary to hear because that almost sounds, dare I say, that there might be an agenda that is trying to have that be accomplished.
Steve Lambert:Yeah. We bring on ourselves a lot of unnecessary stress and fear and night terrors and night sweats. By comparing to a neighbor, to a friend, to your firstborn to the, quote, public school standards, your child was uniquely given to you for a unique purpose. They have a purpose in this life, and together you're going on a journey to discover what that is, and they're going to do great. And when you look back at the process. Again, I come at this from a Christian worldview, and so I would look back at the end of this and say, you know what? Every question we had, every fear that we struggled with, every doubt that we had, in the end, God provided answers, and sometimes in unexpected places and often in unexpected timing. Yes. But even if you don't come at it from a Christian worldview, the statistics tell us that your kids are going to turn out okay. So the battle is not to start fast, the battle is to finish steady.
Timmy Eaton:So well said. So much wisdom. I love also just the principles that were taught there, especially when you said most of the most important lessons are caught and not taught. And so the, maybe the message to a parent is to just keep modeling and keep teaching because you don't know what's going to be caught. And then when you do see what was caught by your kids, take that and nurture that and let that just I love what Oh, I was talking to a guy here. His name is Daniel Allers. He does history plus history alive, amazing curriculum he does here. He just won some huge awards for it, for homeschool kids. And he said, chase your passions. And as parents, we gotta be on the, Be sensitive to that. What are their passions and help them nurture those. So thank you so much along the line of maybe we should transition. There was so much there. That's good. But I love that. Thank you. So let's just talk at least for a few minutes about five in a row. Cause you, you did give a really good comprehensive description of it at the beginning, but what my wife and I are lamenting is that we had not heard of it, like we had not heard of it until recently in one of these episodes. And I just couldn't believe it. I was like, we have, we've been doing 15 plus years and I don't know if it's the Canadian context or what, but and I feel like my wife almost sounds like Jane in that she really paved her own way. Like I would call our situation, Sarah schooling or Sarah learning or whatever. That's my wife's name is Sarah. And that's how our home has done it. But you said it basically started in 1994. And tell me a little bit about like its course, like how has it gone and how have you guys come up with stuff and what, just tell us, give us some background on the the journey of it.
Steve Lambert:Sure. As I said it was birthed really to help friends. An answer to help friends who were struggling, and I think that's important if you're using, if you had a chance, and most parents don't, but ideally if you had a chance to sit down with the developer of any curriculum that you choose to use with your children and probe a little bit and find out what their worldview is, what they believe, what their agenda was, what they're trying to teach, that would be helpful that would be golden to know Because if they've done their job well as a curriculum developer, their vision and their values and their passions are going to be imprinted onto your child. And so it would be good to know what that is. And some of those you would probably be horrified to find out what they believe or don't believe. But in our case, we believe that a mother and father are probably the best equipped people in the world. As you said earlier, you love your child, you have their best interests at heart, you know your child better than anyone else. And we know that at the end of the day, if you look back at your own education, you don't remember the methodologies. You don't remember the textbooks. You don't remember the workbooks. What you remember is teachers and their personalities and everybody has a favorite teacher and your favorite teacher was probably somebody who took a personal interest in you. Often we, I hear people say it was somebody who read aloud to our class or to me helped me on a personal level. When you're the only teacher that your children have, you can either be their favorite and most memorable teacher, or you can be somewhat forgettable. And I, we wanted our parents, our customers to be the favorite teachers that their children ever had. And so Jane began to write this as an answer to girlfriends and word of mouth spread. And we found ourselves thrown into an emerging homeschool world in which there were very few products to choose from. But there were a couple of competing philosophies, and let me give your listeners a quick lesson in education. Educators divide subject areas or divide subject areas into two categories, the subject, the content areas of learning and the skill areas of learning, or sometimes they're called the horizontal and vertical, and it's important for new homeschoolers, or any homeschooler for that matter, to understand the difference. Skill areas are basically reading, writing, and arithmetic, and there are three, or two unique characteristics of the skill areas of learning. Number one they're, they are absolutely sequential in nature. You don't take a four year old and say, okay, we're going to learn about arithmetic today. This is called a quadratic equation. Can you say that for mom? A quadratic equation? We're going to learn that today. No. You start with a zero and a one and a two, and then you learn to add and carry to the tens column. You build line upon lines. Incremental.
