2023-02-10_How_to_Invest_in_Your_Children_at_a_Very_Young_Age_Part_4-Give_Your_Children_Words_and_Background

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00:01:00.780 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:01:01.980 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:01:03.580 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:01:05.720 | to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:01:07.900 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:01:09.360 | in 10 years or less.

00:01:11.120 | My name is Josh Rasheeds, I am your host,

00:01:12.700 | and today we continue our series on how to invest

00:01:15.440 | in your children at a young age.

00:01:18.400 | By way of review in the first episode in this series,

00:01:21.540 | we talked about the importance

00:01:22.900 | of carefully choosing your mate,

00:01:25.580 | because at its core, both the genetic material

00:01:29.180 | as well as the environment that your mate

00:01:31.480 | is capable of creating will dramatically affect

00:01:35.080 | the outcomes for your children in the long term.

00:01:38.620 | In episode two, we talked about the importance

00:01:40.680 | of mothers and fathers being in excellent physical health

00:01:44.360 | prior to conception, and of the importance

00:01:47.060 | of supporting a mother's health during the gestation

00:01:49.760 | of her baby, as well as supporting her during childbirth.

00:01:54.700 | And infancy, as those physical factors

00:01:59.300 | will make a dramatic difference

00:02:00.700 | in the long term health of your baby.

00:02:02.940 | In episode three, we started to talk about the ways

00:02:05.800 | that you can invest into your children in childhood,

00:02:08.300 | and we began by talking about investing

00:02:10.580 | into your children's bodies,

00:02:12.380 | by gaining for them the highest quality nutrition

00:02:15.520 | that you have access to, making sure that they sleep,

00:02:18.260 | making sure that they move a lot,

00:02:19.820 | making sure they get sunshine, et cetera,

00:02:22.340 | and anything else, and keeping their environment

00:02:24.360 | clean, and making sure that they're not exposed

00:02:26.460 | to any of the toxic substances that you're using.

00:02:29.260 | And finally, we talked about investing

00:02:31.340 | into a child's body, and we talked about investing

00:02:33.780 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:35.860 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:37.700 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:39.540 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:41.340 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:43.140 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:44.940 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:46.580 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:48.180 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:49.780 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:51.380 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:52.860 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:54.400 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:56.240 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:57.880 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:02:59.520 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:01.160 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:02.720 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:04.360 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:05.880 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:07.400 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:08.880 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:10.280 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:11.640 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:13.000 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:14.440 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:15.840 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:17.200 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

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00:03:19.800 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:21.040 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

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00:03:24.300 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:25.620 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:26.860 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:28.100 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:29.380 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:30.700 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:31.940 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:33.300 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:34.620 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:35.940 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:03:37.300 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

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00:03:49.680 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

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00:03:51.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

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00:09:07.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:08.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:09.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:10.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:11.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:12.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:13.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:14.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:15.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:16.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:17.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:18.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:19.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:20.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:21.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:22.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:23.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:24.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:25.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:26.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:27.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:28.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:29.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:30.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:31.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:32.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:33.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:34.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:35.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:36.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:37.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:38.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:39.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:40.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:41.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:42.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:43.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:44.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:45.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:46.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:47.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:48.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:49.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:50.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:51.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:52.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:53.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:54.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:55.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:56.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:57.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:58.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:09:59.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:00.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:01.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:02.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:03.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:04.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:05.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:06.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:07.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:08.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:09.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:10.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:11.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:12.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:13.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:14.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:15.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:16.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:17.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:18.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:19.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:20.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:21.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:22.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:23.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:24.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:25.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:26.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:27.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:28.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:29.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:30.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:31.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:32.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:33.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:34.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:35.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:36.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:37.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:38.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:39.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:40.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:41.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:42.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:43.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:44.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:45.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:46.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:47.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:48.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:49.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:50.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:51.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:52.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:53.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:54.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:55.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:56.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:57.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:58.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:10:59.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:00.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:01.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:02.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:03.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:04.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:05.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:06.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:07.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:08.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:09.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:10.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:11.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:12.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:13.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:14.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:15.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:16.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:17.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:18.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:19.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:20.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:21.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:22.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:23.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:24.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:25.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:26.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:27.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:28.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:29.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:30.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:31.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:32.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:33.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:34.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:35.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:36.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:37.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:38.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:39.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:40.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:41.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:42.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:43.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:44.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:45.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:46.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:47.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:48.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:50.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:51.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:52.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:53.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:54.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:55.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:56.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:57.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:58.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:11:59.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:00.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:01.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:02.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:03.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:04.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:05.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:06.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:07.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:08.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:09.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:10.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:11.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:12.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:13.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:14.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:15.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:16.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:17.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:18.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:19.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:20.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:21.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:22.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:23.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:24.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:25.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:26.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:27.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:28.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:29.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:31.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:32.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:33.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:34.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:35.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:36.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:37.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:38.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:39.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:40.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:41.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:42.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:43.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:44.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:45.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:46.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:47.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:48.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:49.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:50.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:51.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:52.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:53.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:54.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:55.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:56.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:57.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:58.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:12:59.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:00.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:01.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:02.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:03.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:04.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:05.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:06.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:07.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:08.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:09.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:10.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:11.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:12.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:13.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:14.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:15.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:16.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:17.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:18.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:19.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:20.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:21.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:22.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:23.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:24.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:25.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:26.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:27.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:28.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:29.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:30.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:32.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:33.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:34.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:35.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:36.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:37.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:38.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:39.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:40.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:41.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:42.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:43.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:44.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:45.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:46.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:47.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:48.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:49.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:50.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:51.920 | into their brain, and we talked about investing

00:13:53.920 | You probably had an easier time grasping paragraph one,

00:13:56.920 | a newspaper account of a baseball game in 2011.

00:13:59.920 | The second paragraph came from a newspaper story

00:14:01.920 | on the World Cricket Championship in 1999.

00:14:05.920 | Any confusion was because the less you know

00:14:07.920 | about a subject or the vocabulary associated

00:14:10.920 | with that subject, the slower you must read,

00:14:13.920 | the more difficult comprehension becomes,

00:14:15.920 | and the less you understand.

00:14:18.920 | Sounding out the cricket paragraph phonetically

00:14:20.920 | wouldn't have helped much, would it?

00:14:22.920 | By the way, the author there is referring

00:14:24.920 | to the arguments for phonics as opposed

00:14:26.920 | or as contrasted with sight word reading,

00:14:29.920 | and again, I'm in favor of phonics instruction,

00:14:31.920 | but that's not everything.

00:14:32.920 | You understood, certainly, all of the words

00:14:34.920 | that are read in paragraph two,

00:14:36.920 | but just because you understood the words,

00:14:38.920 | that doesn't necessarily mean you understood the meaning.

00:14:41.920 | Background knowledge is one reason children

00:14:43.920 | who read the most bring the largest amount

00:14:45.920 | of information to the learning table

00:14:47.920 | and thus understand more of what the teacher

00:14:50.920 | or the textbook is teaching.

00:14:52.920 | Children whose families take them to museums

00:14:55.920 | and zoos, who visit historic sites,

00:14:58.920 | who travel abroad, or who camp in remote areas,

00:15:01.920 | accumulate huge chunks of background knowledge

00:15:04.920 | without even studying.

00:15:06.920 | For the impoverished child lacking the travel portfolio

00:15:09.920 | of affluence, the best way to accumulate

00:15:12.920 | background knowledge is by either reading

00:15:14.920 | or being read to.

00:15:17.920 | Yes, educational TV can help,

00:15:19.920 | but most at-risk children are not exposed

00:15:21.920 | to it often enough.

00:15:23.920 | The background knowledge of at-risk students

00:15:25.920 | took a further hit with No Child Left Behind

00:15:27.920 | when 71% of school districts narrowed

00:15:29.920 | their curriculum to math and reading,

00:15:31.920 | curtailing subjects like art, music, science,

00:15:34.920 | and languages.

00:15:36.920 | The lack of background knowledge surfaces

00:15:38.920 | very early in a child's school life.

00:15:40.920 | In the Longitudinal Kindergarten Study,

00:15:42.920 | researchers found that more than 50% of children

00:15:45.920 | coming from the lowest education and income levels

00:15:48.920 | finished in the bottom quartile in background knowledge.

00:15:51.920 | So, once again, poverty rears its ugly head

00:15:54.920 | as an obstacle to learning.

00:15:57.920 | Thus concludes this section on background knowledge.

00:16:00.920 | So, here's the first actionable item for you.

00:16:03.920 | One of your goals as a parent,

00:16:05.920 | in order to invest into your child's brain,

00:16:08.920 | is to help your child to accumulate

00:16:11.920 | broad and diverse experiences in life.

00:16:15.920 | Those experiences can be acquired first-hand

00:16:20.920 | based upon first-hand actions, right?

00:16:23.920 | Taking your child to diverse places,

00:16:26.920 | as the author said, going to museums, zoos,

00:16:28.920 | camping in the backcountry,

00:16:30.920 | traveling abroad, etc.,

00:16:32.920 | knowing diverse people, etc.

00:16:34.920 | So, they can be acquired first-hand

00:16:36.920 | or they can be acquired second-hand

00:16:38.920 | by living vicariously through the actions of others.

00:16:41.920 | And that most efficiently is acquired through reading.

00:16:45.920 | With the background knowledge that your child has,

00:16:48.920 | the exposure to life in a variety of different ways

00:16:55.920 | is going to fundamentally affect

00:16:57.920 | his ability to understand the world around him

00:17:00.920 | and to see the opportunities that exist for him.

00:17:03.920 | So, one of my goals,

00:17:05.920 | one way that I personally seek to invest into my child

00:17:09.920 | is to enhance his background knowledge

00:17:13.920 | by exposing him to a very diverse set of life experiences.

00:17:18.920 | And that happens,

00:17:21.920 | I invest quite a lot of money in first-hand knowledge

00:17:24.920 | and experience as well as in second-hand.

00:17:28.920 | And I'll elaborate this more carefully

00:17:30.920 | in a moment when we talk about reading.

00:17:36.920 | Now, let's talk for a moment about the skills

00:17:38.920 | that a child needs for kindergarten.

00:17:40.920 | The first contact that your child is going to have

00:17:42.920 | with the school system, the academic system,

00:17:45.920 | is going to be kindergarten.

