RPF0125-Vern_Poythress_Interview
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00:00:30.200 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:00:32.320 | My name is Joshua Sheets.
00:00:33.680 | Today is Tuesday, December 23, 2014.
00:00:37.680 | Thank you for being here.
00:00:38.920 | I'm thrilled to bring you today's interview.
00:00:41.080 | It's a little bit different than the normal in-depth technological financial content, but I think it may be a valuable contribution, especially for those of you who have children.
00:00:50.480 | One of the aspects of financial planning that I think about is how can we develop independent, autonomous adults?
00:00:59.880 | Knowing and recognizing that many of the major mistakes that young people make happen early in their life, I think a lot about how can we transition from dependence to independence or dependence to independence to interdependence, which is also a valid concept.
00:01:16.480 | My guest today is a man named Dr. Vern Poythress.
00:01:19.800 | I was first introduced to him by a listener who sent me an article with an essay that he had written.
00:01:25.120 | That essay is linked in the show notes today.
00:01:28.560 | I thought it was interesting enough that I reached out to Dr. Poythress for an interview, and I'm glad I did.
00:01:33.520 | Dr. Poythress has an interesting background.
00:01:36.800 | He has probably spent more time in academic studies than many people.
00:01:42.040 | He obtained a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology back in 1966, ultimately completed a PhD in mathematics from Harvard University in 1970.
00:01:54.560 | He taught mathematics for a year and then became a student at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he earned a master's of divinity in 1974, a master's in theology and apologetics in 1974, and then a master's of literature in New Testament studies from the University of Cambridge in 1977, and ultimately a doctorate of theology in New Testament studies from the University of Stellenbach, South Africa.
00:02:19.440 | So he's probably spent more time learning and studying at a university level than most of us have, and he currently teaches as a professor at the Westminster Theological Seminary.
00:02:30.480 | The most interesting part for me, as pertains to this show, however, was essentially how he worked.
00:02:37.920 | He and his wife have two sons, and how he worked with his sons to develop a rite of passage for them from childhood into adulthood.
00:02:46.320 | And as you'll hear in the interview, I think this is a concept that we don't give enough attention to, and I don't quite know how to do it.
00:02:52.480 | I like some of his ideas.
00:02:54.360 | Take his ideas and consider your own interpretation of that, and I'd be thrilled to hear your ideas if you would like to comment in the notes for today's episode.
00:03:03.080 | You can find those notes for today's show at radicalpersonalfinance.com/125.
00:03:09.800 | I receive feedback sometimes when I bring guests on and we talk about religious topics.
00:03:14.760 | Feel free to skip the show if you're not interested.
00:03:17.360 | This interview is actually not particularly religious.
00:03:20.240 | We talk a little bit about it from a religious perspective, but I think this is a concept that you can apply in your religion or you can also just apply in your culture.
00:03:30.440 | There are many cultures around the world who've established a rite of passage, and my major concern is that all of the rites of passage that exist that I generally pay attention to in our culture essentially seem negative to me.
00:03:41.680 | And I bring that out a little bit in the course of the interview.
00:03:44.640 | I'm not going to come back at the end since today is just being released as a special Christmas break episode for you.
00:03:49.320 | If you'd like to get in touch with me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.
00:03:52.560 | Thank you for those of you who support the show.
00:03:54.880 | If you're interested in doing that and checking out details on that, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/membership.
00:04:00.160 | And here is Dr. Poythress.
00:04:02.320 | So, Dr. Poythress, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.
00:04:07.200 | I appreciate you making time to chat with me today.
00:04:09.000 | Well, thank you for inviting me.
00:04:13.120 | I've been looking forward to this conversation and to give you the backstory on how I wound up finding you.
00:04:18.880 | It was a suggestion of a listener.
00:04:20.760 | And although my show is specifically focused on financial planning and personal finance, I have often seen that the way that many people seem to approach personal finance and financial planning doesn't seem to work.
00:04:34.360 | And one of those big expenses is caring for kids, educating kids, things like that.
00:04:40.520 | And so I'm constantly thinking, also, since my wife and I, we have a one-year-old son at the moment, I'm constantly thinking about how to help children to mature into adults.
00:04:51.760 | And this listener sent me a link to your discussion of some of the things that you've done with your sons, and I thought this would be a great topic for the show.
00:04:59.120 | So could you describe how you helped your sons to transition to manhood?
00:05:07.640 | Yes, well, the background is partly that many cultures of the world have a rite of passage.
00:05:17.560 | They have some kind of ceremony.
00:05:20.320 | They have some kind of transition that clearly marks when a boy becomes a man.
00:05:28.960 | But white Anglo-American culture doesn't.
00:05:34.720 | Even some of the minority cultures, I'm told, Hispanics here in the U.S.
