Brian (02:16): 

Welcome to Invested with Purpose Making the Most out of Our Time, talent, and Treasure. I’m Brian. 

Cara (02:30): 

And I’m Cara. And today we have Sam Sorbo with us, dedicated wife, mother, actress, author and public speaker and home education advocate. Sam has dedicated herself to empowering parents to take back the influence of their children from institutionalized education and indoctrination, 

Brian (02:48): 

Also starred numerous films and television shows even alongside her family in movies such as Let There Be Light, A Miracle in Texas and Left Behind the Rise of the Antichrist. Welcome to Invested With Purpose, Sam. 

Sam Sorbo (03:03): 

Well thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Brian (03:07): 

Well, thank you. We’d love to start with a little bit about your journey from being an actress to becoming a home education advocate and kind of what inspires you in this transition in your life. Big change. 

Sam Sorbo (03:24): 

You know what? So I became an actress. I was modeling when I was in my late teens, early twenties, and I became very successful and I moved into acting and I met Kevin and at the time that I met Kevin, I had realized that I was going to have to compromise something if I wanted to have a husband and a family, but I didn’t know compromise, what the compromise was going to be. And I thought, okay, I know that there’s a compromise, God, what’s it going to be? Is he going to be short? Is he going to be stupid? Is he going to be 

Sam Sorbo (04:00): 

Bald? I don’t know. What’s the compromise? And I met Kevin and there was no compromise. He was like, 

Brian (04:11): 

He was Hercules, 

Sam Sorbo (04:15): 

He was a phenom, he was incredible. He was conservative, he was Christian, he was clever, just everything. And then we determined to get married and I was considering what that was going to look like and it was a bit chaotic because I lived in la, he lived in New Zealand shooting the show. I could go back and forth. It’s a 13 hour plane ride back and forth. And I was a career woman. I wasn’t going to give up my career because that just seems silly. And so I was sort of trying to figure out what that was going to look like and he got deathly ill and he ended up in the intensive care unit and I landed the best job ever for three days in New York City. And he was in la I was in LA with him and I got the job and I said, they’ll fly me first class to New York. It’s a lot of money for my favorite thing ever ice cream. It was the be all and end all because that’s how God works. And I asked him if he wanted me not to go, and he said, yes, I want you to not go. Mind you. He was knocking on death story. He really thought he was dying. 

Sam Sorbo (05:28): 

Felt like he was dying and he nearly died. And so in that moment when he said that he wanted me not to go, I realized it was a binary choice. I could have the family and the husband or I could do my career, but you can’t have it all because too much. And so I walked away from my career at that moment. So then if you fast forward with my kids, it just seemed like the logical progression. I tried to go back to work and then one of my kids, my toddler, my youngest came up to me one day. I came home from an audition with her little finger out. She went, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I’m like, well, that’s good that that word now. 

(06:18): 

And I picked her up and she turned to the nanny and she said, bye-bye. And I thought, oh, so she wants me. And this is a binary choice and I try to tell young women that we’re sold a bill of goods, we’re taught to pursue career above everything. And that’s not the hierarchy. That’s not where our priorities should be. And unfortunately our world has transformed. And so we can’t be reliant like we used to be on the traditional norms, husband provides, wife does motherly housemaker type stuff. It’s a confusing world, no doubt. But if you can manage it, I just found that I was really, this is my calling, my family is my calling and everything else is secondary to that. And that’s why I’m on such a mission to get kids out of schools because the school forms a wedge between the child and the parent. 

(07:25): 

It is the embodiment of the destruction of the family. It is the catalyst for the destruction of family, and now it’s the catalyst for the destruction of children. And so if you’re a parent and you have seen anything of what’s been going on in the schools, whether it’s not saying the school can vaccinate your child against your wishes, it doesn’t matter to the school saying to the parent, we’re transitioning your child. There’s nothing you can do about it. You need to butt out. We’re not going to tell you what’s going on. All of those things, just say no. Nothing is worth that risk. I told you, I just came from another interview and I said, you’re playing Russian roulette with your kids’ lives and every chamber is loaded, but one, it’s the reverse of the Russian roulette, right? Your kid’s going to get shot if he doesn’t get shot. That’s going to be the tremendous likelihood, 

Cara (08:30): 

Not if, but when at some point. And children today are experiencing anxiety like no other generations before them. So I just went to an orientation for my children for high school and I’m already considering my options, especially after this orientation where 70% of the orientation was speaking about mental health and their concerns and all the people on campus that are there to speak with them. And as I’m thinking through this, I’m thinking about you and the many times I’ve heard you speak to the power that we have as parents and why would I want to give that over to these people that I don’t know their agenda? Well, I do. I but so what do you attribute this level of anxiety into depression too? And how is institutionalized education contributing to the epidemic? 

