RPF0659-How_My_Ideas_and_Philosophies_on_Education_Have_Changed_Over_the

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00:00:30.620 | - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:31.920 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:33.560 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:35.700 | to live a rich and meaningful life now

00:00:38.160 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:39.800 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:41.360 | Today on the show, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:43.100 | kind of a current report,

00:00:45.700 | tell you a little bit about my current thinking

00:00:48.280 | and strategy, answer some personal questions

00:00:51.080 | with regard to my children's education.

00:00:54.880 | Over the years here at Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:56.640 | a common theme of the show has been the value

00:00:59.220 | of education.

00:01:00.720 | Obviously, education has a direct financial payoff

00:01:04.860 | and it's important for living a whole life.

00:01:07.560 | And I have some rather strong views on the subject.

00:01:10.060 | I've been very open with those views.

00:01:12.300 | And I've shared over the years a little bit

00:01:13.640 | about some of my ideas.

00:01:15.340 | But the challenge has been that when I first started

00:01:17.500 | this show, I think, if my timeline is correct,

00:01:21.140 | I think my wife and I, our first child was six months old.

00:01:25.040 | Well, at this point in time, our eldest child

00:01:27.280 | is closer to six, almost six.

00:01:30.340 | And so things are changing, of course, with experience.

00:01:34.120 | And I found this to be a common theme of my life.

00:01:36.760 | I have a certain idea, a certain perspective,

00:01:39.980 | a certain opinion when I am young.

00:01:42.860 | And then as I get older and accumulate more experience,

00:01:46.760 | more insight, perhaps a little bit more maturity,

00:01:50.960 | I look to see if those ideas change,

00:01:53.140 | if those ideas have grown

00:01:55.940 | or if I've learned something that shows me

00:01:58.040 | the previous idea was wrong.

00:02:00.540 | I wanna be quick to admit to myself and to anybody else

00:02:03.000 | when I get something wrong,

00:02:04.780 | but I also want to stay true to a vision,

00:02:07.720 | whatever vision I've had as a young person.

00:02:10.480 | Because I think that those visions are important.

00:02:12.480 | It is very humbling, of course, when you get older

00:02:14.580 | and you hear yourself say something

00:02:17.360 | or you remember, you hear someone else say something

00:02:19.900 | and you remember how you said something similar

00:02:22.720 | when you were younger

00:02:25.060 | and you think of how foolish your younger self was.

00:02:28.140 | It's extremely humbling when you're in that situation.

00:02:30.400 | I try to be humbled by that and change my words

00:02:33.240 | and adjust as I grow older.

00:02:35.040 | We all should be growing.

00:02:36.680 | But I'm not ready just to throw aside

00:02:38.880 | all kinds of every vision, every idea that you have,

00:02:42.320 | because there's something valuable about those ideas.

00:02:44.760 | There's something that takes you through

00:02:46.760 | even as you grow and perhaps adapt your ideas a little bit.

00:02:51.320 | So in today's show, I'm gonna share with you

00:02:52.600 | just a little bit about what we're doing,

00:02:55.260 | what influences have been helpful to me.

00:02:58.100 | And I'm intending this not to be a show

00:03:01.060 | that comes from the perspective of an expert to a student,

00:03:04.500 | but simply as a fellow journeyer with you.

00:03:07.860 | I have been very vocal about my position,

00:03:12.300 | which is that a very wise thing for all of us to do

00:03:16.500 | is to pull your children out of government schools.

00:03:19.180 | I've talked extensively about the reasons why

00:03:21.660 | and I still hold to that position.

00:03:24.040 | But the challenge comes that if you are inclined

00:03:27.580 | in that direction, let's say that any of the ideas

00:03:30.400 | or arguments I presented have resonated with you

00:03:33.320 | in some way or you've wondered if they might resonate,

00:03:35.800 | and so you're thinking about pulling your children

00:03:37.560 | out of a government school and doing something else,

00:03:40.260 | now you have to figure out what that something else is.

00:03:43.800 | And that's tough.

00:03:45.160 | That's really, really tough.

00:03:46.720 | Because there is a wide world of options available to you.

00:03:51.540 | The government school approach is easy

00:03:53.720 | because your house or your apartment,

00:03:56.760 | your dwelling place is located

00:03:58.360 | within a geographic school district.

00:04:00.720 | You will go to the government educational institution

00:04:03.920 | of that geographic school district,

00:04:06.920 | and they'll assign you to the local school

00:04:09.800 | that fits your districting.

00:04:11.400 | And then you will just simply take your child there.

00:04:13.840 | And there was not really gonna be many options

00:04:17.320 | for your child to choose from.

00:04:19.320 | At the older years, perhaps there's a little bit of choice

00:04:21.520 | among the classes that are taken,

00:04:22.920 | but the educational philosophy is going to be

00:04:25.540 | whatever philosophy is taught by that school,

00:04:27.720 | whatever's held by that principal,

00:04:29.200 | whatever understanding about education

00:04:31.660 | your child's teachers have.

00:04:32.920 | You have no say over the teachers,

00:04:34.900 | you have no say over the principal,

00:04:36.340 | and you have no say over the school.

00:04:38.160 | But when you pull your child out of that,

00:04:39.940 | you have a wide range of options.

00:04:42.740 | Do you send your child to the private school

00:04:44.880 | that's a mile away from your house?

00:04:47.280 | Or do you send them to the one that's across town?

00:04:50.500 | Do you choose a Montessori style of education?

00:04:54.960 | Or do you choose a Waldorf school?

00:04:57.600 | Or do you choose a private Christian school?

00:05:00.220 | Or do you choose a secular private school?

00:05:02.640 | Or do you homeschool?

00:05:03.840 | And don't even open up the doors on homeschooling.

00:05:06.160 | If you homeschool, what curriculum do you do?

00:05:08.320 | Do you do this curriculum or that curriculum?

00:05:10.440 | And how do you put it together?

00:05:11.320 | And what subjects does your child need to study, et cetera?

00:05:13.280 | It's a little overwhelming.

00:05:15.400 | Check that, it's a lot overwhelming.

00:05:18.200 | And so I just wanna share with you as a fellow journeyer

00:05:21.540 | with the caveat that, again, for context,

00:05:24.180 | my eldest is not yet six,

00:05:26.580 | with the caveat of what we're doing

00:05:28.700 | and what I think is working

00:05:30.380 | and how I think parents could think through

00:05:33.980 | some of these things.

00:05:35.060 | I, of course, am always welcome for your insight.

00:05:37.460 | I do try to solicit and listen carefully

00:05:39.780 | to the wisdom of my elders.

00:05:41.940 | So if you have wisdom to offer, feel free.

00:05:44.780 | But I'll just share as a fellow journeyer

00:05:47.280 | for anybody in a similar boat or with younger children,

00:05:50.640 | some of the things that we are learning as we go.

00:05:53.820 | I'll begin my outline with some things

00:05:57.640 | that I have changed my mind on and changed my opinion on.

00:06:01.980 | And I'll begin with the formal structure

00:06:05.380 | of early child education.

00:06:07.740 | Way back in Radical Personal Finance, episode 77,

00:06:11.780 | I talked about the value and importance

00:06:14.900 | of early childhood education.

00:06:17.100 | That show was the starting of a series.

00:06:19.740 | It was called "How to Pay for College Part One,

00:06:22.220 | Teach Your Baby to Read, RPF 0077."

00:06:25.980 | And I never really finished that episode.

00:06:28.380 | I remember I had a listener who wrote to me,

00:06:29.640 | said, "I wish you'd finish this episode,

00:06:31.300 | the series I mean."

00:06:32.720 | Because I had it planned for a long series,

00:06:34.620 | but other things came in the way.

00:06:36.380 | And I never really finished that series.

00:06:38.500 | Now, at the time, I had first come across

00:06:41.100 | the one of the popularizers of that philosophy,

00:06:46.180 | a man named Glenn Doman.

00:06:48.060 | I think his first name was Glenn.

00:06:49.220 | Anyway, Doman, "The Doman Method."

00:06:50.660 | He wrote a book called "Teach Your Baby to Read."

00:06:52.740 | I started getting online, looking around,

00:06:54.360 | and I was so impressed with the results

00:06:57.260 | and the things that, with the results that he was,

00:07:00.780 | that some of his disciples were achieving,

00:07:03.940 | that I thought, "This is really great."

00:07:05.540 | And I quickly found that he was a,

00:07:09.940 | that certainly there were many people

00:07:11.220 | who disagreed with him.

00:07:12.060 | It's controversies in life.

00:07:13.180 | Everything is just full of controversies,

00:07:14.980 | no matter what position you hold,

00:07:16.420 | no matter what opinion you have.

00:07:18.180 | Man, everything is, you'll always find somebody out there

00:07:21.580 | who wants to tell you how wrong you are.

00:07:24.380 | And so certainly there were people about Doman.

00:07:25.940 | I was aware of that, but I found it very inspiring.

00:07:28.480 | So we started doing some of the Doman methodologies

00:07:32.420 | with our first child.

00:07:34.780 | But we never committed to it fully enough

00:07:37.200 | to grasp or to get all the benefits

00:07:40.780 | that some other parents got from it.

00:07:43.340 | We never committed to it.

00:07:45.060 | And whose fault is that?

00:07:47.660 | My fault, is that?

00:07:48.500 | I wouldn't say there's any fault with the problems.

00:07:49.940 | We just never committed to it.

00:07:51.340 | And today I acknowledge that I still think

00:07:55.420 | that for parents who are heavily committed to it, et cetera,

00:07:58.220 | it's probably fine.

00:07:59.180 | It's probably a good thing.

00:08:00.780 | But I've come to temper quite a bit

00:08:03.860 | on the need for being super hardcore

00:08:06.860 | about early childhood education.

00:08:09.700 | And I'm starting to see the wisdom of simply waiting

00:08:13.420 | and waiting until your child is interested

00:08:17.500 | and is at an appropriate level for formal education.

00:08:22.500 | Now, if we define the word education

00:08:25.220 | as things encompassing formal school subjects,

00:08:28.660 | I think we miss out on a great deal of the richness of life

00:08:32.740 | and the experience that a child needs.

00:08:35.060 | In many ways, children are always learning.

00:08:38.100 | They're always being educated.

00:08:39.860 | And if we surround them with a rich environment

00:08:42.660 | filled with things that are good,

00:08:43.980 | that are beautiful, that are true,

00:08:45.180 | that are inspiring, that are uplifting,

00:08:47.300 | then their education is happening all along the way,

00:08:50.620 | but it's not necessarily happening

00:08:52.060 | through specific academic studies,

00:08:54.340 | through specific book learning.

00:08:56.900 | One of the challenges that you'll face

00:08:59.180 | if you're a young parent is, although you tell yourself,

00:09:01.900 | "I don't need to compare my child to other people,"

00:09:04.180 | you can't help but do it.

00:09:06.100 | And there's such an intense pressure on parenting

00:09:10.500 | and on parents that I think it's very easy to get uptight.

00:09:15.180 | So-and-so is having such and such a milestone.

00:09:17.460 | So-and-so there is having such and such a milestone.

00:09:20.380 | And our child is not.

00:09:21.500 | What's wrong with our child?

00:09:22.940 | Now, we, of course, need to pay attention to our children,

00:09:25.620 | understand what's happening,

00:09:27.300 | but recognize that children develop differently.

00:09:30.100 | Boys develop differently than girls.

00:09:31.900 | One boy develops differently than another boy.

00:09:33.900 | One girl develops differently than another girl.

00:09:35.500 | Everyone develops differently.

00:09:37.300 | And be willing to take some time and have patience.

00:09:40.380 | When I was younger, I read the recommendations

00:09:44.420 | and books of educators who would talk about the value

00:09:47.660 | of waiting until a child is about seven

00:09:50.060 | to start formal academic studies.

00:09:53.820 | And I was always a little bit nervous about that position.

00:09:58.740 | Seems to me that it'd be silly

00:10:00.980 | to waste several years of study

00:10:03.660 | if it can be achieved.

00:10:06.020 | And so I filed that away in the back of my head as,

00:10:08.580 | okay, well, they're saying you shouldn't worry

00:10:10.700 | about things until age seven.

00:10:12.740 | But I think probably that's a little bit too late.

00:10:15.820 | And of course, in the system that most of us are part of

00:10:18.060 | where you have kindergarten and pre-kindergarten

00:10:20.420 | is very heavily pushed.

00:10:22.420 | And in fact, there's a big push among some people

00:10:25.860 | to make sure that not only is kindergarten mandated

00:10:29.020 | and paid for by the government,

00:10:30.220 | but now pre-kindergarten is available

00:10:32.180 | and paid for by the government, et cetera.

00:10:34.780 | So there was a big push in that direction

00:10:36.700 | that some people claim academic success because of it.

00:10:39.500 | But I think I've come far more over onto the side

00:10:42.620 | of wait till the child is ready.

00:10:45.020 | And I'm growing in confidence

00:10:47.140 | as I watch my own children develop.

00:10:50.060 | It's difficult when you,

00:10:52.980 | especially if you homeschool as we do,

00:10:55.140 | if you homeschool, I think there's a tendency

00:10:57.020 | to feel a bit self-conscious

00:10:58.860 | because you know you're comparing yourself

00:11:00.820 | and you're being compared to the government school system.

00:11:03.820 | And because you're doing something

00:11:05.060 | that is still somewhat unorthodox,

00:11:07.180 | I feel the desire to be a good representation

00:11:10.140 | of good results.

00:11:12.180 | It's a little bit also of pressure

00:11:15.620 | if you're in any kind of public facing capacity.