00:05:40.000 | do have something, and the Jews have something, namely bar mitzvah.
00:05:46.960 | And we live in a Jewish area.
00:05:50.200 | So our thinking was influenced.
00:05:54.760 | My wife and I, we had two boys.
00:05:56.680 | It was thinking that was partly influenced by feeling, you know, boys can be tempted to try to constantly prove their manhood in destructive ways, often, unfortunately.
00:06:09.840 | And we're going to be proactive, but not simply produce something arbitrary.
00:06:17.520 | But because we think we're followers of Christ, we're Christian believers, we think we ought to have a positive influence and input into our boys' life.
00:06:28.080 | And we are responsible for guiding them and training them and not just handing it off to the school or even to the church, because God has made us with a special role.
00:06:42.760 | So a lot of things went into that, and we decided to have a specific program, and we called it Bar Yeshua.
00:06:50.920 | It was built off bar mitzvah, which means "son of commandment."
00:06:55.400 | But we thought, because there are many Jews in our area, our boys will see this happening with the Jews.
00:07:01.400 | It won't be so strange that we will do a version that is appropriate to our Christian faith.
00:07:10.000 | So that's what we did, and it involved asking ourselves, "What does it mean for a boy to become a man? What do we want?"
00:07:20.320 | And for us, we think the destiny of all human beings ought to be to be in the image of Christ.
00:07:28.040 | And so it was Christ-likeness rather than, "Can you kill an antelope?"
00:07:34.280 | Or, "Can you go on a big hunt?" You know, some of these things in other cultures.
00:07:40.280 | So we defined it spiritually, and we set specific projects for them as they were growing up that fed into this.
00:07:52.280 | And we also hoped that this might be taken up by our church and by other followers of Christ.
00:07:58.880 | Well, we haven't seen that very much, because it's hard. You have to be committed. You have to be involved.
00:08:06.480 | But we felt we wanted to do this not only because of our responsibility, but because of our love for our boys.
00:08:15.480 | And I must say, we wrote it up. It's on the Internet, but it has to be adapted to circumstances.
00:08:25.080 | In a sense, we had it easier, because we lived in this Jewish area, and they already had this right of manhood
00:08:35.480 | built into their culture. That made it easier. It was not easy, however, in terms of...
00:08:42.480 | We didn't have a lot of people who were Christians and followers of Christ who were doing it.
00:08:50.480 | So we had to not only have an outline in our minds, "These are the things we want them to do,"
00:08:59.080 | but then to keep encouraging them and to keep saying, "This is what we do as a family."
00:09:05.080 | And not to back down. If you make it too easy, then it means nothing.
00:09:10.080 | So we really wanted to have substance, and we wanted...
00:09:15.080 | Once the boys, when they were 12 years old, which is the same age when Jesus went with his parents
00:09:24.080 | to the temple and showed his wisdom, so it was a good time there.
00:09:30.080 | And also when they're still at home, to give them this transition to manhood,
00:09:37.080 | and then be able to deal with them as young adults in the home, but with greater independent responsibility.
00:09:44.080 | So it had to mean something in terms of, "Look, you'll have your own budget, you will have your own bedtime,
00:09:51.080 | and reading, and so on, because we believe that you can take this responsibility."
00:09:59.080 | Yeah, it's something...so I've been thinking about this for a few years,
00:10:04.080 | and I have a bunch of different things that came together in my mind.
00:10:09.080 | But I've always...I went to my first bar mitzvah that I'd ever been to about two or three years ago.
00:10:14.080 | I don't have many Jewish friends here in my area.
00:10:18.080 | And I met one, and he was actually a Jewish rabbi, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi,
00:10:22.080 | and he became a client of mine and a friend of mine, and I asked him, I said,
00:10:25.080 | "Can I come to some of your holidays, and your festivals, and your celebrations?"
00:10:31.080 | Because I've always wanted to know what they're like.
00:10:35.080 | And so he invited me to his son's bar mitzvah.
00:10:38.080 | And I'd never been to a Jewish bar mitzvah before, and it was just fascinating to me.
00:10:42.080 | And I've been reflecting since then, and on other things as well,
00:10:47.080 | which may or may not come out here in our conversation,
00:10:50.080 | about what a tough scenario it is in our world, in the U.S. American cultural context,
00:10:56.080 | at least white U.S. America.
00:11:00.080 | We don't have...there's no transition from childhood to adulthood that's not negative.
00:11:06.080 | About the only transitions is 18 when you graduate from high school,
00:11:10.080 | but really that doesn't mean much other than you can smoke, legally.
00:11:14.080 | And then you've got 21, which really doesn't mean anything other than you can legally drink.
00:11:19.080 | And so about the biggest transition we have as a culture is a night of drunkenness on your 21st birthday.
