2023-03-22_How_to_Invest_in_Your_Children_at_a_Very_Young_Age_Part_9-Develop_Great

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00:01:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:01:07.000 | while building a plan for financial freedom in ten years or less.

00:01:10.000 | My name is Josh Rasheeds. I'm your host.

00:01:12.000 | Today we continue our series on how to invest in your children when they are young.

00:01:17.000 | This one's going to be not quite very young.

00:01:20.000 | It's more going to be young, and I will explain why.

00:01:24.000 | Today I want to encourage you that you can help your children to transform their thinking skills, their speaking skills, their communication skills broadly,

00:01:34.000 | their leadership skills, their impact in the world, etc.

00:01:38.000 | by doing one simple thing, which is encouraging and requiring your children to write.

00:01:50.000 | Now, let's set very quickly a little bit of context for this show, or for this series.

00:01:55.000 | We're doing this series here at the show called "How to Invest in Your Children When They Are Young."

00:02:00.000 | And this is a series that is birthed out of my years-long frustration with people going quick to save money for my kid's college

00:02:08.000 | as their primary, and in many cases, only way of thinking about how to invest in their children.

00:02:13.000 | And as a long-time frustrated financial planner, I've always believed that you can get a better return on your investments by investing directly into your children

00:02:22.000 | rather than putting money in mutual funds to save for college.

00:02:25.000 | Not that one is right and one is wrong. They're both fine, and I think most parents can do both.

00:02:29.000 | But if you had to choose between tossing your kids into some industrial government school somewhere

00:02:35.000 | and just never talking to them about their education again, but saving for college,

00:02:39.000 | versus talking with them and working on some of the techniques and the things that I'm sharing with you,

00:02:45.000 | I think you're better off with what I'm talking about versus the other stuff.

00:02:49.000 | Because if you get this stuff right, you don't have any need to save for college, because your child may not need college.

00:02:55.000 | Your child will get paid to go to college. All the doors will open up.

00:02:59.000 | And so we talked a lot about the basic physical things, physical ways to invest into your children.

00:03:04.000 | Now we're working through the way to invest in your children's minds.

00:03:08.000 | So after talking about the importance of developing healthy, strong, and beautiful bodies,

00:03:12.000 | we've talked about developing healthy, strong, and well-functioning minds.

00:03:17.000 | We've talked about enhancing literacy, helping your children to develop words so that increases their verbal intelligence,

00:03:24.000 | helping to develop numeracy. We've talked about multilingualism.

00:03:27.000 | And today we want to continue with our thinking skills by talking about writing.

00:03:32.000 | Writing, the skills and act of writing, is one of the most ignored tools that we have for becoming smarter.

00:03:42.000 | One of the lenses through which I pass all of my advice towards children is quite simply,

00:03:47.000 | "Do I think that this applies to me as an adult?"

00:03:51.000 | And maybe you've picked up by now, but there's almost nothing that I have said in this show, this series,

00:03:58.000 | that does not apply equally to your 68-year-old relative as it does to your 8-year-old relative.

00:04:07.000 | Now there are a few things that, of course, you can't necessarily change with a 68-year-old.

00:04:11.000 | You can't go back and re-choose the genetic material of a 68-year-old, like I talked about in the very beginning of this show,

00:04:18.000 | or re-choose the way that a 68-year-old's mother and father prepared their bodies for pregnancy to give the best,

00:04:24.000 | you know, that stuff's done and gone.

00:04:26.000 | But virtually everything else that I have said applies equally to children as it does to adults.

00:04:33.000 | Now, there are times in which we're going to emphasize something more for children than for adults.

00:04:39.000 | And you'll notice that I brought this theme of opportunity cost up in the previous episode on multilingualism.

00:04:45.000 | When I talked about multilingualism, I shared with you that not only is it valuable to help children become multilingual

00:04:51.000 | because they have more time to become genuinely fluent in a language versus waiting until later,

00:04:57.000 | but also the opportunity cost for helping children become multilingual is smaller than the opportunity cost of, say,

00:05:04.000 | helping someone like me become multilingual.

00:05:07.000 | I'm in a very intense time of life. I have young children. I have work. I have business obligations, etc.

00:05:12.000 | I don't have tons of extra free time to just go around learning 15 languages.

00:05:17.000 | And so while I engage in some multilingual acquisition, some acquisition of foreign languages as a way of making myself smarter,

00:05:27.000 | the opportunity cost for that versus other more practical things is quite high.

00:05:31.000 | With children, the opportunity cost is much lower, and I think it makes a lot of sense.

00:05:36.000 | So there are differences between how we interact with children because children have lots of time that adults don't have.

00:05:42.000 | But in general, I think most of the things that we encourage children to do will probably be things that we ourselves should do,

00:05:51.000 | meaning I don't want to just have a whole bunch of stuff for my children.

00:05:54.000 | Rather, I want something that I would say, you know what, either I'm willing to do that now,

00:05:59.000 | or I at least would be willing to do it if I were doing childhood over again and I had that time.

00:06:06.000 | And so in this comment of writing, this is one of the areas where you see this really shine through.

00:06:12.000 | We want to help our children to be effective writers, not from a career perspective primarily,

00:06:21.000 | although I think there are compelling reasons to help our children to become good writers because it is a skill that can be useful in their career.

00:06:29.000 | It can be a very highly paid skill. But my primary reason for helping children to become skilled and competent writers is because I want them to be skilled and competent thinkers.

00:06:42.000 | And you'll notice that as we talk about investing in children's minds, that's a central theme of everything that I've talked about.

00:06:48.000 | We want our children to think well. We need strong bodies and we need strong minds.

00:06:53.000 | So how do we build strong minds? Well, so far we've talked a lot about becoming smarter and intentionally growing the gray matter in our children's heads,

00:07:02.000 | intentionally becoming well informed about the world. But how do we make sure that our children actually think accurate and useful thoughts?

00:07:10.000 | Well, they need to think. They need to dedicate themselves to thinking.

00:07:14.000 | Step one of thinking well involves being informed about the world and being informed about the experiences of others.

00:07:21.000 | But we've covered that amply in our conversations about reading and literacy, etc.

00:07:25.000 | But how do we then take thoughts that we have about the things that we've observed in the world, read about in the world, etc.,

00:07:33.000 | and then transform them into something that is useful?

00:07:38.000 | The number one tool we have is writing. Why is writing so powerful?

00:07:42.000 | Well, writing allows you to take these immaterial, somewhat elusive things we call thoughts and put them onto paper in a way that they can be made concrete and examined carefully.

00:07:58.000 | And that's what's so powerful about writing. Also, writing is something that is generally slow.

00:08:05.000 | And because it's slow, it requires labor and it gives our minds opportunities to ponder over the veracity, the truthfulness of what we are actually saying.

00:08:17.000 | So why should your children write? Well, a few reasons.

00:08:22.000 | One is what I've said. Good writers tend to be clear thinkers.

00:08:28.000 | And the process of writing is one of the most effective tools that you can use to be sure that you are thinking effectively.

00:08:40.000 | This is true for children. This is true for adults.

00:08:43.000 | There are many ways that you can express this.

00:08:45.000 | If you're wrestling with a problem, pull out a piece of paper, write at the top of it the problem in the form of a question, and then write an answer to this.

00:08:52.000 | I've used this for years as a goal-setting technique.

00:08:55.000 | I've got a fresh sheet in a journal. I use just a simple planner each day and open up at the top of the page, write your question.

00:09:03.000 | How can I make more money? Write it in the form of a question and then just fill in the page with ideas.

00:09:08.000 | Number 1 to 30 or 1 to 20 or just write out every idea that you have.

00:09:12.000 | That process of focusing on a sheet of paper and writing, even if it's not in the form of narrative, it's just bullet points, it's powerful.

00:09:20.000 | If you're facing a problem, write down your problem at the top of a sheet of paper and then write down potential answers to that problem.

00:09:27.000 | Just that act of releasing those thoughts from your mind and putting them on paper is very freeing.

00:09:33.000 | Years ago, we went through the Getting Things Done revolution spearheaded by David Allen.

00:09:39.000 | In David Allen's incredible book called Getting Things Done, he makes the point that the brain is not good at holding on to thoughts effectively.

00:09:49.000 | And then feeding you those thoughts exactly when you need them.

00:09:52.000 | And so one of the basic steps that you take is simply empty your brain of all of its commitments, deposit those thoughts into a trusted system,

00:10:02.000 | and then maintain the system so that your brain can be mostly focused on the task of actually thinking rather than trying to remember random things.

00:10:12.000 | In addition, we can take thinking, so that was basically, to be clear, the first level of thinking,

00:10:19.000 | to empty your brain, to clear your brain and write down your commitments, the things that you have going on,

00:10:24.000 | so that your brain can be clear, right, in that mind-like water space, that space where you're just clear and relaxed.

00:10:31.000 | Then the second aspect of writing is when you're actually thinking about something very, very carefully.

00:10:37.000 | And writing forces you to articulate your thoughts in words rather than impressions.

00:10:42.000 | Your brain functions in terms of words and pictures, but sometimes those words and pictures can get all confused.

00:10:49.000 | But when you force yourself to articulate clearly in words on paper, you can then study an opinion that you have,

00:10:55.000 | or a philosophy that you have, or a model that you've created, and ask yourself, "Is this really true? Do I really believe this?"

00:11:03.000 | So some of the best thinkers in the world become that way by writing.

00:11:08.000 | And many non-writers misunderstand this. They think that people write well because they think well.

00:11:13.000 | And in reality, much of the time, people think well because they write well.

00:11:18.000 | The actual act of writing is a powerful form of thinking. It's a powerful tool of thinking.

00:11:28.000 | Your children should write because writing makes them better learners.

00:11:33.000 | Years ago, I heard Gary North make a quip in one of his essays.

00:11:38.000 | And by the way, North was an incredibly productive writer, now deceased, of course.

00:11:42.000 | But there was a time for many years where he wrote four long-form essays a day, plus work which he published on his website,

00:11:50.000 | plus chapters in his books, plus courses and things that he taught.