00:11:18.300 | And even though I don't talk about my children

00:11:19.980 | or put them in a public eye,

00:11:22.220 | I of course still feel a little bit of pressure

00:11:24.140 | of being in a public capacity.

00:11:26.140 | And so there's this pressure to want to say,

00:11:28.380 | oh, I'm just gonna teach a child now

00:11:31.100 | and I've got to get these great results

00:11:32.580 | because if I don't, I'm gonna be judged harshly.

00:11:35.380 | But of course to do that would be to not be focusing

00:11:38.620 | on the person's interests who matter,

00:11:41.420 | which is the child,

00:11:43.460 | 'cause my children's job is not to make me look good.

00:11:46.620 | My job is to care for them

00:11:48.140 | and do what's in their best interest,

00:11:50.140 | to do what's good for them,

00:11:51.140 | regardless of how it makes me look.

00:11:53.340 | And I've also just realized and learned

00:11:55.940 | through a little bit of experience

00:11:57.420 | that it can lead to a lot of unnecessary frustration.

00:12:01.700 | For example, with my eldest son,

00:12:04.080 | we started working with him with reading

00:12:06.180 | and teaching him using a phonics method.

00:12:08.940 | And it just came to a lot of frustration.

00:12:13.140 | And it was frustrating for mama,

00:12:16.980 | it was frustrating for the child.

00:12:19.280 | And so finally just said, okay, that's it.

00:12:21.660 | And actually we were traveling around the country

00:12:23.160 | when we were doing it.

00:12:24.060 | So we just said, that's it, there's no need for this.

00:12:25.780 | We're not gonna try to...

00:12:26.740 | We weren't doing much for anybody who thinks

00:12:28.340 | that I'm brutalizing my children

00:12:30.060 | with three hours of instruction per day.

00:12:31.620 | No, it wasn't much,

00:12:32.460 | but still it just wasn't clicking

00:12:34.360 | and it was frustrating for him.

00:12:36.060 | And his parents looked and said, this isn't working.

00:12:38.420 | So let's just stop.

00:12:39.380 | And it was a convenient time to stop, et cetera.

00:12:41.820 | Now on the flip side, he really seems to be skilled in math,

00:12:45.660 | grabs onto mathematical ideas much more.

00:12:48.620 | And so I just kind of gently started working on mathematics

00:12:51.900 | and counting and numbers and things like that

00:12:54.100 | instead of reading.

00:12:54.960 | And it led to far more happiness.

00:12:57.380 | Now, recently, as he's come back to reading,

00:12:59.540 | his skill level is a little bit older,

00:13:01.460 | has gone through the roof much, much faster.

00:13:03.900 | Now this is not uncommon for boys.

00:13:06.980 | It's fairly common for boys to learn to read

00:13:09.340 | at a later age than girls.

00:13:11.920 | But yet it's encouraging to me as a parent

00:13:14.380 | to recognize that just because my child doesn't read at four

00:13:17.460 | that doesn't mean that they're doomed for failure.

00:13:22.020 | I can wait and just wait until they're ready.

00:13:25.400 | And waiting until they're ready

00:13:26.720 | seems like it can be a very important strategy.

00:13:29.960 | So that would be, if I were to say

00:13:31.120 | what is the biggest change that has happened for me

00:13:34.920 | is I've grown increasingly confident

00:13:36.960 | that you can wait until a child is ready

00:13:40.360 | and that there is value in all the things they're learning.

00:13:44.100 | So playing outside is valuable.

00:13:46.720 | It's really important.

00:13:48.680 | There's some interesting books

00:13:51.160 | that have been written about the value of play

00:13:53.020 | and how it in and of itself is formative.

00:13:56.840 | I read these things and I just think,

00:14:00.080 | okay, well, how do I apply this?

00:14:01.800 | But just learning to slow down and relax.

00:14:04.080 | And I think that's probably a common experience.

00:14:06.440 | As I have talked to parents in my peer group,

00:14:10.160 | it seems like many of us

00:14:11.560 | have gone through a similar experience.

00:14:15.320 | As I pull older parents that I know,

00:14:17.680 | it seems as though that's a common parenting experience.

00:14:20.040 | So I was probably a little bit blind to it

00:14:22.080 | back when I reported episode 77 of the show

00:14:24.440 | and the older parents are probably chuckling a little bit.

00:14:27.580 | But that is what,

00:14:28.860 | that is, that's the biggest thing that I've changed on.

00:14:33.280 | I'm growing more relaxed.

00:14:34.680 | I'm growing more willing to just give time

00:14:36.800 | and let the child learn when the child is ready

00:14:39.040 | rather than try to kind of screw them

00:14:40.800 | into some preset curriculum.

00:14:42.760 | Sounds ironic.

00:14:43.600 | It sounds like it should be obvious

00:14:45.000 | because of course that's one of my frustrations

00:14:47.560 | with the government school system

00:14:48.760 | is that children are screwed into a set curriculum

00:14:52.120 | that doesn't account for the individual needs

00:14:53.880 | and interests of the child.

00:14:55.080 | So it should be obvious to me that that's what I was doing.

00:14:59.000 | But I was open to not doing that,

00:15:02.280 | but still I think I did have a little bit

00:15:04.020 | of unnecessary pressure there.

00:15:06.160 | I'll talk about some influences

00:15:07.840 | that have been impressive to me

00:15:10.760 | and talk about some solutions

00:15:12.220 | as we talk about how to integrate them.

00:15:15.080 | So the first thing is philosophy of education.

00:15:19.240 | In my mind, the purpose of a child's education

00:15:22.940 | is multifaceted.

00:15:24.740 | So there are a number of things,

00:15:26.540 | and this is not a comprehensive list,

00:15:28.460 | but there are a number of things that we want

00:15:29.860 | for our children in their educational process.

00:15:33.620 | One of the first things that we want

00:15:35.120 | is character development.

00:15:36.920 | So a child who has a strong and upright

00:15:39.880 | and virtuous character can succeed in almost any endeavor,

00:15:43.800 | almost any activity,

00:15:45.680 | whereas a child who has great book smarts,

00:15:48.640 | but no character, is less likely to succeed.

00:15:52.320 | If you look at the world around us

00:15:54.480 | and you look at the character of people around you

00:15:59.120 | that you see succeeding and failing,

00:16:01.240 | I'm convinced that character development

00:16:03.360 | and instruction and virtue and moral virtue

00:16:06.260 | is more important than one specific aspect of book learning.

00:16:12.280 | And so that's a major focus of a child's education

00:16:15.680 | has to be character development.

00:16:17.380 | Now that's a little hard to try to think about

00:16:19.480 | how you do it,

00:16:20.760 | because character development is different

00:16:22.720 | than understanding math facts.

00:16:25.000 | Math facts can just simply be drilled and memorized,

00:16:27.960 | but character development is much more a matter of example,

00:16:31.520 | a matter of instruction, a matter of correction,

00:16:34.120 | and a matter of practice, a matter of exercise and courage

00:16:36.920 | when you don't feel like it,

00:16:38.080 | and learning how to behave uprightly

00:16:40.800 | in the face of difficult circumstances.

00:16:42.560 | So I don't know how that can be put into a book format,

00:16:46.840 | but because character instruction and character development

00:16:49.940 | is a primary goal of education,

00:16:53.120 | I think that is where environment makes a big, big difference.

00:16:56.360 | One of the biggest influences on a child's behavior

00:17:00.160 | is going to be what they see modeled around them.

00:17:03.520 | When I think back to my own childhood,

00:17:07.400 | one of the things that I'm acutely conscious of is

00:17:10.880 | whenever I, when I look back on some of the things

00:17:14.120 | that I'm embarrassed of or ashamed of,

00:17:17.000 | times when I treated people unkindly,

00:17:19.120 | or I was rude and abusive in my behavior towards others,

00:17:24.120 | it was always due to peer pressure

00:17:28.560 | and to the involvement of people who were around me.

00:17:33.240 | And there's things that I'm ashamed of.

00:17:36.120 | But looking back, I can see how, you know,

00:17:38.080 | the old saw bad company corrupts good morals

00:17:41.520 | is certainly true.

00:17:43.160 | I think many of us, if we look back on the things,

00:17:45.520 | times that we did things that were stupid,

00:17:47.500 | that could have led to physical harm or death even,

00:17:51.360 | times that we just did things that were foolish

00:17:54.440 | or that were hurtful towards other people,

00:17:56.440 | often it wasn't something that we dreamed up

00:17:58.960 | in and of ourselves, just sitting on our bed at home,

00:18:00.980 | thinking, how can I go out and be cruel to another child?

00:18:03.580 | It often came because we saw somebody else being cruel

00:18:06.220 | and we wanted to fit in,

00:18:07.360 | or we saw somebody else practicing deviant behavior

00:18:10.580 | and we wanted to fit in.

00:18:11.900 | And so with regard to character development,

00:18:13.500 | in my mind, I think one of the most important things

00:18:16.180 | to that end is to surround the child

00:18:19.580 | with a positive moral example.

00:18:22.580 | Hopefully that comes from my wife and me living out

00:18:26.340 | an example of positive moral virtue.

00:18:29.180 | It comes in to be very important

00:18:31.620 | in terms of the influences that we allow into our home,

00:18:34.380 | making sure that they're filled with,

00:18:36.580 | that our home is filled with influences that are upright,

00:18:39.860 | that are moral, that are virtuous,

00:18:41.420 | that are inspiring, that are quality,

00:18:44.580 | and being willing to set clear standards about those things.

00:18:49.340 | Now, one of the things that,

00:18:50.880 | one of the things that's been interesting

00:18:54.040 | is because my wife and I are fairly sensitive to this,

00:18:57.180 | it's amazing how much of even just common day

00:19:02.180 | children's literature,

00:19:03.800 | the things that are relatively normal,

00:19:08.100 | common, inoffensive, traditional things,

00:19:11.380 | how much of it teaches wrong behavior,

00:19:16.380 | wrong actions, et cetera.

00:19:18.220 | And it's been sobering to me, even as a parent,

00:19:20.500 | to look at some of the things that I formerly consider

00:19:22.460 | to be fairly innocuous and recognize

00:19:24.880 | what a formative effect these things can have

00:19:27.480 | on the impressionable mind of a child.

00:19:30.620 | So I think that's one of the primary goals

00:19:32.420 | of character development.

00:19:34.760 | Another primary goal, sorry,

00:19:36.440 | goals of education is character development.

00:19:38.380 | Another primary goal of education, I think,

00:19:41.260 | has to do with developing and fostering a love of learning.

00:19:45.780 | As far as I can tell, a person who loves to learn

00:19:49.340 | can conquer any mountain that's placed in front of them

00:19:53.920 | because challenges and problems simply become,

00:19:57.080 | well, just that, a challenge that can be learned around.

00:20:00.900 | You know, there's that old song from Annie Oakley,

00:20:05.060 | "Anything you can do, I can do better.

00:20:06.940 | "I can do anything better than you."

00:20:08.780 | And there's a measure of truth to that

00:20:11.420 | that I think is helpful and healthy for us to understand,

00:20:15.720 | that anything you can do, I can do,

00:20:17.500 | maybe not better, but I can also do.

00:20:19.480 | Anything you can do, I can also do.

00:20:20.940 | Now, obviously, there are limitations.

00:20:23.880 | There are physical limitations.

00:20:25.360 | There are certain specific things

00:20:29.280 | that are simply not going to be possible.

00:20:31.620 | And I bristle at kind of cheesy, positive-sounding stuff

00:20:36.620 | where people lie to children and say,

00:20:39.780 | "Yeah, you can do anything in the world."

00:20:42.500 | One of my cardinal rules is never lie to my children,

00:20:44.760 | no matter what, in any circumstance, for any reason.

00:20:47.800 | I feel like that erodes the most important measure of trust

00:20:51.020 | between a parent and a child.

00:20:52.220 | A parent will, if my daddy will lie to me about that,

00:20:55.340 | what else is he lying to me about?

00:20:57.220 | So one of my rules, I'll never lie to my children.

00:21:00.140 | But there is, and so feeding them with fluffy things,

00:21:04.220 | if you can do anything, is absurd.

00:21:06.180 | You can't do anything.

00:21:07.560 | But yet still, helping somebody to understand

00:21:09.860 | that you can do almost anything

00:21:12.060 | with if you develop the appropriate disciplines,

00:21:14.420 | exercise, develop the appropriate skills,

00:21:16.420 | if you have the basic natural traits needed for that thing,

00:21:19.540 | and you can at least do better.

00:21:21.620 | And the point of saying things like that to a child

00:21:23.660 | is you can do better if you apply yourself

00:21:25.740 | and you really focus on it and you believe in yourself

00:21:27.940 | and you work hard at it than if you sit around moaning

00:21:30.260 | and groaning about how you can't do it.

00:21:32.900 | That's the truth that needs to be conveyed.

00:21:35.020 | And so I see that one of the primary goals of education

00:21:39.340 | is to help a child develop a lifelong love of learning.

00:21:44.340 | As I look at the world around,

00:21:46.540 | it seems absurd to me to think that any one of us,

00:21:50.780 | be it us a parent or a professional teacher

00:21:54.180 | or an administrator of some kind,

00:21:56.460 | it seems absurd to me to think

00:21:58.780 | that we can look at a four-year-old child

00:22:02.380 | and design for that child a course of study

00:22:05.620 | taking some 12 or 16 or 20 years

00:22:09.660 | that will properly equip that child

00:22:12.180 | for the world that exists

00:22:14.980 | to take 15 or 20 years from now

00:22:18.660 | if we're talking about things like knowledge.