Timmy Eaton:Incremental.
Steve Lambert:And you do it in a very specific order. And the second factor is once you've accomplished that. You never go back. None of your listeners got up this morning and practiced their vowel sounds or their consonant blends or their times tables in case they needed to multiply. You learned that back in fourth grade and you've never thought about it again since. The content areas of learning are everything other than reading, writing, arithmetic. So history, geography, astronomy, health, nutrition, architecture, art, anything else you can think of. And the two characteristics of that are number one, It is non sequential in nature. You don't need to learn anything about insects before you can learn about weather and science. In fact. If you want a recipe to make kids hate history, teach it chronologically because then you fall into the tyranny of the next. Mom, I'm not interested in the Spanish Civil War. Why do we have to learn that? I don't mean it's next. It's what's in the book. It's just next. So no particular sequence. And number two, you never achieve mastery. So if you talk to somebody who's finished their post doctoral work on nuclear energy, And you say, wow, you must know everything there is to know about nuclear energy. They're going to be the first ones to tell you, oh my gosh, we've not even scratched the surface. The more we learn, the more we realize we don't understand. There's so much more to learn. And so you never finished learning about birds or about art or about architecture. You'll be learning the rest of your life about those subjects. So practically speaking, how does that. Apply to five in a row. And what does that mean to homeschoolers? Five in a row teaches the content areas of learning. The areas that are not sequential and that you can always dig deeper and learn more. We do not teach the skill areas. You need a phonics program. You need a math curriculum. Each child will develop at a different rate. Some will excel in math and others will excel in reading, but you take each child step by step sequentially through those skills, but every child can learn about those content areas. And if you have a large family and you have older children and younger children, you're not doing the older children a disservice by going back and touching on a subject that they've already touched on once or twice before this time, they can simply dig deeper. Yeah, repetition. So that repetition, that opportunity to dig deeper, to learn more. leNds itself to things like studying a book. And five in a row is the units of the approach. The unit that we study is a particular children's book, and one of the comments we've had over the years over and over and over is, Oh, my word, where did Jane come up with these this book list and the answer is she would go typically and come home with 100 library books and maybe not find any that she felt were really worth investing a week in studying and exploring. So the books had to have three things. They had to have a great illustrator because children art shouldn't be something you learn in a freshman in college in your art overview class. It should be something you began learning about in preschool right away. Number two, it had to have a broad, rich diversity of content and material information about, every book is different but they had to have Lots of
Timmy Eaton:compelling content.
Steve Lambert:Yeah, compelling content. And number three, they had to have something that touched your soul, something that left a lifelong impression. It was C. S. Lewis who said, there's no such thing as a great children's book. Either it's a great book or it's not. If it's great for an eight year old, it ought to be great for an 88 year old as well. And so she found books, some of them written as early as 1933. And some of them written just in the last several years. That combined those 3 characteristics. And so given the fact that we're teaching the content areas of learning, so it's a random walk through subject material. And so this week, if we're reading the children's book, Madeline. We may be learning about Paris and about the Eiffel Tower and about the mansard roofs and French architecture and about the little girls March two by two. So we're gonna learn to count by twos and we're gonna learn about French cooking and all kinds of subjects come up this week in our study of Madeline. Next week, we do the story about Ping. We're gonna find ourselves in the Yangtze River in China, and it's a whole different direction we're gonna go and it integrates life. So there's a cookbook that goes with it, for example. With children having an opportunity to cook food from that period of history or that region of the world. It's not required, but it's a delightful experience to add to it. There's science experiments in every book. There's art lessons. Did you notice how Mr. Wise drew the Yangtze River? It's not just blue paper like Mama draws. It's, the light reflects off the water and reflections in different colors and shadows and movement and lines. Let's get out our colored pencils and try to draw water more realistically the way our illustrator taught us this week, or the use of complementary colors in the color wheel. wE began to take that product around the country and share those. Discoveries, I guess for us, they were discoveries. They're not. And
Timmy Eaton:so Jane was just compiling, like you said, she was just compiling them. Like she, she would basically, she was doing it anyway. She'd come home with the library stuff for her own, for your kids. And then she would just go, yeah, this one hits that criterion. And so then she just compiled her own list. That's that's so amazing. That's like literally what my wife does.