00:11:55.000 | He was an incredibly prolific writer. And he wrote about writing, and he said,

00:11:59.000 | "One of the things that I've learned about writing is that writing makes me a better listener."

00:12:04.000 | He said, "I'll go to a party, and I'll be talking to someone, and I'm always thinking about, 'Is there a story here? What's the story?'"

00:12:10.000 | And so, if you know you're going to have to write about something, it causes you to listen more carefully.

00:12:15.000 | And then, when you write about something, especially when you're not copying,

00:12:19.000 | you're just simply articulating what you know about something, you have to genuinely understand it.

00:12:25.000 | If you're going to write effectively about another person's point of view, you need to understand it.

00:12:29.000 | A good practice is to steel man your opponent's arguments.

00:12:33.000 | And if you have to sit down and write out the thought process, the chain of logic that leads your opponent to believe the way he does,

00:12:40.000 | to have the opinions that he does, then at least you know you're going to genuinely understand it,

00:12:45.000 | if you can write it off the top of your head.

00:12:47.000 | And if you can't just sit down and write it out carefully on top of your head,

00:12:50.000 | and then look back at it and be confident with what you've written, you know you don't quite understand it well enough.

00:12:55.000 | This is, in some ways, an expression of what is, I think, commonly labeled today the Feynman technique for learning,

00:13:02.000 | the lecture-to-the-wall technique.

00:13:04.000 | Basically, it involves learn something, take a chapter of a book, a subject that you're studying, etc., learn something,

00:13:10.000 | then close the book, stand up, and deliver a lecture on it.

00:13:14.000 | And writing is a form of that. Can you articulate it?

00:13:17.000 | And this process of recalling what you know and then articulating it makes what you know actually go deeper into your learning.

00:13:26.000 | You can't do this with everything, because we don't need to learn everything very well.

00:13:30.000 | But if there is something that you need to learn very well, probably the best thing you can do about it is write a book on it.

00:13:36.000 | And I'm partly being facetious, but only partly.

00:13:41.000 | If there's something that I want to learn about, I will usually create a podcast series on it.

00:13:46.000 | I'll create written content on it, write a book on it.

00:13:50.000 | And that process of saying, "Hey, I don't know anything about such and such, but I'm going to go write a book on it,"

00:13:55.000 | it forces you to organize your research in a compelling way, to learn about it, and then to articulate your unique thoughts.

00:14:01.000 | So writers are better learners.

00:14:04.000 | Then when we look at the long term, writers are impactful on the world.

00:14:09.000 | And in many ways, I think writing is perhaps the most, has the most impact.

00:14:15.000 | It is true, and let me start with the reverse actually.

00:14:21.000 | I don't think that writing and speaking need to be in conflict.

00:14:26.000 | Just like writing and say, movie making or film making don't need to be in conflict.

00:14:31.000 | Writing and speaking are very compatible.

00:14:34.000 | Many people in the world do not read.

00:14:37.000 | And so if you do not write, that's not to say that you can't reach people.

00:14:42.000 | You can reach people with your spoken word.

00:14:45.000 | I, myself, primarily use the medium of spoken word to communicate and seek to impact the world in a positive direction.

00:14:53.000 | But at its core, writing forms the best exercise that's possible for speaking well.

00:15:01.000 | And speaking and writing have this symbiotic relationship where they're not in conflict with one another.

00:15:08.000 | You don't have to choose one or the other.

00:15:10.000 | But if you were going to major on one or the other, I think writing is probably the more impactful thing.

00:15:17.000 | And here would be a few arguments for it.

00:15:20.000 | First of all, writing is able to be consumed more broadly and more easily by more people.

00:15:26.000 | It can go viral in ways that spoken word can't go.

00:15:29.000 | And I think more importantly, if you want to influence the influencers, writing is one of the most effective ways to do it.

00:15:37.000 | Writers are influential.

00:15:40.000 | And so you want your children to be influential and impactful to the world.

00:15:44.000 | Help them to become good writers.

00:15:46.000 | Help them be good speakers too, but help them to become good writers.

00:15:51.000 | One core technique that you can use, let's say that you want to be a better speaker.

00:15:55.000 | One thing that you can do is just practice writing more.

00:15:58.000 | One of the reasons many people become tongue-tied or flustered when they're called on to speak, especially to speak extemporaneously,

00:16:09.000 | is because they haven't had enough practice formulating their thoughts.

00:16:12.000 | So when people have asked me, "Joshua, how do I become a better speaker?"

00:16:17.000 | Well, one way you can become a better speaker is to speak more.

00:16:20.000 | But even if you don't have opportunity for that, just simply write.

00:16:24.000 | And practice using your slow thinking ability to create elegant, articulate, useful thoughts.

00:16:32.000 | And then that process will simply be sped up when you're called upon to speak.

00:16:37.000 | So writers are impactful on the world, and this is perfect interplay between speaking and writing.

00:16:42.000 | And in fact, this is the technique that we'll get to in a moment of how to help your young children to be better writers.

00:16:49.000 | Writing is a skill that needs to be developed through practice.

00:16:54.000 | So let's talk about how to teach writing.

00:16:57.000 | This is one of those areas in which I have a model that is developed from research and from careful listening and studying of other people who've been effective with it.

00:17:09.000 | And yet it's a model that I am still proving out with my own children.

00:17:13.000 | So there may be modifications to this over time as my model meets reality.

00:17:18.000 | But here are some thoughts that I think are useful and I hope will help you, especially if you're helping your children to become better writers.

00:17:25.000 | First, if you want to become a better writer, it's important that you become a better reader.

00:17:33.000 | It's very unusual to find a skilled, competent writer who is not also a skilled and competent reader.

00:17:42.000 | Good reading begets good writing.

00:17:45.000 | And there are a few reasons for this.

00:17:49.000 | The first thing is good reading requires you to absorb good thoughts.

00:17:54.000 | People who do not read often have a very superficial way of thinking about the world.

00:18:00.000 | Because you can go through life and if you're insulated from serious academic, let me strike academic, just serious text in your field that you care about.

00:18:11.000 | If you're insulated from those things, your thoughts will tend to be shallow, your knowledge will tend to be superficial, and you will not genuinely or generally interact with the meat of the subject that you're involved in.

00:18:25.000 | But if you read about a subject that you're interested in, be it that of a professional interest or a personal interest, doesn't matter.

00:18:31.000 | If you read about that subject, you will develop a skill of thinking serious thoughts on the subject.

00:18:40.000 | And that's the basic material that you need for good writing.

00:18:44.000 | In addition, you'll need to absorb style, written style from various authors so that you can develop your own personal style.

00:18:53.000 | So step one of developing a good writer is to become a good reader.

00:18:59.000 | Everything we've said previously about helping your children to read applies today.

00:19:05.000 | Help your children to read and read widely and deeply and of high quality so that your children will be skilled writers.

00:19:15.000 | Next, I think the basic technique that you can use with children is to encourage the skill of what is called narration.

00:19:25.000 | Now this is a term that is common to some of us in the homeschool world.

00:19:29.000 | It's a core part of an educational philosophy that I admire greatly called the Charlotte Mason philosophy.

00:19:35.000 | But narration is something that you can do regardless of how you school your children and it forms the foundation of ultimately good writing.

00:19:46.000 | Narration in its simplest form simply means telling about something.

00:19:51.000 | It's telling.

00:19:52.000 | Notice here we're using the spoken word, not paper and pencil.

00:19:57.000 | And yet the practice of narration forms the core of skill development.

00:20:03.000 | I want to read to you a little bit about this because this is the core technique that I want you to use with your children regardless of where they are to help them become better writers.

00:20:12.000 | Let's talk a little bit.

00:20:13.000 | I'm going to read to you a little bit from an excellent book called Know and Tell, the Art of Narration by Karen Glass.

00:20:20.000 | And here she talks in the beginning of the book about what narration is.

00:20:25.000 | Narration is telling.

00:20:28.000 | From the beginning of human history as far back into the past as it is possible for us to glimpse, people have been talking to each other.

00:20:35.000 | History has left us remnants of communication in pictures, cave drawings, sculpture, hieroglyphs, runes scratched on stones, and fragments of faded parchment.

00:20:45.000 | We cherish these messages from the past because we want to hear and understand the people who were like us, although they lived so long ago.

00:20:53.000 | However, their communication was not intended for us.

00:20:56.000 | They did not imagine us.

00:20:58.000 | Most of their interaction took place among themselves by way of spoken words as they talked to each other within their own communities.

00:21:05.000 | The words they uttered were the words that meant most to them, the words that touched their hearts, quickened their understanding and interest, and shaped their lives.

00:21:13.000 | They told each other the things that were important to them day by day, and they passed down treasured stories from generation to generation by way of oral tradition.

00:21:24.000 | We are doing much the same thing today.

00:21:26.000 | The purpose of this book is to acquaint you with the art of narration, the art of telling.

00:21:32.000 | It is an innately human activity, and because it is a natural part of human interaction, it is a particularly effective educational tool.

00:21:42.000 | I hope to give you some insight into how narration can be used as an educational method with students of all ages.

00:21:49.000 | I also hope to show the development of the process from simple oral narration to polished writing.

00:21:56.000 | What is narration? Why is it an art?

00:21:59.000 | In its simplest form, narration is simply telling.

00:22:03.000 | You attend a meeting and summarize it later for your boss, making sure that she hears all the main points that were discussed.

00:22:09.000 | Your grade school child returns from camp and entertains you with a detailed account of his group getting lost in the woods and all the adventures they had before they found their way back.

00:22:19.000 | Your teenager monopolizes the breakfast table conversation with a thorough recounting of the movie she saw the night before, including all the spoilers and the "no longer a surprise" conclusion.

00:22:29.000 | These are all narrations, tellings.

00:22:33.000 | These instances and dozens like them make up the fabric of our lives and our interaction with others.

00:22:39.000 | We sometimes tell because we need to convey information, but that is not the most important reason.

00:22:45.000 | We tell because we want to relive an event or allow others to experience something with us.