00:22:21.700 | I don't see how you and I could possibly know

00:22:24.740 | what our children will be facing 18 years from now.

00:22:28.700 | How could we know?

00:22:29.820 | How do we know what the world is gonna look like

00:22:31.820 | at that point in time?

00:22:33.100 | And so there's no specific piece of knowledge

00:22:36.140 | or point of skill that we can specifically say,

00:22:38.980 | well, I'm gonna give this to my five-year-old

00:22:40.780 | or I'm gonna do this in third grade

00:22:42.540 | that we can be sure is going to be relevant

00:22:44.780 | when they graduate from high school

00:22:46.580 | or when they graduate from college.

00:22:48.740 | And so what we need to do is to give them disciplines

00:22:52.740 | and skills that will allow them

00:22:55.460 | to grapple with the world at as it is

00:22:57.700 | 12 or 16 or 18 years from now.

00:23:00.460 | Now, the tools for doing so

00:23:02.220 | are probably going to involve

00:23:04.060 | specific pieces of information,

00:23:05.980 | specific skills that are relevant today.

00:23:08.260 | But we're not focusing so much

00:23:11.300 | on those specific bits of information

00:23:14.340 | that we can somehow teach them for success,

00:23:16.820 | but we're rather focusing on teaching them

00:23:18.860 | to acquire the bits of information.

00:23:20.900 | And so in order for them to acquire the information,

00:23:23.500 | they need to love learning

00:23:26.340 | so that they will not be those who are left behind

00:23:28.580 | as the pace of change continues to increase.

00:23:32.060 | From every metric that I can see,

00:23:33.860 | we can expect throughout the rest of our lifetimes

00:23:36.580 | that the pace of change of our lives

00:23:38.420 | will continue to increase.

00:23:39.860 | If you do a survey of the last 15 years,

00:23:42.260 | you can clearly see that, how the pace of life has picked up

00:23:45.500 | and how many of our jobs and businesses and skills

00:23:50.500 | are quickly becoming obsolete.

00:23:52.940 | And the only people who are going to thrive

00:23:55.420 | and prosper in the future

00:23:56.980 | are those who have the requisite character

00:24:00.220 | and the requisite skills

00:24:01.860 | where they can quickly acquire new specific applied skills

00:24:05.900 | or grasp new knowledge, et cetera,

00:24:08.420 | that will allow them to stay competitive

00:24:09.980 | in an increasingly competitive world.

00:24:12.020 | Those who don't have that skill will quickly fall behind.

00:24:15.260 | And so I see the development of those skills

00:24:17.420 | as being the primary function

00:24:19.020 | of a child's educational process.

00:24:21.620 | So they need to teach them a love for learning.

00:24:24.980 | The second thing that's closely associated

00:24:27.420 | is they need to have the skills of learning.

00:24:31.620 | Now, as I see it, those skills of learning

00:24:35.220 | could be subdivided between what I will call,

00:24:39.340 | for lack of a better word, hard skills,

00:24:41.580 | and maybe soft skills.

00:24:44.180 | I would classify hard skills as things like

00:24:49.180 | reading, writing, and arithmetic.

00:24:53.780 | That the basic skill of reading or basic literacy

00:24:58.340 | is a fundamental core skill of learning.

00:25:01.820 | Certainly you can learn how to do some things

00:25:03.940 | by watching somebody do it and repeating it.

00:25:06.540 | There are students who are very skilled with their hands

00:25:09.100 | who, for example, can watch somebody work a machine

00:25:12.220 | or use a knife or a lathe or some piece of equipment

00:25:16.180 | and can copy what they're doing.

00:25:18.940 | But the basic skill is, for all of us,

00:25:21.300 | is going to be reading.

00:25:22.380 | That's the basic way that we learn.

00:25:24.740 | Then writing is one of those basic skills of communication.

00:25:28.860 | And writing is an effective way of developing thoughts

00:25:31.980 | and is an effective way of developing what you think.

00:25:34.540 | The best way to understand what you actually think

00:25:37.780 | is to write it down.

00:25:39.060 | And so in writing it down,

00:25:40.940 | you can actually grapple with the thoughts that you have.

00:25:44.060 | You can understand if you believe what you think or not.

00:25:47.380 | And so people who are good writers

00:25:49.460 | and who are focused on writing

00:25:51.180 | tend to be disciplined thinkers.

00:25:53.340 | And thinking is one of those basic hard skills,

00:25:56.580 | but it's not a skill that's easily taught

00:25:58.340 | because you say, "Well, everybody thinks."

00:25:59.540 | No, some people think,

00:26:02.900 | but the majority of people who do think, think poorly.

00:26:06.660 | This seems self-evident to me.

00:26:09.340 | If you look at the world around you,

00:26:12.180 | it's not hard to find many examples

00:26:14.100 | of people who don't think.

00:26:15.460 | They don't think about the consequences of their actions.

00:26:18.060 | They don't think about the philosophy behind their ideas.

00:26:20.980 | They don't think about where they're going to be tomorrow

00:26:23.660 | or where they came from yesterday.

00:26:26.060 | Many people simply don't think.

00:26:27.980 | They love to be entertained, but they don't love to think.

00:26:31.740 | And so thinking is important.

00:26:33.900 | But thinking is only the baseline.

00:26:35.500 | Now, the next question, the next level

00:26:37.300 | has to become good thinking, excellent thinking,

00:26:40.260 | disciplined thinking, critical thinking,

00:26:42.660 | where we can extract our thoughts from our heads,

00:26:44.900 | put them down on paper where we can see them

00:26:47.060 | and grapple with, is this really true?

00:26:49.380 | Is this really going to have this effect?

00:26:51.820 | And so that seems to be a subset to me

00:26:54.500 | of one of the more valuable things of writing is thinking.

00:26:57.900 | And then arithmetic, math in and of itself

00:27:00.940 | is a separate language from almost anything else,

00:27:03.420 | but yet in many ways, it's the language of the universe.

00:27:05.820 | It's one of the most incredible languages to speak,

00:27:09.260 | but it's in many ways separate.

00:27:10.860 | It's infused in everything from the tree

00:27:13.540 | sitting outside of my window

00:27:15.300 | to how you'd balance your checkbook

00:27:18.260 | and how you figure out what a compound

00:27:20.660 | rate of return calculation looks like.

00:27:22.940 | But yet it's something that has to be studied separately,

00:27:25.460 | and it's a basic skill.

00:27:26.460 | So reading, writing, and arithmetic are hard skills.

00:27:30.100 | Now, I think there are many other skills,

00:27:31.620 | and I don't have a comprehensive list,

00:27:33.580 | but skills of communication are important.

00:27:36.580 | Being able to relate with others,

00:27:38.020 | with empathy and with understanding,

00:27:40.020 | and with the skills of making friends

00:27:42.620 | and winning friends and influencing people.

00:27:45.980 | Skills like that are deeply important.

00:27:49.140 | Soft skills such as goal setting.

00:27:51.020 | I think one of the most crucial things that we can do

00:27:53.780 | to teach our children is how to set goals.

00:27:55.940 | Majority of people don't set goals,

00:27:57.500 | and the majority of people, of course,

00:27:58.900 | don't achieve the goals that they would set

00:28:00.740 | if they did sit down and set them.

00:28:02.260 | But if they would set the goal,

00:28:03.220 | then they would probably achieve it.

00:28:05.180 | So we're teaching a child how to set a goal.

00:28:07.260 | And all of this wraps together with helping them

00:28:10.140 | develop the skills of learning.

00:28:12.620 | Now, I can find some ways to teach the hard skills.

00:28:16.300 | That is probably simple.

00:28:17.860 | I don't yet know all of the tools to use

00:28:20.660 | to teach the soft skills.

00:28:21.900 | Time will tell.

00:28:23.180 | But I'm looking for them, and I'm watching them

00:28:24.940 | to see how are those soft skills being developed.

00:28:29.140 | One way I think that the child can learn those skills

00:28:31.700 | is through academics.

00:28:33.260 | And I believe that there is a real value in academics.

00:28:37.780 | As you look at different educational philosophies,

00:28:40.900 | if you start to confront them,

00:28:42.620 | you'll come across some very intelligent,

00:28:45.460 | experienced, and persuasive people

00:28:47.820 | who will write to you and communicate to you their thoughts

00:28:51.220 | on almost any philosophy.

00:28:53.620 | And I find a number of them very persuasive.

00:28:56.900 | So for example, there is a small but growing movement

00:29:01.620 | in the United States, and I think around the world,

00:29:04.140 | of what has come to be known as unschoolers, unschooling.

00:29:08.660 | It's not a great term.

00:29:10.220 | Some of the unschoolers have different ideas

00:29:13.260 | that they would like, different words

00:29:15.180 | that they would like to be dubbed as instead of that,

00:29:18.260 | because they don't even like the paradigm

00:29:20.380 | of school being the paradigm,

00:29:22.140 | and thus being the anti-school.

00:29:24.060 | I'm sympathetic to that argument.

00:29:25.380 | I usually use the term home education

00:29:28.140 | rather than homeschooling,

00:29:29.620 | because I prefer not to be labeled

00:29:33.300 | in the term of something that is so artificial as schooling.

00:29:36.180 | But I do intermittently use the term homeschooling,

00:29:38.660 | because it simply is the common language.

00:29:40.420 | So with all due respect to the unschoolers

00:29:42.540 | who don't like my use of the term,

00:29:43.760 | I think it's a most widely understood and used term.

00:29:48.020 | In my understanding, the basic philosophy

00:29:50.900 | of the unschoolers is this.

00:29:53.160 | Children who are not spoiled or destroyed

00:29:56.540 | by forced, coerced schooling have a love of learning.

00:30:01.480 | It's natural, it's intuitive, it's built into the child.

00:30:05.060 | I think most of us who are parents would affirm that,

00:30:08.140 | that we see that our children love to learn.

00:30:10.820 | And so as a child grows and develops,

00:30:13.720 | that child doesn't have to lose that love of learning.

00:30:17.960 | They can just simply choose what they want to learn about.

00:30:21.000 | And the child will probably,

00:30:23.580 | at least with a little bit of guidance

00:30:25.060 | or a little bit of direction from the parent,

00:30:26.900 | the child will probably be able to choose

00:30:29.420 | the things that are important to them

00:30:31.780 | based upon the interests they have

00:30:34.020 | or the problems they have in their life.

00:30:36.100 | And then with a little bit of seeding by the parent,

00:30:38.980 | where the parent exposes them to ways to learn, et cetera,

00:30:41.940 | can learn about what they want to learn about.

00:30:44.620 | And so you don't have to force onto your child

00:30:47.820 | a giant curriculum.

00:30:49.700 | These are the 15 textbooks we're gonna use

00:30:51.440 | for the next 12 years,

00:30:52.360 | and you've gotta have them done by May 1st.

00:30:54.600 | You can just allow your child to direct themselves,

00:30:59.600 | to direct their own learning.

00:31:03.080 | Now, I find this philosophy very inspiring.

00:31:07.120 | I find it inspiring because to me,

00:31:09.620 | it seems that there's some level

00:31:11.280 | of it being intuitively right that I want to concede.

00:31:16.240 | If you go back to the era

00:31:18.280 | before forced industrialized compulsory schooling,

00:31:22.440 | you find that most people did learn

00:31:24.680 | the things that they needed for life.

00:31:26.480 | Now, they lived in a much simpler life, I think,

00:31:28.620 | but at the end of the day,

00:31:29.820 | the children did learn the things that they needed for life.

00:31:32.480 | And there were many methods of education

00:31:34.560 | that didn't involve even the one-room schoolhouse.

00:31:37.600 | And most of the learning that was practical,

00:31:39.980 | the one-room schoolhouse model

00:31:41.320 | just simply provided a basic education

00:31:43.400 | in reading, writing, arithmetic.

00:31:45.100 | And then most of the learning took place outside of that.

00:31:48.360 | And the child could choose what they were interested in.

00:31:51.420 | And so this strikes me as intuitively right

00:31:53.960 | and intuitively good to understand.

00:31:57.940 | I have seen some evidence of really impressive success.

00:32:01.360 | If you see a child who's really interested in something

00:32:03.580 | and they're allowed to indulge that interest

00:32:06.980 | and they're given good materials,

00:32:08.520 | it's really impressive what some young people

00:32:11.380 | can come up with in terms of their areas of interest.

00:32:14.260 | And when I reflect on my own life,

00:32:16.140 | my own memory of my childhood

00:32:18.400 | is that I pretty much don't remember

00:32:20.860 | anything that was forced on me,

00:32:22.860 | but I do remember all the things that I was interested in.

00:32:25.700 | And I always was interested in learning.

00:32:27.680 | And I remember the things that I studied

00:32:29.200 | because I cared about them.

00:32:30.500 | And I didn't have anyone tell me

00:32:31.900 | I had to go and study this certain thing,

00:32:34.180 | but all the stuff I was forced to do

00:32:35.740 | by school curriculum, et cetera,

00:32:37.380 | I've pretty much forgotten.

00:32:39.060 | I think of marine biology.

00:32:40.620 | I took a marine biology course or a chemistry course,

00:32:43.340 | and I didn't care about marine biology.

00:32:44.820 | I didn't care about chemistry.

00:32:46.060 | And so I remember relatively nothing.

00:32:48.660 | I could name probably half the elements

00:32:50.140 | on the periodic table.

00:32:51.100 | And beyond that, I don't know that I have any knowledge

00:32:53.340 | of chemistry whatsoever.