00:11:26.080 | And I just think, "We need something better!"
00:11:29.080 | And so I've been thinking a lot about that.
00:11:32.080 | Yes, yes. And we felt some of the same thing,
00:11:37.080 | but in addition to that feeling that I think many parents,
00:11:40.080 | because there are so many activities and so many things going on connected with school,
00:11:47.080 | that parents sort of abdicate.
00:11:50.080 | But really, not only has God given us a responsibility, that's number one,
00:11:56.080 | but also it's a great opportunity because parents are the most influential people in a child's life.
00:12:04.080 | Even though they spend many hours at school, you know, it's sort of one teacher after another kind of thing.
00:12:10.080 | Parents are parents, you know, and they're not replaceable.
00:12:13.080 | And if they're not there for the child, then there's a hole in that child's life.
00:12:20.080 | Right. Absolutely.
00:12:22.080 | The other thing that attracted me to what you talked about is I've been doing a lot of research on,
00:12:28.080 | essentially, the artificial extension of childhood.
00:12:31.080 | And what sparked me on that was studying a little bit of the history of education and the history of schooling,
00:12:38.080 | and learning that basically throughout history, most cultures have perceived,
00:12:43.080 | if they had any distinction between child and adult,
00:12:47.080 | which many cultures don't have any distinction between child and adult,
00:12:50.080 | if they did, traditionally, the transition from child to adult occurred essentially in the early teens.
00:12:57.080 | And, you know, 10 to 12 to 13 to 14, somewhere in that range.
00:13:01.080 | Whereas in our culture, we've extended that childhood, I would say, artificially beyond that.
00:13:08.080 | And so I keep thinking from a financial planning perspective, I think,
00:13:12.080 | "Wow, if we could help people not be dependent at an early age, think for their own good how much that time will help them."
00:13:20.080 | And so if we can help people make that transition at an earlier age,
00:13:25.080 | what a blessing that can be in their life to eliminate that dependence on society,
00:13:29.080 | that idea of sitting back as a child and absorbing,
00:13:33.080 | rather make that transition to contributing adult at an earlier age.
00:13:38.080 | How old are your sons now?
00:13:40.080 | Well, the older is 29 and the younger is 27.
00:13:45.080 | So they have no doubt right now that they're adults.
00:13:49.080 | But, you know, when they were younger, I think there was much more of that.
00:13:54.080 | And if I may chime in on what you say about this just being passive,
00:13:59.080 | one of the components was learning about the Bible, learning the books of the Bible,
00:14:05.080 | learning some elementary theology.
00:14:08.080 | So there were things that were specifically Christian, but also then activities.
00:14:13.080 | We involved them in some mercy projects of helping people who may be fixing up the church grounds
00:14:23.080 | or helping somebody clean their house when they're beset with sickness,
00:14:31.080 | doing kinds of things that are saying to our children,
00:14:36.080 | "Here's ways that you may serve God by serving other people as well."
00:14:42.080 | So there were projects like that.
00:14:45.080 | And included in it, if I may do the financial planning part, was they had to draw up a budget.
00:14:51.080 | They had to learn about balancing a checkbook.
00:14:54.080 | Now, this was before they were 12, you know,
00:14:57.080 | and if you've got a child that's not very capable intellectually,
00:15:01.080 | then you might have to adjust that somewhat.
00:15:04.080 | But they were able to learn that and to demonstrate that they could understand elementary ways of budgeting.
00:15:12.080 | Now, we wanted them then to manage a significant amount of money while they were still there at home.
00:15:19.080 | Because one of the challenges for many people in sort of the standard suburban white environment
00:15:26.080 | is that the child is there at home under parental control,
00:15:32.080 | and then suddenly they go away to college and they have immense liberty and don't know what to do with it.
00:15:39.080 | We thought, "We're going to give them some of that liberty while they're at home,
00:15:43.080 | but in a context where we're still there and they can seek us out,
00:15:48.080 | and if we see something going radically astray, we can counsel them as we would another adult."
00:15:55.080 | The thing about the Church is - I know there are many problems with the Church today -
00:16:01.080 | but it's supposed to be a people where we care for one another,
00:16:05.080 | and if we see somebody falling into sin and rebelling against God's ways,
00:16:10.080 | we speak to them rather than just let them spiral down.
00:16:14.080 | Well, somebody in your own home, even if it's another adult, that's what should be happening.
00:16:21.080 | So we thought this is a good time to make that transition gradually,
00:16:27.080 | rather than suddenly everything is plopped down on you and you have nobody there who's older and wiser to help guide you.
00:16:39.080 | So when they became a man, the child got a man-sized allowance, and he had to pay some rent.
00:16:51.080 | But he also had to buy his own clothes, and he was managing money with the idea,
00:16:59.080 | "Look, let's do it in a controlled way.