00:22:52.000 | Your boss wants to know what was said at the meeting.

00:22:54.000 | Your child wants you to enter into the adventure that he experienced.

00:22:57.000 | Your teenager wants to share the emotion of being surprised by the turn of events in the movie.

00:23:02.000 | We talk about the things that matter to us.

00:23:04.000 | We tell because we care.

00:23:07.000 | In short, there is nothing mysterious or magical about narration.

00:23:11.000 | We all do it.

00:23:13.000 | When we have had a pleasant outing or listened to a beautiful concert or seen an exciting play, our first impulse is to tell our friends about it, developing the power of telling.

00:23:25.000 | The desire to tell, to share with others, takes many forms.

00:23:29.000 | It can include the most earnest preaching or speech-making, as well as the whispered gossip in a corner.

00:23:36.000 | It is a natural human behavior with high and low purposes.

00:23:39.000 | Listen to your spouse talking about what happened at the gas station, or your daughter on the phone relating a complicated exchange of "then he said and I told him."

00:23:49.000 | We engage in this human activity of telling nearly every day at some level.

00:23:53.000 | Sometimes we do it formally and purposefully.

00:23:56.000 | More often we do it spontaneously and casually.

00:23:59.000 | This natural telling is the foundation of the art of narration.

00:24:03.000 | When we take this ordinary and very human activity and move it into the realm of education, it becomes a more formal practice.

00:24:11.000 | It is the same simple act of telling something, but it is now a required activity, and the material being related, whether history, geography, science, or literature, has been chosen by a careful teacher.

00:24:25.000 | By this means, narration becomes more than simply telling, and becomes, essentially, oral composition.

00:24:35.000 | Composition is the art of arranging facts, thoughts, and ideas and presenting them to others, in this case through the medium of words.

00:24:44.000 | Narration allows this practice to begin with the form that is most easy and natural for us, oral telling, or oral composition.

00:24:54.000 | When we take up narration as an educational tool, we do not have to begin by teaching children something they do not already know.

00:25:02.000 | We simply invite them to develop and refine their natural ability.

00:25:07.000 | Narrating is an art, like poetry making or painting, because it is there in every child's mind waiting to be discovered, and is not the result of any process of disciplinary education.

00:25:19.000 | A creative fiat calls it forth, "Let him narrate," and the child narrates, fluently, copiously, in ordered sequence, with fit and graphic details,

00:25:31.000 | with a just choice of words, without verbosity or tautology, so soon as he can speak with ease.

00:25:38.000 | This amazing gift with which normal children are born is allowed to lie fallow in their education.

00:25:43.000 | Bobby will come home with a heroic narrative of a fight he has seen between Duke and a dog in the street.

00:25:49.000 | It is wonderful. He has seen everything, and he tells everything with splendid vigor in the true epic vein.

00:25:55.000 | But so ingrained is our contempt for children that we see nothing in this but Bobby's foolish, childish way.

00:26:02.000 | Whereas here, if we have eyes to see and grace to build, is the ground plan of his education.

00:26:10.000 | To make an art of narration, we begin with children's natural interest and ability to tell about something.

00:26:17.000 | We accustom them to tell accurately, consecutively, and fully.

00:26:22.000 | In due time, we encourage them to write their narrations.

00:26:26.000 | They begin by learning to write the same thing they would have said in an oral narration,

00:26:31.000 | and when that becomes natural, we teach them to take what they have written and shape it into familiar forms of writing, such as essays.

00:26:38.000 | Narration is the basis of composition.

00:26:42.000 | When we practice the art of narration in education, it can replace all artificial attempts to teach composition.

00:26:49.000 | We do not instruct our children how to tell us about a movie or an incident at the park.

00:26:55.000 | We just listen while they tell, and perhaps ask for clarification.

00:26:59.000 | In spite of our innate understanding of what narration or oral composition entails in natural communication,

00:27:07.000 | we have become guilty of substituting unnatural methods in our efforts to teach children written composition.

00:27:13.000 | Hours and hours of precious educational time are invested each year in teaching children how to write.

00:27:19.000 | But in spite of all this, as a nation, we have made things worse instead of better.

00:27:24.000 | "According to the Nation's Report Card in 2007, the latest year for which this data is available,

00:27:29.000 | only 1% of all 12th graders nationwide could write a sophisticated, well-organized essay.

00:27:36.000 | Other research has shown that 70 to 75% of students in grades 4 through 12 write poorly."

00:27:44.000 | When we consider the eloquence and thoroughness with which we are able to narrate what happened at the ballpark last week,

00:27:50.000 | the plot of the latest novel we read, or how we managed to defeat the termites in the basement,

00:27:56.000 | we will recognize the power we possess to tell.

00:27:59.000 | Just as nearly everyone can run and jump at some level, nearly everyone has the natural ability to narrate.

00:28:06.000 | We can refine this natural ability with use and practice.

00:28:10.000 | We can gradually increase our proficiency until, like the medal winner who clears the high bar at a tremendous height,

00:28:17.000 | we astonish ourselves with our ability to say in words the things that we want to say.

00:28:22.000 | Through the use of narration, children can become thinkers and writers.

00:28:27.000 | It is not always obvious at the beginning of the process how oral narration will develop into the ability to write well,

00:28:33.000 | but that is part of what this book will attempt to show.

00:28:36.000 | We will be looking at each step in detail and considering each part of the process toward that desired outcome.

00:28:42.000 | You will find dozens of examples of real narrations from real children at different stages of the process,

00:28:47.000 | which will illustrate what can reasonably be expected at each point.

00:28:51.000 | Narration lays the foundation for writing well.

00:28:55.000 | Narration as a means of teaching written composition is actually a proven effective technique.

00:29:02.000 | This is clearer today than when I began to teach my own children some 20 years ago and made narration a regular practice.

00:29:09.000 | We find records of narration being used in education in the ancient world, among some Renaissance educators,

00:29:15.000 | and more recently by the British educator Charlotte Mason, who wrote and taught in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

00:29:21.000 | It is her influence that has brought narration to us in the 21st century.

00:29:25.000 | I was introduced to the use of narration in education when I read the Home Education series by Miss Mason,

00:29:31.000 | and I determined to give it a try.

00:29:34.000 | Something happened very early in the process that gave me a glimpse of the power and possibility inherent in this natural telling,

00:29:42.000 | and which convinced me to use narration consistently to the end of our educational endeavors.

00:29:47.000 | I wanted to see how effective narration could be when it was employed at every level.

00:29:53.000 | One week in November, still early in the school year, I read "The Thanksgiving Story" by Alice Dagliese to my six-year-old son,

00:30:00.000 | and he narrated it day by day.

00:30:03.000 | Not long after, a friend who was homeschooling her son, a year older,

00:30:07.000 | using traditional textbooks called and shared her disappointment in his writing that week.

00:30:12.000 | He had been assigned to write two sentences about the first Thanksgiving, and he had produced "The Pilgrims are Nice, The Indians are Nice."

00:30:22.000 | It was a laudable effort, and he had probably taken no small amount of trouble to spell out those words and sentences.

00:30:29.000 | But as a composition, it was perhaps lackluster.

00:30:34.000 | I thought about that assignment and the sentences my friend's son had written.

00:30:38.000 | Later, as an experiment, I asked my own son to tell me about the first Thanksgiving,

00:30:43.000 | and he related the story in full detail.

00:30:46.000 | If I had written down all he said, it might have filled one and a half or two pages.

00:30:52.000 | It was a genuine composition.

00:30:55.000 | But he could not have written it.

00:30:57.000 | In fact, he could not have written the two simple sentences my friend's son had written.

00:31:02.000 | In that single incident, I saw how oral narration allowed a child to make full use of his abilities to think and compose

00:31:10.000 | without being hindered by his inability to write and spell on paper.

00:31:15.000 | If the difference was so starkly clear this early in the educational journey,

00:31:19.000 | how far might it take us if we followed it faithfully to its conclusion?

00:31:23.000 | I committed myself and my homeschooled children to finding out.

00:31:27.000 | I have seen narration work with them and with scores of other children during the intervening 20 years,

00:31:33.000 | and my confidence in narration as a method is the foundation of this book.

00:31:39.000 | Narration is a training exercise in thinking well.

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00:32:14.000 | Learning to write is important.

00:32:18.000 | Yet teaching composition is not the only educational objective met by narration.

00:32:23.000 | Our natural use of narration in our everyday lives serves many purposes and meets many needs.

00:32:29.000 | Likewise, narration in education has a multitude of benefits.

00:32:33.000 | When you relate an event to someone else, it is because you want that person to share in the experience.

00:32:39.000 | If you were frustrated by a cashier at the store, you want to relate what happened

00:32:43.000 | so that others can feel your frustration and commiserate.

00:32:47.000 | When your daughter tells her best friend about a conversation with her boyfriend,

00:32:50.000 | she is untangling the threads and trying to make sense of one attempt at communication by means of another.

00:32:57.000 | When we tell someone the plot of a movie or a novel, we are reliving the story in our own minds

00:33:02.000 | and inviting others to join us in appreciation.

00:33:05.000 | Even in our lowest forms of narration, such as gossip, we are seeking shared understanding,

00:33:11.000 | albeit at the expense of another.

00:33:13.000 | At its heart, narration is a relationship-building exercise.

00:33:18.000 | When we lift narration out of its everyday context and use it as an educational method,

00:33:22.000 | we are giving each pupil narrator the opportunity to create, build, or strengthen his relationship with knowledge.

00:33:32.000 | The relationship develops on several levels.

00:33:34.000 | The child forms his own relationship with the material he is narrating,

00:33:38.000 | and as his relationships become broader and deeper,

00:33:42.000 | he begins to perceive the relationships that exist within knowledge itself.

00:33:46.000 | The first steps toward personal acquaintance with knowledge

00:33:49.000 | become the first steps toward higher-level thinking skills.

00:33:53.000 | "There is little practical utility in an exercise which does not call forth any of the higher powers of the mind,

00:34:00.000 | and it is but a barren result to be able to repeat dates, facts, and names

00:34:04.000 | with no sense of their important relations.