Steve Lambert:She created a, a little structure for it, and it's called five days in a row because you study the same book for
Timmy Eaton:right five days in a row, and then the lessons come after.
Steve Lambert:Yeah, so Monday she would place the emphasis on social studies. So now you've read the book the first time, but let's learn something about the culture where the characters in our story live, what kind of food they ate, what kind of music they listen to, what's the history of that part of the world? What are the customs of the people in our story? Why? Why was the grandfather sad in our story? Why do you think that was? What had happened in his life that made him sad? Why do you think it was so important the way the little girl treated her mother in the story? Then Tuesday, language arts. So new vocabulary words that came up in our story this week. We'll try writing, even if you're not a writer yet, even if you're four, you can dictate to mom. Let's try writing a sentence that makes us want to dig into the story. Let's try writing dialogue the way our author wrote dialogue today. Let's try using some of the new vocabulary words in a sentence that came up in our story today. Wednesday, we're going to look at the illustrator's work. Like I said, we're going to try drawing water, or perspective, or vanishing point, or using the complementary colors in the color wheel. Thursday, we do applied mathematics. Which is not the same as math skills. Not sequential. No, the not sequential part of math. What's the difference? Tell me what a square is. It's got four sides. And then you show them a rectangle. That has four sides. Is that a square? No. Why not? Oh, I see. Okay. So it has to be for equal size. Oh, yeah. Okay. How many pints in a quarter? How many quarts in a gallon and then on Fridays we do science lessons all kinds of kitchen chemistry with just simple things like a cork or rubber bands and bobby pins and things that you'll have around the house with vinegar and water and a glass pitcher and Things that you can do that reflect on what was going on in our story. And then, like I said, along with it, there's a Bible supplement for Christian parents who want to teach the why behind some of the relational lessons. And there's a cookbook available. And I love that. I tell parents, sometimes the cookbook experience, if you're doing the story about paying in China can be as simple as a wife saying to a husband, honey, we need to take the children out to a Chinese restaurant this week. It's four years cool. Yeah. Or it can be, we're gonna, go pick up some Chinese food, but it can also be making invitations on Monday and mailing with grandma and grandpa and making decorations and placemats and Chinese lanterns for the chandelier on Tuesday. Yeah. There's
Timmy Eaton:no limits on the creativity of a family to implement it. How they will. Yeah.
Steve Lambert:Menu on Wednesday and shopping on Thursday and cooking on Friday and Saturday, grandma and grandpa come and you serve them their food and you put a towel over your arm and you can pretend to be the waiter and you share some of the things you learned about China this week. And each week may be different. You do what you have the time, the flexibility, the energy to do. But those skills are planning a budget, budgeting a meal and planning. If we're going to have the dinner on the table at six o'clock, then we got to have the rice finished by five 30 and we got to have the noodle started by four 30 and That kind of project management probably is more skilled, more significant than anything they learned about the history of China today. And
Timmy Eaton:those are the skills that, that gentleman you were talking about was looking at, right? He's looking at the budget and he's looking at being able to do I, does this person know how to learn and are they engaged and will they work hard and all those skills that you were talking about? That's beautiful. But we took
Steve Lambert:that out on the road 30 years ago and began sharing it with parents and they were immediately. Excited about it and as people who knew a whole lot more about this than we did people who were experts in quote education or curriculum or whatever Done. I got a call one day I got a Letter in the mail and it was a purchase order for 35 copies of our first volume And this has been 20 years ago probably And I looked at it and it came from the university of california at san diego And so I called and it was in the bookstore and I said What's this about? And they said, Oh, I don't know. What's the purchase order number? And I told him they looked and said, Oh, that's the textbook for Dr. So and so's class in the school of education. They're using one for the textbook on how teachers ought to teach.
Timmy Eaton:Oh my goodness.