Sam Sorbo (09:19): 

Children are unchored. There was a good book that I read years back about how children used to have chores because we’ve become so advanced and so prosperous, we don’t need our children necessarily to do the lawn, to mow the lawn, to do the weeding, to take out the garbage, to clean the house. We don’t need our children to do that. We hire people to do that. Or that’s a dangerous paradigm because when children were invested with responsibility to the family, instead of just being responsible to the school, to the baseball team, to the cheer team, to whatever, when they were responsible for being a cog in the wheel of the family, their lives had value. They knew where they stood. They knew that they mattered. 

Cara (10:17): 

They feel seen. 

Sam Sorbo (10:19): 

They felt seen. If they weren’t there to take care of the baby when mom needed the oldest daughter or whatever to take care of the baby, the baby would suffer. They were valuable. They’re not valuable anymore. And our entire culture craps all over them. Our entire culture now hates children. Look at the DNC today. I don’t know whether this is airing, but they’re celebrating child sacrifice. They are the child sacrifice party. Our major national political party celebrates child sacrifice. You think that the entire culture is against children. We robbed children of their childhoods. It’s almost like we’re jealous, right? I went to school, I put up with it. He better go to school and put up with it. I’m not going to make it easy for him. It was hard enough for me. No, no. Let’s take a step back. Let’s protect our children. 

Cara (11:12): 

Absolutely. 

Sam Sorbo (11:12): 

Let’s be the better people. 

Cara (11:14): 

You have JD Vance speaking on this and talking about how the left hates children or they’re not pro family or pro child and they scoff at this and they make fun of him and say it’s weird. And yet they’re doing this right outside of the DNC. They’re giving away abortions and vasectomies, but they’re saying they’re pro-family. Yes. And 

Sam Sorbo (11:33): 

It’s funny because he made a comment about the childless cat ladies, and so now they’re like leaning into everybody wants to be a childless cat lady. No, there’s a stereotype for a reason. Nobody wants to be the childless cat lady because we know that those people exist. 

Brian (11:51): 

Well, I like Sam, how you brought it home with you. You need to spend the time where the time is valuable. And we talked with Ted Barry from Movie Guide and he emphasizes this kind of thing too, because between school and between entertainment, we get the least amount of time in front of our kids versus the two of those things if we’re not homeschooling. So essentially you’ve given school over to a private school or a public school and then you’ve got the entertainment factor where they sit in front of a TV and what are they watching? And ultimately as parents, you think that one Sunday a week we go to church, maybe they go to youth group once a week and that’s going to cover it. We could totally combat the world. 

Sam Sorbo (12:33): 

The thing is now that we’re seeing how decrepit our schools are, and I struggle because I want to defend private schools, but I struggle to defend them because their entire paradigm is the same as the public school. And their textbooks, by and large are very similar if not the same as the public school. And the textbooks have all been, most been, I shouldn’t speak in absolutes, but most of the textbooks have been perverted by the DEI and the woke agenda and the CRT and the alphabet 

Cara (13:12): 

And the teaching to test the teaching, to test the constant testing. 

Sam Sorbo (13:16): 

There’s so many issues with the system itself. The system itself is not a failure. It is succeeding because this is what it wants to create. It wants to create a rote citizenry that only follows orders. And if that’s what you hope for your child, then by all means leave them in that system because the system will turn out an obedient, unthinking, unable to solve problems individual. That’s 

Cara (13:42): 

What system turns out. 

Sam Sorbo (13:45): 

So if you take that and you go, so that’s the one alternative, and let’s assume the bullet wasn’t loaded for that round and that kid escaped. So-called unscathed by the whole agenda that is now churning in our schools, but that kid just made good grades is a good student, whatever. You’ve still destroyed the family relationship. What do you hope for the future? That child, you might hope that he moves to New York and gets an office with a view and hopefully maybe gets married and doesn’t end up getting divorced. That’s a whole treadmill that is, it’s not seductive. It doesn’t look that good to me. I know that that’s the culture’s definition of success, but that that’s not my definition of success. I want my children to know how to be good people, how to be loving, how to receive love, how to forgive people, how to ask for forgiveness, how to donate to charity, how to be charitable. 