00:32:54.940 | I don't know anything that I learned in marine biology.

00:32:57.500 | And so you look back and you calculate the time

00:32:59.420 | and you say, what a waste that was

00:33:00.940 | to spend all those hours in a class

00:33:02.980 | when I could have been doing something that I cared about

00:33:05.700 | and actually remember those things today.

00:33:07.740 | My concerns, however, with unschooling

00:33:11.260 | primarily relate to, or primarily twofold.

00:33:14.620 | They are, number one, character.

00:33:16.700 | I really get concerned about character development.

00:33:19.260 | And how do you help a child to do hard things

00:33:21.540 | so that they develop disciplines like persistence

00:33:25.140 | and the willingness to keep working

00:33:28.140 | in the face of adversity

00:33:29.620 | if you're just simply indulging the whims of the child?

00:33:32.540 | In the same way that I'm not about to let my child

00:33:35.220 | eat ice cream and cotton candy all day, every day,

00:33:39.860 | rather I'm going to feed my children healthy food,

00:33:42.940 | it seems like the same risk could be there

00:33:45.500 | with regard to unschooling.

00:33:47.740 | I think that risk might be able to be moderated

00:33:50.140 | by maintaining a proper influence.

00:33:52.700 | So if in your home you don't have any ice cream

00:33:55.340 | or cotton candy or sugar of any kind,

00:33:57.780 | and the child gets used to only having good foods

00:34:00.860 | available to them,

00:34:02.140 | then they're probably going to make better choices

00:34:04.820 | and choose to eat food that is available

00:34:07.180 | and be happy with that.

00:34:08.740 | In the same way, I think that can happen

00:34:10.740 | with regard to the intellectual diet of a child.

00:34:14.340 | If your home is free of cotton candy and ice cream

00:34:17.660 | and is filled with good solid materials,

00:34:20.260 | then I think the child could probably indulge their interests

00:34:24.060 | and wind up in quality environments.

00:34:28.580 | In our household, we've worked hard to try to do that.

00:34:30.900 | It's not easy, it's a lot of work.

00:34:33.840 | Some of the weird things we do,

00:34:35.140 | we don't have any screens in the house

00:34:37.260 | that are available to the children.

00:34:39.020 | The only screens in the house is my wife

00:34:40.940 | and my computers and our phones.

00:34:42.780 | And we work really, really hard

00:34:44.300 | to never be on them around the children.

00:34:47.220 | Now, ebbs and flows.

00:34:49.860 | I think recently, I've been on my screen

00:34:52.260 | more than I should be.

00:34:53.980 | And of course, I make a living

00:34:55.340 | staring at my computer screen.

00:34:57.620 | So you wish for things to be better,

00:35:00.560 | but we've not introduced, we don't have a TV,

00:35:02.860 | we don't watch movies,

00:35:03.980 | the kids don't have entertainment devices or phones,

00:35:07.240 | things like that.

00:35:08.340 | I'm not convinced that's the best thing forever.

00:35:10.420 | I think that there is a time

00:35:11.660 | where those things should be introduced.

00:35:14.240 | But what I have watched is over the years,

00:35:16.820 | I have watched my children's natural curiosity develop.

00:35:20.980 | And I've watched that in absence of cotton candy,

00:35:24.820 | in absence of YouTube, which I'm not arguing

00:35:27.980 | that there couldn't be a huge amount

00:35:30.580 | of useful information available from YouTube.

00:35:33.500 | If I had had YouTube when I was a kid,

00:35:35.580 | I don't know what, I don't know if it would have been

00:35:38.980 | a good thing or a bad thing,

00:35:40.180 | but certainly with my interests,

00:35:41.200 | I would have been doing nothing but watching YouTube videos.

00:35:44.540 | So I'm not denying that there can be some things

00:35:46.920 | that are really interesting.

00:35:48.920 | And I guess to say no screens,

00:35:51.020 | I did show my children a video

00:35:53.420 | of the SpaceX launch the other day.

00:35:55.340 | We took them up to Cape Canaveral

00:35:59.320 | for the first big SpaceX heavy launch,

00:36:02.260 | which was pretty cool.

00:36:03.100 | If you get a chance to go to one of the SpaceX

00:36:04.600 | heavy launches, you should do it.

00:36:05.960 | It's pretty spectacular to be there

00:36:08.500 | and to watch it take off

00:36:09.340 | and then to watch the rocket boosters come back

00:36:10.740 | and land is pretty cool.

00:36:11.700 | It's worth making an effort to do.

00:36:13.720 | So we took them to that and we showed them a video of it

00:36:15.900 | so they could understand more of what was happening.

00:36:17.580 | So it's not as though there's not a place for that.

00:36:20.040 | I think there really is.

00:36:21.400 | But what I observe and my theory is

00:36:24.640 | that things like reading are hard usually for a young child,

00:36:29.380 | whereas things like video are easy

00:36:31.700 | because there's no imagination needed

00:36:33.540 | for a child when they're watching video.

00:36:36.160 | They already have all of the words

00:36:38.600 | because they've learned how to speak.

00:36:40.140 | They just haven't learned how to read.

00:36:41.580 | And so I'm thankful and gratified to see

00:36:45.760 | that in absence of cotton candy and ice cream,

00:36:48.340 | I'm watching my children start to interact

00:36:50.740 | and engage with a lot of reading

00:36:54.220 | and a lot of things that are pretty challenging.

00:36:56.680 | And I'll watch carefully over the next couple of years

00:36:59.560 | and see how that goes.

00:37:00.460 | But as I see it, I need to really successfully cement

00:37:03.840 | the skills and the love of reading

00:37:07.300 | before ever bringing in the cotton candy for the brain,

00:37:10.300 | which is the screen.

00:37:11.880 | So my concern with unschooling is

00:37:14.540 | how do you get that character development

00:37:16.500 | if the child is just simply allowed to go

00:37:18.820 | with their own whims and their own wishes all day long?

00:37:21.380 | It's not that I deny that the interests

00:37:25.100 | that you have are important.

00:37:26.320 | Certainly they are.

00:37:27.740 | We all have interests that are important.

00:37:29.740 | But I do deny that you can always just do

00:37:31.780 | what you feel like.

00:37:33.220 | And that being the highest and best good.

00:37:36.140 | I deny that vigorously.

00:37:39.060 | In my own life, there are many times

00:37:41.100 | where the things that I'm most proud of

00:37:42.840 | are things that don't feel good.

00:37:44.580 | They don't feel nice.

00:37:45.740 | This seems to me like a...

00:37:48.860 | When I watch friends and I study stories

00:37:53.060 | of people who succeed in life and who fail in life,

00:37:59.460 | it seems like these things are the most important.

00:38:02.540 | Knowing how to do something that's hard.

00:38:03.860 | So whether it's loving your wife

00:38:06.300 | when you don't feel like it,

00:38:07.700 | or working with your child,

00:38:09.780 | or rocking the baby in the middle of the night

00:38:11.860 | when you don't feel like it,

00:38:13.300 | or submitting to a boss who's very difficult

00:38:17.900 | when you don't feel like it.

00:38:19.300 | This matters.

00:38:22.340 | And so I don't think that academics

00:38:23.560 | are the only way to teach it.

00:38:24.500 | I think there are many ways to teach it.

00:38:25.740 | At a young age, of course,

00:38:27.140 | I try to use putting away the toys to teach it,

00:38:29.500 | or doing hard things that you don't feel like to teach it.

00:38:32.460 | It doesn't have to be academics.

00:38:34.140 | But what tool do I have other than academics?

00:38:37.580 | Some students and children seem to learn this

00:38:40.300 | with things like sports,

00:38:41.300 | learning how to do five more suicides

00:38:43.920 | when you thought you couldn't,

00:38:45.540 | learning how to do an extra workout

00:38:48.740 | when you thought you couldn't,

00:38:49.620 | or whatever the reality is.

00:38:51.420 | So maybe there's an involvement there for sports

00:38:53.780 | or for working with their parents.

00:38:56.060 | There are many things that I think could be applied to that.

00:38:58.860 | But for most of us,

00:39:00.420 | where we live in an academic context that,

00:39:02.740 | or sorry, a societal context

00:39:04.500 | in which academics are important,

00:39:06.340 | it seems to me that academics

00:39:07.580 | is one of the best tools that we have

00:39:09.380 | for challenging a person.

00:39:11.380 | And at the moment, it's my opinion

00:39:13.460 | that we can challenge a child

00:39:15.900 | and encourage them to do hard things

00:39:18.140 | without their losing their love of learning.

00:39:25.380 | So I think that's one of my concerns with unschooling

00:39:28.100 | is how is character going to be developed

00:39:30.260 | and doing hard things?

00:39:31.820 | In addition, my concern is that we live in a society

00:39:35.540 | where academic prowess really pays dividends

00:39:39.580 | for those who have a high cognitive ability.

00:39:44.580 | And if my child didn't have a high cognitive ability,

00:39:48.820 | I don't wanna stress them with academics.

00:39:50.780 | I want them to learn the basics of literacy and numeracy,

00:39:53.580 | but I'm not gonna stress a child of low cognitive ability

00:39:57.140 | with trying to say you've got to get a PhD in chemistry.

00:40:01.220 | But we live in a society

00:40:02.860 | where those who have good academic qualifications

00:40:06.380 | tend to get better results in many areas than others.

00:40:11.380 | And so I'm concerned that if we just allow a child

00:40:16.300 | to only do the things that they feel like doing,

00:40:18.540 | and we don't dig in with other things that are challenging,

00:40:21.700 | that they're not gonna get great results.

00:40:24.620 | Those are my concerns with unschooling.

00:40:26.660 | Now, on the flip side,

00:40:27.500 | we could go over to a very rigorous academic environment,

00:40:30.740 | whatever you would use to describe that word.

00:40:33.660 | And this is where my own personal natural inclination is,

00:40:36.980 | especially as a parent,

00:40:37.980 | is I want my child to go into a world

00:40:39.660 | of rigorous academics.

00:40:41.220 | I want them to be the valedictorian of their class.

00:40:43.860 | I want them to have a PhD by the time they're 22.

00:40:46.300 | This is kind of my natural extremist personality

00:40:49.180 | that says, "Let's move you over into this hardcore world."

00:40:54.180 | The problem I have here is multifold, multifaceted, however.

00:40:59.580 | First, I don't think that rigorous academics

00:41:02.820 | necessarily leads to life success.

00:41:05.820 | And I think that it's very possible

00:41:07.700 | that somebody could be happy and successful and content

00:41:11.420 | and not have been involved

00:41:12.500 | in a rigorous academic environment.

00:41:14.900 | Although I can see that something

00:41:17.380 | like having a college degree

00:41:19.900 | certainly seems to make a difference

00:41:21.260 | on the unemployment rate

00:41:22.820 | that a person could expect to experience,

00:41:24.860 | or perhaps the earning ability

00:41:26.100 | that a person could expect to have,

00:41:27.660 | I don't see that a college degree

00:41:29.100 | necessarily leads to greater happiness.

00:41:31.380 | In fact, I bet there's probably some way

00:41:33.420 | we could find some data to prove the opposite.

00:41:35.460 | I've never looked into it all that much,

00:41:37.660 | but I don't wanna look at my children and say,

00:41:39.620 | "You've gotta get a master's degree or a PhD,

00:41:42.980 | "or I'm gonna disown you."

00:41:44.060 | Like, that doesn't seem to be right.

00:41:46.580 | And especially in the world of the future,

00:41:48.740 | I think that although I think something

00:41:51.660 | like a college degree or a high school transcript

00:41:54.740 | will be continued to be important,

00:41:56.900 | and I'll encourage my children

00:41:58.260 | who are interested and capable in that direction,

00:42:00.700 | I don't think it'll be nearly as important

00:42:02.300 | as it was in the past.

00:42:03.220 | I think we see this ship turning a little bit.

00:42:07.060 | And it's certainly not necessary

00:42:08.820 | to be a productive member of society,

00:42:10.620 | and it's certainly not necessary

00:42:11.940 | to be able to support yourself and your family.

00:42:14.140 | If you're a motivated, disciplined person

00:42:16.620 | who has an interest and skills developed in a certain area.

00:42:19.980 | What I'm doing right now is not something

00:42:21.940 | that could be screened

00:42:23.060 | as something requiring a college degree.

00:42:25.740 | Many of the people that I would hire in my company,

00:42:27.740 | I don't care if they have a college degree,

00:42:29.380 | I care if they have certain skills,

00:42:30.820 | and those skills may or may not be taught

00:42:33.380 | in a college classroom.

00:42:34.860 | Most of the time, they're not.

00:42:36.380 | And I think we see kind of the silliness

00:42:38.220 | of the college system of the past going away.

00:42:41.940 | I don't think that means that college is worthless.

00:42:45.300 | What I do think it means is I have actually changed

00:42:47.700 | my personal tune on college

00:42:50.100 | to go away from a measure of career practicality

00:42:53.260 | towards some of the more traditional,

00:42:55.140 | older points of college.

00:42:57.620 | When I went into college,

00:42:58.780 | I measured my college degree in the basis of career.

00:43:03.780 | I studied business because I wanted to,

00:43:05.880 | I wanted to become successful in business.

00:43:08.980 | I wanted to be a Fortune 500 corporate CEO.

00:43:11.940 | That was my goal.

00:43:12.820 | And so I studied finance, and then I studied marketing,

00:43:17.340 | and I ultimately graduated

00:43:18.740 | with a degree in international business.