00:34:07.000 | Knowledge has been said to consist largely in relationing.

00:34:11.000 | By this is meant that to know an event is to know it in all its bearings,

00:34:15.000 | in its relation to other events in time, place, and circumstance,

00:34:19.000 | to know the causes and effects and the sequences of which it forms a part,

00:34:23.000 | and to be able to put it in its true place in the complex series of which it may be only a small item."

00:34:32.000 | When a child is asked to tell what he knows,

00:34:35.000 | his attention to the matter at hand is increased.

00:34:38.000 | He reads, listens, or watches more closely so that he will be able to tell.

00:34:44.000 | A child who narrates the life of George Washington, episode by episode,

00:34:48.000 | builds an affinity for the great man.

00:34:51.000 | He forms a relationship with him and feels that he knows him.

00:34:54.000 | When Washington is encountered in a general history book or makes an appearance in fiction,

00:34:59.000 | or is spotted on a one-dollar bill, he will be met as an old friend, not simply a name.

00:35:04.000 | Each encounter adds another layer to the relationship already begun.

00:35:09.000 | A child who must narrate a chapter about geology,

00:35:12.000 | telling how volcanoes are formed and how rivers dig deep channels,

00:35:15.000 | has his mind open to the scenery about him.

00:35:18.000 | When he sees a creek bed running below steep banks,

00:35:20.000 | he will remember what running water does to the landscape

00:35:23.000 | and look around for the telltale signs of its work.

00:35:26.000 | When any of us have to think about something thoroughly enough

00:35:29.000 | to be able to relate it to someone else,

00:35:32.000 | we are making that bit of knowledge a part of ourselves and our experience.

00:35:39.000 | The ability to tell or narrate is directly linked to knowledge.

00:35:45.000 | Narration and knowledge shape our relationships in many areas of our lives.

00:35:52.000 | Ms. Glass continues and talks about narration building relationships,

00:35:56.000 | but I want to skip forward to narration is an art.

00:36:00.000 | Everyday telling can be refined into the creative art of narration.

00:36:05.000 | It is creative because each child's mind, working on the material at hand,

00:36:10.000 | reproduces a version that is unique to that individual.

00:36:14.000 | "What a child can do is to assimilate and give knowledge forth in a form

00:36:19.000 | which is original because it is modified, recreated by the action of his own mind,

00:36:25.000 | and this originality is produced by the common bread and milk,

00:36:28.000 | food for everyone, acting upon the mind which is peculiar to each individual child."

00:36:34.000 | An art is not an artistic pursuit.

00:36:38.000 | The historical seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy)

00:36:44.000 | were called arts and not sciences for a reason.

00:36:47.000 | In the ancient world, a science represented a body of knowledge to be acquired.

00:36:53.000 | An art is not a body of knowledge.

00:36:56.000 | It is something to be practiced.

00:36:58.000 | An art is something that you do.

00:37:01.000 | This is why even in contemporary usage we speak of "practicing law" or "practicing medicine."

00:37:07.000 | It is necessary to acquire some knowledge in order to be a lawyer or a doctor, of course,

00:37:12.000 | but when knowing is expressed by doing, it becomes an art.

00:37:18.000 | Narration becomes an art when we lift it beyond its everyday uses and make it a purposeful pursuit.

00:37:24.000 | Many things that we do naturally can be polished and refined to a high degree of skill.

00:37:28.000 | Everyone can sing, but some train their voices to produce the highest quality of sublime music.

00:37:34.000 | Little children can jump and run, but athletes refine those abilities into record-breaking feats of strength and speed.

00:37:41.000 | We can all push the letters on a keyboard,

00:37:43.000 | but accomplished typists bang out 90 words per minute with virtually no errors.

00:37:47.000 | Like many arts, narration appears deceptively simple at first glance.

00:37:53.000 | A child hears or reads a passage from history, science, literature, biography, travel, or another literary work,

00:38:00.000 | and then retells what he has read or heard in his own words.

00:38:04.000 | That's all it looks like most of the time, the same kind of retelling that we do every day,

00:38:09.000 | except that the subject matter is purposefully chosen by the teacher,

00:38:12.000 | and the narration is a required activity rather than a spontaneous one.

00:38:17.000 | Have you ever seen the classic 1984 film The Karate Kid?

00:38:21.000 | In that film, the wise old sensei assigns his protege the task of waxing his car using very particular motions.

00:38:29.000 | The boy waxes the car according to the method until the movements become second nature,

00:38:34.000 | and then the teacher reveals that those motions, which have been perfected by practice, have other applications.

00:38:41.000 | In fact, they give the young man access to a power beyond what he realized he had.

00:38:46.000 | Narration is like that. It is a natural activity that we engage in all the time.

00:38:52.000 | But if we refine it and lift it beyond its mundane uses to a higher one, practicing and perfecting it,

00:38:59.000 | we will gain access to a power, a skill, that will take us further than we might have imagined.

00:39:05.000 | Rather than being simply the way we interact with the people around us in everyday life,

00:39:09.000 | narration becomes the key that builds our relationship with knowledge,

00:39:15.000 | develops our thinking skills, and gives us the power to collect our thoughts and relate them accurately and effectively,

00:39:22.000 | both in speech and in writing.

00:39:25.000 | Just as our narrative interactions with our family, friends, and neighbors increase our intimacy with them

00:39:31.000 | and strengthen our shared understanding, the process of narration in education deepens our understanding of the material we read

00:39:40.000 | and allows us to retain it as our own.

00:39:43.000 | Our learning becomes a matter of not merely acquiring information,

00:39:46.000 | but of relating what we are learning to what we already know,

00:39:49.000 | so that our understanding grows sharper and clearer and we remember things better.

00:39:58.000 | A couple of final points from the following chapter.

00:40:04.000 | The practice of narration is quite simple.

00:40:06.000 | You read a young child a page from a book and then ask her to tell you back what she has heard.

00:40:11.000 | An older child reads a chapter and you ask her to relate the chapter back to you,

00:40:16.000 | or to write out her narration of it.

00:40:19.000 | Most of the time, this is what narration looks like on a day-to-day basis when it is used in education.

00:40:24.000 | It requires no formal instruction, no special equipment, no particular means of evaluation.

00:40:29.000 | As part of a daily regimen, we simply say, "Tell me about it."

00:40:34.000 | "Tell me about life in ancient Egypt."

00:40:36.000 | "Tell me about the water cycle."

00:40:38.000 | "Tell me what Tom Sawyer did next."

00:40:40.000 | Or, "Tell me about the African savannah."

00:40:43.000 | Narration used in the ancient world.

00:40:46.000 | Narration in education makes an early appearance.

00:40:50.000 | When the early Greek educators formalized the study of rhetoric,

00:40:53.000 | narration was one of the earliest exercises appropriate for beginners.

00:40:57.000 | Formal rhetoric, as it was studied in the ancient world, was an extremely complex subject.

00:41:02.000 | Every aspect of a composition was given individual consideration,

00:41:06.000 | and pupils practiced each part separately.

00:41:08.000 | They mastered the various parts, hoping that ultimately they would be able to mix and remix the parts into effective compositions.

00:41:15.000 | Yet, some long-ago educators felt that good rhetorical practices could be achieved in a more natural way.

00:41:22.000 | For example, Augustine wrote, "And therefore, as infants cannot learn to speak,

00:41:27.000 | except by learning words and phrases from those who do speak,

00:41:30.000 | why should not men become eloquent without being taught any art of speech,

00:41:34.000 | simply by reading and learning the speeches of eloquent men, and by imitating them as far as they can?

00:41:40.000 | And what do we find from the examples themselves to be the case in this respect?

00:41:44.000 | We know numbers who, without acquaintance with rhetorical rules,

00:41:47.000 | are more eloquent than many who have learned these.

00:41:50.000 | But we know no one who is eloquent without having read and listened to the speeches and debates of eloquent men."

00:41:56.000 | This is very like what I propose narration will do.

00:42:00.000 | Augustine believed rhetoric could be developed organically with use and practice.

00:42:05.000 | Narration, as an aspect of rhetoric, works the same way, without special study or rules to guide its use.

00:42:12.000 | Read, listen, narrate, and your proficiency will grow.

00:42:17.000 | The simpler topics of rhetoric practiced by beginners were called the progimnismata,

00:42:23.000 | which literally means "pre-exercises."

00:42:26.000 | These were the basic building blocks for later rhetorical studies.

00:42:29.000 | Narration, as it was presented in the progimnismata,

00:42:33.000 | today sometimes referred to less formally as the progim,

00:42:36.000 | is essentially the same thing we have already discussed in Chapter 1,

00:42:39.000 | the telling of something that has occurred.

00:42:41.000 | These simpler pre-exercises did not merely teach foundational information about rhetoric.

00:42:47.000 | They served a deeper, longer-lasting purpose, which shaped the way the pupils learned and thought.

00:42:53.000 | "The progimnismata also inculcated certain habits of thought

00:42:57.000 | that transcended mere preparation of studying rhetoric.

00:43:01.000 | Each of the individual exercises teaches students to pay attention

00:43:06.000 | to matters of definition, classification, differentiation from similar forms, and etymology.

00:43:14.000 | The consistent use of narration builds mental habits of thinking

00:43:19.000 | that operate beyond the classroom and lesson time,

00:43:23.000 | paying attention, ordering knowledge, and then articulating it.

00:43:27.000 | These are high-level thinking skills, and students who use narration regularly

00:43:32.000 | will be able to apply those skills wherever they are needed."

00:43:36.000 | Renaissance educators who were familiar with the formal study of rhetoric

00:43:39.000 | recognized the value of telling back lessons that have been read or learned.

00:43:44.000 | Some of them suggested using the same telling technique

00:43:47.000 | in a less formal but consistent way to assist memory

00:43:51.000 | and build the intellectual habits which are the mark of a scholar.

00:43:55.000 | Erasmus, one of the most famous Renaissance scholars,

00:43:58.000 | considered narration to be indispensable.