00:17:03.080 | Give him the experience while he's still here so he doesn't go out without that training into a college environment."
00:17:14.080 | As your sons have gotten older, have they reflected back on this positively, negatively?
00:17:19.080 | Have they continued in the Christian faith? Have they turned away?
00:17:24.080 | What have they said in looking back from an older age?
00:17:28.080 | Well, I believe that all parents sin and make mistakes. We did. It's always the case.
00:17:38.080 | So you always have to--and you can't change a child's heart. Only God can do that.
00:17:45.080 | So we prayed, and by the grace of God, because of God's mercy, our children are followers of Christ,
00:17:52.080 | committed, walking after the Lord's ways in firm ways, I think I can say now.
00:18:02.080 | But it wasn't all sweetness and light. We had some rebellious spots.
00:18:08.080 | We had some rebellious spots, even after they became men.
00:18:13.080 | One of them, one of the children more seriously, he felt that we'd been inconsistent.
00:18:23.080 | I think he was right, that we'd said, "You're getting all these freedoms and privileges,"
00:18:28.080 | but we still had too much hands-on.
00:18:31.080 | But I think now, as he's grown some more and gotten older, we can see,
00:18:37.080 | yeah, you know, you can't give young people too much freedom because of this message.
00:18:45.080 | They should be in fellowship with older adults.
00:18:50.080 | And one of the things about our Church, which is good, is that older adults, as our children grew,
00:18:57.080 | older adults began to interact with them outside of us.
00:19:01.080 | You know, other people, we thought, "Wow, they really need that," because parents are parents,
00:19:07.080 | and teenagers begin to feel, "I want to be a kind of more independent adult."
00:19:13.080 | But if other adults are coming alongside them and respecting them, at the same time,
00:19:19.080 | showing wisdom in interacting with them, that's a great encouragement to say,
00:19:26.080 | "Look, I have something to learn from older people," which is one of the setting problems, of course, of being a teenager.
00:19:34.080 | You think you know everything.
00:19:37.080 | How did you handle it with regard to schooling?
00:19:40.080 | So if you set an arbitrary day of 12 or 13 years old and say, "We're considering you to be an adult,"
00:19:47.080 | how did you handle that?
00:19:49.080 | Because school and the compulsory school system under which we live doesn't acknowledge that as being an appropriate age.
00:19:56.080 | How did you handle that with your kids?
00:19:59.080 | Right. Well, they continued to attend school,
00:20:03.080 | but we attempted to make changes in how they were treated and what responsibilities they had at home,
00:20:11.080 | of course, buying their own school things and being responsible to do their homework without us constantly saying,
00:20:20.080 | "Well, do you have homework tonight, and are you doing it?"
00:20:24.080 | They were supposed to be responsible to do it on their own, so it was things like that that changed.
00:20:32.080 | But we didn't have a problem because our boys were gifted intellectually with saying,
00:20:42.080 | "Look, you should continue to go to school," obviously through high school, but then even to college.
00:20:48.080 | And that does present challenges because in other cultures, as you pointed out,
00:20:54.080 | people got married and set up their own homes somewhat younger, although it tended to be the boys had to be a little bit older to be financially independent.
00:21:07.080 | But in many cultures, that was true.
00:21:10.080 | But if a boy has intellectual gifts and you want to encourage that,
00:21:15.080 | then there's very little way around it of saying some way or other, "You need a lot of schooling in our day."
00:21:25.080 | So we were fine with that, but we attempted there also to keep talking about what was going on in school with our boys.
00:21:37.080 | It's almost a debriefing when they would come home rather than just say, "Oh, the school is taking care of it."
00:21:44.080 | We wanted to give them our own input, and particularly because our decision—people differ here, but our decision for various reasons was that they went to public school from fifth grade onwards.
00:22:01.080 | Before that, you taught them at home before that?
00:22:05.080 | Well, they were in Christian school, and we supplemented with homeschooling in the summer
00:22:11.080 | because we found there were certain gaps both in Christian school and in public school where the schools weren't doing such a good job.
00:22:21.080 | So we would have them read something, but it was more enjoyable because they didn't have tests and grades,
00:22:27.080 | but here are some things to catch up on areas where the school is not giving you very much.
00:22:36.080 | So we did that, but because they were in public school, it was even more important because we didn't—you know, we're Christian believers.
00:22:43.080 | We didn't agree with every single thing that was going on in the school.
00:22:48.080 | So we would continue to process that and attempt to train them to be critical in analyzing ideas and notions and practices that they were interacting with in school.
00:23:06.080 | And in a sense, if you do that, it can be better than just having one thing because you're getting that interaction that trains the younger person to do the kind of analysis we need to do,
00:23:28.080 | all of us, I think, in facing a culture that is a mixed bag. Any culture in the world, in fact, is mixed.