Cara (14:55): 

Yes, true legacy. 

Sam Sorbo (14:57): 

How to help somebody grieve. These are the things of education. And while our kids are being distracted by, even if it were just academics being distracted by the only academics version of the school that we all would love to believe it were, it’s not, but we would love to believe it were that even if that was it, they would still be missing out on everything that I as an adult human being have to impart to my children. And so what 

Cara (15:28): 

I’m saying, I’m 

Sam Sorbo (15:29): 

Saying people is you as a human being are so much more successful than the 22-year-old Marxist college graduate who is assigned to your child randomly by an authority figure that you don’t respect. Why are you relying on that? You have much more to offer Now, can you teach your child calculus if that’s the scariest part for you? Don’t worry. All the answers are in the book and maybe your kid doesn’t need calculus. Now that’s hard for me to say because I love calculus and I was really looking forward to teaching my kids calculus. They don’t need it and they don’t want it. And I kind of understand that it’s too bad. I loved it, but we didn’t do that. So 

Cara (16:14): 

I don’t think I’ve used any portion of calculus in my entire life. Do you 

Sam Sorbo (16:19): 

Haven’t calculated your Volume of sphere inside of a co recently? 

Brian (16:24): 

Oh no. I’ll never forget. I got in trouble with my father who was helping me with my calculus work when I was in high school. I was in public school, and I looked at him and I said, who will ever use this in their career, in their lives? And he turns to me and said, well, I use this formula today at my work as an electrical engineer. And I said, thank you dad. That really makes me feel great. I have yet to use any of the calculus I learned. I still don’t know when you 

Cara (16:51): 

Work in finance. Well, I just kind of want to pivot a little bit because you spoke on some very godly characteristics that we all want our children to have and the one that we forget so often or that we think is unattainable is virtue. So it’s a topic that’s scoffed at by many in society today, yet it sits at the core of our Christian values. So why do you see Christian parents struggling to discuss purity with their kids? 

Sam Sorbo (17:17): 

They don’t read the Bible because they went to school. And in school you learn four foundational lessons that are sort of just imparted to you. It’s not sort of done overtly, it’s covert. You learn to always ask permission to question. So don’t ask, you learn, don’t try because failure’s bad. So covertly, the message is don’t try. Don’t think because the teacher just wants you to regurgitate for the exam what she’s told you. So stop the thinking that you’re doing because that can’t end well. Right? Just regurgitate 

Cara (18:03): 

Because they certainly don’t want you to question in class. 

Sam Sorbo (18:06): 

No, and then don’t read because the teacher read the book, she’ll tell you what’s in it. There’s no reason for you to read. And all the reading assignments, especially these days are awful. So they’re basically gearing the child up to hate to read. And so the child’s never going to crack a book. And I remember graduating high school going, if I never have to crack a book, well, and I misspeak, I shouldn’t have said that. I did not graduate high school. But I remember leaving high school going, if I never have to crack a book again, that would be wonderful. So it’s ask, don’t try, don’t think, don’t read. And then what happens is we have Christians who go to church, but they think they don’t have to read the Bible because the pastor read it and the pastor’s going to tell ’em what’s in it. 

(18:52): 

Then we have these wimpy namby-pamby pastors who don’t subscribe actually to true doctrine, and they basically, they don’t read the book because they went to school and they learned everything that they needed to learn. Incredible. So the thing that I tell parents, the number one thing to do for your child if you’re home educating, this was the number one thing I did. And I did not know that I was accomplishing what I was accomplishing while I was doing this. But we read the Bible every day as a family, 15, 20 minutes. It wasn’t even like this huge investment because I don’t want to make it onerous for parents, but if that’s all you do, your child will figure out virtue, honor, truth, all the good things. Because that book is an incredible book that somehow with the stories that are in it, and it’s a good book. It’s good storytelling. It is somehow with those stories, your kids figure it out. My kids are so fervent today because of that. And I would have to say nothing else. I mean, we went to church and they did some youth group stuff and they all did Summit ministries, which is really exceptional. And I think that that actually was instrumental on their journey, but it was reading the Bible every day, man, that taught them that truth existed and that it was worth pursuing, and that virtue existed and it was worth pursuing. 