00:44:00.000 | "The master must not omit to set as an exercise the reproduction of what he has given to the class.

00:44:08.000 | It involves time and trouble to the teacher, I know well, but it is essential.

00:44:13.000 | A literal reproduction of the matter taught is, of course, not required,

00:44:17.000 | but the substance of it presented in the pupil's own way."

00:44:22.000 | The kind of narration we expect from our students is exactly the same as what Erasmus wanted from his,

00:44:27.000 | the substance of the material presented in the child's own way.

00:44:32.000 | Comenius, a widely respected educational reformer who lived a century after Erasmus,

00:44:37.000 | also recommended narration explicitly.

00:44:40.000 | "Every pupil should acquire the habit of acting as a teacher.

00:44:44.000 | This will happen if, after the teacher has fully demonstrated and expounded something,

00:44:49.000 | the pupil himself is immediately required to give a satisfactory demonstration

00:44:53.000 | and exposition of the same thing in the same manner.

00:44:57.000 | Furthermore, pupils should be instructed to relate what they learn in school to their parents

00:45:01.000 | or servants at home or to anyone else capable of understanding such matters."

00:45:07.000 | When students are given the opportunity to write or speak in their own words about what they have learned,

00:45:12.000 | their minds are engaged and working at a level that far exceeds the mental requirements of merely filling in the blank.

00:45:18.000 | Narration, among other practices, laid a foundation for scholarly thinking

00:45:22.000 | that marked the educated men of the past.

00:45:26.000 | Today's educational practices do not usually aspire to inculcate original thinking.

00:45:31.000 | There is no reason that we cannot today accomplish as much as others have done before us.

00:45:37.000 | Later in this chapter, narration engages the whole mind.

00:45:42.000 | One characteristic of narration, which we noted in the previous chapter,

00:45:45.000 | is that it is not possible to narrate something unless you know it.

00:45:50.000 | In fact, the root of the word "narrative" is related to the Latin word for "to know."

00:45:57.000 | What we know, we can narrate.

00:46:00.000 | Those of us who mastered the art of true/false and multiple choice tests

00:46:04.000 | knew that the answer was already there on the page.

00:46:06.000 | We developed strategies for identifying it.

00:46:09.000 | When using narration, the only question is "What can you tell me about this?"

00:46:13.000 | When a child knows from the start that that will be the only question,

00:46:17.000 | her attention to the material at hand is secured.

00:46:20.000 | She knows that she will be able to answer only if she has absorbed the material.

00:46:25.000 | Skimming, a deplorable practice encouraged by fill-in-the-blank questions in many texts, will not suffice.

00:46:31.000 | She must comprehend the full meaning of the text.

00:46:35.000 | She is actively engaged in learning.

00:46:39.000 | When the reading is finished, and it is time for the narration, the real work of the mind begins.

00:46:44.000 | Not only must relevant details be recalled, but the material must be ordered in some way

00:46:49.000 | so that the narration makes sense.

00:46:52.000 | If you were going to relate the plot of a movie, you'd begin by setting the stage.

00:46:56.000 | There was a family who lived on a farm.

00:46:58.000 | Of course, the setting would be implied if the narrator jumped into the story by saying,

00:47:02.000 | "A farmer woke up one day and discovered something strange in his barn."

00:47:06.000 | Narration is infinitely flexible, with scope for individual style, but it requires thinking.

00:47:13.000 | "To tell again what they have read sounds very simple, but in reality it involves hard work."

00:47:20.000 | It is impossible to tell what they do not know,

00:47:23.000 | and to make an orderly narration of any passage read involves repeated putting of the question,

00:47:29.000 | "What next?" by the mind to itself till the whole thing stands out clearly in the memory.

00:47:34.000 | The process of narration does for the mind what the digestive organs do for the body.

00:47:40.000 | To have narrated a passage satisfactorily implies not a mere parrot-like committing to a memory of words,

00:47:47.000 | but the having made that passage one's own, a part of oneself.

00:47:52.000 | It is not an easy thing to do at first, but improvement soon comes,

00:47:57.000 | and the child himself proves to us that what he has read once and narrated at a lesson, say, in October,

00:48:03.000 | is still clear in his memory when, at the December examinations, he is asked again for that piece of knowledge.

00:48:11.000 | A student who narrates must decide where to begin and then continue in a way that makes sense,

00:48:16.000 | chronologically if the narration is a retelling of an event,

00:48:19.000 | or in some other intelligible order if she is narrating what a valley is for geography,

00:48:24.000 | or how the muscles move the joints in science.

00:48:27.000 | Her mind is actively engaged in asking that question, "What next?"

00:48:31.000 | until she has shared all that seems important to her.

00:48:34.000 | Everything will be connected and presented in some way that has required the narrator to think,

00:48:39.000 | to order and classify, to structure and formulate,

00:48:43.000 | and finally to articulate her thoughts in adequate sentences and vocabulary.

00:48:49.000 | In short, the deceptively simple act of narration incorporates all the powers of the mind

00:48:54.000 | and exercises them in a coordinated way,

00:48:57.000 | just as tossing a ball requires the coordinated efforts of the nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems,

00:49:03.000 | which are energized by the digestive and endocrine systems.

00:49:07.000 | We don't have to think about these aspects of the process explicitly or pay any attention to them at all.

00:49:12.000 | But when we toss a ball back and forth with a child, we are giving her a chance to exercise her muscles,

00:49:17.000 | practice eye-hand coordination, and probably a few more neurophysical skills,

00:49:22.000 | as well as just enjoy the game.

00:49:24.000 | Thinking of narration in this way gives us a few hints about what to expect and how to manage the early stages.

00:49:30.000 | Small children will drop or miss a ball more often than they will catch it at first,

00:49:34.000 | but we encourage them to keep trying and applaud each success.

00:49:37.000 | Their attempts at throwing are wild and unpredictable,

00:49:40.000 | but we offer what advice we can and demonstrate good technique until they begin to do better.

00:49:45.000 | With regular practice, the body builds the habit of throwing accurately and forcefully.

00:49:50.000 | Likewise, with regular narration, the mind builds the habit of attending, apprehending, ordering, and understanding.

00:49:56.000 | Current scientific research is validating this natural process in education.

00:50:00.000 | Recent studies have confirmed the link between speaking and remembering.

00:50:05.000 | A series of experiments demonstrated that vocalizing material fixed that material in the memory

00:50:11.000 | and increased the ability to recall it.

00:50:13.000 | The effect is enhanced further when the material is not just spoken aloud,

00:50:16.000 | but also addressed to an active listener.

00:50:19.000 | "Previous studies conducted at Professor Victor Boucher's Phonetic Sciences Laboratory

00:50:26.000 | have shown that when we articulate a sound, we create a sensory and motor reference in our brain

00:50:31.000 | by moving our mouth and feeling our vocal cords vibrate."

00:50:35.000 | The production of one or more sensory aspects allows for more efficient recall of the verbal element,

00:50:40.000 | but the added effect of talking to someone shows that in addition to the sensory-motor aspects

00:50:45.000 | related to verbal expression, the brain refers to the multisensory information

00:50:49.000 | associated with the communication episode.

00:50:52.000 | Boucher explained, "The result is that the information is better retained in memory."

00:50:58.000 | Children who narrate their lessons are being given the opportunity to do exactly what was done in these experiments,

00:51:04.000 | speak aloud to another person.

00:51:06.000 | The complex connections between the body and the brain or mind do their integrated work naturally.

00:51:11.000 | As the mind works on the material it has read or heard and the child tells it back,

00:51:16.000 | the knowledge is being digested, becoming a part of the child's own experience and self.

00:51:21.000 | This can be tested by simply asking a child to tell something that she has previously narrated.

00:51:26.000 | One of the most common and effective practices when using narration for school

00:51:31.000 | is to begin each new lesson with a request to tell what happened in the last one.

00:51:36.000 | This reinforces the connections between what will be new and what a child has already learned.

00:51:42.000 | "By the time children reach the top of the school, narration has become an ingrained habit,

00:51:48.000 | has led to observation and thought, to an ability to relate what was learnt last term, last week, yesterday,

00:51:54.000 | with this that we are now considering.

00:51:57.000 | Such coordination grows from remembered past narrations over a wide field.

00:52:03.000 | Some note in today's reading awakes an echo in some other subject or lesson,

00:52:07.000 | and so the power to compare and contrast and illustrate by example is developed.

00:52:12.000 | This should lead to a valuable use of analogy and application of past history to modern times and modern problems."

00:52:20.000 | Regular narration also increases vocabulary and the use of more complex sentences.

00:52:25.000 | This is the natural acquisition of rhetorical skills that Augustine observed.

00:52:30.000 | Much depends on the quality of the material being read and narrated, of course,

00:52:34.000 | but the peculiar attention that is created by requiring narration

00:52:38.000 | means that a child often incorporates an author's vocabulary, a word or a turn of phrase, into her narration,

00:52:46.000 | thus making it her own.

00:52:48.000 | As she sorts out the complex sentences of a more difficult piece of prose in order to narrate what she has heard,

00:52:54.000 | she gains an intuitive understanding of how sentences are put together

00:52:58.000 | that no amount of external grammar instruction can hope to impose.

00:53:02.000 | The benefits of these growing skills cannot be measured right away.

00:53:06.000 | A grammar or vocabulary test of the usual kind might not expose all that the child has absorbed.

00:53:12.000 | In time, however, the child will show in both speech and writing that the effort has not been wasted.

00:53:18.000 | Just as regular sessions of catch with dad can develop a child into an athlete,

00:53:24.000 | the regular use of narration will develop thinkers and writers.

00:53:29.000 | Consistent practice builds the habit of using certain muscles, whether physical or mental, effectively,

00:53:36.000 | and the results are long-lasting.

00:53:38.000 | Mastery cannot be hurried or forced, but patience and persistence will yield their fruit.

00:53:45.000 | Narration develops synthetic thinking.

00:53:48.000 | Because narration strengthens memory, it allows children to gather a growing store of knowledge and understanding.