00:23:36.080 | There are some good things and there are some bad things, and there are good ideas and bad ideas, and sorting it all out is a major, major challenge.
00:23:44.080 | And that's part of what it means to follow Christ, is that in all our thinking,
00:23:49.080 | we are critically analyzing things from the standpoint of God's teaching in Scripture.
00:23:58.080 | So we wanted to train the children to do that.
00:24:02.080 | I'll ask you a question. I'm going to ask it in the form of an idea, and I don't know, since we haven't spoken, I don't know what your opinion is, but I'll share my idea.
00:24:11.080 | I was raised in many ways like you described, as far as a transition to manhood at about 12-ish.
00:24:21.080 | And my parents never did a, we didn't have any formal ceremony in the way that your idea was.
00:24:29.080 | But my father's philosophy was essentially that from the age of zero to two, that was a time of working with a baby.
00:24:36.080 | From the age of two to 12, that was a time of focused training of a child.
00:24:41.080 | And then from 12 to 20 was the transition from child to adult, where he was intensively focused on taking his hands off, taking his hands off, taking his hands off,
00:24:51.080 | and changing from the role that perhaps with an eight-year-old of a strict command relationship to more of the role of an advisor.
00:24:59.080 | And he was always ready to step in if necessary, but the goal was for me to bear the responsibility as he continued to place more and more responsibility on me.
00:25:10.080 | And I felt that that worked good. I watched a lot of my peers as they transitioned at the age of 18, and their parents had been perhaps not, had been very controlling during those teen years.
00:25:22.080 | Then the first thing they could do is they couldn't wait to get out of their parents' household and essentially rebel against the teachings of their parents.
00:25:28.080 | And I never had that relationship with my parents because I'd been accustomed to freedom and responsibility for a longer period of time.
00:25:36.080 | And so I felt that worked good in me.
00:25:38.080 | But one of the things that I think a lot about is how to integrate that with schooling and with education.
00:25:44.080 | And I personally at this point, from not on this side of the, from on the beginning stage working with my son, I look at most of school as far as most of the school curriculum as the generalized school curriculum as largely a waste of time
00:26:04.080 | in the sense that it doesn't go deep enough in any one thing to really matter, and the compulsory aspect of it seems to really affect the student's desire to learn.
00:26:14.080 | Now, I've thought about integrating this, and I've wondered if I couldn't, but I also get very nervous.
00:26:20.080 | I think that academic excellence and knowledge and education is incredibly important.
00:26:27.080 | So I get very nervous by those in society who go to the flip side and say, "Well, we're just going to take our hands off. We're not going to guide our children. We're not going to direct our children.
00:26:36.080 | It's just going to be whatever they want to do, they study," popularly known today in today's world as unschooling.
00:26:41.080 | So I've thought, "How could I handle a transition?"
00:26:44.080 | Because I think that learning the discipline of academic excellence at an early age seems important to me, but yet it doesn't seem appropriate to strap a 16-year-old to a chair and say, "You must do this."
00:26:58.080 | So I've thought, "Well, that seems appropriate for a younger student," but maybe at about the age of 12, at that point in time, perhaps I could transition and just simply pass across the responsibility and say, "Here are the legal -- and we hope to do home education -- but I can say, "Here are the legal requirements that we have to fulfill."
00:27:18.080 | Now, how you want to study and what you want to study, that's up to you, and then my job is, I hope, to inspire a love of learning in whatever the area of specific interest to my child would be.
00:27:32.080 | And I've thought, "Could I make that transition at 12?"
00:27:35.080 | How would you respond to that idea from the other side and then from your perspective as a professor and a learned and educated person?
00:27:41.080 | Right. I think you could.
00:27:45.080 | I think there's two factors that are big in my mind, and one is that it depends on the child.
00:27:57.080 | You do want to adjust to a child's capabilities and to his own creativity and to his own temptations.
00:28:05.080 | Some children may be less disciplined, for instance, in work, and so you want to be very thoughtful and pray about, "How can I encourage maturity, encourage responsibility, and at the same time be realistic about what the child can bear?"
00:28:26.080 | We set the transition at 12, but we also made it clear that if the boy was clearly not progressing, if he was having trouble, then we would delay it rather than just make an artificial ceremony that didn't mean anything because we knew he wasn't really ready.
00:28:50.080 | So that's an example of that kind of thing.
00:28:57.080 | The other thing is, I think, as with the way your father trained you, that even though there can be a marked break, because we did have a special ceremony that we called the Bar Yeshua,
00:29:10.080 | where we invited the whole church and the friends of the boy, and we had a big meal, and he demonstrated some of the abilities that he had worked on.
00:29:25.080 | All of that was a kind of fun thing, and people understood it. It was kind of like a big birthday party, but it was a major transition as well, so people understood that.