00:17:46.920 | So, what are the skills that your child needs for kindergarten?

00:17:49.920 | Reading from Trulise's book again.

00:17:51.920 | Let me make an analogy here.

00:17:53.920 | Inside a child's brain, there is a huge reservoir

00:17:55.920 | called the listening vocabulary.

00:17:58.920 | You could say it's the child's very own Lake Pontchartrain,

00:18:01.920 | the famous estuary outside New Orleans

00:18:03.920 | that overflowed because of all the water brought by Hurricane Katrina.

00:18:06.920 | That extra water breached the levees

00:18:08.920 | and tragically flooded New Orleans.

00:18:11.920 | We want the same thing to happen, but not in a tragic way.

00:18:14.920 | This time, the levees will be breached inside the child's brain.

00:18:18.920 | The first levee would be the speaking vocabulary.

00:18:21.920 | You pour enough words into the child's listening vocabulary

00:18:25.920 | that it will overflow and fill the speaking vocabulary pool.

00:18:29.920 | Thus, the child starts speaking the words he's heard.

00:18:32.920 | It's highly unlikely you'll ever say a word

00:18:35.920 | if you've never heard the word.

00:18:37.920 | More than a billion people speak Chinese,

00:18:39.920 | so why not the rest of us?

00:18:41.920 | Because we haven't heard enough Chinese words,

00:18:43.920 | especially in our childhoods.

00:18:45.920 | The next levee is the reading vocabulary.

00:18:48.920 | It's nearly impossible to understand a word in print

00:18:51.920 | if you've never said the word.

00:18:53.920 | Finally, there's the writing vocabulary.

00:18:55.920 | If you've never said the word or read the word,

00:18:58.920 | how in the world will you be able to write it?

00:19:00.920 | All the language arts flow from the listening vocabulary,

00:19:04.920 | and that has to be filled by someone besides the child.

00:19:09.920 | Simple.

00:19:11.920 | As you read to a child, you're pouring into the child's ears and brain

00:19:15.920 | all the sounds, syllables, endings, and blendings

00:19:18.920 | that will make up the words she will someday be asked to read and understand.

00:19:22.920 | And through stories, you are filling in the background knowledge

00:19:26.920 | necessary to understand things that aren't in her neighborhood,

00:19:30.920 | like war or whales or locomotives.

00:19:34.920 | The one pre-kindergarten skill that matters above all others,

00:19:39.920 | because it is the prime predictor of school success or failure,

00:19:46.920 | is the child's vocabulary upon entering school.

00:19:53.920 | I don't wish to be pedantic, but I do wish to emphasize this

00:19:57.920 | and burn this into your brain, so please allow me to repeat.

00:20:01.920 | The one pre-kindergarten skill that matters above all others,

00:20:08.920 | because it is the prime predictor of school success or failure,

00:20:14.920 | is the child's vocabulary upon entering school.

00:20:20.920 | Yes, the child goes to school to learn new words,

00:20:23.920 | but the words he already knows determine how much of what the teacher says

00:20:26.920 | will be understood.

00:20:28.920 | And since most instruction for the first four years of school is oral,

00:20:33.920 | the child who has the largest vocabulary will understand the most,

00:20:37.920 | while the child with the smallest vocabulary will grasp the least.

00:20:42.920 | Once reading begins, personal vocabulary feeds, or frustrates, comprehension,

00:20:48.920 | since school grows increasingly complicated with each grade.

00:20:53.920 | That's why school entry vocabulary tests predict so accurately.

00:21:00.920 | Now, back to the metrics.

00:21:03.920 | We want to expose our children to lots of background knowledge,

00:21:06.920 | and we want to make sure that our children's vocabulary is as expansive as possible,

00:21:15.920 | because this is the single most important metric

00:21:19.920 | that will drive our children's academic success.

00:21:24.920 | If we know that the metric that will drive our child's academic success is vocabulary,

00:21:28.920 | then the way that we can invest into our children,

00:21:31.920 | especially at a very young age, prior to school,

00:21:34.920 | is by increasing their vocabulary to the highest and greatest extent possible.

00:21:40.920 | We'll talk about how to do that in a moment.

00:21:43.920 | But I want to emphasize why this is.

00:21:47.920 | Allow me a short but meaningful divergence here.

00:21:51.920 | When we talk about educational models,

00:21:53.920 | there is a model called the classical model of education.

00:21:59.920 | That means different things to different people.

00:22:01.920 | It's actually quite difficult to define.

00:22:03.920 | But if we're going to agree on a definition of classical education in the modern age,

00:22:09.920 | most likely we're going to at least agree on the importance of what is called the trivium.

00:22:16.920 | Now, as I say that word, your vocabulary will immediately fill in.

00:22:21.920 | If I say the trivium, and you know what that means, then you know where I'm going.

00:22:25.920 | But if you're not familiar with that word, you don't know what the trivium is.

00:22:28.920 | Allow me to explain, because I'm making a meta point and an actual point.

00:22:33.920 | The trivium was the classical model of education,

00:22:38.920 | where you began with grammar, that's part one of the trivium.

00:22:42.920 | Then you continued with logic, studying logic.

00:22:46.920 | And then the third thing was to study rhetoric.

00:22:49.920 | Grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

00:22:51.920 | And then later they followed up with the quadrivium, which were four other subjects.

00:22:55.920 | But to the extent that the classical model incorporated subjects,

00:22:58.920 | these were they, the trivium, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

00:23:02.920 | Now, the way that classical educators apply this is to say that

00:23:05.920 | in order for you to understand a subject,

00:23:08.920 | you need to begin by understanding the basic concepts,

00:23:12.920 | even the very words of a subject, the grammar of the subject.

00:23:16.920 | And then after you understand the words of the subject,

00:23:19.920 | you can move on to the logic of the subject.

00:23:22.920 | And here, what we mean by this word logic is arguing the arguments,

00:23:26.920 | the hypotheses, the conjectures in a subject.

00:23:31.920 | And then we move on to rhetoric, where you may be qualified then

00:23:35.920 | to actually present new ideas or to effectively and persuasively argue

00:23:40.920 | for the positions that you believe are correct.

00:23:43.920 | Now, the reason that the trivium matters is because

00:23:47.920 | this is how all subjects are learned.

00:23:50.920 | If you're going to learn a subject, you need to begin with understanding

00:23:53.920 | the grammar of the subject, the simplest, most basic elements of that subject,

00:23:58.920 | the words that are involved, etc.

00:24:00.920 | So in finance, there is a basic grammar of finance,

00:24:04.920 | words like interest or compound interest.

00:24:07.920 | When I speak them to you, I assume that you know them,

00:24:10.920 | but your kindergartner can't define them.

00:24:13.920 | In order for you to be competent in the field of finance,

00:24:15.920 | you have to begin with understanding the basic grammar.

00:24:20.920 | Again, things like interest or dividends, compound interest.

00:24:24.920 | And then you move on to more specialized grammar,

00:24:26.920 | such as retirement accounts or tax-deferred accounts

00:24:29.920 | or what we call qualified accounts, etc.

00:24:31.920 | Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, IRAs.

00:24:34.920 | All of these words have meanings.

00:24:36.920 | In order for you to be successful in understanding

00:24:38.920 | how to manage your financial affairs,

00:24:40.920 | you have to learn these words and their meanings.

00:24:43.920 | The higher you go in a subject, the more words matter.

00:24:48.920 | So a straightforward example is that when I use a term

00:24:52.920 | "qualified account" as a professional financial planner,

00:24:57.920 | I'm referring to something very specific.

00:25:00.920 | I'm specifically referring to the types of tax-deferred retirement accounts

00:25:04.920 | that were authorized under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act

00:25:09.920 | of what was it? I forget the year of it.

00:25:11.920 | Now I'm getting old and losing my data.

00:25:15.920 | ERISA is what it's commonly called, right?

00:25:16.920 | The Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

00:25:18.920 | And a qualified account is different than a non-qualified account.

00:25:23.920 | And for a financial planner, this is exceedingly important

00:25:27.920 | as a distinction because the rules for qualified accounts

00:25:31.920 | and the specific attributes of qualified accounts

00:25:33.920 | are very different than the rules of non-qualified accounts

00:25:36.920 | and the attributes of non-qualified accounts.

00:25:39.920 | So when I'm doing, say, asset protection planning,

00:25:42.920 | the distinction between an account that is a qualified account

00:25:45.920 | and a non-qualified account is the distinction between

00:25:48.920 | you're keeping your money when you go bankrupt

00:25:50.920 | versus not keeping your money when you go bankrupt.

00:25:53.920 | Similarly, the distinction between a qualified retirement program

00:25:56.920 | and a non-qualified retirement program is the difference

00:25:59.920 | between you being able to put $50,000 a year in,

00:26:04.920 | as long as you're matching your employees' contributions,

00:26:06.920 | and the difference between you being able to put $5 million a year in.

00:26:09.920 | They're meaningful differences.

00:26:12.920 | But these words, such as qualified and non-qualified,

00:26:15.920 | only have sense or meaning in a specific context.

00:26:19.920 | And as a financial planner, you begin the process

00:26:22.920 | of learning the vocabulary of financial planning.

00:26:26.920 | Then you proceed forward by understanding the deeper meanings,

00:26:30.920 | the logic and the grammar, etc.

00:26:32.920 | And then at your highest and best stage, you're arguing on the Internet

00:26:35.920 | about whether somebody should fund his Roth IRA

00:26:38.920 | or his Roth 401(k) or his traditional 401(k).

00:26:43.920 | And that's where you're engaging in rhetoric

00:26:45.920 | based upon the logical arguments, but you have to understand the grammar for.

00:26:48.920 | So this concept of the trivium is a very useful model for learning.

00:26:52.920 | Let's go back to your elementary age or kindergarten student.

00:26:56.920 | If a kindergarten student comes in with a very large vocabulary

00:27:00.920 | and that kindergarten student is being exposed to a new subject,

00:27:04.920 | and he understands perhaps 90% of the words that the teacher is saying,

00:27:10.920 | then because he understands the words that the teacher is saying,

00:27:14.920 | he will have a much easier time grasping the new concepts

00:27:18.920 | that are being taught by the teacher.

00:27:20.920 | The important thing that he's going to be tested on is not the words,

00:27:23.920 | but the concepts, the meaning, the specific facts.

