Dr. Ty Gooch
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah, so already on turningpointacademy.com, there are resources for young students and older students alike to understand the Constitution, to understand the Bill of Rights, to walk through economics. And our leader, Jennifer Burns, the director of academics, she's laid out a great set of resources. Well, when these students get into the Prep Year program, they're going to walk through economics.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
A fresh version, but from a biblical worldview. They'll understand that as you relate it to free speech. You chatted a little bit about that just recently. And to understand that even from Exodus, for instance, everybody knows the story of Exodus where the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. Everybody thinks it's about them being treated poorly, which that did matter to God's heart.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
But the most redundant, the most thorough expression of concern that God had is that they weren't free to worship him as he had prescribed. And so, yes, we will help students understand the importance of having the right to free speech, having the right to gather freedom freely and to express worship to God in the ways that he described.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
That's great. The students are going to be in a cohort format. So they'll be on this campus in this retreat center-like context, and they'll wake up in the morning.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
It'll be mostly classroom context in the morning, where there'll be an expert that comes in for the given week to focus on content, not just delivery, but content exchange, helping the students work through how to apply what they're hearing, what they're learning. So that'll be generally a morning context of learning. And then they'll move to the afternoon where
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
What is Turning Point Academy Prep Year? It is the culmination of what you and Dr. Hutz Hertzberg, Chief Education Officer, have been working on to prepare students for life, to be leaders, to have impact, and if they go on to college, to be ready to be influencers when they get there.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
where it'll focus more on experience. And we'll get out, and there'll be physical challenges where we do hikes together. Nothing too extreme, but just helping students understand that this is a whole life perspective of the gospel impacting someone's life. So they'll go on hikes. We'll go visit different museums and different things like that. We're going to come to AmericaFest.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
In December. And that'll cap off the end of the year. But that's generally what a day looks like. And then the evening, there'll be some time. They will do some work. They'll do some reading in the evening. And they'll have lots of time to interact with one another in their cohort context. At Southwestern Theological Seminary, Baptist Seminary, the facility has a swimming pool.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
They have a fitness center. And so almost 200 acres of property.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
That's right. In an incredibly intentional context. Super safe, right? If I'm a parent sending my kid off to a place I've never been to before, super safe. The environment there is everything a parent could want and more.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah. The intentionality, the ability to interact with the mentors, not just in that context, but also, Lord willing, long term. And so that exchange is going to be super valuable in addition to the students learning to take what they learn and take it back to where they go to next.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah, you know, the Apostle Paul makes some things super clear, and in in parts in the book of Acts and in some of Luke's writings, but there's this tension that exists. And the tension is, am I going to choose to please man or am I going to choose to please God?
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah, that's right. And also in Romans 12 and several other places, right? And so as it relates to that, students are going to understand there's some things that God not only asks, not only invites, but he commands these things of us. And then he says, you know, you can't do both in Galatians 1.10. You can't please man and please God. I love that. Caveat, unless man wants what God wants.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
And then that's how you can get your twofer. But that's not up to me. It's up to me to just stand for what God says I have to stand for. So helping students understand what it means to live for courage and, you know, Bill Federer. And yourself and people like Erwin Lutzer as well coming into it. Phenomenal. Yeah.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Dr. Hertzberg, absolutely for sure. Time-tested truth-tellers with humility and strength and grace all wrapped up in one packet. So I would say that's what makes it distinctive. It's not just information being delivered. But it's with courage and clarity, which is another thing that Paul says. Just make open statements of the truth. Make open statements of the truth.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Don't worry about trying to package it and trying to figure out how to— I've never heard anyone say that before. Yeah, it's Paul's heart because he's concerned.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
He says it in 2 Corinthians 4, verse 3 through 4. That's amazing. And in his first— book to the church in Corinth. He says, don't come with wisdom and knowledge of man. Why? There's something at stake. Because if you don't choose to proclaim the gospel of Christ and Jesus Christ resurrected, then you have the risk of teaching people to follow you and avoiding following God.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Because then the power now isn't about me and it's not. I'm going to live and die.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
There's a three-step process.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
On the website, it walks right through at the bottom when you go to turningpointacademy.com forward slash prep year. You scroll down to the bottom. I've given you all the content, so just get right down to it and get to the first step, which is to fill out an interest form. But time is running short because the spaces are filling up, and we don't have forever.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
We just want to solidify and start moving forward. And it's this September. This fall, fall 2025, because of generous donors. Generous donors have said, we want this to happen. We want it to happen now. And so we say, yes, of course. We want this to happen too. So they go to phase two. They can go right to phase two right now.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
And they can fill out the application and then send off their reference forms, after which we will set them up for an interview and the process will get going from there.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