00:29:35.080 | But then, that doesn't mean that now, suddenly, it's dropping off a cliff because he's going to be living in the same house, and we're going to be trying to encourage that responsibility to grow.
00:29:50.080 | And when it comes to the educational aspect, I agree with you that we want to encourage lifetime learning of an appropriate way, and skills of learning. And one of the problems with school is it can make it dull.
00:30:06.080 | And fortunately, we had a pretty good school system, and they had tracking for some of the better students as well, and so it was okay in the area of science, but it was not okay in math, but it was not okay in literature and history.
00:30:35.080 | So we supplemented there. But if I were doing it in a kind of homeschooling environment, I think I would want my boy or young man to develop skills in terms of planning and thinking.
00:30:52.080 | Don't just pursue what's the most interesting to you, but be disciplined enough to know that for a lifetime of learning, you need a solid base that is broader.
00:31:05.080 | And that's what we did in our own supplemental homeschooling. One of the weakest areas was geography. Just names of rivers and places and nations and capitals and that kind of thing. They just didn't do that.
00:31:22.080 | And I thought, "You need to know that, friends." Because you live in a world where understanding the news and understanding political developments and things, we want our boys to know that.
00:31:37.080 | We found a little computer game, Geo Safari, that taught that in a kind of painless way. So we were looking for ways to do it, but we were also saying, "Look, this is a gap." And history was the same way. It was kind of spotty.
00:31:53.080 | So I would want to alert the young man and to continue to guide him in a general way in saying, "Look, you want to make sure that you fill in some of these areas at a more mature level because you've had little bitty things in fourth grade or something like that.
00:32:14.080 | But you're beyond that. You want to grow in these things. And at the same time, you want to pursue the things that you are interested in because that's part of what God has given you as well."
00:32:25.080 | So it's a kind of balance there, I would think. And you want also to give a young man skills in, "How do I find things out?"
00:32:37.080 | Well, nowadays, I suppose the standard way is just go on the Internet and Google search it. But what you get from a Google search is going to be a mess. Some of it is going to be good, and some of it is going to be awful.
00:32:52.080 | So most of our education was before the Internet was as big as it is now. But if we had to do it again, that's certainly one of the things that I would do, try to give people a sense of, "Where do I go to get solid and reliable material?"
00:33:15.080 | Right. I'm really puzzling my way through some of the education questions because I was educated at home through seventh grade, and then I went to a private school after that. And then I attended one year of government school in third grade.
00:33:29.080 | And when I've looked at it, I've tried to figure out because the fear is that I think if by focusing on the child and what they're interested in, it seems like the fear is, "Well, they're not going to get this general grounding and general knowledge."
00:33:42.080 | But my experience was that I was always interested in everything. And even today, the things that I study with focused intensity, I don't sit around and play video games. Nothing wrong with that if that's what you do for leisure, but I don't do that. I would rather study something and really sink my teeth into something.
00:34:03.080 | But many of the things that I was forced to learn, I have forgotten. So, the geography that's interesting to me, I retain. The geography that I was forced to memorize, it's all gone. The science that I didn't care about at that time, I passed the test, got straight A's and then was done with it.
00:34:24.080 | Whereas the science that I really care about now, I really can dig into. So, I just think our role is to inspire and then to teach and then to hold accountable. But hopefully, as a parent with a closer relationship, we can do better.
00:34:45.080 | Part of the challenge is that our culture is shifting to a culture of entertainment and self-fulfillment. So, there is a real temptation, I think, for young people not to realize the joys and fulfillment that comes through discipline and application.
00:35:14.080 | They just want to have everything immediately. So, I think parents may have to work harder at showing children how interesting learning can be and trying to present it in an interesting manner.
00:35:30.080 | I can remember when one of the children was in third or fourth grade somewhere, they were assigned to memorize the scientific names for different parts of a leaf or something like that. I thought, "Oh, no. This is a sure way to kill any interest in science."
00:35:51.080 | This is not science. This is just memorization. So, I would have thought, "Go out on the sidewalk and watch the ants or find out about pill bugs or something. Do something. Interact with the natural world. There are a lot of fascinating things."
00:36:11.080 | Don't just read something that has all these technical names. But, that's an example of trying to think through how to present material so that it's engaging and makes sense to a young person.
00:36:28.080 | So, I think that's part of it. Sometimes, the things that we're forced to memorize, we forget all the details. But, just knowing that it exists is of value.
00:36:45.080 | Later, you used the example of science. You learned all this stuff that you were forced to learn and then forgot. But, you still got some experience. What is science? So, when you actually took it up on your own, you understood that you had a platform to build on.