00:43:20.820 | But when I reflect on that today,

00:43:22.880 | one of my biggest regrets of my college experience

00:43:26.980 | is that I didn't prioritize the life of the mind

00:43:30.820 | with regard to philosophy and studying classics, et cetera.

00:43:36.020 | I recently had an interaction with one of my honors teachers

00:43:39.800 | when I was in college, and I talked to them.

00:43:41.260 | I said, I talked to him about how I wished

00:43:43.420 | I hadn't dropped out of the honors program.

00:43:45.540 | My freshman year of college, I was in the honors program,

00:43:48.180 | which at the university that I went to

00:43:49.540 | was very much kind of on the classical education model,

00:43:53.260 | reading many of the great books

00:43:55.100 | and kind of working through the history

00:43:56.460 | of Western civilization in a very robust

00:44:00.560 | and challenging way.

00:44:03.740 | But what happened was prior to my attendance at that school,

00:44:08.740 | always previous, the honors people

00:44:12.580 | who had been accepted into the honors program

00:44:14.520 | had received an additional scholarship from the school

00:44:17.820 | for being in the honors program.

00:44:19.800 | So I applied for and was accepted to the honors program.

00:44:22.380 | But the year that I was a freshman in college,

00:44:24.840 | the school canceled that scholarship.

00:44:28.100 | And at the time, I was working three jobs

00:44:30.500 | to kind of work my way through school,

00:44:32.020 | and I really wasn't enjoying the honors curriculum

00:44:35.140 | all that much, reading all these old books

00:44:39.500 | written by Roman and Greek people,

00:44:41.580 | and I just wasn't that interested in it.

00:44:44.260 | And so I dropped out of the honors program

00:44:45.780 | after my first year.

00:44:46.600 | I didn't see any point.

00:44:47.440 | So I graduated with honors, big deal, who cares?

00:44:49.660 | I don't care.

00:44:50.620 | And I went into just a normal program.

00:44:54.340 | But then a year or two after I did that,

00:44:56.380 | they brought back the honors scholarship,

00:44:57.900 | which was a substantial scholarship.

00:44:59.500 | And so I was in it for the money,

00:45:01.580 | and then I dropped out because they weren't giving the money

00:45:03.740 | and I never went back,

00:45:04.740 | 'cause it's the kind of curriculum

00:45:06.060 | that it builds on itself each year

00:45:07.620 | of freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year.

00:45:10.660 | It's a building curriculum.

00:45:11.940 | So you can't come in in the senior year

00:45:13.260 | and expect to have reasonable conversations

00:45:15.740 | with your classmates.

00:45:17.320 | It's one of the few regrets I have from college.

00:45:19.640 | Today, I wish I hadn't studied business.

00:45:21.640 | I don't see, although I learned some things,

00:45:25.620 | I don't see really any relevant training

00:45:28.820 | other than perhaps accounting.

00:45:30.780 | I don't see much relevant training

00:45:33.260 | from my business degree to my life now.

00:45:36.740 | And my accounting classes were all at 8 a.m.

00:45:40.340 | I slept through half of them,

00:45:41.380 | and I just got my way through.

00:45:43.820 | I don't remember what grades I got,

00:45:44.940 | but I got my way through 'cause I'm good at taking tests.

00:45:47.820 | And today, I learned a lot.

00:45:50.820 | Just picking up an accounting textbook and reading it

00:45:53.380 | is a lot more useful to me

00:45:54.500 | than taking those accounting classes.

00:45:55.740 | And I bet it probably would have been in those days too.

00:45:58.140 | But what I wish I'd studied

00:45:59.140 | is I wish I'd been in the honors curriculum.

00:46:01.500 | Frankly, I probably wish I'd gotten a degree

00:46:04.020 | in something like philosophy

00:46:05.660 | or one of those liberal arts areas of focus

00:46:08.500 | because I spend far more of my time today

00:46:10.980 | thinking about philosophy and reading philosophy

00:46:14.100 | and looking at the world around me

00:46:15.620 | and trying to analyze it in philosophical terms

00:46:18.080 | than I do thinking about anything

00:46:19.740 | that I studied in business.

00:46:21.400 | Someday, I think I'll probably go get a PhD in philosophy.

00:46:24.820 | Maybe after I retire and my kids are grown,

00:46:26.800 | I'll go and study philosophy.

00:46:29.580 | But I don't know how to recommend that to people

00:46:34.100 | because it's just, that's where I'm at right now

00:46:36.300 | is I don't see the academic college degree

00:46:40.060 | as being the key thing of my success.

00:46:42.080 | Now, I learned a lot through school,

00:46:43.420 | built some good relationships.

00:46:44.540 | I learned a lot through the process of it.

00:46:46.220 | And so in that way, academic study can be the catalyst

00:46:48.980 | for developing those character skills

00:46:50.620 | that lead to greater success.

00:46:53.020 | But I don't see that as the specific knowledge

00:46:55.140 | of certain things that are super important.

00:46:58.340 | So my bent is towards emphasizing the rigorous academics,

00:47:01.900 | but I see a number of problems with that for children.

00:47:05.280 | The first problem can be that question of interest.

00:47:08.180 | If a child's not interested in academics,

00:47:10.620 | then is it really the best thing to just hammer them,

00:47:15.000 | hammer them, hammer them,

00:47:15.940 | that you've gotta be academically great?

00:47:18.480 | I can see both sides of that.

00:47:20.680 | I wish today, I wish that somebody had convinced me

00:47:23.860 | to stay in the honors program when I was in college.

00:47:26.620 | I wish it had happened, but it didn't.

00:47:28.500 | And no one came around and explained to me

00:47:31.620 | the lifelong impact of a liberal arts education.

00:47:35.020 | I scoffed at it in favor of just wanting

00:47:38.140 | a business education, not a liberal arts education.

00:47:40.460 | I was wrong.

00:47:41.320 | But I don't know if the same thing applies to children.

00:47:45.440 | Is it really important to hammer the child?

00:47:47.880 | Maybe.

00:47:49.380 | The other thing that I get concerned of

00:47:51.420 | is there is a cost to everything.

00:47:53.260 | There is a cost to rigorous, rigorous academics.

00:47:56.420 | And so a child who's all their time

00:47:58.260 | is spent reading the classics

00:48:00.540 | may also be a child who's not developing other interests

00:48:03.580 | or who's not developing other hobbies

00:48:06.460 | or engaging in projects

00:48:10.260 | that are just of their own personal interest,

00:48:11.500 | programming an app or developing a skill

00:48:15.140 | with making knives or these kinds of things.

00:48:19.640 | And so those things seem to me

00:48:22.900 | like they could suffer at the hands of rigorous academics.

00:48:25.980 | So I'm caught personally between these two schools

00:48:29.140 | of admiring certain things from each of them.

00:48:31.460 | So let me give you some of the inspirations

00:48:33.840 | that have been impressive to me,

00:48:38.300 | and then you can consider them.

00:48:39.860 | First, I do think there is a lot to be said

00:48:42.740 | for the value of a child's interests,

00:48:46.060 | child-directed learning based upon their interests.

00:48:49.580 | As long as the parent is making sure

00:48:51.740 | that the house is not full of cotton candy,

00:48:54.180 | and as long as the parent is working hard

00:48:55.740 | to expose their child to a diverse range

00:48:58.340 | of options and abilities,

00:49:01.100 | I think a child should be encouraged to study

00:49:03.120 | or to be engaged in the things that they're interested in.

00:49:05.700 | I don't see how it could be denied

00:49:07.100 | that when a child is interested in something

00:49:09.900 | that they have a higher degree of probability

00:49:13.880 | of engaging with it and success.

00:49:15.780 | And I don't think there's a problem

00:49:17.780 | with being interested in something

00:49:19.220 | for only a short amount of time.

00:49:21.220 | One of the things that I can see in my own childhood

00:49:24.020 | is I had a great number of interests,

00:49:26.820 | but often only for a short amount of time.

00:49:29.820 | At the time, I thought that was a bad thing.

00:49:31.500 | I thought I had to stick with everything

00:49:32.780 | until I mastered it.

00:49:33.980 | Today, I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing.

00:49:35.940 | I just engaged with something until I lost interest

00:49:38.660 | and moved on to the next thing.

00:49:40.420 | And so I find the approach of child-directed learning

00:49:45.420 | to be very persuasive, but not complete.

00:49:50.080 | Then on the flip side, perhaps the formal philosophy

00:49:53.140 | that has been most engaging to me and to my wife

00:49:56.420 | or most impressive would be the writings

00:49:58.340 | and philosophies of Charlotte Mason.

00:50:00.140 | Charlotte Mason, I'm not sure that she did a great job

00:50:05.380 | writing her books.

00:50:06.540 | That's why some modern writers have gone back

00:50:10.020 | and reworked some of her material

00:50:12.340 | to focus in on her methods

00:50:14.260 | without necessarily reading through her multiple books

00:50:16.940 | that she wrote on education.

00:50:18.840 | But Charlotte Mason, I think more than anybody,

00:50:21.300 | put together a comprehensive vision

00:50:24.240 | of what a well-educated child looks like.

00:50:27.220 | And I find her ideas to be very inspiring, very stimulating.

00:50:31.460 | And it's hard for me to find disagreement

00:50:35.140 | with many of her philosophies.

00:50:37.120 | Perhaps the most influential,

00:50:39.980 | her focus on living books versus textbooks.

00:50:42.380 | I have almost nothing good to say about textbooks,

00:50:44.340 | but living books, I have a lot to say.

00:50:47.120 | Some of her practices of the little techniques and things,

00:50:51.580 | you can go and dig into the Charlotte Mason methodology

00:50:54.140 | if you're interested.

00:50:54.980 | There's a robust world of Charlotte Masonites online

00:50:58.580 | with podcasts, blogs, et cetera.

00:51:01.180 | So I think Charlotte Mason is perhaps

00:51:04.140 | of the philosophers of education that I've come across,

00:51:07.380 | the most inspiring.

00:51:09.060 | And then the third resource

00:51:10.620 | that has been very inspiring to me

00:51:12.500 | was the experience of Art Robinson.

00:51:15.820 | Art Robinson was a man,

00:51:17.800 | he and his wife had six young children.

00:51:20.200 | He and his wife were both PhD research scientists

00:51:23.080 | when she struck an unusual illness and died suddenly

00:51:26.480 | when their youngest baby was about six months old.

00:51:29.240 | And he was left as a committed homeschooler by philosophy.

00:51:33.920 | He and his wife were committed

00:51:34.880 | that they were gonna homeschool their children

00:51:37.640 | by philosophical and religious conviction.

00:51:40.460 | But he was left as a single father with six young children

00:51:42.720 | and the need to work as a full-time research scientist.

00:51:46.620 | And so he went on and he figured,

00:51:49.500 | he enlisted the children in the help

00:51:51.620 | and he successfully homeschooled his children.

00:51:54.460 | Now you can read about it.

00:51:55.340 | There's a website that's curated in his name

00:51:56.980 | at robinsoncurriculum.com.

00:51:58.860 | He sells a school curriculum.

00:52:00.740 | I don't see any reason to buy the curriculum

00:52:02.420 | other than to read his course of study document.

00:52:05.380 | But at that, you can read some of his essays on education.

00:52:09.700 | And in essence, his educational system with his children

00:52:12.720 | was extremely simple.

00:52:14.840 | What he required, first they taught basic reading

00:52:17.280 | and arithmetic and penmanship, basic writing.

00:52:21.840 | And then what he required his children to do

00:52:24.520 | was every day they had to do mathematics.

00:52:26.620 | They would start their day

00:52:27.640 | with about an hour and a half of mathematics.

00:52:30.460 | And what he used with his children

00:52:32.280 | was the Saxon math curriculum.

00:52:34.600 | First thing that they learned was they memorized

00:52:37.180 | to excellence all of the math facts,

00:52:39.600 | the addition, subtraction, multiplication

00:52:41.440 | and division tables by rote memory.

00:52:44.080 | Then after that, they started in on Saxon 5-4

00:52:47.280 | and they worked Saxon math every day themselves

00:52:50.840 | all the way through from Saxon 5-4 through calculus

00:52:54.840 | without help.

00:52:56.220 | So he refused to help his children with learning math.

00:53:00.440 | And his philosophy on this was a few fold.

00:53:03.520 | First, of course, he had a good material.

00:53:05.120 | Saxon was designed to be taught in a classroom environment,

00:53:08.540 | but the teaching and education,

00:53:11.400 | the presentation in the books

00:53:13.280 | were sufficient for his children to teach themselves

00:53:16.560 | and then to go back and figure out their problem.

00:53:18.880 | And so he required them to teach themselves

00:53:21.280 | so that they learned that they could teach themselves

00:53:23.480 | when they were having problems.

00:53:24.880 | If they didn't know how to do something,

00:53:26.160 | he wouldn't answer their question and make it easy on them.

00:53:28.600 | He sent them back to the book

00:53:29.760 | and they had to work at it until they got it.

00:53:31.400 | And as a parent, he held that discipline to say,

00:53:33.400 | you have to work at it till they got it.

00:53:35.720 | Well, his commentary as a father of adult children

00:53:39.220 | is that in and of itself,

00:53:41.980 | transformed the lives of his children

00:53:44.700 | because they learned how to do something hard

00:53:47.180 | and they learned that they could teach themselves

00:53:49.180 | anything they wanted to learn.

00:53:50.340 | They didn't need another teacher.

00:53:51.500 | They could teach themselves with the right book

00:53:53.420 | and the right effort.