And it will take some work too, right? It will. Yeah, it will. It's not a lazy program. It's not just come and sit by the poolside. But it's going to be – and it's not just going to be academically engaging. It's going to engage their hearts. It's going to challenge some of their preconceptions. Yeah, it will.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
That's right. Training of the Mind, whole life transformation. The program will include mentors that come in like yourself to help students understand economics from a biblical worldview perspective. And how to read and process through the great writings of Western civilization in a way that has a biblical infusion of truth at the foundation of them.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
It's great to be a part of the team. And I would just say go to turningpointacademy.com forward slash prep year.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Do that right now. And apply. Yeah, you won't find a better opportunity. And the scholarships won't last forever. So get in on it and make sure that you get the opportunity to come.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
18 to 20 years old. Oh, okay. Or if maybe you're not. You may have graduated last year and you may have realized that there isn't a great option you're excited about. Come, we'll help you get it figured out.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
There's nothing exactly like this. And even if someone created it, what hasn't happened is it hasn't been created for a scholarship exchange for free.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
I mean, this could get thousands of students that every time people hear about it, they, they want it more and they want it in their city. And it is coming to Illinois next fall.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
That's right. That's right. And so it's already lined up, contract signed, committed to work with our partners at Judson University with Dr. Kroon there.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
That's right. They get a chance to kind of peer in and maybe even to influence.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah, but that would be a short-sighted statement of what the facilities are like. They're incredible facilities. The accommodations are off the charts. There's going to be a retreat center, conference center-like experience for the students, the size of the dorms, the excellence of the dorms.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
But more than just the experience on the outside, it's the way that their hearts and lives will be transformed.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
There'll be a week long modular training format where from a classical education perspective, helping students learn with rhetoric, helping students learn in a collegial style of learning where they don't just listen from lecture content, but they actually learn to engage and to think and then. with virtue and wisdom, how to apply the truths that they're learning.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
I've been involved in Christian ministry for the better part of the last 25 years, prior to which I did play football at Northwestern University, and I see you have a Big Ten representation back there.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Okay, fair enough, fair enough. So that experience, though, it was one where I learned myself to learn to engage with what it meant to stand for my faith. So I went from there and went and got a Master's of Divinity, and not a PhD, but a doctorate in ministry, which is relevant for this program because of the application of truth to life.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
And so as a part of this last 25 years of serving in ministry, mostly pastoral, I've also been in Christian education.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
just focused on teaching seniors in high school biblical worldview at a couple of different christian schools at a bible college a senior seminar capstone classroom program context where it's so evident students need to learn to finish well so they can go be influencers right away young leaders already leading in many ways now being prepared not just to go and sort of flail in the context of the ideologies that are being pumped out by some institutions
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
but to go into flourish and what it means to be girded up in their faith and to influence others toward the ways of Christ.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
It's really a holistic perspective from the beginnings of understanding the clarity of what it means to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. The perfect life and sacrificial death and resurrection from the dead of Christ. That's so critical that they understand it's not just a general faith, a general belief. There's specific tenets of the faith that are necessary.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
And so from that standpoint, then moving to what do I do? and response to the gospel. How do I live? How do I think? What does marriage look like? What does stewardship look like of the gifts that I've been given, also of the resources that I've been able to glean, of the talents and skills? So all of that, in addition to some of the more nuanced aspects of intellect. Right.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
The Bible makes it super clear, Charlie, super clear that the beginning of knowledge and wisdom is the fear of the Lord. It's the fear of the Lord.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Right. And so to start there and to think, oh, I really don't need to go beyond here to get to where God wants me to go. And so to help students understand, yes, let's bring all of the intellect of the world.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
That's right. Bring it all in here and then watch how it is redefined and ultimately pushed aside by the truths that come from Scripture.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
So in large part, yes, but then in Christian education as a guest lecturer, as an overseer of interns for undergrad and master students, yes.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah, the lack of biblical literacy. From Christian students. From Christian students and oftentimes in Christian schools. Number one question, always answered, always answered with a no. Have you been taught how to study the truth for yourself? Negative, negative, negative across the board. Even with some students that are actually in college.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