Steve Lambert:Are you serious? Oh my gosh, homeschooled mom makes good, and so we began to meet with accolades and awards that we had no idea that
Timmy Eaton:we had. And weren't pursuing them like you said earlier. You weren't, it wasn't like you were deliberate. You were just going, how do I help my kids first? How do I help these friends? And then there's a knack for this and there's a growing community here. How do I help them out? And I love that pure motive that actually leads to a more high quality product.
Steve Lambert:I had as we headed out on the road, I had two interesting encounters. The first was a gentleman who came to hear me speak. And he said, my daughter came home talking about your workshop yesterday, or not my daughter, my, my niece. She's staying with me here because she's from out of town, but she's staying with me during this conference. And she said, I, he said, I was fascinated. I wanted to come and hear you. And I said, really, what do you do? And he said I'm the Dean of the medical school here at the university, the state university. And I said, Oh, and he said, so you were talking about unit study and how you study, approaching the same book from many different directions. And I said, and he said, I want to tell you a story. He said, we get the top one 10th of 1 percent of students academically here in medical school. And he goes, but the body of knowledge of the human body doubles each year. We've learned more about the human body last year than we learned in all of history up until last year, and it'll double again next year. And he said, even the best and the brightest aren't able to keep up with it. And so he said, historically, we've taught medicine by class. So you had histology and you had, anatomy and you had psychology and sociology, and you had all these different classes. And he said, great points. It was a struggle for kids to keep up. And he said, so two years ago, we started a B track. In which instead of teaching by subject category, we taught by living example. So we took a real patient and we learned about that patient and how all the medical pieces fit together. And test scores went up so dramatically that we thought we were going to do a five minute, five year experiment. But after two years, we quit traditional medical school. And now everybody learns by the unit study approach because they can remember the information. It hangs. On a real life story instead of textbook theory. Wow. That's very interesting. And then I had another guy come up to me and he said he said, I want to talk to you. He's from India. And he said, I want to talk to you. And I said, okay. And he said He said, my wife, he's, I said, what are you doing? He said I'm the Dean of this university. And I said, oh, okay. He said, I have a PhD in education and a PhD in it and administration. And I said, oh goodness. Do you know? And he said, but my wife is teaching our two daughters with five in a row. And I said, oh, great. Thank you. I appreciate that. And he said, even through all the way through school, all the way through college, and even through my master's degree program, I learned what I was told to learn, and not until I began my doctoral dissertation did I begin to discover the joy of learning for the sake of the learning itself. And I got to pick what I wanted to learn, and I fell in love with it, and I did my dissertation on it, and that was a whole new experience for me when I was 24 years old. He said, but I watched my five and six year old daughters getting to do that every day, learning for the joy of learning through five and oh, and I just wanted to thank you for that. Wow. Because I had to wait till I was 24. And I said thank you. I wanted to say, y'all, that's how we planned it. But the reality was like that's neat. I didn't see that coming, but Thank you for that encouragement.
Timmy Eaton:That is awesome. And the other thing that makes me think of,'cause here one of the questions I always had when I was doing my doctorate degree was, how is it that, here I am in the, the Department of Education and at the highest levels at the University of Alberta and there's no knowledge about home education, which is this giant. Movement now. I don't want to say giant in comparison to what's in the public school, but as far as the growth and such a viable option for people. And yet there's no knowledge on it. And this is an education department. Like to me, that's a gap. That's a very conspicuous gap that, that somebody else can tackle perhaps. But that's just interesting to me that an education department, which is about education, and it's not education of just one segment of our society but the whole of our society. And yet that is a, a segment, like a segment worth paying attention to, obviously. And so that's
Steve Lambert:interesting. I'll tell you two quick stories if we have time. Yeah. There was a moment in which early on that we were grappling with the fact that so many new homeschool parents really felt inadequate. And so we toyed with the idea of saying, what if we create an accreditation course that homeschool parents can take? And it'll be pretty simple and straightforward, but They can then get a diploma of sorts and show their mother in law or their next door neighbor. See I'm qualified to teach because I've been through this homeschool teaching program.