00:53:55.000 | As they learn, one thing reminds them of another.

00:53:57.000 | They form connections between old and new knowledge.

00:54:00.000 | They gradually see how things are related to each other and to themselves.

00:54:04.000 | As a child narrates from today's lesson, she will observe progression from yesterday's lesson

00:54:09.000 | or be reminded of something that was read last month.

00:54:12.000 | Because narration stimulates the mind to work, looking for order and making connections,

00:54:17.000 | it develops a synthetic habit of thinking in children.

00:54:21.000 | Briefly, a synthetic approach to knowledge is one that puts together or integrates all the different things

00:54:28.000 | that are learned into a unified understanding of their relationships.

00:54:32.000 | A synthetic thinker is always making connections and noticing similarities between one thing and another.

00:54:38.000 | Synthetic thinkers are able to perceive principles from specific examples

00:54:42.000 | and to use material learned in one framework in a different context.

00:54:46.000 | Synthetic thinking is integrated, not artificial.

00:54:50.000 | It can be contrasted with analytic thinking, in which learners are constantly asked to

00:54:56.000 | "take apart" what they are learning, or "break it down," thus losing connections rather than making them.

00:55:02.000 | Analysis is a useful tool, but it is most effective when it is postponed until after

00:55:09.000 | an integrated understanding has been established.

00:55:12.000 | We think and understand and analyze better when we have first consolidated our knowledge.

00:55:18.000 | Analysis is highly valued today, but let us not hurry our pupils to break things down

00:55:23.000 | before they have put them together.

00:55:26.000 | The usual practice of questioning, in which a child is expected to produce an isolated piece of information,

00:55:33.000 | does not encourage synthetic thinking.

00:55:36.000 | Narration, on the other hand, requires a child to think about all of the material

00:55:41.000 | and produce the relevant details in relation one to another.

00:55:45.000 | What the narrator tells has to make sense.

00:55:48.000 | When the mind goes to work to produce a narration, all the reasoning powers are called into play.

00:55:54.000 | It does help with memory, but it also gives the narrator a chance to practice the mental habits

00:55:59.000 | that develop synthetic, or relational, thinking.

00:56:02.000 | "The value of narration does not lie wholly in the swift acquisition of knowledge and its sure retention.

00:56:09.000 | Properly dealt with, it produces a mental transfiguration.

00:56:13.000 | It provides much more exercise for the mind than is possible under other circumstances,

00:56:18.000 | and there is a corresponding degree of alertness and acquisitiveness."

00:56:23.000 | As a Yorkshireman would put it, the children become very quick in uptake, or quick in the uptake.

00:56:28.000 | Psychologically, narration crystallizes a number of impressions.

00:56:32.000 | It also tends to complete a chain of experiences.

00:56:36.000 | Contemporary educational practices, which often require students to produce bits of specific information,

00:56:42.000 | are frequently fragmented in nature.

00:56:45.000 | Isolated pieces of information are required as answers to questions.

00:56:49.000 | However, truly great and innovative thinking must include the ability to synthesize knowledge.

00:56:56.000 | This has been recognized by scholars and thinkers for centuries.

00:57:00.000 | Synthetic thinking, at its foundation, is the development of a personal relationship with the material being learned,

00:57:06.000 | so that the pupil achieves a level of familiarity with it that allows at least the potential for connecting

00:57:12.000 | what she is learning to things she has learned before, or might learn in the future.

00:57:17.000 | Those connections are real for her only if she perceives them for herself,

00:57:23.000 | and the process of narration encourages this integrated, synthetic thinking,

00:57:28.000 | as almost no other educational practice does.

00:57:31.000 | I had the privilege of speaking about narration and synthetic thinking to a large group of parents not long ago.

00:57:37.000 | In the audience were a few teenagers who had grown up narrating in their homeschools.

00:57:41.000 | As I described the relational nature of synthetic thinking and how it is different from analytic thinking,

00:57:47.000 | one of the young people turned to the other and asked, "Doesn't everyone think that way?"

00:57:52.000 | Sadly, the answer is, "No, they do not."

00:57:56.000 | Knowledge that is not easily measured and tested is often ignored in modern schools.

00:58:03.000 | An innate relational understanding of the connections between different areas of knowledge

00:58:08.000 | is part of the power that educational narration unlocks.

00:58:12.000 | We begin with a simple request to "tell what you know."

00:58:16.000 | However, years of building that intellectual habit lay the foundation for the kind of thinking

00:58:20.000 | that will eventually allow a teacher to give assignments such as,

00:58:24.000 | "Compare the leadership of George Washington with that of Napoleon Bonaparte,"

00:58:28.000 | or "Explain how the closing of one business can affect the economy of a whole town."

00:58:33.000 | These types of assignments are not a matter of simply regurgitating facts.

00:58:38.000 | They require deeper understanding and thinking, and they will be well done

00:58:41.000 | only if that thinking is based upon knowledge and understanding of the principles at work in leadership or economics.

00:58:48.000 | The kind of thinking that connects general principles to concrete instances

00:58:52.000 | cannot be taught in a mechanical manner.

00:58:55.000 | There are no workbooks, no writing curricula,

00:58:58.000 | no textbooks that will produce thinkers who can tackle those questions and others like them.

00:59:03.000 | Just as strong muscles develop only when the body is well fed and exercised,

00:59:08.000 | the mind develops strong thinking when it is well fed and regularly exercised.

00:59:14.000 | Excellent books are the preferred nourishment, and narration is the best exercise.

00:59:21.000 | Synthetic thinking cannot be taught with didactic methods.

00:59:25.000 | How does one come to understand the principles of leadership?

00:59:28.000 | An analytical approach might try to distill some of the aspects of leadership into a few sentences,

00:59:34.000 | and those sentences might be committed to memory.

00:59:36.000 | But this is not how principles are apprehended.

00:59:39.000 | We must meet leaders within the pages of a book, if not in real life, to know what leadership is.

00:59:45.000 | A child who has read the biography of a leader absorbs those principles so that they become a part of herself.

00:59:51.000 | Now she knows, in her small way, how a leader thinks and acts.

00:59:57.000 | She will remember, for example, that Robert the Bruce watched a spider build and rebuild its web,

01:00:03.000 | and took courage from that example to persevere in his mission.

01:00:07.000 | When faced with the prospect of quitting, the child's heart will take courage from the remembrance,

01:00:12.000 | and when she tells herself or another, "Don't give up,"

01:00:15.000 | it will carry the conviction and weight of example and experience not her own.

01:00:20.000 | This is relational, synthetic thinking.

01:00:24.000 | Merely memorizing definitions of courage or leadership produces no such personal reaction.

01:00:30.000 | When children are given years of opportunities to narrate,

01:00:33.000 | they make connections and develop deep understanding that most educational methods cannot give them.

01:00:39.000 | Narration deserves a fair trial.

01:00:42.000 | For the last century and more, educational methods have largely failed to establish this kind of synthetic thinking in children.

01:00:48.000 | Most of us have reached adulthood without being given the opportunity to develop these thinking skills,

01:00:53.000 | and our writing and speaking is correspondingly weak.

01:00:57.000 | Too often we attempt to address the symptom of poor writing rather than the disease of weak thinking.

01:01:06.000 | Narration gives us an opportunity to reclaim those higher-level thinking skills for the next generation,

01:01:12.000 | and even to develop them for ourselves.

01:01:14.000 | That process can begin right now.

01:01:17.000 | If you are reading this chapter, then you have probably read through chapter one, "The Art of Narration."

01:01:22.000 | Close the book and narrate that chapter, either to someone near or silently to yourself.

01:01:28.000 | Don't worry if you can't do it or find it difficult.

01:01:30.000 | Just do the best you can, and you will probably discover that narration is deceptively simple-sounding.

01:01:36.000 | In practice, it is actually quite difficult at first and requires a great deal of mental effort.

01:01:41.000 | But that effort grows easier with time and habit,

01:01:44.000 | just as it becomes easier to throw a ball accurately with regular practice.

01:01:48.000 | Consider narrating each chapter of this book, or perhaps another book you are reading,

01:01:52.000 | and see if it isn't a little easier to narrate the last chapter than it was to narrate the first.

01:01:58.000 | If narrating a whole chapter is too much at first, try narrating one section at a time.

01:02:03.000 | I know of no better way to open the eyes of an adult teacher to the power of narration

01:02:07.000 | than for that teacher to attempt the practice personally.

01:02:11.000 | If we get a glimpse of the power that narration unlocks,

01:02:14.000 | it makes it easier to commit to using the practice.

01:02:17.000 | Narration requires perseverance, because it takes time to develop the skills in the first place,

01:02:23.000 | and still more time for those skills to blossom into mature thinking and writing.

01:02:28.000 | However, that time is well spent, because narration will give children mental habits

01:02:33.000 | that will pay dividends in every aspect of education.

01:02:36.000 | Children who are taken for long walks every day develop stamina and endurance for hiking.

01:02:42.000 | Children who are taken to the pool regularly become swimmers.

01:02:46.000 | Children who spend every week playing baseball learn the skills of playing ball.

01:02:50.000 | And children who narrate consistently become thinkers and writers.

01:02:57.000 | Regular, consistent practice is all that is necessary.

01:03:02.000 | No special training is needed, and no tricks or shortcuts will take its place.

01:03:09.000 | If that was inspiring to you, I was reading sections from chapter 1 and chapter 2

01:03:14.000 | of a book by author Karen Glass called "Know and Tell, the Art of Narration".

01:03:21.000 | So, in summary, while I have titled this episode "Teach Your Children to Write",

01:03:26.000 | I'm seeking to give you the tools to help your children to write.

01:03:31.000 | And the basic tool that I think every adult can use with children,

01:03:37.000 | especially young children, is the tool of narration.

01:03:43.000 | Ask your child to simply tell you about something that he has read,

01:03:47.000 | something that he has seen, something that he has done.

01:03:50.000 | Do that consistently, day in, day out, and in the fullness of time, it will bear fruit.