in Bible colleges as a guest lecturer or in a senior seminar context. And so it's a great opportunity to help the students that apply. And some of these students are just the best representation in certain categories of excellence. One student that's applied and been accepted at 33 on the ACT.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Another student, two students already accepted at well-known institutions across the country with scholarship money. They're putting that on pause so that they can come prepare to go use that education to the best of its ability.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah, it is. It's approaching. And this is the most unique opportunity that a student, especially a student that wants to go be a leader, could have. Because of generous donors, building on the foundation of Turning Point Academy where we have the Educator Summit coming up July 10th through the 13th for all educators across the globe. Great opportunity. Go to our website. You can see more there.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
But this opportunity is time-sensitive. Because we've had generous donors donate the equivalent of $20,000 scholarships for every student that's accepted.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah. The students that get accepted, they'll pay $1,000 deposit fee just to let us know that they're seriously committed after they go through the intervent process.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Right. So in seminary context, in Bible training context, it's called hermeneutics. how to get at the truth. Everybody has access to the truth, but it's important to learn how to study the truth. Why? So that I don't bring my, I do as much as I can to put aside my inclinations and I let the scripture speak for themselves.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
We are overrun right now with people quoting from the Bible out in culture saying, oh, this is Jesus, this is truth. And they're really not representing the truth of Jesus at all. They're representing what they thought culture would demand and impose upon them, and then they're slapping Scripture on top of it. Instead of that, let's push culture aside.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Let's let the Scriptures speak for themselves, and then let the Scriptures define culture, which is so much of what you do and what you have done with Turning Point in many, many regards. So hermeneutics, how to study the Bible. Let me learn step by step. Simple. It's not studying Hebrew. It's not studying Greek.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
But there are simple God-centered ways, not people-centered ways, to learn to study the Bible. One of the methods is just look, learn, live. Look at the text. See what the author is saying to the original audience. Learn from the Scriptures based on what it objectively says, and then let's figure out how to live it out.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Absolutely. They are, at this point, for the applicants that we've gotten, number one off the charts in several ways. Some are worship leaders at their churches or in their context. Some are already super skilled in the area of graphic design and photography, etc. All of them. have a testimony of how the gospel of Christ has already impacted their lives.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Many of them already have begun to lead in spiritual context on their campuses or in their homeschool context, and now they're just eager for somebody to come alongside them to help them grow in what they've done. You wouldn't believe this. One of the students, we learned through the interview process, she had just written a
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
a document to the local governor to challenge the public office about the importance of taking a stand on important biblical issues. A 30-page document, well-written, presented it. And so we get on this interview, and then she says, well, I just got back from this event, right? What was it, a sports event, a local? No, she's standing for important things in our culture for Christ.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
students will have been thoroughly exposed to what it looks like to walk with Christ because of a biblical understanding of prayer life and spiritual pursuits. They will be involved in what it means to also go and serve in the community in various contexts. They'll take trips to the capital of the state that we're in. We'll take trips to public office. And at the end,
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
They'll be fortified in their understanding of biblical worldview in a way that equips them to walk into a myriad of different opportunities, whether it's military, whether it's entrepreneurship in the marketplace, whether it's going to focus on preparing to be a homemaker, whether it's preparing for public office.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
They'll have clarity on how their background, their aptitude, their skill sets apply to those different contexts.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Yeah, you know, the biggest problem facing Christian education is that it's oftentimes marketed as something that it used to be, that it no longer is, right? Something that's going to help students understand how to think properly. And I wouldn't suggest that that's what it is.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
I just remember sitting at this incredible institution, undergrad, receiving class or lecture, and the professor espouses this content. And I'm a freshman, and I thought, oh, he's telling us these facts. I'm taking notes. And I raised my hand. I asked a question. And I asked, so these facts you're helping us understand. And he probably says, wait, they're not facts. They're theories.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
I had no more questions. Because I thought I want to hear facts. I want to hear data that is true and time-tested. I don't want to hear theories. I can go read about those on my own as I so choose. I want the information that's necessary. So that now is, I would say, one of the biggest divides. Is the data, the information that's being presented, is it fact?
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Or is it theory, ideological, and from culture and essentially from man? Whereas classical education, foundation, information, moving on to the middle stage, which is understanding, moving to virtue and wisdom. Which education, I've heard you say, education... Needs to lead forth. Yeah, it needs to move into that. Now, you know...
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
Public education is saying that they don't extend virtue and wisdom, but they are trying to infuse with the ideologies a way in which it's applied. So we've got a great partner and our host in Dallas, in Fort Worth.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
You couldn't have a better first year start because the leaders, Dr. Dockery and at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, so many like-minded leaders there, the provost and the dean of students, great leaders that are going to help us just by helping the environment be created and to create a means through which students might find another one of the pathways.
The Charlie Kirk Show
This Could Change Your Children's Education Plan Completely
which is academia, where they go in to be influencers. Maybe they're not a lawyer, but they go into the academia context and get degrees that will have helpful payoff, not just for what they benefit from financially, but how they can impact the culture.