Timmy Eaton:Starting to create the school. So
Steve Lambert:we went to the local university here in Kansas City, University of Missouri. The office here in Kansas city. And at that time they had open stacks in the library. And so we said we'll just go back into the education department stacks and we'll buy some of the best teaching textbooks. And we'll summarize some of the principles of how to teach math, how to teach reading, how to teach social studies. There were no books on how to teach. They were all books on how to deal with difficult parents, how to avoid legal difficulties, how to deal with classroom management. Classroom management. That was all it was taught. It was nothing about how to teach a child to read or how to teach math. And so we were a little shocked by that. And then we were at a homeschool conference and this was early on at least 20, 20 some odd years ago. And I was standing at the front of the booth talking with homeschool parents, as you might imagine, after talking to me this afternoon, but my wife was sitting in a chair in the back of the booth and it was an auditorium that had a concrete floor and there was a woman in her forties who was in an expensive wool suit. lizard skin, high heel shoes and matching purse, diamond tennis bracelet, whatever. And she's kneeling on her bare knees on this concrete floor with a steno pad. And she's grilling my wife asking questions. And this goes on for the better part of an hour. How long do you spend each day on reading? Is there a particular math program that you recommend? Which is you think is the best approach to phonics? What do you think is? And so after she left, I said, so that wasn't Was that a new homeschooler? She said, yeah, brand new. I said, she's freaked out. She goes, totally freaked out. I said, yeah, I get it. I, she's, I said late biological clock story. She goes, yeah, she was late thirties when she had her first child and she's now in her mid forties and she's leaving her career field after 20 years. To come home and teach her son and I said, oh, I love those kind of stories Yeah, she goes but what was interesting is what she does and I said really what does she do? She said she's the dean of the school of education at the university down here and I said what she said Yeah, I kept saying to her I should be asking you questions and she said The doctor said no, you don't understand i've never really taught anybody And but even if I had you don't understand this is my son. We waited so long to have him He's only five. I've never really taught anybody before. I don't want to mess this up. Now tell me again, how long each day do you recommend for phonics? And so I told my wife, I said, whether you dropped out in grade or whether you're the Dean of the school of education, teaching your own children is intimidating and having a proven program like five in a row to help get you started is of. It's an untold treasure. So thank you for writing it.
Timmy Eaton:Oh, that is amazing. And somehow it doesn't totally surprise me. Like I'm just saying, because you have, one of the things you said earlier in the conversation was that and one thing that I'm finding in a lot of these episodes, a lot of the, a lot of the episodes that I have are with the moms who are homeschooling and what a commonality that, I knew about from my own wife, but that I see. A common thread here is just this passion for their children, which might sound like an obvious thing, but it's not it's not always obvious that like you said, your main motivation was exactly, I would have said it the same way, like we wanted to be with our children and and my wife in particular, like she, she saw my daughter going to kindergarten for the first couple of months and then just said, I don't know why I'm doing this. Like she had three other kids at home and she's going We enjoy this. She's missing out and I don't care to have somebody else. Spending that much time with my kid when I want to. And but like the idea of just having that passionate mother who has, and one of the funniest questions that people ask is, does your wife have an ed degree? And you just smile at these days and don't even try to, I don't even try to, engage it anymore but but they are that they're, they really are teaching their children and it's really. Fun to watch, and it's moving to watch, and I love it.