01:03:56.000 | It will help your child to understand the material more clearly,

01:04:01.000 | to remember the material more fully.

01:04:04.000 | It will be an effective practice to help to develop a smooth and competent writer

01:04:10.000 | and thinker in the fullness of time.

01:04:13.000 | But you can begin it at an age in which your child is not capable of perhaps holding a pencil,

01:04:19.000 | or forming letters, writing compositions, etc.

01:04:23.000 | I wish this tool were a tool that was known by parents everywhere, because it is so powerful.

01:04:29.000 | Now, I've had some success and some failure in this area, as is to be expected.

01:04:34.000 | What I found to be most effective is just do it at the dinner table.

01:04:38.000 | In fact, in our homeschool, I don't have a high opinion of tests in the way that they're normally administered.

01:04:45.000 | Tests, grades, report cards, things like that,

01:04:49.000 | most of this stuff is primarily a tool for communication between teachers and parents.

01:04:57.000 | A teacher needs to administer a test to a classroom.

01:05:01.000 | Let's take the very best of examples.

01:05:03.000 | A teacher says, "I need to administer a test to the classroom to know how I'm doing as a teacher."

01:05:08.000 | The only reason a teacher needs to administer a test to a classroom to know how he's doing as a teacher

01:05:13.000 | is quite simply because he has too many students to actually interact with those students to know.

01:05:17.000 | If you're working with one student as a teacher on a daily basis,

01:05:21.000 | you know exactly how well that student is doing.

01:05:23.000 | You don't need to administer a test to know that.

01:05:27.000 | And so, tests, the way that they're conceived of in the modern educational system, are not particularly useful.

01:05:33.000 | What's more important is the way that tests are administered,

01:05:36.000 | for example, in the context of multiple choice, true and false, etc.,

01:05:41.000 | are a way of fracturing information.

01:05:44.000 | And those of us who are good at test-taking just basically figure out how to scam the test,

01:05:49.000 | but that doesn't mean that we know the material.

01:05:52.000 | And so, in a perfect world, all tests would be essay exams, right?

01:05:57.000 | Write me an essay on this topic.

01:05:59.000 | And the child sits down with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and creates an essay.

01:06:03.000 | And then you can judge what the child really knows.

01:06:06.000 | But it takes time to build up to that level, and so you begin with narration.

01:06:10.000 | Now, your child's teacher, if your child is enrolled in an industrial school,

01:06:14.000 | your child's teacher is not going to have the time to do this.

01:06:16.000 | It's not a basic pedagogical tool that is in common use today.

01:06:21.000 | But you as a parent can do this.

01:06:23.000 | Even if your child is enrolled in an industrial school, you can still use this yourself.

01:06:28.000 | Simply ask your child to tell you about what he's reading about.

01:06:31.000 | Give him good books, have him read those books, tell me about it.

01:06:34.000 | And over time, your child will develop these skills.

01:06:37.000 | I find the dinner table works really well.

01:06:39.000 | Sometimes with our young children, our dinner table conversations become,

01:06:43.000 | I don't know what to ask them about.

01:06:45.000 | We're together all the time, so it's not like that's the only time we see each other.

01:06:49.000 | What do I ask you about?

01:06:51.000 | I want to fill the table with conversation, but sometimes it's difficult with young children.

01:06:55.000 | And so recently I've learned that talking about narration and requiring my children to narrate their books

01:07:01.000 | has been a very effective tool.

01:07:03.000 | It's a good time, we can do it, and they like having an audience.

01:07:06.000 | In fact, it has increased the quality of the narrations consistently.

01:07:10.000 | This is the primary tool that we use in our homeschool.

01:07:12.000 | I give my children books, have them read the books, and have them narrate the books.

01:07:16.000 | And then you can use an exam period at the end of a term.

01:07:21.000 | And the exam questions are basically, tell me what you know about the War of 1812.

01:07:26.000 | And have the child tell you.

01:07:28.000 | And it's important to note that even this process of testing helps to hone the memory.

01:07:34.000 | So start with narration, because the skills of speaking will turn out in the fullness of time to enhance the skills of writing.

01:07:44.000 | In the same way that I gave the example earlier with somebody who's not a skilled speaker,

01:07:48.000 | the tools of writing help someone to be a skilled speaker.

01:07:52.000 | When you're speaking about something that you've written about, it's pretty easy,

01:07:56.000 | compared to just speaking about something that you haven't taken the time to think through and write about.

01:08:02.000 | I'm not going to take an extended period of time to discuss the topic of copy work,

01:08:06.000 | other than to suggest it to you.

01:08:08.000 | Another classic tool for helping your children to learn to be skilled writers is to expose them to copy work.

01:08:14.000 | And this is a tool that is used for children and for adults.

01:08:20.000 | Years ago, I took a course on writing sales copy, writing effective sales letters.

01:08:25.000 | And the foundation of that course was basically copying good sales letters.

01:08:29.000 | And I've spent enough time around professional copywriters who still use that to this day.

01:08:34.000 | They sit down and they do copy work.

01:08:37.000 | They copy an effective letter multiple times until the very words get soaked into their bones.

01:08:43.000 | And they use that to absorb the style.

01:08:46.000 | There are certain aspects of style and technique that really can only be absorbed through exposure,

01:08:52.000 | rather than explicitly taught.

01:08:54.000 | And so copy work is a very effective tool.

01:08:57.000 | And you can put together good collections of high-quality literature and then have your children copy them.

01:09:02.000 | And in the process of copying that work, they're exposed to the beauty of the thoughts,

01:09:07.000 | the beauty of the language, the vocabulary that's being used, etc.

01:09:12.000 | With regard to writing, I think another great practice to implement is to make writing a daily occurrence.

01:09:20.000 | Now, to be clear, I don't think that writing necessarily needs to be a daily occurrence for a six-year-old.

01:09:26.000 | I think narration should be the foundation.

01:09:29.000 | But for adults, writing should be a daily occurrence.

01:09:32.000 | Every day, you're sitting down and writing about something that you care about.

01:09:35.000 | You can choose the context, but it should be similar for children.

01:09:39.000 | When we do something on a daily basis, even if it's hard, the brain gets very accustomed to doing it.

01:09:46.000 | And it becomes easier and easier to do it.

01:09:50.000 | Somebody goes to the gym constantly or walks every day just gets used to the fact that this is what I do every day.

01:09:58.000 | And that is a much more effective tactic and technique than the guy who goes once a week or three times a week

01:10:04.000 | and works really, really hard at that point in time.

01:10:07.000 | And so writing is a discipline.

01:10:09.000 | And most disciplines are best used on a daily basis.

01:10:13.000 | And so incorporate daily writing into your children's life.

01:10:17.000 | Now, a few ways that this could be done.

01:10:19.000 | First, you can just simply require it of your child.

01:10:22.000 | But sometimes that may be difficult in the beginning.

01:10:26.000 | I've mentioned previously, I've always been inspired by Art Robinson's homeschool outline,

01:10:30.000 | which basically involved come to school, do two hours of math.

01:10:35.000 | First thing, that's a hard daily activity that's going to build your brain and build your logical reasoning skills,

01:10:40.000 | your mathematical skills, read for an hour and write me a one-page essay.

01:10:44.000 | And if that were all you did on a daily basis, you would have a world-class education.

01:10:49.000 | And the practice of every day writing a one-page essay is, I think, very, very powerful.

01:10:54.000 | So incorporate that.

01:10:56.000 | Have your children write to you every day.

01:10:58.000 | Now, this is one where if your child has school assignments that are being assigned by an external teacher,

01:11:04.000 | it may be more difficult for you to add this on.

01:11:07.000 | Or if your child has extensive amounts of homework, etc.

01:11:10.000 | But this is one of the reasons why I choose to homeschool.

01:11:13.000 | I don't want my children wasting their time filling out workbooks and long, you know, random assignments.

01:11:20.000 | I want them working with the meat of it using the most effective tools.

01:11:23.000 | The most effective tools are read, narrate and write, do math.

01:11:29.000 | That's it. Those are the tools.

01:11:31.000 | And then they're the most effective tools.

01:11:33.000 | And the only reason they're not used in the industrial school setting is because of the flawed teacher-student ratio.

01:11:40.000 | They're not possible to use if you've got 30 students.

01:11:43.000 | They're only possible if you've got one or two or three students.

01:11:46.000 | And so in the home you can use those most effective techniques.

01:11:50.000 | So write daily. Have your children write daily and use it as a discipline.

01:11:54.000 | So then how do you write daily?

01:11:56.000 | Well, here I think one of the things we can do is help our children to have more context for their writing.

01:12:02.000 | When you're writing for meaning, it's much more powerful than writing for writing's sake.

01:12:09.000 | Copywork has its place.

01:12:11.000 | But if you're writing a letter to grandma or if you're writing a persuasive article on something that you care about

01:12:18.000 | or if you're writing a story that you want to finish, then writing your daily pages makes a lot more sense.

01:12:25.000 | One of the things I've been so inspired by over the years comes from Jonathan and Renee Harris,

01:12:30.000 | who have been on the – Jonathan's been on the – both of them, I think, have been on the show a couple of times.

01:12:36.000 | Jonathan started years ago a brand called 10K to Talent.

01:12:39.000 | Now he and Renee have a brand called Parent Their Passion, which is really wonderful.

01:12:44.000 | And one of the things that I learned from their homeschooling techniques is that they taught their children to write for an audience.

01:12:53.000 | And so they would figure out an area that their children were interested in or passionate about.

01:12:58.000 | And it was one child, it was horses and art.

01:13:01.000 | With another child, it was knife making and machinery, et cetera.

01:13:05.000 | And then try to incorporate that into a writing exercise.

01:13:10.000 | And so your writing exercise this week is to write an essay for your email list.

01:13:15.000 | Or your writing exercise today is to write a coherent blurb for your Instagram post on what you're doing.

01:13:22.000 | And in today's world, I think this is a wonderful technique that we can integrate.

01:13:28.000 | Our children are going to be exposed constantly to writing.