00:37:05.080 | So, I'm not convinced that, of course, the best way is if you can get a child interested. But, I'm not convinced that there aren't times when it's still valuable to learn certain things where you don't yet see the value of them.
00:37:24.080 | But, Ken, the question should still be asked, "Is there a way I can present them so that people can see the value of it?" So, with homeschooling, I think you got more flexibility.
00:37:39.080 | So, rather than just presenting it as problems of learning how to add and multiply, you go to a grocery store with a child and you talk about which of these two things is actually the best buy.
00:37:58.080 | Right. Well, it depends on the one thing. It's a higher price, but there's a greater quantity in the package. So, that's actually a division and multiplication problem.
00:38:13.080 | But, that's presenting it in a real context where you say, "How would you figure that out?" So, the child begins to see this is related to the world. It's not just something that I'm sitting down and doing meaningless things on paper.
00:38:32.080 | When your sons transitioned, especially with regard to the finances, you mentioned earlier that you paid them a man-sized allowance and then required certain responses from them and you pushed responsibility onto them.
00:38:51.080 | How did they do? Did they fail a couple of times? Did they pick it up easily? Had they gone on to continue to be financially responsible? Have they struggled? What's been your experience?
00:39:01.080 | Yeah. I don't think you can guarantee anything. Again, the grace of God is the last thing back. In our case, I think both boys did pretty well. One of them was probably, in early days, inclined to be overly frugal and the other overly spending.
00:39:24.080 | But, that settled down. It wasn't an extreme in either case. Maybe it was partly because of the example, which I hope my wife and I set in our own use of money. That affects things whether you like it or not.
00:39:44.080 | We tried to be reasonable. Actually, when the boys became men, one of the things was that you're part of the family council. So, major decisions will be discussed and you will be part of that discussion.
00:39:59.080 | So, you see some of the dynamics of things if my wife and I are contemplating a major purchase and the boy sits in and sees how we go about that.
00:40:13.080 | So, we were blessed, I think, by the fact that our boys turned out pretty well and both of them started investment accounts, small investment accounts because they didn't have money, but when they started having a job or something, they understood how to do that.
00:40:33.080 | I think one of them actually then asked my wife, "Well, such and such an investment account is actually a very good deal for the kind of thing that you want."
00:40:46.080 | So, I was able then to be a financial advisor, not that I'm an expert on that, but I've tried to train myself a little bit. So, I was glad to see that they understood how to save money.
00:41:03.080 | They've seen people their age that can't. Anyone who comes in, it goes out immediately, sometimes for frivolous things.
00:41:16.080 | I have two last questions for you and I'm curious because one is a cultural question and the other is a gender question. The first, the cultural question, in the Jewish tradition, and I'm not sure if there's, are you aware of other than the Jewish tradition and some of the other major world religions, do they also have a religious transition from childhood to adulthood?
00:41:41.080 | I'm not broadly aware, although I think for many things it's more of a cultural thing, and of course religion tends to get integrated with culture, but it varies a lot with culture and not always mixed with a particular religious view.
00:42:06.080 | I've always wondered and I'd like to have a Jewish rabbi on and some people that are experts in some of the other major world religions because I'm very familiar with the Christian teachings and some of the transitions there, Christian teachings on money, but I'm not familiar with some of the other cultures.
00:42:23.080 | I just was curious if you knew. Last question, and then unless you have anything else that I'd like to ask. You had two sons, so you didn't handle this transition with daughters, but maybe you had this conversation. Have you thought about if you had been fathering a daughter, what would have been similar, what would have been different, would it have been exactly the same, would you have done it differently within the context of, I don't know what the Jewish differences are between bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah, but could you comment on any differences or similarities?
00:42:52.080 | Yeah, I think that's a very good question, and my wife and I would have had to think hard about it because we do not believe that gender makes no difference. It does make a difference, a deep difference, although it's subtle as well, and that's part of the challenge.
00:43:13.080 | So we wouldn't have done everything the same. We would have expected our daughters to grow into being Christian women, and I think we would have trained them, for instance, in scales of homemaking and dealing with children and things that, not that the boys didn't have to find out, they could be, after they were men, they could be babysitters.
00:43:42.080 | That was one of the things. So daughters, we would have paid attention to the fact that most women are called by God to become wives and mothers, and that occupies a lot of their time and energy.
00:44:03.080 | And it is a most valuable service, both to God and to others, though it is not valued in our culture, and that is part of the problem. We would have had to work hard, I think, on that, because the culture puts down, I'm convinced, a lot of aspects of the culture puts down motherhood and wife, and that's not a real job kind of thing.
00:44:31.080 | That is just terrible. I think that is just an attack on what many women, most deep down, they want to do. And God has created them to do. Not that there aren't a spectrum of things in women, but that gets me into a whole philosophy of what are the differences between men and women without stereotyping things, because people can be caught in stereotypes.