Steve Lambert:The natural order of things. And maybe the most sobering thought I can leave you with, which is most good, again, as a Christian. The Gospel of Luke, chapter 6, verse 40 says, When a student is fully trained, he'll be like his teacher. And that somebody is discipling your child. It's either you or somebody that you've delegated the authority to. And when they're grown, when they've been taught, they will be like their teacher. And so on the one hand, that's fair warning about who do you engage in and trust your children to do. And on the other hand, it's a sobering reminder that every time they're not listening, but they're watching you. They're asking mama, why do you always wait till the last minute, dad? Why do you always get so angry? Why do we all, so they will be like you when, so that is at once, both a sobering reminder for us. And it is challenged us. We when we hired an attorney and we went to meet with the school board. We had our daughter, our oldest daughter uh, formally tested, and so the administrator at the school, or the superintendent of a large suburban school, she pulled out their test results for our daughter when she was in kindergarten, first grade, and our test results after she had been in second and third grade, and he said, she's improved academically everywhere, so I've got no problem with that. I've invested my life in public education, I think you're making a serious mistake, but we're not going to cause you any problems, I said, I appreciate that. Three months later, he calls me. You get a phone call and it's the superintendent. And I thought, Oh, now what? And he said, Mr. Lambert, can we talk candidly? And I said, sure. And he said, I don't know if you're aware of this, but we're having some problems in public education. This was 1985. And I said, really? I didn't know that doctor. He said, no, we are test scores are going down. Faculties discouraged student attitudes, worse parents. Involvements is terrible. I pulled together a blue ribbon panel to talk for six consecutive weeks this summer about education. And I wondered, would you be interested in being a part of our expert team? Because you have a unique perspective on education. I said, I suppose so. And so I showed up, and there were like 13 People and they all had at least 12 letters after their name and they introduced themselves. I'm dr So and so my doctorate is in educational testing. I'm dr. So and so Counseling i'm a doctor so and so curriculum development I said i'm steve and i'm a homeschool dad and every head turned because at that point I don't think any of them ever actually met a homeschool dad and lived to tell about it. So They were terrified but the moment came when I had prayed about homeschooling. When my wife said, what would you think about homeschooling? And and I felt like the Lord spoke to me and some of your listeners will understand that. I don't mean audibly, but but my sense was at the heart of God was you're accountable for how your children are raised. So if you want to delegate some of that, feel free. If you want to delegate all of that, you may. But understand at the end of the day, don't blame the outcome on the NEA or on liberal politics or on anything else you chose to delegate it. You're accountable. And I thought. If I'm accountable, if I get to sit for the final exam, I ought to attend a few of the classes. I'd like to know how my daughter is raised and taught. And by the way, parenthetically, it wasn't until two years later that he told me part two. He said, but your kids are accountable for how they turn out. And I said, oh, so I've known great parents who've raised terrible kids and terrible parents who've raised great kids. You're accountable for how you raise them. They're accountable for their life choices, but when we began that class with all these educational experts, they said we can all talk about a lot of things that we know that are wrong with public education, but let's start and build on the foundation that we know to be right and true principle. Number one, responsibility for educating children rest with the state and I immediately raised my hand and I said, I'm sorry that's not right. And he said, what do you mean that's not right? And I said, the responsibility for raising educating children rests with their parents and only insofar as they've chosen to delegate some or all of that authority. It's the state have any say in the matter whatsoever. And I chose not to add, and I know this because God told me so, I didn't figure that would help them understand it all. So I didn't tell him that part. Yeah. But at that point, they all looked at me and he said let's take a brief adjournment. And I realized that they really weren't interested in what I had to, my input in the conversation. But anyway, that was a long time ago. And has become a mainstream option for millions and millions of families worldwide.
Timmy Eaton:Excellent. Oh, that is so good. I appreciate you just so much wisdom. I, our listeners are going to be so grateful and blessed by what you've what you've taught and what you've shared with us. And maybe in some future episode, we could have your wife and you, and then maybe even your daughters at some point. So really appreciate your time. Thank you for being here. Any final words or one thing I definitely want to hear from you is like, where can we, where can people find five in a row materials and how can they connect with. The with the Lambert's,
Steve Lambert:oUr website is five in a row dot com. All one word spelled out F I V E I N arrow w. com. They can order a in Canada. You can order from Amazon. Your books will be shipped out to you immediately. Here in the States, you can order from Amazon or you can order directly from, you can buy from Rainbow. You can buy directly from us. We offer some little incentives if you buy from us because we make a little bit more money that way, but we don't ship to Canada because of the paperwork and the hassles that are involved. But Amazon will take good care of all of our Canadian customers and I have for many years. So thanks for asking.
Timmy Eaton:Yes, indeed. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and I look forward to talking to you again.
Steve Lambert:Good. Thanks for having me. It's been fun. Appreciate it.
Timmy Eaton:That wraps up another edition of this golden hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it. If you would take a minute and give us a review in Apple podcasts or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it. And thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Tim Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.