00:53:54.780 | And then by starting with math every day,

00:53:56.900 | with an hour and a half of math every day,

00:53:58.640 | they started with something hard,

00:54:00.380 | which taught them discipline,

00:54:01.700 | taught them to engage their brains.

00:54:03.780 | Then after math, he laid out for his children

00:54:06.320 | and his wife had actually compiled

00:54:08.080 | the list of resources prior to her death.

00:54:11.160 | They laid out a specific reading curriculum

00:54:13.800 | of a broad array of books,

00:54:15.160 | starting with simple child level novels and stories,

00:54:19.540 | up to advanced philosophical, political works, et cetera.

00:54:24.000 | And he ordered this reading in terms of easy reading

00:54:27.960 | through difficult reading.

00:54:29.680 | And they were required to read their way systematically

00:54:32.680 | through a list of books.

00:54:34.960 | And then the third component was every day

00:54:36.560 | they had to write a small essay.

00:54:37.740 | I think it was a page a day

00:54:38.920 | and they had to write something every day.

00:54:40.400 | And then he would every day correct that essay.

00:54:42.980 | Now, from the perspective of academic accolades,

00:54:47.220 | I think he has gotten great success with that methodology.

00:54:52.220 | With his six children going from memory here,

00:54:55.320 | something like four of them have PhDs in various fields,

00:54:58.840 | from a PhD in chemistry to a veterinary,

00:55:02.000 | one is a veterinarian, things like that.

00:55:04.360 | And most of his children

00:55:05.880 | clapped out of the first two years of college

00:55:07.880 | simply by taking tests.

00:55:09.440 | And the simplicity of that was very strong.

00:55:12.120 | By the time his children were old enough,

00:55:14.020 | after years of doing sacks and math,

00:55:15.760 | they would all go through calculus

00:55:16.960 | and they would study physics and chemistry.

00:55:18.960 | As a scientist, he has personal strong feelings

00:55:23.960 | that science should come after mathematics

00:55:26.880 | rather than trying to be taught concurrently.

00:55:29.420 | I am not qualified to affirm or deny that position,

00:55:33.600 | but I do know that my attempt at learning science

00:55:36.740 | concurrent with mathematics didn't produce much.

00:55:40.040 | And I probably would have learned more

00:55:41.560 | if I had gone through calculus

00:55:43.260 | and then gone and done physics and chemistry

00:55:45.100 | as his children did.

00:55:46.400 | But his children, so when it came time to clep tests,

00:55:50.840 | basically he would have his children say,

00:55:53.320 | here is the chemistry clep exam preparation manual,

00:55:57.120 | take it, read it, they would read the book,

00:55:59.280 | and then they would go take the test.

00:56:00.800 | And then for whatever other subjects were,

00:56:03.040 | they would read the book and go take the test.

00:56:05.120 | I can see in myself that that's the kind of system

00:56:08.360 | that I would have thrived on

00:56:09.800 | if I had been presented to me in college.

00:56:12.800 | The way that I did my master's degree in financial planning

00:56:14.820 | was exactly that.

00:56:15.760 | Here's a textbook, read the textbook, take the test.

00:56:18.480 | It was easy for me.

00:56:19.460 | I read the textbook,

00:56:20.320 | the textbook teaches what you need to know,

00:56:21.960 | you read, you take the test.

00:56:22.880 | There's no need for a teacher.

00:56:23.920 | There's no need for the waste of time

00:56:25.440 | of sitting around for classroom lectures.

00:56:27.280 | I never understood the reason why in college

00:56:29.080 | I would buy all these expensive textbooks.

00:56:32.160 | And then the teacher takes 10 pages out of this chapter

00:56:35.740 | and six pages out of that, et cetera.

00:56:37.780 | And I still don't understand it.

00:56:39.680 | It seems like a total waste of time.

00:56:41.480 | If the textbook is what's needed to learn the subject,

00:56:45.080 | give me the textbook and I'll read it

00:56:46.360 | and not waste my time with a lecture.

00:56:47.960 | If we need a lecture, then give me the lecture,

00:56:49.560 | but don't duplicate what's in the textbook

00:56:51.400 | and just do the same thing for me.

00:56:52.860 | I recognize there may be different learning styles,

00:56:54.600 | et cetera, but I find it annoying to have that.

00:56:57.640 | The best use of a college classroom that I can determine

00:57:00.240 | is something like a law school classroom

00:57:02.320 | or perhaps a philosophy classroom

00:57:04.140 | where you do your reading out of class

00:57:05.800 | and then you come together and you talk about the ideas.

00:57:08.000 | Not the answers to simple things that are found in textbooks

00:57:10.600 | but the ideas.

00:57:11.680 | And you focus your class time on reasoning together

00:57:15.880 | and debating together, et cetera.

00:57:17.440 | That seems to me to be a more useful use of classroom time.

00:57:22.440 | So back to Robinson Curriculum, his children went on,

00:57:24.920 | they got undergraduate degrees, master's degrees,

00:57:26.920 | and many of them, again, PhDs, but very young ages.

00:57:29.760 | So very impressive academic credentials.

00:57:32.880 | How much of that is due to the example

00:57:35.560 | of their father and mother

00:57:37.100 | versus their school environment, I don't know.

00:57:40.760 | It seems like the example of the father and mother,

00:57:42.600 | if you come from a father and mother who both have PhDs,

00:57:46.160 | would probably be a heavy influence on you.

00:57:49.960 | But I think there is something to his curriculum.

00:57:54.040 | So in many ways, at the moment,

00:57:58.080 | I basically think that a hybrid of these two models

00:58:01.240 | is probably the best solution.

00:58:02.980 | Now, I reserve the right to watch my children

00:58:05.520 | and see how they develop,

00:58:06.580 | see what they're responding well to

00:58:07.840 | and what they're not responding well to.

00:58:10.040 | But in my mind, really the only thing

00:58:12.960 | that a child has to learn

00:58:14.680 | is reading, writing, and arithmetic.

00:58:17.960 | Reading is learned by reading.

00:58:20.200 | So we have to accomplish basic literacy,

00:58:22.100 | teach the child to phonetically sound out words,

00:58:24.600 | and then fill the child's hands with quality,

00:58:28.040 | level-appropriate reading material,

00:58:29.800 | and ensure that they read it.

00:58:31.320 | Writing is learned through writing,

00:58:33.800 | and it is influenced by good reading.

00:58:36.320 | Good readers tend to be better writers.

00:58:38.680 | Being a reader, I never failed a spelling test in my life.

00:58:43.000 | I didn't understand why people had to study spelling

00:58:44.560 | or study grammar.

00:58:45.400 | It just becomes natural to you.

00:58:47.200 | It comes naturally to you. (laughs)

00:58:49.680 | If you're raised in a household

00:58:51.520 | where your parents speak with proper grammar

00:58:54.040 | and where you read proper grammar,

00:58:56.200 | there's little need to do much more than that.

00:58:58.600 | But writing is a discipline that needs to be encouraged.

00:59:01.840 | So reading and writing.

00:59:03.080 | And then arithmetic seems to me

00:59:04.900 | like an important language

00:59:09.240 | that has to be studied separately.

00:59:11.800 | My biggest beef with the Charlotte Mason methodology

00:59:15.160 | is that it's extremely teacher-intensive.

00:59:17.720 | It's largely teacher-led and teacher-directed.

00:59:22.000 | I see the importance of that at a young age.

00:59:24.280 | I don't think it's right to toss a six-year-old in

00:59:27.540 | and say, "Go in and do six hours' worth of school today."

00:59:31.080 | But I don't see any reason why a 12-year-old

00:59:32.840 | can't have the necessary self-discipline

00:59:34.800 | to sit at their desk and do three or four hours

00:59:36.920 | of good, solid work.

00:59:38.760 | One of Robinson's things was he always made sure

00:59:42.640 | that he had his desk work to do at the same time

00:59:45.400 | that his children had their desk work.

00:59:46.760 | And so they would come in

00:59:47.600 | and they think they would probably do four hours

00:59:49.120 | of schoolwork a day.

00:59:50.680 | And he had a classroom where he had his desk

00:59:52.480 | where he was working on his work quietly.

00:59:54.280 | The child would come in, work on their work quietly alone.

00:59:56.740 | And then when they were done for the day,

00:59:57.720 | they could go and do whatever other things they needed,

01:00:01.240 | whether it was their chores, their interests,

01:00:03.220 | their hobbies, et cetera.

01:00:05.220 | So my issue with Charlotte Mason,

01:00:07.360 | the heavy teacher-intensiveness seems difficult

01:00:10.800 | to put up with over time.

01:00:13.680 | And the Robinson curriculum seems to me to be,

01:00:16.640 | I really appreciate that self-directed attention

01:00:20.120 | and the ability and the requirement of the child

01:00:22.120 | to be self-directed.

01:00:23.480 | My children are as yet too young for that.

01:00:26.400 | And I think that it's important that as a parent,

01:00:28.140 | we not be a slave to any one philosophy,

01:00:31.200 | but that we be open to see what's working

01:00:32.960 | and what's not working.

01:00:34.320 | But those are the influences

01:00:36.040 | that have been most influential upon me.

01:00:39.840 | Now, looking at the future,

01:00:42.280 | I think where we'll wind up

01:00:44.520 | is probably doing some combination of these things,

01:00:48.760 | focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic

01:00:52.600 | as the curriculum that is required of our children.

01:00:57.600 | Reading the curriculum or the list of books

01:01:01.920 | that we will require our children to read

01:01:04.400 | will align heavily with the Charlotte Mason philosophy

01:01:08.540 | of living books.

01:01:10.160 | And it will be quality literature

01:01:12.080 | that engages the mind, engages the heart,

01:01:14.920 | and it leads the mind to think on lofty things,

01:01:18.520 | things that are good and virtuous, et cetera.

01:01:21.040 | I do think that the Charlotte Mason tactic

01:01:25.240 | or tool of narration of having the child,

01:01:29.240 | which is for the uninitiated,

01:01:31.360 | it is narration is simply having the child talk about

01:01:34.840 | in an early age and then write about what they're reading

01:01:37.580 | so that you can understand what's going on in their head

01:01:39.800 | and so they can articulate their thoughts.

01:01:41.440 | I think that narration is a natural result of good books.

01:01:44.560 | And I observe that my children narrate the books

01:01:47.600 | that we read fairly naturally.

01:01:49.520 | We do a lot of out loud reading together,

01:01:52.120 | and they quickly,

01:01:53.160 | after we finish reading a passage in a book,

01:01:55.320 | they quickly wanna go, I do a lot of the reading,

01:01:57.700 | my wife does too, but I do a lot of it,

01:01:59.280 | they quickly wanna go and narrate to their mother

01:02:01.480 | and tell her what happened in the book.

01:02:03.360 | And so I think that seems natural.

01:02:04.720 | And then the natural output for writing

01:02:06.720 | seems to be that basic narration.

01:02:09.760 | In the early years, however,

01:02:11.960 | I don't see how this applies to kindergarten age students,

01:02:15.280 | first grade or necessarily second grade.

01:02:16.960 | It seems like there's probably a jump

01:02:18.640 | somewhere around second or third grade level.

01:02:20.800 | So what we're doing right now is I work a lot

01:02:23.920 | with my eldest on math facts.

01:02:26.720 | Most math facts seem to wait till later,

01:02:29.540 | but since he has an appreciation and an ability in math,

01:02:32.420 | I've been feeding that.

01:02:34.040 | And then we're using a basic,

01:02:36.160 | currently an Abeka workbook

01:02:37.920 | that helps with some mathematics and some penmanship.

01:02:42.560 | One of the unusual things that we're doing thus far

01:02:44.680 | is we have chosen to not teach our children thus far,

01:02:48.920 | at least, to write using manuscript,

01:02:52.080 | but to start with cursive writing from the beginning.

01:02:56.160 | That's a fairly unusual, and I don't think it's a key thing,

01:02:59.040 | but it's a fairly unusual thing to do.

01:03:01.080 | A couple of years ago, I never thought of it.

01:03:02.640 | I was taught to print with manuscript

01:03:04.920 | and then later to write with cursive.

01:03:06.600 | But I did observe that most people that I know

01:03:08.760 | who learned to write cursive

01:03:10.040 | don't really use cursive all that much,

01:03:11.840 | and they go back to their printing.

01:03:13.920 | I came across an essay on this position,

01:03:17.160 | or several essays, where people were talking about

01:03:19.320 | the value of simply starting a child with cursive.

01:03:21.520 | The flowing lines of cursive are better

01:03:25.020 | for the child's physical ability with their hands

01:03:29.480 | than are the sharp points and straight lines of printing,

01:03:34.160 | and that you can just simply start with cursive,

01:03:35.760 | and if they want to learn to print later on, that's fine,

01:03:37.920 | but there's nothing that keeps a child

01:03:39.800 | from learning how to write in cursive

01:03:41.120 | from the very beginning.

01:03:42.240 | I thought the position was influential,

01:03:44.520 | and it's one of the reasons why we chose

01:03:45.720 | to use an Abeka curriculum, because Abeka,

01:03:47.840 | you can purchase all of their early-stage curricula

01:03:50.840 | in either in manuscript or in cursive.

01:03:55.720 | So I personally don't think we'll stick with that

01:03:57.700 | much beyond these first few years,

01:03:59.480 | but what I am satisfied with seeing

01:04:01.140 | is I see an appreciation and an increasing understanding

01:04:04.520 | and memorization of math facts happening.

01:04:06.760 | I see my eldest grappling with the concepts

01:04:10.740 | and applying what he's learning to the world around.

01:04:13.320 | I see him learning how to sit at a desk and work on it.