00:27:26.920 | But in order to understand those facts, he needs to understand the words.

00:27:30.920 | If the child understands only 60% of the words the teacher is saying,

00:27:34.920 | he's going to have a vastly more difficult time grasping the concepts

00:27:39.920 | on which he will be tested.

00:27:41.920 | And so vocabulary is the metric that we need to measure

00:27:46.920 | in order to know that our children have the highest possible chance

00:27:53.920 | of becoming excellent students as measured by academic ability.

00:27:59.920 | Moving on.

00:28:00.920 | How is it then that some kids get a head start on vocabulary?

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00:28:38.920 | Conversation is the prime garden in which vocabulary grows,

00:28:42.920 | but conversations vary greatly from home to home.

00:28:45.920 | The eye-opening findings of Drs. Betty Hart and Todd Risley at the University of Kansas

00:28:50.920 | from their research on children's early lives demonstrate the impact of this fact.

00:28:55.920 | Published as "Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,"

00:29:00.920 | the research began in response to what Hart and Risley saw among the 4-year-olds in the university lab school.

00:29:06.920 | With many children, the lines were already drawn.

00:29:09.920 | Some were far advanced and some far behind.

00:29:13.920 | When the children in the study were tested at age 3 and then again at 9, the differences held.

00:29:19.920 | What caused the differences so early?

00:29:22.920 | The researchers began by identifying 42 normal families representing three socioeconomic groups

00:29:28.920 | – welfare, working class, and professional.

00:29:31.920 | Beginning when the children were 7 months old, researchers visited the homes for one hour a month

00:29:36.920 | and continued their visits for two and a half years.

00:29:39.920 | During each visit, the researcher tape-recorded and transcribed by hand

00:29:44.920 | any conversations and actions taking place in front of the child.

00:29:48.920 | Through 1,300 hours of visits, they accumulated 23 million bytes of information for the project database,

00:29:55.920 | categorizing every word (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) uttered in front of the child.

00:30:00.920 | The project held some surprises.

00:30:02.920 | Regardless of socioeconomic level, all 42 families said and did the same things with their children.

00:30:08.920 | In other words, the basic instincts of good parenting are there for most people, rich or poor.

00:30:14.920 | Then the researchers received the data printout and saw the "meaningful differences" among the 42 families.

00:30:20.920 | When the daily number of words for each group of children is projected across four years,

00:30:26.920 | the 4-year-old child from the professional family will have heard 45 million words,

00:30:32.920 | the working class child 26 million, and the welfare child only 13 million.

00:30:38.920 | All three children will show up for kindergarten on the same day,

00:30:42.920 | but one will have heard 32 million fewer words.

00:30:47.920 | If legislators expect the teacher to get this child caught up,

00:30:50.920 | she'll have to speak 10 words a second for 900 hours to reach the 32 million mark by year's end.

00:30:56.920 | Hope they have life support ready for her.

00:30:58.920 | Those 42 children would perform differently in class because their word totals created different brains.

00:31:04.920 | By the time the study group reached age 3,

00:31:07.920 | the professionals' children had 1,100 word vocabularies, to the welfare children's 525.

00:31:14.920 | Similarly, their IQs were 117 vs. 79 by the time the study finished.

00:31:20.920 | Brain differences have nothing to do with how much parents love their children.

00:31:24.920 | They all love their children and want the best for them,

00:31:26.920 | but some parents have a better idea of what needs to be said and done to reach that "best."

00:31:32.920 | They know the child needs to hear words repeatedly and meaningful sentences and questions,

00:31:37.920 | and they know that plunking a 2-year-old down in front of a television set for 3 hours at a time

00:31:42.920 | is more harmful than meaningful.

00:31:45.920 | Sociologists George Farkas and Kurt Barron studied the research on 6,800 children from ages 3 to 12

00:31:52.920 | and found that children from the lower socioeconomic spectrum

00:31:55.920 | were far more likely to arrive at school with smaller vocabularies 12-14 months behind,

00:32:02.920 | and they seldom made up the loss as they grew older.

00:32:07.920 | The message in this kind of research is unambiguous.

00:32:12.920 | It's not the toys in the house that make the difference in the children's lives.

00:32:16.920 | It's the words in their heads.

00:32:18.920 | The least expensive thing we can give a child outside of a hug turns out to be the most valuable.

00:32:24.920 | Words.

00:32:25.920 | You don't need a job, a checking account, or even a high school diploma to talk with a child.

00:32:31.920 | If I could select any piece of research that all parents would be exposed to,

00:32:34.920 | meaningful differences would be the one, and that's feasible.

00:32:38.920 | The authors took their 268-page book and condensed it into a 6-page article for American Educator,

00:32:43.920 | the Journal of the American Federation of Teachers, which may be freely reproduced by schools.

00:32:48.920 | There is one inexpensive, common-sense move that parents could make

00:32:53.920 | that would impact their children's language skills, and maybe their emotional development as well.

00:32:57.920 | Yet it goes largely unpublicized here in the United States.

00:33:01.920 | First, consider how badly it would affect a conversation with someone

00:33:04.920 | if she wouldn't look at you while you were talking to her.

00:33:07.920 | Most conversations would slow to a crawl.

00:33:09.920 | Let's apply that principle of human behavior to children in strollers.

00:33:13.920 | Until the 1960s, nearly all strollers were engineered so the child was facing the parent.

00:33:18.920 | Now, it's either way, but far more often facing away.

00:33:22.920 | Does it make a difference?

00:33:23.920 | Researchers found it makes a huge difference in how much conversation takes place between parent and child.

00:33:29.920 | Twice as much when the child faces the parent.

00:33:32.920 | It was even more frequent when the child walked with or was carried by the parent.

00:33:36.920 | Of course, it's not going to help that much if the child is facing the parent

00:33:40.920 | and the parent is on the cell phone all the time.

00:33:43.920 | So, what can you invest in in order to help your children grow?

00:33:48.920 | Well, the first actionable thing is we want to invest in words.

00:33:52.920 | We want to make sure that our children are spoken to constantly and continually.

00:33:58.920 | Conversations filled with love, filled with appreciation, filled with context,

00:34:02.920 | because that's how we learn words.

00:34:04.920 | We learn words by context.

00:34:06.920 | And you want to make sure that your children, during practically all of their waking hours,

00:34:10.920 | are being spoken to.

00:34:12.920 | And you want to measure, to the extent possible, the number of words.

00:34:16.920 | So, I love this as a beginning place to start.

00:34:20.920 | If you have a baby and you have a stroller that causes your baby to look away from you,

00:34:24.920 | go buy a new stroller and get one where your baby is facing you.

00:34:27.920 | And then take your baby on a stroller and get used to talking to your baby.

00:34:30.920 | And just narrate all of the things that are going on.

00:34:33.920 | I find this difficult to do sometimes with a newborn, even though I try.

00:34:37.920 | But as soon as your child starts to get to that point where he starts to respond to you

00:34:42.920 | and you can tell he is listening--of course, newborns are hearing your voice,

00:34:46.920 | but they're not putting things together--

00:34:48.920 | then I try to apply this principle by talking to my children incessantly.

00:34:54.920 | And I use the best vocabulary that I can, and I repeat it consistently.

00:35:01.920 | I'm not opposed to baby talk, but I don't use much of it myself.

00:35:05.920 | It's never felt natural for me, so I just use my words in all their contexts.

00:35:10.920 | But I make up ways to fill in vocabulary.

00:35:13.920 | So, for example, when I'm changing a baby's diaper and I'm touching his body parts,

00:35:17.920 | I say, "Look, here's your right foot. I touch the right foot.

00:35:20.920 | This is your left foot. This is your left foot."

00:35:22.920 | And then as you're putting his feet into his jammy legs--you say, "Right leg, left leg.

00:35:28.920 | Right knee, left knee. Touch him. This is your tummy."

00:35:31.920 | And you give him all his body part names, etc. as you go through everything.

00:35:34.920 | You explain what you're doing. So you give vocabulary.

00:35:37.920 | "I'm changing your diaper. I'm going to wipe your bottom.

00:35:39.920 | I'm going to take you out and I'm going to give you to mommy,

00:35:42.920 | or we're going to go for a walk, etc."

00:35:44.920 | As you're going down a walk, "Hey, look over there. There's a green house."

00:35:47.920 | Or whatever it is that you have. You get the point.

00:35:49.920 | The point is, engage with your children and talk to them.

00:35:52.920 | Now, the stroller, I think, is a great idea.

00:35:54.920 | But for most of us, it's not something that we need to go and buy.

00:35:58.920 | Rather, it's something that we need to avoid.

00:36:01.920 | And that is, of course, our phones.

00:36:04.920 | Our phones are the most destructive influence in our relationship with our children.

00:36:11.920 | And it is affecting all of us.

00:36:14.920 | If you go out in any of our modern society, and you go out to eat, etc.,

00:36:19.920 | you will see what I consider to be one of the greatest, most horrific sights ever,

00:36:24.920 | which is children with their faces glued to screens.

00:36:28.920 | A child with his face glued to a screen out at a restaurant

00:36:33.920 | is a child who is simultaneously not listening and not speaking to a parent.

00:36:41.920 | And that's a child who is losing prime opportunities to acquire background knowledge on the world around,

00:36:48.920 | to acquire understanding of how he's going to act as a parent.

00:36:54.920 | Instruction, both positive and negative, meaning hearing stories of inspiring virtuous characters

00:37:00.920 | and people who have failed, etc.

00:37:03.920 | And just being in context. And the child is losing opportunities to speak.

00:37:07.920 | The child is absorbed in a drug, is being drugged.

00:37:10.920 | And that extends also. And why does the child do that?

00:37:13.920 | Well, because that's the example that we set as parents.

00:37:16.920 | We have our eyes glued to the screen, and that's the example we set.

00:37:20.920 | And so our children are following our example.

00:37:22.920 | And it is utterly destructive.

00:37:24.920 | It is destroying children's capacities to learn because, as we'll talk about in a moment,

00:37:30.920 | they're cut off from the most important words.

00:37:34.920 | I don't care how educational the app is.

00:37:38.920 | An app is never going to give your child the necessary background knowledge to make words make sense.

00:37:44.920 | And it's not going to give your child adult words.

00:37:47.920 | So what if your child can spell "cat"?