01:13:31.000 | But if we approach this writing as a useful exercise, that your daily writing assignment is to write a really well thought out Instagram post or some version of that that makes sense for you.

01:13:44.000 | It really makes all the sense in the world.

01:13:46.000 | Or even if you're scripting something, right?

01:13:48.000 | Good comedy is going to be scripted.

01:13:50.000 | So write the comedy and then record it.

01:13:52.000 | Or a lot of times good verbal delivery is scripted in advance.

01:13:56.000 | So writing is at the core of even other modes of delivery.

01:14:00.000 | Writing for an actual audience is going to be much more productive and much more motivating than just writing for your teacher who's going to read it, mark a letter grade on it, stick it back.

01:14:11.000 | You're going to put it in a notebook that you never again open in your life.

01:14:14.000 | I think we should incorporate writing for an audience in an appropriate way for our teenagers.

01:14:20.000 | So that they have the desire to do well.

01:14:23.000 | In today's world when we can get an audience for so many things, I think there's not much of a reason at all for our children to write with no audience.

01:14:31.000 | At the very least, let's have a personal blog.

01:14:34.000 | It can be behind a password.

01:14:36.000 | It can be password protected.

01:14:38.000 | But at the very least, let's have some way of sharing the compositions of our children among our family members.

01:14:44.000 | Things like that.

01:14:45.000 | Because it would be, then the child can get feedback, significant levels of feedback on his work and have a desire to write for an audience.

01:14:54.000 | And again, even just the response will make all the difference in the world of desire.

01:14:59.000 | Next suggestion is make sure that your child is writing about something that he cares about.

01:15:06.000 | There perhaps is an element in which writing as a discipline about something that you don't care about, maybe that's fine.

01:15:13.000 | But in general, write from a place of caring.

01:15:17.000 | Now, I'm sensitive to this word because I love it.

01:15:20.000 | One of my favorite Charlotte Mason quotes is, our goal, I can't quote it directly, but a version of this basically.

01:15:27.000 | "It's not so much important how much a child knows, but rather how much a child cares."

01:15:35.000 | When I'm teaching my children, my goal is not to create the most knowledgeable student.

01:15:41.000 | Knowledge is infinite.

01:15:43.000 | But I want to create a student who cares.

01:15:46.000 | Because with caring, the student will get whatever level of knowledge is necessary.

01:15:52.000 | And so try to find ways of writing about things that you care about.

01:15:56.000 | A professional writer is going to write about things that he cares about.

01:16:02.000 | Why make it hard on a child by forcing him to write about things that he doesn't care about?

01:16:09.000 | Look for things that your children care about and have them write about that.

01:16:15.000 | Next, if possible, get rid of stuffy, formal, academic language.

01:16:23.000 | One of the great harms that English classes or professors do to children is they teach writing as something that is a matter of correct and incorrect.

01:16:35.000 | They say that this is the right way to write.

01:16:39.000 | It can be useful to know how to make a three-paragraph, three-point essay.

01:16:43.000 | That can be useful.

01:16:45.000 | But at its core, writing is a creative endeavor.

01:16:48.000 | And there really are no rules except effectiveness.

01:16:54.000 | A skilled writer is going to know and absorb the rules so that he knows when to break them.

01:17:01.000 | As a skilled speaker, I know the grammar rules.

01:17:05.000 | I know rules of delivery.

01:17:07.000 | So then when I break them, I'm conscious of the fact that I'm breaking them by intention for effect.

01:17:15.000 | Same thing happens with writing.

01:17:17.000 | But when we teach this artificially stuffy and formal academic language, I fear that we hamstring our students before they ever need it.

01:17:29.000 | Formal academic language is largely worthless.

01:17:32.000 | All academics do is write for each other.

01:17:35.000 | No one reads their stuff.

01:17:36.000 | It doesn't matter.

01:17:37.000 | It's not impactful.

01:17:38.000 | The most important writing is always going to be on a popular level.

01:17:42.000 | Now, in many cases, a skilled academic will have two voices.

01:17:46.000 | A skilled academic might have the need to write academic papers, but that academic should also be able to write for the popular level.

01:17:53.000 | A really great writer is going to write at the popular level, not at the academic level.

01:17:58.000 | Academics speak academic ease, and all they do is use unnecessarily complicated language to obfuscate, right, stupid word that is unnecessarily complex, to basically hide their real meaning.

01:18:12.000 | And they hide behind these stupid, high-sounding words to point out, to conceal the fact that they don't have anything that's genuinely worthwhile to say.

01:18:23.000 | The most important points are points that can be expressed simply and clearly so that they can lead to action on behalf of a reader.

01:18:32.000 | And so teaching formal academic language, to me, has a very, very low priority.

01:18:38.000 | In addition, I think we want to teach our children and allow our children to write for effectiveness, for impact.

01:18:45.000 | The example I think of is in college, I took a business communications course.

01:18:51.000 | And we had this textbook, we go through this course on proper business communications.

01:18:56.000 | And they teach you, you know, "Dear sir, or dear Mark, recently I had the opportunity to pass by your office and I noticed blah, blah, blah, and you fill it in, 'Sincerely, Joshua Sheets.'"

01:19:07.000 | Okay, well, there's a time and a place for that.

01:19:10.000 | And then I got out in the business world and I realized that if I wanted an answer to an email, I had to put the entire body of the email in the subject line.

01:19:20.000 | And I discovered that if I wanted my emails answered, I had to distill my comment down to one sentence, one phrase ideally, maximum about three sentences.

01:19:30.000 | I had to put the first sentence or phrase in the subject line and then follow it up with maximum, again, two sentences.

01:19:37.000 | And if I didn't, and if I was going to email somebody successful and effective and busy, then my email, in order to get responded to, had to have that ridiculous informal nature.

01:19:48.000 | Because all the other ones just disappeared into the trash.

01:19:52.000 | And so, focus on effectiveness and recognize that we don't write like we did in the 1800s.

01:20:00.000 | It's great to be able to absorb that and enjoy some aspects of it, but we write for the world that we live in.

01:20:06.000 | Next and final comments, just a few things in terms of practicality.

01:20:10.000 | Use appropriate tools for the job.

01:20:13.000 | In some cases, I think the appropriate tool for the job should be a paper and pen.

01:20:18.000 | To this day, I know of professional writers, best-selling authors, who compose their books intentionally with paper and pen.

01:20:29.000 | They use electronic keyboards and such, obviously in their day-to-day life, they're perfectly competent.

01:20:38.000 | But they write with paper and pen because it forces them to slow down.

01:20:41.000 | And the metric to measure in effective writing is not the quantity of words produced, either in total or per hour.

01:20:53.000 | Good writing depends primarily on the quality and the clarity of the thought, and then the succinctness and good editing of the thought.

01:21:08.000 | And so, slowing down in many ways forces you to be more effective at communicating clear thoughts, rather than just producing things as quickly as possible.

01:21:23.000 | So, I think there's a strong case to be made for paper and pen, even when composing essays, all of those things.

01:21:33.000 | The lack of distractions available when you're composing on paper is very, very crucial.

01:21:41.000 | Consider using paper and pen.

01:21:43.000 | The flip side is, consider using digital writing.

01:21:47.000 | Obviously, most of our writing in life is going to happen in some digital format, keying it in with a keyboard, dictating it with a voice, etc.

01:21:54.000 | And so, if you're struggling with someone who doesn't have the muscular strength or skill of writing with paper and pen, then bring in a computer keyboard.

01:22:04.000 | Bring in voice dictation.

01:22:05.000 | Bring in something that's going to make it easier and simpler to compose your thoughts.

01:22:11.000 | These tools are tools to be used and applied in the right place.

01:22:16.000 | Quick comment about voice dictation. I think for many people, one of the most powerful tools that we have is voice dictation.

01:22:24.000 | Voice dictation has gotten really good.

01:22:26.000 | The cell phone that you're listening to me on right now has fantastic voice dictation.

01:22:32.000 | And for me, this is something I use routinely because the phone itself is a very convenient medium and the ability to have thoughts recorded as quickly as I can speak them is really, really powerful.

01:22:46.000 | So, if you have a writer who's struggling, try dictation.

01:22:50.000 | If you're struggling with actual writing, try speaking.

01:22:54.000 | Record it, transcribe it, and then edit from there to turn that into writing.

01:22:59.000 | There are many tools and techniques that you can use to help somebody to get written text down on paper.

01:23:05.000 | But writing as a daily discipline is something that I think is powerful for children, for teenagers, and for adults.

01:23:14.000 | For children, I think our emphasis should be on narration, which is why I've focused on that.

01:23:20.000 | If your children are skilled in the art of narration, of simply telling about something, then they will be able to translate that skill into skill of writing in the fullness of time.

01:23:33.000 | So, with your very young children, focus on the skill of narration.

01:23:36.000 | With your middle and older children, develop the discipline of writing.

01:23:42.000 | Make it as appealing as possible, but make sure that discipline is there.

01:23:48.000 | Friends, we live in a world in which we need better thinking.

01:23:52.000 | We need better thinkers.

01:23:54.000 | We are surrounded by stupidity and ignorance at every turn.

01:23:59.000 | And this is dangerous, because when skilled orators are talking to ignorant people, then instead of having to rely on clear logic and compelling thought, they wind up engaging in pure sophistry.

01:24:17.000 | They focus on moving someone with their emotions rather than with logic.

01:24:24.000 | And as human creatures, emotions are valuable, but they're very fickle.

01:24:28.000 | And we should harness the power of emotions while not succumbing to the control of emotions.

01:24:33.000 | We need to raise up a generation of better thinkers, better communicators.

01:24:40.000 | That is our responsibility as parents.

01:24:42.000 | We're not going to change the popular culture.

01:24:44.000 | But even if we could make a 10% or a 20% shift towards raising better thinkers and better communicators, that will make a big difference in the world that we live in a century from now.

01:24:57.000 | So, let's put our hands to the plow and be faithful to the task that we have in front of us.

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2023-03-22_How_to_Invest_in_Your_Children_at_a_Very_Young_Age_Part_9-Develop_Great_Writers