01:04:15.860 | I have to concede that the colorful workbooks

01:04:17.680 | and whatnot probably do make that more fun,

01:04:19.840 | and I see him developing the skill of working alone.

01:04:23.280 | By having a workbook, it puts very little stress

01:04:25.760 | on me or his mother to say to him, "You have to do this,"

01:04:30.760 | but rather he can read the instructions.

01:04:32.280 | He does still need some help

01:04:33.160 | with reading the instructions, and beyond that,

01:04:38.160 | but he can learn and sit and work at his desk for an hour,

01:04:41.040 | and that seems to be working well,

01:04:42.800 | and then beyond that, of course,

01:04:43.680 | trying to focus on other things that are learning,

01:04:45.740 | whether it's physical movement and activity exercise,

01:04:48.460 | just simply playing, music, construction, et cetera,

01:04:52.120 | beyond that.

01:04:53.020 | That's where I'm at currently.

01:04:57.320 | Pivot to the last couple of topics.

01:04:59.120 | Is homeschooling the best for everyone

01:05:01.760 | who is going to pull their child out of a government school?

01:05:06.120 | I don't think so.

01:05:07.260 | I don't think so, and I get conflicted on this

01:05:10.580 | because a lot of it has to do with what you have access to.

01:05:13.760 | On the one hand, homeschooling has tremendous benefits.

01:05:17.200 | I can't think of a way that a child

01:05:19.180 | could have a better personalized education

01:05:22.280 | than being homeschooled by their parents

01:05:25.040 | because their parents know them,

01:05:26.760 | their parents know what they're interested in,

01:05:28.520 | and they can learn and work at their own pace.

01:05:30.960 | That's really, really useful.

01:05:32.720 | In many ways, you could say one of the best environments

01:05:35.280 | is if you have a healthy, happy home,

01:05:38.000 | it's the best environment for your child to be in.

01:05:40.200 | Your child doesn't get bullied.

01:05:41.560 | Your child doesn't get picked on.

01:05:43.080 | Your child doesn't develop all these weird phobias

01:05:45.480 | and insecurities, and your child isn't influenced

01:05:48.740 | by peer pressure and all these just weird stuff

01:05:50.960 | that happens in the industrial school system.

01:05:54.560 | And that stuff happens in private schools

01:05:56.120 | and in government schools.

01:05:58.360 | So I think homeschooling does have a lot

01:06:00.100 | to go to offer it.

01:06:02.000 | One of the things I really love about homeschooling

01:06:03.960 | is it can be very time efficient.

01:06:06.280 | Because the child is only working on their own level,

01:06:09.840 | they can work diligently and then be done.

01:06:12.360 | And three hours for a young child,

01:06:15.200 | four hours for an older child,

01:06:17.120 | it seems hard for me to imagine the curriculum

01:06:19.600 | that would need more than four hours

01:06:22.480 | of focused work by a child.

01:06:24.680 | And so what that does is it frees up the rest of the day

01:06:27.220 | for many of those other things.

01:06:28.760 | The development of a hobby, the development of a skill,

01:06:31.280 | the development of a business, just whatever it is.

01:06:35.000 | If it's wandering around the woods shooting rabbits,

01:06:37.560 | or if it's becoming a world-class swimmer,

01:06:40.520 | or if it's becoming a really great bookkeeper

01:06:43.480 | and studying accounting, or if it's learning

01:06:45.360 | to program apps, or learning to draw beautiful artwork,

01:06:49.960 | learning to play the piano.

01:06:51.460 | When you can bring school down

01:06:53.200 | and have a really excellent academic instruction,

01:06:55.440 | yet bring it down to about four hours,

01:06:57.560 | that leaves the rest of the day open to those other things,

01:07:00.800 | those other pursuits.

01:07:02.280 | And in hindsight, if I look back at my own schooling,

01:07:06.160 | so for context, I was homeschooled through seventh grade

01:07:08.680 | with the exception of one year at a government school,

01:07:11.120 | then I went to a private Christian school

01:07:12.840 | from seventh grade through 12th grade,

01:07:14.560 | then I went to a private Christian university

01:07:16.640 | for my bachelor's degree,

01:07:18.360 | and then I got a master's degree in financial planning

01:07:20.520 | through distance learning

01:07:22.100 | at a secular financial planning college.

01:07:24.160 | So when I look back, one of the resentments that I have

01:07:29.160 | is the massive waste of time

01:07:31.760 | that I perceive so many of those classes to have been.

01:07:35.100 | My parents had other reasons for putting me into a school.

01:07:39.000 | I think those reasons were good,

01:07:41.240 | and I am certainly open to putting my children

01:07:44.480 | into a private school in the future.

01:07:47.380 | And I think there are times, I try to emphasize this,

01:07:50.960 | but there are times at which parents need

01:07:52.880 | to put their children into a government school.

01:07:54.360 | There is a time and a place for it, not the majority,

01:07:56.880 | but there are situations for where that is appropriate.

01:08:00.960 | But in hindsight, it just seems like such a waste of time.

01:08:04.120 | And I think about the skills that could have been developed,

01:08:07.160 | the interests that could have been indulged,

01:08:10.280 | the businesses that could have been built.

01:08:12.120 | If I weren't stuck in that time-wasting system,

01:08:14.960 | sitting in class, hearing a teacher lecture

01:08:17.080 | about something that could have been learned from the book,

01:08:22.360 | that's one of the resentments that I have.

01:08:24.560 | It's not an emotional resentment.

01:08:26.280 | I talk about it freely and openly.

01:08:27.920 | Don't worry, my parents,

01:08:29.520 | I don't have anything against them for it.

01:08:30.880 | It's just one of those things

01:08:31.720 | when you look back and you consider.

01:08:33.400 | But on the other hand,

01:08:34.400 | you look at people who homeschool exclusively,

01:08:37.960 | and there seemed to be a list of dangers

01:08:39.560 | and things that they could be exposed to,

01:08:41.080 | where resentments that they could have.

01:08:43.120 | And so I don't know a solution other than to say,

01:08:45.520 | let's trust the parents to look at their child

01:08:47.680 | and discern what is in the best interest

01:08:49.480 | of their child at that time.

01:08:52.120 | Some of the biggest challenges of homeschooling

01:08:53.880 | involve things like curriculum choice,

01:08:57.880 | also just things like maintaining

01:09:01.320 | a positive, motivated environment.

01:09:03.640 | It seems like many homeschooling parents

01:09:05.440 | can just slack off and allow their child to slack off,

01:09:08.840 | and I don't see how that's good for the child.

01:09:11.680 | Sometimes you put a child into a competitive environment

01:09:14.200 | at a more traditional mainstream school,

01:09:17.640 | and that can raise up a challenge for them.

01:09:20.640 | One of the challenges of homeschooling

01:09:22.040 | is you don't have as many things available to you.

01:09:24.920 | So you look at homeschooling, for example,

01:09:26.680 | I did a lot of theater when I was in high school,

01:09:28.760 | really enjoyed it, acting in musicals

01:09:30.920 | and singing and things like that.

01:09:32.800 | You look at something like that,

01:09:33.760 | you say, how do you have that for a homeschool child?

01:09:36.440 | You can't have a world-class theater production

01:09:40.000 | as a homeschooler, just can't happen.

01:09:41.840 | So there are benefits there to schooling

01:09:44.880 | or access to things like lab equipment, et cetera.

01:09:48.360 | Now, as a parent,

01:09:49.200 | you can invest in those things for your children

01:09:51.040 | as you see it being important and worthwhile.

01:09:53.840 | And so there are options there, but that can be hard.

01:09:58.840 | So then you go to a private school and say,

01:10:02.280 | well, are there private schools?

01:10:03.280 | I think there are many benefits to private schooling

01:10:06.240 | that do exist, but a lot of the private schooling

01:10:11.240 | seems to be not original and new

01:10:15.640 | and focused around the best interest of the child.

01:10:17.640 | It seems to be one of a couple of things.

01:10:20.400 | Most of the time in my observation,

01:10:22.760 | many private schools simply take the industrial school model

01:10:27.760 | that was perfected in the government schools.

01:10:31.120 | And then either in a secular private school,

01:10:33.480 | they simply say, well, we're gonna eject the bad kids

01:10:36.260 | and we're only gonna have rich kids

01:10:37.560 | and we'll have better teachers and better equipment, et cetera

01:10:40.160 | in the secular private schools

01:10:41.400 | or in the Christian private schools.

01:10:43.580 | They often just kind of say, well,

01:10:44.600 | we'll take the whole system from the government school,

01:10:46.880 | but we'll just basically baptize all this stuff a little bit

01:10:50.240 | and we'll have a Bible class

01:10:51.560 | and we'll hire Christian teachers,

01:10:53.320 | but there's not really much meaningful difference.

01:10:55.360 | There's not a different articulation

01:10:57.000 | of the worldview of education

01:10:58.840 | where Christianity is infused,

01:11:02.620 | where everything is taught from a Christian perspective,

01:11:04.620 | where you see that every subject

01:11:06.200 | comes into a biblical worldview,

01:11:07.760 | where every subject, whether it's mathematics

01:11:09.680 | or chemistry or biology or physics or geography,

01:11:14.520 | how everything now comes into a Christian perspective.

01:11:17.880 | Now, most Christians aren't even able

01:11:19.040 | to articulate those worldview issues,

01:11:21.600 | but that's what a Christian school should be doing,

01:11:23.640 | in my opinion, and it's hard to find those.

01:11:25.640 | And so you look at it and you look at the cost of it all,

01:11:28.000 | and sometimes you say, is that really worth it?

01:11:30.280 | One of the best things about homeschooling

01:11:31.900 | is it can provide for tremendous flexibility,

01:11:34.840 | and that's one thing I really love about it.

01:11:37.040 | I love, love, love not having my family's schedule

01:11:41.640 | dependent on any outside person.

01:11:44.360 | That is a wonderful luxury.

01:11:46.660 | We don't have a work schedule.

01:11:48.240 | For me, we don't have a work schedule.

01:11:50.040 | For my wife, neither of us have to apply for leave time

01:11:53.160 | or for time off or work out who's gonna cover our shift.

01:11:58.160 | And for the children, we don't have to deal with any dates.

01:12:00.400 | We don't have to deal with a date that they start work,

01:12:02.660 | that they don't start work or class.

01:12:06.300 | It's wonderful, and so that means that we can do

01:12:08.380 | what's in the best interest of our family.

01:12:11.480 | At the moment, I'm inclined to do year-round schooling

01:12:14.560 | rather than to have a summer break.

01:12:16.560 | That's something that people look at,

01:12:19.080 | but I don't see any point of taking

01:12:20.680 | an arbitrary artificial break just for some summer season

01:12:24.240 | if there's no use of the time.

01:12:27.960 | What we are doing at present, and of course,

01:12:30.420 | with young children, is just simply taking breaks

01:12:32.320 | when it's right.

01:12:33.160 | So if we're traveling, we take breaks.

01:12:34.160 | We don't do school if we're traveling.

01:12:35.400 | If we're doing holidays or something like that,

01:12:37.320 | we take breaks, and then if we're at home

01:12:38.880 | on a normal schedule, we do school.

01:12:40.600 | And I think that has a lot going for it.

01:12:43.240 | Certainly, it can help the child.

01:12:44.480 | If you run the math on having your child

01:12:46.520 | do schooling effectively, say, 10 months a year

01:12:49.040 | instead of seven, eight months a year,

01:12:51.480 | it's a big, big difference compounded

01:12:53.080 | over a number of years.

01:12:55.000 | And so that's something that, another kind of little

01:12:58.040 | weird thing that we're into.

01:13:00.400 | I think ultimately the future where the best results

01:13:04.220 | are gonna be to have for parents who are looking

01:13:06.560 | for something is gonna be some kind of hybrid model.

01:13:09.040 | You see this with homeschooling,

01:13:11.080 | with the use of homeschooling co-ops and such.

01:13:13.780 | It's a rare and unusual homeschooler

01:13:15.800 | that just does everything at home,

01:13:17.360 | who's not part of some kind of community group,

01:13:19.780 | some kind of children's group, some kind of co-op, et cetera.

01:13:23.000 | Whether it's very informal, such as a play date once a week,

01:13:27.640 | whether it's programs, field trips,

01:13:30.160 | whether it's specific classes, and you come together

01:13:32.160 | two or three days a week and then do work at home

01:13:34.720 | the other couple days a week, there are various models

01:13:37.080 | that are being worked on and tested.

01:13:39.120 | And I think that some of these hybrid models

01:13:41.320 | are probably going to be some of the strongest models

01:13:44.180 | in the future, because you do gain benefit.

01:13:46.540 | People, the number one objection that people have

01:13:48.580 | to homeschooling is always,

01:13:50.980 | what about child socialization?

01:13:53.620 | It's the dumbest objection,

01:13:55.380 | but it's the most common objection whatsoever.

01:13:59.260 | People say, well, what about child socialization?

01:14:01.020 | Who's your child gonna hang out with?

01:14:02.540 | As if a child who is homeschooled doesn't see people.

01:14:06.060 | And the first thing is that generally,

01:14:08.260 | I don't want my children being taught

01:14:09.900 | by most other people's children.

01:14:11.180 | That's what happens.

01:14:12.240 | You send most children into a school system

01:14:14.700 | and very quickly now they come back

01:14:16.560 | and you have to, a whole lot of stuff,

01:14:18.600 | standards that you hold as a parent

01:14:21.160 | that other people don't, it's just very, very difficult.

01:14:23.640 | So especially at the young years, that's super important.