00:37:51.920 | It's far more important that your child has the context for who cats are and what cats are

00:37:57.920 | in all of their different senses and meanings, rather than being able to simply spell "cat."

00:38:04.920 | Permit me another literary divergence to give you a story that I hope will burn this into your head.

00:38:12.920 | And here is the point. Your child does not need simple facts, which is what apps seek to give your child.

00:38:21.920 | Your child needs experience.

00:38:24.920 | I want to read an excerpt from a world-class book by Professor Anthony Esalen called

00:38:31.920 | "Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child."

00:38:35.920 | As I begin, I hope it's immediately evident by the title itself, but I just do want to emphasize that this is satire.

00:38:42.920 | So what you should understand is that this entire book is written in the voice of somebody who is saying

00:38:49.920 | the exact opposite of what you and I actually want. So just be clear on that.

00:38:55.920 | Reading from a chapter called "Why Truth is Your Enemy and the Benefits of the Vague," or "Gradgrind Without the Facts."

00:39:03.920 | Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts.

00:39:08.920 | Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else.

00:39:13.920 | You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts. Nothing else will ever be of any service to them.

00:39:19.920 | This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.

00:39:25.920 | Stick to facts, sir.

00:39:28.920 | The Opening of Hard Times by Charles Dickens.

00:39:32.920 | Those are the words of the schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind, whose philosophy of education is meant to reflect

00:39:39.920 | the smog-ridden industrial desert of Coke Town, where his enlightened school is located.

00:39:45.920 | If what you want is industrial production, cheap and plentiful, and if human beings are to be cogs and gears in the industrial machine,

00:39:54.920 | then of course you will want to stick to flat, unimaginative facts.

00:39:58.920 | A cog should not go soft, musing about the clouds and the sky. A gear should never wonder what it would feel like to turn backwards.

00:40:07.920 | It's easy for us to laugh at the naivete of Mr. Gradgrind.

00:40:11.920 | We ingrates who have inherited all the benefits of the revolutionary system that he represents.

00:40:16.920 | We forget that what was called empiricism in education, sticking to facts, sir,

00:40:21.920 | and avoiding the training of the moral imagination in virtues that can't be isolated in a glass dish or oxidized in a Bunsen burner,

00:40:28.920 | was locked in a mighty struggle with the older tradition of the liberal arts,

00:40:32.920 | introducing students to the best that has been thought, done, and written in the world,

00:40:36.920 | and sometimes, quite by accident, indulging dangerous flights of fancy, with every book like Aladdin's carpet ready to whisk us away.

00:40:44.920 | The popular form of such an education was what young David Copperfield had, locked up in his room by his cold-hearted stepfather.

00:40:52.920 | My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs to which I had access,

00:40:57.920 | for it adjoined my own, and which nobody else in our house ever troubled.

00:41:02.920 | From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Klinker, Tom Jones,

00:41:08.920 | the vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Jill Bloss, and Robinson Crusoe came out, a glorious host to keep me company.

00:41:16.920 | They kept alive my fancy and my hope of something beyond that place and time.

00:41:22.920 | I pick up McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader, 1837, and find to our shame that along with precise rules of grammar and elocution,

00:41:31.920 | students are expected to expand what was once quaintly called "their souls," contemplating, for example,

00:41:37.920 | the meaning of those places where their forefathers fought to secure their liberty.

00:41:41.920 | "No American," writes Daniel Webster, "can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, or Camden,

00:41:48.920 | as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface.

00:41:51.920 | Whoever visits them feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew,

00:41:56.920 | as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished

00:42:01.920 | still hovered around, with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them."

00:42:08.920 | The same short selection ushers on stage in a single sentence the beauties of Homer, Milton, Cicero, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

00:42:17.920 | It is, alas, no isolated lapse into imagination.

00:42:21.920 | Students elsewhere in the book are transported to the Himalayas, the ruins of Babylon, Westminster Abbey,

00:42:28.920 | the volcano of Etna, the gates of Hell, and more dreadful even than those,

00:42:33.920 | the whirlwind out of which God spoke to Job, commanding him to consider the glory of the creation about him.

00:42:39.920 | "Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?"

00:42:44.920 | That one image would be sufficient to quicken a dying imagination.

00:42:48.920 | Undoing months of hard and programmatic labor.

00:42:52.920 | So we ought to be grateful to the old grad grinds, without whom the first stage of modern education,

00:42:58.920 | with its demotion of a sense of beauty to an irrational and private feeling, would have been impossible.

00:43:05.920 | In C.S. Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrub,

00:43:10.920 | brought up in a modern gradgrindian school, bumbles into a cave with treasure in it

00:43:16.920 | and makes the terrible mistake of putting a golden bracelet on his arm.

00:43:20.920 | "He did this," says Lewis, "because in his school all the boys and girls ever read about

00:43:25.920 | were factories and electrical output and population density and such like."

00:43:29.920 | "Eustace didn't read the right sort of books," says Lewis,

00:43:32.920 | "so he never did know what to do in case of dragons and other sorts of eminently practical things like that."

00:43:37.920 | This, of course, is the same C.S. Lewis who, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,

00:43:42.920 | has four children enter into another universe by stepping into a clothes dresser,

00:43:47.920 | when, as everybody should know, a wardrobe is for hanging clothes in, and that is that.

00:43:52.920 | So, if we want to kill the imagination, and we do want to do that,

00:43:57.920 | the gradgrind method of sticking to the facts is not a bad way to begin.

00:44:02.920 | Consider what it would be like to have row upon row of students seated at their geography lesson

00:44:07.920 | while the rain drips down the gutter from outside the windows, hear their voices in unison,

00:44:12.920 | droning on without inspiration or joy.

00:44:15.920 | The Arkansas River is 1,469 miles long. It is the sixth longest river in the United States.

00:44:22.920 | Its source is in Colorado. It empties into the Mississippi River.

00:44:26.920 | It flows through Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. It is irrigated for farms.

00:44:31.920 | The Rio Grande River is 1,885 miles long. It is the third longest river, and so on,

00:44:38.920 | until death, or the bell, whichever comes first.

00:44:41.920 | But there are problems with the gradgrind method. Let's see what they are.

00:44:46.920 | Now for a limited time at Del Amo Motorsports.

00:44:49.920 | Get financing as low as 1.99% for 36 months on Select 2023 Can-Am Maverick X3.

00:44:56.920 | Considering the Mavericks taking home trophies everywhere from King of the Hammers to Uncle Ned's Backcountry Rally,

00:45:02.920 | you're not going to find a better deal on front row seats to a championship winner.

00:45:07.920 | Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3.

00:45:10.920 | Visit Del Amo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours.

00:45:14.920 | Offer in soon. See dealer for details.

00:45:17.920 | Now, dear listener, please pay careful attention to this next section and think about educational apps and their benefits as I read this section.

00:45:32.920 | A horse is a horse, of course, of course.

00:45:35.920 | Early in the novel Hard Times, Mr. Gradgrind, in his arrogance, makes the mistake of taking into his school a girl named Sissy.

00:45:44.920 | Gradgrind insists upon calling her Cecilia, whose father wants her to get a better education than he can give her himself.

00:45:51.920 | The father works as a horse breaker for a traveling circus, and so Sissy has lived all her life among tightrope walkers,

00:45:58.920 | magicians, fire eaters, lady acrobats, elephants, midgets, and such like. Hardly a promising upbringing.

00:46:05.920 | For the trouble with Sissy, other than that she has a keenly developed sense of good and evil and a lively imagination,

00:46:12.920 | is that she actually does know some facts. And that proves to be a dangerous thing.

00:46:19.920 | "Give me," says Gradgrind for the benefit of Sissy and the whole class, "your definition of a horse."

00:46:25.920 | Sissy, alarmed, can say nothing.

00:46:28.920 | "Girl number 20, unable to define a horse," said Mr. Gradgrind for the general behoof of all the little pitchers.

00:46:35.920 | "Girl number 20, possessed of no facts in relation to one of the commonest of animals.

00:46:40.920 | Some boy's definition of a horse? Bitzer, yours!"

00:46:44.920 | Whereupon Bitzer, a pale and gloomy boy, with the habit of knuckling his forehead when he is not speaking,

00:46:50.920 | the pride of the Gradgrind system, replies, "Quadruped, greminivorous, 40 teeth, namely 24 grinders,

00:46:57.920 | four eye teeth and 12 incisors, sheds coat in the spring, in marshy countries sheds hoofs too.

00:47:02.920 | Hoofs hard but requiring to be shod with iron, age known by marks in mouth. Thus and much more, Bitzer."

00:47:09.920 | "Now, girl number 20," said Mr. Gradgrind, "you know what a horse is."

00:47:16.920 | The irony is that Sissy knows more about horses than anybody in the classroom,

00:47:21.920 | certainly more than Bitzer, who is merely repeating phrases poured into him like concrete into a form.

00:47:28.920 | She has ridden upon horses, seen them give birth, combed them and curried them,

00:47:34.920 | and watched as her father sabbed their sores or rubbed them with liniment.

00:47:38.920 | She knows them in a way that only life with them reveals.

00:47:42.920 | At the end of the novel, indeed, Mr. Gradgrind's spoiled son, Tom, will be spirited away from the clutches of the law,

00:47:48.920 | riding a horse provided for him by the circus people and disguised as a clown.

00:47:53.920 | Then there will be no patter about the horse being greminivorous and shedding its coat in the spring.

00:47:59.920 | And yet, Bitzer is in possession of some facts about horses.

00:48:03.920 | He knows that they have 12 incisors.

00:48:06.920 | What's an incisor? Why should a horse have those if he eats only grass?

00:48:10.920 | Will he eat anything besides grass? Anything that an incisor might help him bite and crush?

00:48:16.920 | For instance, how does a horse eat a carrot or an apple?

00:48:20.920 | Bitzer knows that horses shed their winter coats. How do they do that?

00:48:24.920 | Do the coats come off in patches? Do the horses rub up against rough trees or rocks to peel them away?

00:48:30.920 | What does the new coat look like?

00:48:32.920 | Bitzer knows that you can tell how old a horse is by looking in its mouth.

00:48:36.920 | What would you be looking for there? Do the teeth grow long? Do they change color?

00:48:41.920 | Do the gums turn dark? Can you learn the age of other animals in the same way?