00:45:00.080 | I think we need to respect the differences, and we would have trained then our daughters, and we would have had a transition at 16, because then they would have been declared as eligible to be courted.
00:45:15.080 | Is that a, you're talking about from a legal standpoint, in the US framework?
00:45:20.080 | No, I'm not thinking legally, but there is an old-fashioned thing of the, what is it they call it, the coming out party or coming out ball. It's still there, vaguely, in the culture. And so, again, anything we can build from the culture, we would use and say, you know, this is the point at which you are declared to be a young woman, and that means being eligible.
00:45:49.080 | To be married. And not that necessarily you would go that way immediately, because a woman can continue to mature and to grow in her relationship to Christ and to grow intellectually as well. But we would make a transition, I think, at that point.
00:46:07.080 | Right, and in the Latin tradition, they have the quinceanera at 15, which is the coming out party for Spanish girls.
00:46:18.080 | Right, and now I've got the, the Anglo term is debutante ball. It's a similar kind of thing. But again, you know, it's telling, isn't it, that many cultures have something or other.
00:46:32.080 | Or our culture used to. I mean, that's like, we know the terms, but we just, it's vanished, and I don't know why.
00:46:39.080 | Yeah, yeah, for various reasons. But anyway, we would try to have moved in that direction. But because we didn't have daughters, we didn't think, we haven't thought it through fully.
00:46:52.080 | Although I know my wife got together with some other women in our church, and again, they talked about, well, couldn't we have some training, put our minds together and develop some training that would be specifically for the girls and help them with etiquette and help them with things related to clothing and food and so on.
00:47:19.080 | Things that have sort of dropped out of a lot of public school education, but that women are going to be thinking and working with that, most of them, for most of their life.
00:47:33.080 | I said it was my last question, but you sparked another one, because you made a comment in your essay about the difference between, you know, Master Smith versus Mr. Smith. Can you shed any more light on that in terms of our cultural heritage and cultural context for the use of those terms and how they were traditionally used?
00:47:52.080 | Yeah, well, as I understand it, and you have to go back some decades to see this, but it used to be that a boy child was called Master, well, if it was my last name, Poitras, it would be Master Ransom Poitras, is my older son, Master Ransom Poitras, until he was 12.
00:48:16.080 | Then he would become Mr. Ransom Poitras. Because that existed back there, I don't know how many decades it's been since it more or less dropped out, but because that existed, we thought we were going to pick up on that as well and we'll reinforce this whole thing by saying,
00:48:40.080 | "Now you are officially Mr. Ransom Poitras." I announced it to everybody, right at this Bar Yeshua ceremony, so that we were doing everything we could think of to underline the fact that this is a major transition, and it's marked by a change in how you are called by the other people in the culture.
00:49:09.080 | So, it's one more example of how we were trying to use things that were not completely dead, at least the time we did them, maybe it's completely dead now, but we felt, "Here's another something that we can use."
00:49:32.080 | And you know, when boys are boys, you don't call them Mr. You just call them by their first name, usually. But if you're being very formal, then it would be Master. That was the old way of doing it. And then you become Mr. when you're recognized as an adult.
00:49:52.080 | Fascinating. Well, Dr. Poitras, I appreciate your sharing, at least your story and your perspective. I'll make sure that your essay is linked in the show notes of today's show, so if anyone wants to read your original essay from some years ago, I'll make sure the link is there. And I thank you for coming on. I appreciate it very much.
00:50:10.080 | Well, thank you once again for the invitation. If there's one thing I would say in closing, it is to underline again the grace of God. You know, we as parents have had the responsibility which we felt we had from God, but nobody keeps that. No one carries that out perfectly.
00:50:32.080 | And we had to ask our children to forgive us. And partly the message of Christianity is about, it's a message of Christ coming to die for us and to save us and to forgive us, and that alters the family, because then you can admit, "I was wrong."
00:50:52.080 | And you admit, "I can't save my children. I can't change their hearts." So it's a different life than just trying to do everything yourself.
00:51:03.080 | It seems to me very clear, and I appreciate you making the point. There's no technique in the world that can save you if you're a disaster as a person and you're trying to tell your child and follow this magic technique and saying, "Do this thing," if your life does not add up.
00:51:20.080 | The first and foremost thing is to live a life that's worthy of following, and earn the respect. And then now, within that context and within God's ability, then you can hope that the work that you do will have lasting fruit.
00:51:39.080 | Right, right. But we prayed because we knew we couldn't do what only God could do.
00:51:48.080 | I'm finding the experience of being a new parent to be a very humbling experience.
00:51:53.080 | Yeah, it is.
00:51:56.080 | Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today, Dr. Poythress. I appreciate your time.
00:52:00.080 | Okay, thanks again for the invitation.
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