Sam Sorbo Says Home Education Is Essential for Teaching Biblical Morals
By Cooper Dowd, Staff Writer
Actress Sam Sorbo, an advocate for home education, offered her tips and tricks for teaching children while at home as teachers and parents are navigating schooling during the pandemic.
Sorbo not only taught her children from home but also wrote two books relating to homeschooling and parenting called They’re Your Kids and Teach From Love. Sorbo is passionate about raising children with biblical values that honor God and prepare children with a strong foundation before entering a world that despises God. She also points out public schools’ failure to uphold those morals.
As more families teach their children within their own homes for the first time, Sorbo sat down with The Christian Post to offer advice.
“The thing that people have to realize is there’s homeschooling, and there’s home education,” Sorbo told The Christian Post. “Homeschooling is best described as doing homework with your child that he or she is assigned by a school teacher. Home education is parent-led learning. The goal of a home educator is to instill and cultivate a love for learning that will last a lifetime.”
Sorbo advocates for parents to take the responsibility to lead their children in an upright and encouraging way. It allows for direct involvement in the child’s education and builds a tighter relationship between the child and the parent.
“School forms a wedge between the child and the parent,” Sorbo said. “But when the parent chooses to home educate, the parent becomes the lead teacher/learner for the child, which strengthens the relationship in a way that the school necessarily destroys.”
Sorbo also mentioned a correlation between the child respecting his or her parents and at what level public school leaders are a part of the student’s life.
“When a parent drops his child off at kindergarten, he is tacitly telling the child, ‘I am incapable and the school now has authority over you.’ When the child returns home with a permission slip and says, ‘Daddy, you have to sign this!’ or ‘Mommy, the teacher says you need to sign this,’ the parents’ authority in their own home is undermined,” Sorbo explained. “Then, when teenagers rebel against their parents’ strict rules, we roll our eyes and claim, ‘It’s just what teenagers do.’ I refute that. It’s what they are taught to do by a system that denigrates parents and undermines their authority.”
Furthermore, Sorbo also advocates the role that love plays alongside authority in educating children from home.
“How can you learn without love? Love opens the heart, and the heart opens the mind. That is, in part, why Jesus showed love to the world. If He showed anything else, what would we possibly have learned from Him?” Sorbo said. “But you also want to show your students a love for learning because that is the value that you ultimately are trying to inspire within them … Finally, we must love our children. That’s why it is so important to cultivate a strong relationship with them and not allow external institutions to interfere with that relationship.”
Sorbo often claims that the best way to build up children’s morals and values is through home education.
“Another reason I think homeschooling is imperative is because of morals and values,” Sorbo said. “We have ceased to teach those things in public schools. We teach the very opposite: Evolution and survival of the fittest. It means that our children are accidents of nature and there is no good higher than the personal good. That necessarily devolves into bullying, and people wonder why we have a bullying problem! It’s all we teach!
“On a fundamental level, the child will never trust any authority,” Sorbo continued. “Not the school’s, because clearly they lie with that contradiction, and not the parent who has subjected the child to that authority. And we wonder why there is looting and rioting in our streets today. It’s what they’ve been taught.”
Sorbo said that teaching children about good and evil not only produces a firm foundation but a healthy ambition to pursue what the Lord has for them.
“We need to be teaching children that there is good and evil, right and wrong, and that they should aspire to things outside themselves,” Sorbo said.
With restrictions affecting public and private schools in significant ways, Sorbo also noted that online learning’s effectiveness is not the same as the home education she advocates.
“I struggle to advocate online learning as a replacement for in-person instruction,” Sorbo said. “The benefit of in-person instruction is the personal contact and the facility to answer questions and engage the student directly. If this can be achieved in an online forum, then fantastic! But I would caution parents against trying to simply take a classroom that used to be in person and put it online.
“I would take this opportunity to expand my provincial views on education that I inherited from a system in which I grew up and seek to offer my children a wider range of options for their education,” Sorbo continued.
Sorbo said she understands the fear of being inadequate to homeschool but pointed to God’s Word and the gift of raising a child to encourage those on the fence.
“I am here to tell you, you are perfectly qualified to teach your child. Children are a gift from God. Why would you send a gift away for someone else to open?” Sorbo said. “If you personally struggle with math, then this is an opportunity for you to overcome that while relearning it with your child… But don’t subjugate your authority to anyone else’s where your children are concerned.”
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Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.
What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.
You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.
Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.
