Shawn Ryan Show
#188 Leigh & Robert Bortins - Why Parents Are Ditching Public Schools for Homeschooling
Thu, 03 Apr 2025
Leigh Bortins is the founder of Classical Conversations, a global homeschooling program rooted in classical, Christian education. With degrees in aerospace engineering and ministry, she blends analytical rigor with deep educational vision. A mother of four and grandmother of three, Leigh’s passion for home education began with homeschooling her own children. She’s authored several books—including The Core, The Question, and The Conversation—that guide parents through the classical trivium. Robert Bortins, CEO of Classical Conversations, was homeschooled by Leigh and now leads the organization with a bold vision for educational reform. A mechanical engineering graduate and entrepreneur, Robert champions faith-based, family-led learning, helping over 125,000 students across 50 states and 30 countries thrive through critical thinking and community. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://AmericanFinancing.net/SRS | NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://trueclassic.com/SRS Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at trueclassic.com/SRS ! #trueclassicpod https://ZipRecruiter.com/SRS https://ExpressVPN.com/SRS https://hometitlelock.com/SRS Go to https://hometitlelock.com/srs and use promo code SRS to get a FREE title history report so you can find out if you’re already a victim AND 14 days of protection for FREE! And make sure to check out the Million Dollar TripleLock protection details when you get there! Exclusions apply. For details visit https://hometitlelock.com/warranty https://Hillsdale.edu/SRS https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SRS | Download the app today and use code SRS Classical Conversations Links: Special Offer For SRS - https://info.classicalconversations.com/shawnryan Classical Conversations - www.classicalconversations.com Leigh’s Website - https://leighbortins.com Robert’s Website - Robertbortins.com Podcast - www.Refiningrhetoric.com X - https://x.com/TheRobertBshow Education Independence - https://chooseeducationindependence.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why are parents choosing homeschooling over public schools?
Horace Mann was the primary evangelist for the public school system. He wanted to get rid of Christianity, and he wanted to get rid of individualism and capitalism.
Over the last hundred years of state education, parenting's kind of been drummed out of us. And the UN, since the 1930s when it got to be big after the war, has the same agenda as Horace Mann because the UN wants this voucher system to occur because they knew with the shekels come the shackles.
Lee and Robert Bordens, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having us. Yeah, Sean, thanks for having us.
I've been looking forward to this for a while. So we were kind of talking off camera just a little bit, but I've been really looking forward to this. My wife and I have little ones, and it seems like every day we're trying to decide what we're going to do with the schooling. Are we going to do public school? Are we going to do private school? Are we going to do homeschool? And I think both of us,
Well, I don't think. I know both of us lean way more towards the homeschooling. We have a lot of friends that do homeschooling, and where we live here seems to be somewhat of a homeschool mecca. But it's also kind of a...
it's kind of a daunting task, you know, it's, it's maybe not, it's intimidating, you know, the, it's intimidating to us, the, the time commitment, the socialization, are we going to do it right? All those kinds of things. And so, So anyways, my wife and I, she never sits in on interviews. This is the first one ever she's sitting in on because we're so interested in this.
So I just want to say to both of you, thank you for coming. And like I said, we've really been looking forward to this conversation. So I appreciate it.
Yeah, I'm glad to be here. And you brought up the issues that people want us to address all the time. So it's kind of universal that over the last hundred years of state education, parenting's kind of been drummed out of us. And the confidence that I can teach you reading, writing, arithmetic, that it doesn't take an expert to do it, I mean, just isn't there anymore in our culture.
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Chapter 2: What are the challenges and benefits of homeschooling?
And like even just being on this show today, Sean, you don't know how many people have texted us saying they're praying for you and for this to go well. We raise our children so that they can see the unseen, they know the world has windows, and that they pursue their purpose rather than their weakness. And as you help parents see how to do that, it cannot not do anything but naturally filter down
to helping their families know God and make Him known. So we're going to have a lot of failures. We're human beings, but the vision is what we have to stick to, and we have to keep knowing who's in charge.