00:48:46.920 | The judicious reader will see the problem.

00:48:49.920 | A fact, by itself, does not seem to rouse the imagination.

00:48:55.920 | It merely is.

00:48:57.920 | It sits there like a rock. Yet, its apparent impenetrability is a challenge to the mind.

00:49:02.920 | The Arkansas River is 1,469 miles long.

00:49:06.920 | How wide is it when it reaches the Mississippi?

00:49:08.920 | Can you sail a boat upriver?

00:49:10.920 | How far can you go? Is it a clear and fast river or sluggish and muddy?

00:49:15.920 | If water from the river is used for farming, does that mean that it has been dammed up here and there?

00:49:20.920 | If it has been, are there big man-made lakes along its course?

00:49:23.920 | Can you swim in those lakes?

00:49:25.920 | Now, of course, it is better that the student learn facts about the Arkansas River

00:49:29.920 | than wander about the streams of Mount Helicon, where the muses of Greek mythology danced and sang.

00:49:34.920 | It is better that they should learn that Mount McKinley is the highest peak in North America

00:49:38.920 | than that they should trudge along with Frodo to Mount Doom in the heart of Mordor.

00:49:42.920 | It is better that they should learn that there are twelve tones in the Western musical scale

00:49:46.920 | than that they should listen to a wood thrush singing from the thickets,

00:49:49.920 | trilling out his ethereal notes that have no name.

00:49:52.920 | But it would be better still if they had never heard of the Arkansas River or Mount McKinley or the twelve-tone scale.

00:49:58.920 | Such heights of ignorance could never be attained in Mr. Gradgrind's time,

00:50:02.920 | for the simple reason that in the middle of an industrial revolution,

00:50:05.920 | you actually have to know some things to get some jobs done,

00:50:08.920 | and those jobs were often complicated, requiring a great deal of ingenuity.

00:50:12.920 | Suppose for you a tree is nothing but a source for lumber.

00:50:15.920 | That's fine. You're well on your way.

00:50:17.920 | But in Gradgrind's day, you would then have to know about sawmills,

00:50:21.920 | and that would require, in turn, a pretty precise knowledge of water power

00:50:25.920 | and how to use wheels, belts, and gears to turn the rotary motion of a wheel

00:50:29.920 | into just the right back-and-forth motion of the saw,

00:50:32.920 | complete with couplers to disengage the mechanism from the source of power.

00:50:36.920 | In other words, a sawmill, while not the forest of Arden, is in its own right a fascinating place.

00:50:43.920 | A great deal of that fascination can be found in William Stout's "The Boy's Book of Mechanical Models" (1917),

00:50:49.920 | now available in reprint, and doubly dangerous to the young mind,

00:50:53.920 | in that it encourages both the direct experience of mechanical forces

00:50:57.920 | and the spirit of irresponsible play.

00:51:00.920 | Thus, Stout describes seeing a "wonderful electric writing telegraph" at the St. Louis World's Fair.

00:51:06.920 | Here, a man sat at a desk with a pencil and wrote and drew pictures,

00:51:10.920 | while above him, on another piece of paper in a separate machine,

00:51:13.920 | a pencil guided itself in the same manner and drew the same lines.

00:51:17.920 | It was very interesting, especially when one thought of writing from one city to another,

00:51:21.920 | as can be done with this machine.

00:51:23.920 | So Stout, while yet a boy (such was the state of unsupervised youth in his day),

00:51:28.920 | went home to devise a way to copy the machine in miniature.

00:51:31.920 | His scheme takes into account all kinds of facts.

00:51:34.920 | First, there is what I'd call the "grammar" of the teleautograph,

00:51:38.920 | the structure that directs its motions to the desired goal.

00:51:41.920 | Then, there are the parts themselves, and knowing by experience what sorts of work they can do.

00:51:46.920 | Then, there's the material for the parts, wood, rubber, and metal.

00:51:50.920 | Of course, Stout's machine is far too complicated an apparatus for our current schools, I'm proud to say,

00:51:56.920 | let alone for a boy rummaging about his basement with spare wood and a toolbox.

00:52:00.920 | But Stout assumes that his readers will grasp the principles involved without much trouble.

00:52:05.920 | "You can see from this how," he says, "if you swing the pencil sideways so as to move this lever about its pivot, S,

00:52:12.920 | that the pencil at the other end will slide sideways back and forth in exactly the same way as you move the first pencil.

00:52:18.920 | That's just one motion. A linked mechanism transmits the up and down motion,

00:52:22.920 | and the whole machine, therefore, will transmit any kind of motion of the pencil at all."

00:52:26.920 | "Well," says my reader, nervously looking over his shoulder as his son transforms a ruler,

00:52:31.920 | a spool, and an ice cube into Lord Winter's catapult,

00:52:34.920 | "that may be the case for mechanical or physical facts,

00:52:37.920 | but surely it is safe to drum young heads with historical trivia as dry as dust.

00:52:42.920 | If their minds are going to be as flat as Oklahoma, they should be as dry and dusty as Oklahoma too."

00:52:48.920 | True enough, and many an imagination has been flattened by such an approach.

00:52:53.920 | Yet beware, historical facts can be dangerous too.

00:52:57.920 | Webster could not have touched the imaginations of his audience, after all,

00:53:00.920 | if they had not known what Bunker Hill and Camden were.

00:53:04.920 | Let's take a few examples. What could be duller, you say,

00:53:07.920 | than to memorize the dates of the various presidents of the United States?

00:53:10.920 | Not much. So the student properly instructed may learn that Franklin Pierce was president from 1853 to 1857.

00:53:19.920 | If the facts stopped there, that would be fine. But they might not stop there.

00:53:24.920 | He might learn that Pierce was an unpopular president, another fact, and this one more mysterious.

00:53:29.920 | He might read somewhere that Pierce's son died just before his father took office.

00:53:34.920 | He might hear that a great author named Nathaniel Hawthorne was a close friend of Pierce.

00:53:38.920 | And all at once a picture of a tragic man emerges in the mist,

00:53:42.920 | one who might have done well had times been better.

00:53:46.920 | If the student then remembers that the Civil War began in 1861,

00:53:50.920 | and that Pierce was a Democrat while Lincoln was a Whig and then a Republican,

00:53:54.920 | the mystery deepens and questions begin to stir in the sleepy mind.

00:53:58.920 | What was it like to have been that man, watching the war that he did not prevent,

00:54:03.920 | with the Union armies commanded by his political enemy?

00:54:07.920 | Or consider this piece of apparently harmless trivia.

00:54:11.920 | The Normans conquered Sicily in the 11th century.

00:54:14.920 | Ah, who cares about that? Nobody.

00:54:18.920 | So long as you have not made the mistake of introducing your student to geographical facts to boot.

00:54:24.920 | For if he knows where Normandy and Sicily are on the globe, he may ask the obvious question.

00:54:29.920 | How did the Normans get down there? Did they go overland or did they sail?

00:54:34.920 | And that might lead him to investigate the construction of their boats,

00:54:38.920 | or who was in control of Sicily before they arrived.

00:54:41.920 | He might eventually find out that Viking raiders and traders had long been in contact with Constantinople,

00:54:46.920 | and that the Byzantine rulers there requested the help of the now Christian Normans in ousting their enemies,

00:54:53.920 | the Muslim Arabs from Sicily.

00:54:55.920 | How did Vikings end up in Byzantium?

00:54:58.920 | It appears they trekked overland to the River Don in Russia,

00:55:01.920 | and then sailed down it to the Black Sea in Constantinople.

00:55:04.920 | It would be better if the student could not tell Sicily from Saskatchewan,

00:55:09.920 | and knew only that Vikings were very bad people with funny hats who sailed a lot.

00:55:15.920 | Old history textbooks used to be full of battle plans.

00:55:18.920 | People had the quaint notion that the outcomes of battles like Salamis, Lepanto, and Waterloo changed the course of history.

00:55:26.920 | One argument for getting rid of those plans was that they were dull.

00:55:29.920 | Actually, they were dull to the teachers, many of whom didn't care a rap about the structure of battles,

00:55:35.920 | but they could be dynamite for the young.

00:55:37.920 | Once, when my family and I were visiting Gettysburg,

00:55:40.920 | I got into a conversation with a teenager at the top of an observation tower.

00:55:43.920 | He was a tourist, too, but he told me he came back to Gettysburg quite a lot,

00:55:48.920 | and showed me Little Round Top and described for me what happened there.

00:55:51.920 | He reminded me of a couple of homeschooled boys I knew,

00:55:54.920 | who also got their hands on battle plans, poured over them, committed them to memory,

00:55:59.920 | and turned the basement into a battlefield.

00:56:02.920 | They drew out the woods and hills and rivers in chalk,

00:56:05.920 | marked the battalions with counters,

00:56:07.920 | and then played a game of strategy with declared decisions and dice,

00:56:11.920 | reenacting the battle not as it actually happened, but as it might have happened.

00:56:15.920 | When they'd made a move or two on the sprawling "board" of the basement floor,

00:56:19.920 | they would then go outside to play it out with their arms and legs and voices.

00:56:23.920 | And all this was going on while the mother of one of the boys looked the other way.

00:56:27.920 | I relay this all to you in order to ask,

00:56:30.920 | "Of what use to us now are facts?

00:56:33.920 | Surely, in the case of the homeschooled boys, we have seen facts run amok.

00:56:37.920 | The grad grinds in the days of Dickens saw the black smoke belching out of the stacks in Leeds and Manchester,

00:56:43.920 | and it gladdened their hearts.

00:56:45.920 | The thought of molten pig iron fairly made them giddy.

00:56:49.920 | Had Father Christmas dumped their stockings full of coal,

00:56:52.920 | they would have treasured the lumps like diamonds.

00:56:54.920 | But we now have a service economy,

00:56:56.920 | which mainly entails the transfer of money from one person to another for nothing of any inherent use.

00:57:01.920 | We also have a welfare state, which is a perpetual motion machine,

00:57:05.920 | producing the dependency which it purports to alleviate.

00:57:08.920 | Now, a man with a wrench who knows facts about pipes and fittings simply won't do.

00:57:12.920 | We need a few such men, no doubt, but we don't want to encourage it.

00:57:16.920 | We want instead helplessness, narcissism, shallowness, and ignorance,

00:57:21.920 | and we want them in the guise of education.