Cara (20:27): 

Your kids are incredible. I followed, by the way, so I know that you have spoken about how Octavia is it that she’s now interested in college as where your two sons were not. And I know that I had seen your husband speaking at a Christian film event and he’d said that he had your boys audition for the role and let there be light, which I did see is amazing, by the way, tear jerker. Thank you. But as a mother, it must make you really proud to see them not just following along in some course that you mapped out, but they’re doing what God put on their heart. 

Sam Sorbo (21:06): 

That’s part of it. So when you’re home educating, you realize that they have a little bit of autonomy, they have a little bit of a self-determination, and it’s your job to lean into that and help them figure it out because you want them to be happy. Whereas when they’re in school and they’re distracted by what the school determines has value, the school determines that an A has value and an F has no value, which really is wrong. Thomas Edison said, I didn’t fail 10,000 times. I found 10,000 ways not to invent a light 

Brian (21:41): 

Bulb. 

Sam Sorbo (21:43): 

And so we ought to recalibrate our thinking, not just on education, but on the very foundations of our schools. Right. When I realized, and that was a bit of an epiphany for me because when I started the homeschool journey, I was all about the academics. I thought that it was all about academics because I went to school. 

Brian (22:05): 

Well, that’s what we all think. School was all 

Sam Sorbo (22:07): 

Academic. And then I started to realize, oh, this is more about character. This is about creating, envisioning a future with my child. 

Brian (22:20): 

Yeah, Sam, it is very interesting. As part of Timothy plan, we’ve had the privilege of going to a lot of these homeschool conferences over the years, and there’s a gigantic community out there. And now with Trump running and getting political again a little bit, but with Trump running again for presidency here and announcing his agenda 47, he has kind of delved into the use of 5 29 plans, and I’m very familiar with those working for Timothy Plan and how they can be used for school, but they were never really allowed to use for homeschool. And now he’s looking at the avenue of opening that up for homeschool families. What would that mean for parents out there to have an option like that? 

Sam Sorbo (23:09): 

It’s probably just another tax savings opportunity. I don’t know that it’s much more than that. I looked at you can, if you’re a homeschooler, you can avail yourself of a five 20 of a, was it 5 29 plan? 

Brian (23:24): 

Yeah, 5 29. 

Sam Sorbo (23:27): 

And I opted against it because at that point, when I first started looking at it, I was like, are my kids going to go to college? I don’t need it to pay for their current school. I homeschool them. I am skeptical of any government intervention. 

Brian (23:47): 

Interesting. Yeah. 

Sam Sorbo (23:49): 

So we have school choice. That seems to be really big. I sort of equate that with pro-choice in my book. It’s like a bad word because I’m not. I know that sounds like, well, then you’re exclusive or whatever. I have pretty exclusive views on life, the value of life, but also the school choice movement with the vouchers and stuff is proving to be fraught with problems. And very quickly, so one year, Arizona puts in the ESAs or the education savings account, and they’re so proud of themselves, no strings attached. It’s a great thing. Parents, they’re going to avail themselves of all this money and it’s going to be great for them. No tuition skyrocketed. So then they were still priced out of the market in any case. And then the government decided the next year, oh, you know what? We are going to put a couple little strings, just a few strings. We want you to do this, this, and this for the money. And that’s going to go way downhill very quickly. And it’s actually government takeover. So it really means school choice movement really devolves into, and we could walk all the way through this, but basically it’s public school for all. It’s the elimination of homeschool. 

Brian (25:08): 

Interesting. And 

Sam Sorbo (25:08): 

More than that, it’s the elimination of the homeschool groups or co-ops or outreach, the homeschool outreach that will not seek government accreditation. It will price them out of the market because if they don’t seek accreditation, then they won’t get any of the funding that the government magnanimously returns to the people. Remember, it came from you to begin with. So it’s literally, it’s public school for all. It is a very dangerous movement. So seductive. It’s so sexy, it’s so free. You want 

Cara (25:48): 

School 

Sam Sorbo (25:49): 

Choice. Don’t you want your kids to be able to choose? Yeah. 

Brian (25:55): 

Wow. That’s not the way I would’ve thought about it 

Cara (25:58): 

Initially. Yeah, that’s 

Brian (25:59): 

An eye opening. Yeah, in a conservative circle, school choice is like, it’s everything, sadly.