Very cool. I'm just—so you have—did you say 15,000 tutors?
Yeah, when you just announced the numbers, that's just how many students we have this year. We've been doing this for 20 years. We've had over a million—almost a million students go through Classical Conversations this
Tutors are teachers, correct? Yeah, so we have about one tutor for every eight students.
Do you want to explain the structure? Can you do that?
Yeah, so we form communities. So we'll have a community leader we call community director. And for each kind of, I'll call them grade levels for the sake of our conversation, they have a tutor and they get training from Classical Conversations, you know, home office. And we have all sorts of online modules for them as well as in-person training opportunities for them.
And so they're leading the parents and the students once a week inside of community. So you, especially K through sixth grade, typically the mom and the kid go together. So there's eight kids and eight moms with one tutor, and she's demonstrating how to go through all six subjects on a weekly basis.
And since homeschool parents have to teach all subjects, we have one tutor that's teaching all the subjects, and we believe that's part of that classical model. And so it's not... It's a really strong bond. You know, the Bible says a bond of three is not easily broken.
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Chapter 3: How has homeschooling evolved during and after COVID?
It's because they don't remember, when we used to all get money from the government, how bad it was. And so we just said, leave us out of it. Go do all the dumb stuff you want, but leave us alone. And then by leaving us alone, what happened? We got really strong. And any type, you have a business that does well, The government starts to say, oh, we want to do that. That looks good.
And so our popularity has almost been our worst enemy because now everybody wants to have a classical Christian education, but they don't want to pay for it.
They don't want to put the work in.
And so the government's making it possible for everybody to do that by we'll give you $7,000 a head for your kids.
So if you have four kids... What do you think about the voucher program?
That's what I'm talking about.
Isn't DeSantis in Florida trying to implement some type of a voucher program? We're very against it. You're very against it.
And he spends a lot of time talking in these states. So you can explain some of the different ones that you're up against.
Again, this is... From just a perspective of the three governments, the civil government has no responsibility over the human mind. And so we don't think the civil government should pay for it. And we recognize as legislators, you've got a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. Basically, the only thing they can do is distribute money. So we understand why they're wanting to do it.
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Chapter 4: What role does government play in education?
into the challenge program which is as mom my mom was describing earlier those six challenges where we put the all the building blocks together for leadership and go back through history and read you know who struggled with what you know what were those things going on reading about booker ii washington and
learning about slavery, the truth about that stuff, not some woke version and not some whitewashed version, but what was actually going on in people's minds. Each year has a special event at the end of it, so they do things like Challenge A's, they do a science fair, so that's a big focus along with drawing the map from memory.
Challenge B is mock trial, which they'll go and we have a case, a person dies on a work site. So there's prosecutors, defenders, witnesses, judges, and we typically have those in courtrooms with real judges. A lot of times they say that our seventh graders do better than the second year law students they see doing the same sort of presentations.
You can go see one. So if you want to find out where the challenge, because what happens, one challenge B and another challenge B from near zip codes will meet at the courthouse and try each other. Both will prosecute and both will defend. And the public's welcome to see that. And for me, like the best story out of that was when I ran David's mock trial. The judge said, you know what?
He was a juvenile district judge. And he said, I was going to quit being a judge. This was the end. I wasn't going to go do it anymore because all I hear is this horrible stuff from juveniles every single day. It's my job. He said, I'm not going to quit now because I just met you 12 students, and I know it can be better.
Wow.
So we hear those kind of things all the time. So to have them...
The way that works is we do take a true case, and we've had it scripted, or not scripted, but researched kind of at the student level, and then the children write the script based on their roles, and they write it as a team, and then they meet this other team they've never met before, and they go against each other, and they wear suits and ties, and they speak really well, and they're all 13 years old.
So our expectations are just really high in those middle school years versus most school situations treat middle school kind of as a waiting ground. They're not children who are fun at school. They aren't able to do what a high school student does. But we say, no, they are dialectic. They will ask questions. They will rise to the occasion. So let's give them occasions to rise to.
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