00:57:24.920 | Drudgery will do, but drudgery to no practical end.

00:57:27.920 | We want grad grind without the facts."

00:57:34.920 | Hope you enjoyed that excerpt.

00:57:36.920 | Again, that is from Anthony Esalen's book called

00:57:39.920 | "Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child."

00:57:43.920 | Excellent reading if you're very interested in destroying the imagination of your child.

00:57:48.920 | He gives ten excellent ways to do that, and as you know, I believe in learning from the very best.

00:57:59.920 | Obviously, that passage could be thought of in connection with many different aspects of our modern society.

00:58:10.920 | But the reason I wanted to share it with you is it's important that you see how these things matter holistically,

00:58:19.920 | and that something as compelling as an educational app can't hope to do anything more than convey some simple, brute facts,

00:58:36.920 | which, while perhaps they could be a catalyst in encouraging someone to go farther,

00:58:43.920 | when compared to the life experience, the background experience of what could be being gained by your child,

00:58:55.920 | it's a dreadfully dull vision.

00:59:01.920 | Just consider Sissy and her knowledge of horses.

00:59:06.920 | She knew horses, and the facts that she could or could not articulate were completely irrelevant

00:59:18.920 | because they were swept away by her knowledge of horses.

00:59:23.920 | Now, come to the modern age, for months and months, AI, artificial intelligence, has been the topic du jour,

00:59:31.920 | where we talk every single day about how AI is going to sweep things away.

00:59:36.920 | Do you think that your child, having some mere facts brute-forced into their brain by an app,

00:59:47.920 | is in some way going to help your child succeed in a world of ubiquitous AI?

00:59:56.920 | There's no chance, friend.

00:59:59.920 | So, speak to your children.

01:00:03.920 | Help your children to acquire words by conversation and by engaging with them.

01:00:10.920 | Turn your baby around so you can talk to him.

01:00:13.920 | Put your phone away so you can talk to him.

01:00:16.920 | Get rid of his phone so you can talk to him and talk to him.

01:00:22.920 | Now, what's even better than conversation?

01:00:27.920 | Now for a limited time at Del Amo Motorsports.

01:00:30.920 | Get financing as low as 1.99% for 36 months on Select 2023 Can-Am Maverick X3.

01:00:37.920 | Considering the Mavericks taking home trophies everywhere, from King of the Hammers to Uncle Ned's Backcountry Rally,

01:00:43.920 | you're not going to find a better deal on front row seats to a championship winner.

01:00:48.920 | Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3.

01:00:51.920 | Visit Del Amo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours.

01:00:55.920 | Offer in soon. See dealer for details.

01:00:58.920 | How can we engage the mind and the imagination?

01:01:06.920 | Back to the Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trulise.

01:01:09.920 | Most conversation is plain and simple, whether it's between two adults or with children.

01:01:16.920 | It consists of the 5,000 words we use all the time, called the basic lexicon.

01:01:22.920 | Indeed, 83% of the words in normal conversation with a child come from the most commonly used thousand words,

01:01:30.920 | and it doesn't change much as the child ages.

01:01:33.920 | Then there are another 5,000 words we use in conversation less often.

01:01:38.920 | Together, these 10,000 words are called the common lexicon.

01:01:43.920 | Beyond that 10,000 mark are the rare words, and these play a critical role in reading as we grow older.

01:01:51.920 | The eventual strength of our vocabulary is determined not by the 10,000 common words,

01:01:58.920 | but by how many rare words we understand.

01:02:01.920 | If we don't use these rare words very often in conversation, where do we find them?

01:02:06.920 | And here I want to orally describe to you a chart that is printed on the page.

01:02:12.920 | This chart is titled "Number of Rare Words Met Per Thousand."

01:02:17.920 | And remember the definition of a rare word, right?

01:02:19.920 | It's a word that's not in the basic lexicon of those 10,000 words that we commonly use.

01:02:25.920 | So first we have "listening."

01:02:27.920 | Adults speaking to child at six months, 9.3 rare words met per thousand.

01:02:33.920 | An adult speaking to a child at three years old, 9.0 rare words per thousand.

01:02:39.920 | An adult speaking to child at 10 years old, 11.7 rare words per thousand.

01:02:47.920 | An adult speaking to an adult, 7.3 rare words per thousand.

01:02:52.920 | Primetime TV programs, 22.7 rare words per thousand.

01:02:58.920 | Now here in the chart we pivot from listening activities to reading activities.

01:03:03.920 | Reading a children's book, 30.9 rare words met per thousand.

01:03:08.920 | Reading an adult book, 52.7 rare words met per thousand.

01:03:14.920 | Comic book, 53.5 number of rare words met per thousand.

01:03:19.920 | A popular magazine, 65.7.

01:03:22.920 | Newspaper, 68.3.

01:03:25.920 | And a scientific paper, 128 rare words met per thousand.

01:03:31.920 | The preceding chart shows the printed text contains the most rare words.

01:03:37.920 | Whereas an adult uses only 9 rare words per thousand when talking with a three-year-old,

01:03:42.920 | there are three times as many in a children's book and more than seven times as many in a newspaper.

01:03:48.920 | As you can see from the chart, oral communication, including a TV script,

01:03:52.920 | is decidedly inferior to print for building vocabulary.

01:03:57.920 | As shown by the data for printed material, the number of rare words increases significantly.

01:04:02.920 | This poses serious problems for at-risk children who hear fewer words and encounter print less often at home.

01:04:09.920 | Such children face a gigantic word gap that impedes reading progress throughout school.

01:04:16.920 | And that gap can't possibly be breached in 120 hours of summer school or through morphonics instruction.

01:04:26.920 | So let's review now where we're going.

01:04:28.920 | We want to build the minds of our children. We know that we need to give them words and background knowledge.

01:04:35.920 | Those words and that background knowledge need to come to them in the most concentrated form that we're capable of giving to them.

01:04:47.920 | Yes, we want to talk with them in conversation, but normally in day-to-day conversation we only use a basic subset of words.

01:04:53.920 | So we need to give them more words and those words are not abundant in anything except the printed written text.

01:05:04.920 | And so what that means is we need to read to our young children and then encourage our reading children to read,

01:05:12.920 | because that's where they're going to acquire those words.

01:05:15.920 | Now here is where your investments can pay off massively.

01:05:20.920 | If you will dedicate yourself to finding the world's best books with the best words,

01:05:30.920 | and then you dedicate yourself to reading those books to your children,

01:05:34.920 | and you dedicate yourself to encouraging them to read them to themselves or have them read,

01:05:40.920 | which we'll talk about in a moment, through audiobooks,

01:05:42.920 | you can give your children the background knowledge and words so intensely

01:05:47.920 | that their vocabulary going into school can be light years ahead of their peers.

01:05:55.920 | And I want to give you an actual example.

01:05:58.920 | I'm going to take a moment to read to you an example that I just noticed this week while I was reading to my children.

01:06:05.920 | I read to my children a lot.

01:06:07.920 | I personally aim for reading aloud to my family two hours a day.

01:06:11.920 | That's my goal.

01:06:12.920 | I reach it most days, sometimes more, sometimes days I don't get it done,

01:06:16.920 | but I aim for reading to my children two hours a day.

01:06:20.920 | And to be clear, it's not two hours at one time.

01:06:22.920 | It's sprinkled throughout the day.

01:06:24.920 | But I track it and I exceed that goal most days.

01:06:27.920 | And in addition, I try to read to my children the best books.

01:06:32.920 | And when you read really wonderful children's literature,

01:06:35.920 | and you see the vocabulary that's used and the mental pictures and whatnot that are made,

01:06:41.920 | and then you go and compare it to all of the other alternatives,

01:06:45.920 | you can't come away thinking that anything is superior.

01:06:49.920 | But I fear that most of us are not exposed to good quality children's literature because we don't go out and look at it.

01:06:53.920 | So I want to take a moment and I want to read about five pages from the book that I was reading to my children this week.

01:06:59.920 | The book is called Gone Away Lake by an author named Elizabeth Enright.

01:07:04.920 | It's this wonderful story about some young children who on their summer vacation discover an abandoned town

01:07:11.920 | and meet some people who are living in this ghost town.

01:07:14.920 | those people are introducing them to uh to the possibility of using one of these abandoned houses

01:07:22.040 | as a clubhouse that's the basic plot of the book and for children this concept is completely

01:07:26.360 | engaging so if you've not been exposed to high quality children's literature take just a few

01:07:31.320 | minutes and listen to me read this and see how this activates you and then pay attention to the

01:07:37.400 | words that are being used and then again for for context i'm reading this to a nine-year-old

01:07:42.040 | a seven-year-old a five-year-old and a three-year-old now the three-year-old is not super

01:07:45.800 | into it he listens but he's not super engaged it's a little bit past his ability but the rest of them

01:07:51.880 | love it. Belmir. Clouds had covered the sky during the course of Mr. Payton's story and now as they

01:08:00.840 | came out they saw that the color of the day had changed from green and yellow to a cool gray.

01:08:06.840 | The reeds tipping their tops had a velvety bluish look. "Won't rain yet," Mr. Payton said,

01:08:12.680 | glancing at the sky. "Will tonight though. 11, 12 o'clock. We'll get a good steady soaking.

01:08:17.480 | Good for the garden, good for the frogs." "My brother has a remarkable talent for foretelling

01:08:21.960 | weather," Mrs. Cheever said. "I've hardly ever known him wrong." "The swamp taught me," Mr.

01:08:27.480 | Payton conceded. "Live alone as we do, not bothered by the characters of people. And soon,

01:08:33.160 | if you're attentive, you begin to know the character of the weather. Or characters, it has

01:08:39.080 | many." They walked the path in single file. "Now that house," Mr. Payton pointed his cane. "That

01:08:46.040 | house, the Delaney's, might be a good one but there's a bull snake makes his home under the

01:08:50.520 | front steps and I believe there are rats in the basement." "No thank you," said Portia.

01:08:54.600 | "The castle castle has fallen to trash of course and the one beyond is unsound. Roof's gone. Same

01:09:01.400 | with the big house but the Tucker Towns. Now that one maybe? Let's go see." The grass in the

01:09:08.280 | dooryard of Belmere was high as their waists. The old house loomed above them shabby and fancy.

01:09:15.160 | "It doesn't look friendly," thought Portia. The front door glued by years of damp and disuse

01:09:22.120 | stuck fast in its frame. They got in by way of a window from which the lower sash was gone.

01:09:28.440 | The room they entered was large and dark. The floor was littered with fallen plaster and a

01:09:33.400 | crop of toadstools glimmered there. Portia gave a loud scream pointing at the wall before them

01:09:39.000 | but then she saw that what she had believed to be a group of approaching strangers, ghosts perhaps,

01:09:44.520 | was really only the reflection of themselves. A great mirror was set against the wall.

01:09:49.240 | "I thought it was people, not just us," she explained apologetically. "I mean they, we,

01:09:56.040 | look so shadowy and queer." "I was startled myself," confessed Mrs. Cheever, "and I knew

01:10:01.720 | that mirror was there. It's Mrs. Ravenel's old mirror. She was the mother-in-law. She contributed

01:10:07.000 | it to the furnishing of Belmere. The damp has damaged it now, of course. See how blotched it

01:10:11.800 | is and the frames turned black." Looking into the mirror was like looking into a pond mottled with

01:10:18.440 | duckweed. Portia liked the way her face appeared in it. Softened, dimmed, mysterious, she thought.

01:10:26.520 | "Now up there on the ceiling where you see the broken fixtures was a very fine gas chandelier,"

01:10:31.720 | said Mr. Peyton, waving his cane aloft. "Wonder what happened to that."

01:10:34.840 | "Plunderers, no doubt," said his sister. "Plunderers got a lot out of Tarago in their day."

01:10:39.880 | Growing used to the dim light, the children's eyes saw now where the paper had fallen from the walls.

01:10:46.920 | Names and dates were scribbled and scratched and initials were carved in the smooth mahogany of the

01:10:52.040 | stair rail. "That's what they used to do," said Mrs. Cheever with satisfaction. "They don't come

01:10:57.880 | here anymore now that my brother and I have settled in. Perhaps they fancy I'm a witch."

01:11:02.520 | She straightened her bell-shaped hat rather proudly. "It flatters many that folks should

01:11:07.160 | think her dangerous," said Mr. Peyton, laughing comfortably. "She's about as dangerous as a dove.

01:11:12.760 | Now these stairs, Portia, Julian, watch out for these. If you select this house, I advise you to

01:11:18.920 | mend the treads. Julian, I'll give you the tools. Hold on to the railing, Minnie." "I'm perfectly

01:11:23.960 | able, Pin," replied his sister without holding on to anything but her skirt to avoid tripping on it.

01:11:29.160 | "And I wish you wouldn't call me Minnie. Min is tolerable, but Minnie, that's the trouble with

01:11:34.360 | the name Minnehaha." "I know exactly how you feel," agreed Portia warmly. "Everybody calls me

01:11:40.760 | Porsche." "Well, I never shall." "No, indeed, I shall not," declared Mrs. Cheever. In the upstairs

01:11:47.640 | hall, Mr. Peyton, advising caution, walked ahead, every now and then stamping his booted foot on

01:11:53.160 | the floor. "Sound, seems perfectly sound," he observed. "Roof's still intact, but it's best

01:11:58.440 | to be careful. Haven't been up here since 1942." The rooms that opened off the hall were bleak

01:12:05.560 | and empty. Clay wasp's nests were stuck to the moldings. No furniture remained, but a broken

01:12:11.800 | washstand or two and an iron bedstead. Plaster had fallen everywhere. There was a solid smell of damp.

01:12:18.760 | "That was Tark's room," Mr. Peyton observed, glancing at a doorway. "By Jove, how well I

01:12:24.360 | remember it. Maps all over the wall. And on his ceiling, he'd painted the constellations in their

01:12:29.160 | summer order. You can still see some of the blue and gold. He had a time painting it. Lay on his

01:12:35.160 | back on a plank laid across two ladders. That's how Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel,"

01:12:40.040 | says he. "But the amount of paint he got on himself, in his hair, in his eyebrows. And I've

01:12:45.960 | swallowed plenty too," says he. "For I work with my mouth open when I'm concentrating." Lucky thing

01:12:51.640 | it didn't poison him, though no doubt he had an azure colored elementary tracked for a long time

01:12:57.160 | afterwards. "I remember those blue eyebrows," said Mrs. Cheever as they continued along the hall.

01:13:02.920 | "A terrible sight. Now this room at the very end was Baby Bell's," she tried to open the door. "Oh

01:13:08.920 | dear, the miserable thing is stuck. Pen see if you," Mr. Peyton and Julian shoved their shoulders

01:13:13.800 | against the door, which instantly burst open, hurling them inward. Mrs. Cheever and Portia

01:13:18.120 | followed. "This one's lovely," exclaimed Portia. And it was. A light, spacious room with three

01:13:24.920 | windows and a fireplace. Facing south and having been shut up for a long time, the room was drier

01:13:30.280 | than the others and no wasps had lodged there, though there were signs on the hearth that swifts

01:13:35.400 | had nested in the chimney. Without thinking, Portia walked to a closed closet door and turned

01:13:40.120 | the knob. That door, like the other, opened unwillingly, resisting strongly at first and

01:13:45.320 | then flying forward to bang her on the forehead. "Ouch!" said Portia. "And then why look what's

01:13:51.080 | up there on the shelf, Mrs. Cheever. Why look at those!" I'll stop, but I hope it drives the point

01:14:01.400 | home that if you will find and read world-class literature to your children, they will be

01:14:09.080 | utterly engrossed in the story, which gives them a tremendous amount of background knowledge on life,

01:14:16.040 | as well as an absolutely massive vocabulary. Think of all the words that I just read that

01:14:25.480 | are not in the common vocabulary, and we learn words by hearing them in meaningful context

01:14:33.400 | repeatedly. And so, if you will read to your children, you can put them so far ahead of

01:14:40.040 | their peers in terms of vocabulary, and that will fundamentally alter their academic career

01:14:48.760 | as well as, very possibly, their life career. An experience I had a number of years ago

01:14:55.560 | is so etched on my brain that I want to share it with you in this context,

01:15:02.840 | because it matters. A few years ago, I had a friend of mine that I grew up with, and this

01:15:10.360 | friend was not from my same kind of background and upbringing. He was adopted when he was a baby,

01:15:21.400 | adopted into a loving and wonderful home. His mother died of cancer when he was only a few

01:15:29.080 | years old, though, so he never knew his mother. So, he was raised by a single father. This father

01:15:34.920 | was a loving and devoted father, but he was a very simple man. The father worked as a – owned a

01:15:43.720 | landscaping – a lawn maintenance company, and he worked to give his children everything that he

01:15:49.720 | could. And he gave his son everything that he could. All of the necessary boxes for a successful

01:15:57.560 | childhood were checked. Now, he was raised by a single father. His father never – his widow or

01:16:03.320 | father never remarried. So, he was raised by a single father. He missed the influence of a mother

01:16:08.200 | in his life. But again, the father was loving and wonderful. He was close to – the boy's

01:16:13.880 | grandmother was involved in his life, etc. The boy went to private schools, went to various private

01:16:20.680 | schools. He wasn't great academically, but he was adequate, graduated from high school.

01:16:24.600 | All during his lifetime – sorry, during his teenage years, he worked in his father's company

01:16:31.880 | and in the lawn maintenance business. And he worked hard, earned money, etc. It was a good

01:16:36.920 | family business. Again, good productive relationship. And then after graduating from

01:16:43.400 | high school, he continued to work in his father's company. His father later sold the company,

01:16:47.160 | and he continued to work for the guy who had purchased the landscaping company.

01:16:50.840 | Then this young man – young man at that time, 23-ish years old – he got into an accident that

01:17:00.840 | was his fault. Car accident. He was fine, but he was sued by the lady who he got an accident with,

01:17:08.920 | and his license was affected because of the at-fault accident. And so, his boss's insurance

01:17:14.840 | rates were going to increase massively. And so, his boss at the company fired him because he

01:17:20.920 | wasn't willing to pay the higher insurance rates due to his now marred driving record.

01:17:26.360 | And this is where I came in. I had known the boy his entire lifetime. We had been closer at times,

01:17:32.600 | farther away at times, etc. But we came in, and I got involved, and I was doing a little bit of

01:17:37.880 | career coaching. Now, this young man had done a great job of saving money. At the time, he was in

01:17:42.760 | his early 20s. He had something like $30,000 saved, which was remarkable. And basically,

01:17:48.200 | he didn't do a lot with his life. He basically just saved money. He stayed at home. He played

01:17:53.560 | around on the computer, played computer games, etc. Went to work, came home, went and played

01:17:59.080 | basketball with some friends here and there, but didn't do a lot. So, here I was doing career

01:18:03.160 | coaching. And what was shocking to me was when I started probing about ideas he had for things he

01:18:08.840 | wanted to do, he had basically no ideas in his life. He couldn't come up with anything that was

01:18:16.760 | interesting to him. He had no idea what to do. The most creative idea that he had for his life

01:18:25.160 | and for his career was basically to go and get a job at a store working as a cash register.

01:18:32.520 | Now, he was a hardworking, perfectly competent guy, high school diploma, etc. And what was

01:18:39.320 | lacking in his life was imagination. He was lacking the understanding that things could be

01:18:46.040 | different. And as I sought to coach him a little bit, I quickly came to understand that he had no

01:18:55.320 | imagination about what he could do because he had no life experience that showed him what other

01:19:02.120 | options other people had gone on. And I came to realize that because he was not a reader,

01:19:07.640 | because he had not been exposed vicariously to the experiences of others, he didn't have a sense of

01:19:14.120 | the world and the realities of the world. By all accounts, he was a normal member of society,

01:19:20.680 | but his screen-oriented personal life and his limited personal experience confined him to a

01:19:27.720 | world that was extraordinarily small and rather dreary. And this influenced not only his

01:19:34.280 | choices, but his level of confidence in the world, his level of confidence in life.

01:19:42.760 | At 23 years old, he was a perfectly attractive guy. He went to the gym a lot. He had big muscles,

01:19:49.880 | was in great shape, etc. Very sociable, etc. He had no problem with social skills,

01:19:57.160 | perfectly normal guy. He had no ambition to marry, didn't really see the point, didn't know why he

01:20:02.760 | would want to marry. He didn't really have an ambition to go anywhere, do anything, just kind

01:20:08.200 | of live in life. And so I did my best to coach him and give him some ideas. I strongly urged him to

01:20:14.280 | go travel, and this is why I'm getting to. What was shocking to me was how little confidence he had

01:20:19.960 | in his ability to travel. I told him, I said, "Listen, you got 30 grand in the bank,

01:20:24.840 | you're 23 years old, you don't have a dime of debt, you got all the world in front of you.

01:20:29.160 | Buy yourself a pickup truck," or he already had an SUV. I was like, "Toss a mattress in the back of

01:20:32.360 | your pickup truck. Go hit the road, right? Just go drive, drive for a few weeks, go camp out,

01:20:37.480 | stay in some national parks, visit people, go to coffee shops, go to bars. If you see someone

01:20:42.520 | hiring a job, just work your way in a big square around the country, live cheap and pick up a job,

01:20:47.560 | work here for a few months, go there for a few months, basically get some life experience."

01:20:50.760 | I felt like that would be helpful for him. I wasn't going to turn him into a literary creature,

01:20:54.520 | nor would that even be advisable. Get some life experience and get access to some things that are

01:20:59.080 | available to you, right? Go and work on a shrimp boat in Louisiana, go and work on a

01:21:04.760 | logging crew in Maine, go do something interesting with your life.

01:21:08.200 | So as I'm talking with him, and over the course of weeks, I'm urging him to do it,

01:21:16.680 | he started moving in that direction. What he was scared of was the most insane things to me. He's

01:21:21.960 | like, "What happens if my car breaks down while I'm on my trip?" Newish car, very little chance

01:21:27.800 | of breaking down. I said, "You call a tow truck." "Well, what if a tow truck can't come?" "Then you

01:21:31.800 | put out your finger, like your thumb, you walk. You're 23 years old, you're in the prime of your

01:21:36.920 | physical youth, etc." But he couldn't do it. Now, my goal is not to be hard on my friend,

01:21:44.760 | we've all been in this experience, but I don't want my 23-year-old son to be in the situation

01:21:54.520 | that my friend was at 23 years old. And I don't want your son to be there either.

01:22:00.120 | The idea that you couldn't have any ideas about your future is unacceptable.

01:22:05.640 | Even if you choose, even if you say, not everyone needs to go and sail the world constantly. I'm

01:22:11.720 | not saying that we should all live unorthodox lifestyles, but you should have the imagination

01:22:17.320 | to know various lifestyles that you could enjoy, things that could be good for you.

01:22:21.560 | And it's perfectly reasonable for you to make a choice and say, "I'm working this fairly mundane

01:22:25.960 | job because it gives me these certain things that I want." Again, that's fine, I'm not arguing with

01:22:30.280 | that. But make that choice intentionally, knowing that there are other things that you could do and

01:22:36.760 | that you've chosen to do those things. But you don't want to be in a situation where you're 23

01:22:41.320 | years old, money, time, physical health, etc. And you don't have the courage and confidence to even

01:22:47.400 | go explore the world looking for something else that you could do. This young man had all the

01:22:53.480 | basics, high school diploma, could read, could do math, etc. Gone to a private school, good school,

01:23:00.440 | right? But he didn't have... I'm lacking the words. You need to give your children experience in life.

01:23:13.880 | It's better for your children to work six different jobs during their middle school and high school

01:23:21.240 | years than one job. It's interesting. As I reflected on this, I realized how different his

01:23:25.960 | life course was than my life course. I've actually, although I want my children to have the opportunity

01:23:31.160 | to work in our family businesses, I'm concerned about them exclusively being involved in the family

01:23:37.160 | businesses because it's bad for experience. Children need to go and they need to work for

01:23:41.960 | different employers, they need to be exposed to all kinds of different kinds of co-workers,

01:23:45.160 | they need to be exposed to different cultures, different backgrounds, different customs,

01:23:48.520 | and that experience needs to be both firsthand and through other resources. Secondhand through

01:23:54.200 | literature, through movies, through stories of other people, etc. We need to expose our children

01:24:00.440 | to these things. How can I give my kids word if I don't have them? This is a question I've heard

01:24:06.680 | from parents who have learning disabilities or for whom English is a second language.

01:24:10.360 | While there are few easy answers in parenting, this one is easier than most. There is a public

01:24:16.520 | agency that comes to the rescue in such instances. In fact, it's been doing this job for more than a

01:24:21.640 | century. What the agency does is take all the nouns, verbs, and adjectives a person would ever

01:24:28.360 | need and bundle them into little packages for anyone to borrow free. It asks only that you

01:24:35.400 | bring the packages back in a few weeks. I'm referring to the American Free Public Library,

01:24:40.520 | the people's university, and for those who can't read the words, they are now available on audio

01:24:45.640 | cassette and CD. Forty years ago you had to be blind to get a recorded book in America. Now anyone

01:24:51.240 | can. What do you do? How do you invest into your children? Expose your children to an immense

01:24:58.280 | amount of background knowledge and an immense amount of words. Do it based upon reading to them

01:25:05.000 | constantly and continually at every age, not just at young age, but all the ages. Do it by

01:25:11.480 | encouraging them to read constantly and continually at every age and to read a diet

01:25:18.680 | of great diversity of sources and do it by exposing them to audiobooks, really wonderful

01:25:28.360 | audiobooks. I use all of these things and I think that if you do them you'll see the amount of

01:25:34.680 | difference that can be made. Let's do a quick math calculation here. Do you remember the number that

01:25:41.160 | was used as far as from the Kansas University study of how many words the wealthy people would

01:25:45.480 | expose the total words a child would have heard by age four? The number in the highest group was

01:25:51.960 | 45 million words. The four-year-old child from the professional family will have heard 45 million

01:25:56.440 | words prior to the age of four. When I read, I read at a rate of 8,000 words per hour. I read

01:26:05.960 | 8,000 words per hour and I read two hours per day. Basically, every single day,

01:26:11.480 | 365 days per year. That's an average. That means that every year I read to my children about 5,840,000

01:26:18.120 | words. Over the course of four years, that comes out to 23,360,000 words.

01:26:26.360 | So, I know that I myself am putting in, again, about 6 million words per year just from reading aloud.

01:26:34.120 | That's ignoring conversation, etc. Total for that four-year-old is 23.3 million words.

01:26:40.280 | In addition to that, we do as a family a huge amount of audiobook listening. I would estimate

01:26:46.600 | it varies on the child, but somewhere between one to three hours a day of audiobook listening.

01:26:52.360 | When I go through our daily schedule, I'll explain how I do that. Let's just call it two hours a day.

01:26:56.760 | Two hours a day, again, over four years, I know for sure that I'm getting another 23.3 million words

01:27:04.840 | into my child. So, right there, I'm at 46 million words with stuff that I track. My wife also reads

01:27:12.920 | to the children quite a lot. I don't track the amount of time that she reads to them, but she

01:27:16.680 | also reads to them quite a lot. And, of course, we converse constantly, non-stop, etc. And so,

01:27:23.720 | if the average professional child gets 45 million words prior to entering kindergarten,

01:27:31.480 | I think that pretty reliably that I can get 60 million words into my children prior to the age

01:27:39.160 | at which they enter into kindergarten. And then, because of the resources that we consume,

01:27:46.120 | those words that we present are much…there are many more of the less common words than the most

01:27:54.440 | common words. I have a lot more to say on this subject, but I can hear that my children have

01:27:59.480 | awakened from their naps in the other room, and I am needed for my fatherly duties. So,

01:28:05.400 | I'm going to close this podcast episode here and come back with you with more. I want to talk

01:28:12.680 | about…certainly about reading. I want to talk about fiction versus non-fiction and the dreadful

01:28:19.160 | importance of lots and lots of fiction. I want to talk about multilingualism and reading in

01:28:25.560 | different languages, because that is another thing. Now, I'll explain in detail the impact

01:28:31.160 | that I think multilingualism can have on your children's brains, and I'll do it from the

01:28:35.880 | perspective…remember, three years ago, we as a family were a monolingual family. At this point

01:28:41.560 | in time, we are now reading and homeschooling in six languages. I'll explain that process to you,

01:28:48.760 | because I believe it is tremendously important, and it's very important even what those languages

01:28:55.640 | are and how they impact your skill and knowledge in the English language, etc.

01:29:00.520 | And then, we'll move on to numeracy, we'll talk about music and musicality, etc.

01:29:05.880 | When it comes to investing into your child's mind and brain and enhancing the cognitive ability of

01:29:13.160 | your child, there are many things you can do. Most of them are very simple and very inexpensive.

01:29:20.680 | And if you want to make the one investment into your child's cognitive ability that will pay off

01:29:28.280 | in spades, just read to your children and surround them with books that they can read to themselves.

01:29:38.680 | Read to them, surround them with books that they can read, surround them with audiobooks of them

01:29:43.720 | being read to. And that, more than any other metric or piece of advice that I can find,

01:29:52.680 | will secure their academic future in an incredible way. And by the way, you don't need to do this for

01:30:01.480 | 12 years. You should, but you don't need to. You need basically four years of this.

01:30:07.000 | If you can send your kindergartner, if you have a young child and you send your kindergartner off

01:30:12.440 | into the local government school for kindergarten, but you send your child in, being exposed to,

01:30:19.240 | having been exposed to 60 or 70 or 80 million words by being with mom, with dad constantly

01:30:26.120 | conversing, talking, etc., reading hours and hours of books, reading audiobooks, having diverse

01:30:33.160 | experiences, etc., academically, as far as I'm concerned, you can pretty well dust your hands

01:30:38.280 | and be done. And your child will never be in the struggling component of the class ever again.

01:30:45.240 | But if you don't do that, if you don't get those first four, five, six years right by

01:30:51.720 | filling your child's mind with words and stories and etc., then you may spend

01:30:59.240 | tens of thousands of dollars on tutors and never make up the results, because you're just running

01:31:07.240 | behind the whole time. So, I think this is an adequate place for me to close today's podcast.

01:31:11.640 | I have more to say on the subject, but I'll be back with you very soon. Thank you for listening.

2023-02-10_How_to_Invest_in_Your_Children_at_a_Very_Young_Age_Part_4-Give_Your_Children_Words_and_Background_Knowledge