01:14:26.320 | But then, but there is a consideration there

01:14:29.760 | that is certainly true, such as friendships

01:14:32.680 | and community activities, and can a child learn

01:14:34.480 | to relate to peers of their own age?

01:14:36.440 | Well, the other reason it's such a silly objection

01:14:39.080 | is it's pretend that somehow homeschoolers

01:14:41.200 | just don't leave their house.

01:14:42.800 | And in general, homeschoolers, yeah,

01:14:44.440 | you have three or four hours a day,

01:14:46.000 | but homeschoolers are far more available

01:14:47.480 | to go wakeboarding in the afternoon

01:14:48.880 | or to go camping this weekend, et cetera.

01:14:50.960 | And so if there's a, are there other sources

01:14:53.640 | of groups of children, such as a neighborhood

01:14:56.640 | or such as a church group, et cetera,

01:14:58.320 | then there are plenty of opportunities for children

01:14:59.920 | to build and maintain friendships.

01:15:01.520 | And instead of being in an artificial environment

01:15:03.640 | where you're forced by the government

01:15:05.040 | to be in a class with somebody who's bullying you

01:15:07.640 | or somebody you don't like, which is a totally artificial

01:15:10.120 | and destructive environment,

01:15:11.680 | then a child has much more options of choice.

01:15:14.240 | Hey, I joined the local club doing this,

01:15:17.000 | but there's somebody that I don't like,

01:15:18.440 | and it's just, there's somebody that's mean to me.

01:15:20.000 | Well, you leave the club and you go do something else.

01:15:21.600 | You're not forced into forced associations

01:15:24.160 | and relationships like you are

01:15:25.940 | in the government school system.

01:15:27.540 | My opinion is one of the worst things

01:15:30.320 | about government schooling is, and you look at it,

01:15:32.760 | you see the bullying rates,

01:15:33.800 | you see the suicide rates among children,

01:15:35.520 | you see the psychological devastation

01:15:37.880 | that is wrought by the environment,

01:15:41.280 | and it just, it seems tough.

01:15:44.040 | Now, it takes work by a parent.

01:15:46.400 | For example, especially in the United States,

01:15:48.600 | most of the neighborhoods that once buzzed with children

01:15:51.320 | have been hollowed out.

01:15:52.760 | Depending on where you live,

01:15:53.780 | there may or may not be children in your neighborhood.

01:15:56.080 | If you're living in downtown San Francisco,

01:15:58.600 | there's no children.

01:16:00.080 | If you're living in other neighborhoods,

01:16:02.640 | there might be some,

01:16:04.000 | but they're just not nearly the number of playmates

01:16:06.200 | that children traditionally had on their block

01:16:08.400 | and across the street, et cetera,

01:16:09.840 | as fewer people are having children

01:16:12.120 | and the families that are having children

01:16:13.840 | are having fewer children.

01:16:15.280 | So it takes work.

01:16:16.480 | Church groups, youth groups, things like that

01:16:18.000 | are certainly worthwhile,

01:16:19.680 | and then homeschool organizations

01:16:21.140 | and clubs and interest groups,

01:16:23.000 | there are opportunities out there.

01:16:24.800 | The other model that I think will really grow in the future

01:16:28.560 | is the hybrid model that's reversed,

01:16:31.200 | where it's school, it's a private school,

01:16:32.700 | but where the parents are still very involved.

01:16:34.600 | And I think there's a lot of stuff that could grow there.

01:16:38.100 | Now, I'm gonna close this episode

01:16:40.900 | with a brief discussion on classical education.

01:16:44.320 | Listener writes in and says,

01:16:45.360 | "Joshua, what are your thoughts

01:16:46.280 | "on the classical Christian education approach?

01:16:48.720 | "My wife and I have two boys, and like every parent,

01:16:51.160 | "we want to give them the best possible education possible.

01:16:54.560 | "I have learned through some research that I have done

01:16:56.600 | "that the best education they can get

01:16:57.960 | "is through homeschooling.

01:16:59.200 | "However, my wife and I both work,

01:17:00.860 | "and we can't accommodate homeschooling

01:17:02.480 | "at this stage of our lives.

01:17:03.980 | "The closest approach that we have found

01:17:05.420 | "to a Christian and homeschool education

01:17:07.320 | "is the classical Christian model.

01:17:09.420 | "Just wondering what your thoughts are on it."

01:17:11.420 | So I thought this would be interesting,

01:17:12.560 | because it is one of the biggest growing

01:17:14.620 | and most popular trends,

01:17:16.260 | especially in the homeschooling world,

01:17:18.580 | and especially in the Christian religious

01:17:20.680 | homeschooling world.

01:17:22.320 | For example, probably the most popular homeschool model

01:17:25.960 | would be an organization, a company,

01:17:28.480 | called Classical Conversations,

01:17:30.620 | that's kind of one of these hybrid approaches.

01:17:32.320 | The child goes to meet with other children

01:17:35.680 | of their peer group once or twice a week,

01:17:37.820 | and then the rest of the work is done at home.

01:17:39.860 | But there's a comprehensive model

01:17:41.660 | put through a comprehensive curriculum.

01:17:43.620 | Most of that is at home.

01:17:44.920 | There's also a large and growing, thankfully,

01:17:47.460 | movement of classical Christian schools.

01:17:49.380 | So specifically, traditional private Christian schools,

01:17:52.520 | classrooms, bells, teachers, all desks, all that stuff,

01:17:56.960 | the traditional model,

01:17:57.820 | but done in the classical model

01:18:01.560 | with distinct Christian distinctives.

01:18:05.080 | I would guess that there are plenty

01:18:06.480 | of classical schools out there,

01:18:07.780 | some of the elite schools,

01:18:08.760 | especially in the Northeastern United States,

01:18:10.260 | the elite private schools,

01:18:11.520 | but not wishing to live in that part of the country,

01:18:14.320 | it's not been an interest of mine to research.

01:18:16.980 | So what do I personally think

01:18:19.380 | about the classical Christian model?

01:18:22.480 | So the first thing is to understand

01:18:24.060 | what is meant by the word classical.

01:18:26.180 | And there could be a number of different things

01:18:28.380 | that are meant by that,

01:18:29.560 | depending on who you talk to.

01:18:31.620 | Perhaps the most common understanding

01:18:33.680 | would come from those who have read Dorothy Sayers' essay

01:18:36.660 | called "The Lost Tools of Learning."

01:18:39.420 | If you have not read that essay,

01:18:41.960 | just scroll way, way back in your RSS feed for the podcast

01:18:46.360 | to October 28, 2014,

01:18:49.160 | and you'll find an audio recording

01:18:51.160 | of me reading her essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning."

01:18:55.460 | And I think it's an excellent essay

01:18:57.060 | that everybody should listen to.

01:18:58.720 | But Dorothy Sayers popularized for many modern people

01:19:03.320 | the concept of the trivium,

01:19:05.560 | which is traditionally what people point to

01:19:08.120 | when they talk about a classical education.

01:19:11.220 | In traditional medieval education,

01:19:13.460 | you had the trivium, which is logic,

01:19:16.160 | sorry, grammar, logic, and rhetoric taught,

01:19:18.820 | and that would be followed by the quadrivium,

01:19:21.620 | which traditionally was arithmetic, geometry,

01:19:24.420 | music, and astronomy.

01:19:26.680 | And that was the traditional medieval approach to education.

01:19:31.680 | Now, Dorothy Sayers took that concept

01:19:33.760 | and she expanded it into,

01:19:35.620 | and tried to relate the trivium

01:19:37.080 | into different phases of a child's life.

01:19:40.320 | So she suggested that we think about the grammar stage

01:19:45.220 | as the initial years of a child's education,

01:19:47.520 | where they're learning and memorizing the concepts

01:19:50.020 | and information that is taught to them.

01:19:52.580 | Then the logic stage,

01:19:54.340 | where they're being taught specific logical reasoning

01:19:57.640 | and grappling with the concepts as they become older,

01:20:00.140 | the time where a child,

01:20:01.740 | I think her words were like the parrot stage,

01:20:05.020 | then the pert parrot,

01:20:05.920 | where the child starts to be argumentative,

01:20:07.440 | where you'd go ahead and teach the child

01:20:08.540 | to argue with logical training and logical education.

01:20:12.020 | And then you go on to the rhetoric stage

01:20:13.540 | where the child is learning how to articulate,

01:20:16.040 | be it verbally or in written form,

01:20:18.820 | concepts, ideas, arguments, et cetera,

01:20:21.020 | to be persuasive towards other people.

01:20:23.120 | I think the trivium traditionally

01:20:26.420 | was seen as giving the tools of learning,

01:20:28.680 | that once a child had knowledge and mastery of the trivium,

01:20:33.080 | that they could then apply that methodology

01:20:35.980 | to almost any other subject.

01:20:37.680 | And so in essence, that's really what any of us do.

01:20:40.380 | If I wanna learn a new subject,

01:20:42.680 | I need to learn first the grammar of the subject.

01:20:45.340 | The grammar could be defined

01:20:46.620 | as the basic words of the subject,

01:20:49.340 | the basic content of the subject.

01:20:51.580 | Then I need to deal with the logic of the subject,

01:20:54.620 | the arguments, the controversies, et cetera.

01:20:58.020 | And then you learn how to do the rhetoric of the subject,

01:21:00.380 | where you learn how to articulate your own concepts

01:21:02.520 | built upon your study of those things.

01:21:04.420 | And so the trivium provides a basic model of learning

01:21:07.140 | that can be applied to almost any area.

01:21:09.520 | So if by classical, we mean the trivium,

01:21:11.980 | then that would be one thing.

01:21:14.920 | When you get to classical,

01:21:16.080 | that also can mean to some people,

01:21:18.740 | the use of the so-called great books.

01:21:21.720 | If you were to go back to Mortimer Adler's work

01:21:24.020 | of putting together the work, all the great books,

01:21:27.340 | and publishing the great books,

01:21:28.980 | and reading the great books,

01:21:30.340 | all of the Roman and Greek thinkers,

01:21:32.180 | and all of the luminaries and philosophers

01:21:34.420 | who contributed to Western civilization,

01:21:36.020 | that's often thought to be the concept

01:21:39.080 | of a classical education.

01:21:41.080 | To some people, classical education

01:21:42.920 | involves the study of Latin,

01:21:45.320 | that you have to learn Latin,

01:21:46.440 | and there are various arguments and defenses made

01:21:48.380 | for why you learn Latin.

01:21:50.440 | And I guess what else?

01:21:53.580 | I guess some people just say,

01:21:54.420 | well, what the traditional model,

01:21:55.920 | the model of education prior to government coerced schooling

01:21:59.740 | of 18, prior to 1850, what happened before 1850?

01:22:03.740 | So you have to define what you mean by classical.

01:22:07.240 | Now, in general, I think if a school is going to embrace

01:22:09.920 | the labeling classical,

01:22:11.820 | they're probably demonstrating a much higher level

01:22:14.140 | of academic commitment than many other schools,

01:22:17.180 | than just someone saying, oh, we're a random private school.

01:22:19.920 | So I think that's a good thing.

01:22:21.640 | One of the more interesting things to wrestle with,

01:22:24.580 | 'cause you're combining the terms classical and Christian,

01:22:26.780 | as is it possible that something classical can be Christian?

01:22:31.780 | This is, in my opinion,

01:22:33.340 | a very interesting and worthwhile debate.

01:22:35.120 | Now, in the classical model,

01:22:37.020 | I don't see anything particularly wrong about the trivium,

01:22:39.880 | for example, but in the classical model,

01:22:41.820 | you're primarily thinking about Roman and Greek thought.

01:22:44.480 | And so the question is, should Roman and Greek thought

01:22:47.740 | be primary influences for somebody who is a Christian?

01:22:52.740 | I don't personally think that question

01:22:55.020 | should be taken lightly.

01:22:56.220 | Now, in the modern American context,

01:23:00.820 | there is no question that the Roman and Greek thought

01:23:04.440 | has had an intense influence on American society.

01:23:08.580 | Even if you dig into modern religious history,

01:23:10.920 | there's no question, in my opinion,

01:23:13.620 | that Roman and Greek thought has had an intense influence

01:23:18.620 | on the Christian religion.

01:23:20.320 | Just look at the way that St. Augustine

01:23:22.580 | is revered and studied,

01:23:24.580 | and the Augustinian flavor of Christianity

01:23:28.780 | is heavily influenced by Roman and Greek thought.

01:23:31.740 | There's a lot to be said for Roman and Greek thought,

01:23:34.680 | but it's my personal opinion

01:23:36.020 | that Roman and Greek thought developed

01:23:37.620 | in a time of a spiritual vacuum.

01:23:40.780 | If you look at the history of humanity

01:23:45.580 | that we have as recorded in the Bible,

01:23:47.140 | the way that I think about the Bible is,

01:23:49.240 | it sounds trite, but as his story.

01:23:51.640 | The Bible is a collection of history,

01:23:54.040 | the books that are historical in nature,

01:23:56.200 | as it's important to God.

01:23:58.980 | It's certainly not a comprehensive collection of history.

01:24:01.100 | There are many things that happened

01:24:01.940 | that were not included in the Bible,

01:24:03.640 | but we have a compilation of the historical account

01:24:06.040 | that was important to God.

01:24:07.880 | Well, there are two basic giant periods of time

01:24:12.400 | that are recorded in the Bible

01:24:14.440 | that are simply not, sorry,

01:24:17.140 | there are two giant gaps of time

01:24:19.200 | that are recorded in the Bible.

01:24:20.800 | So the earliest things that we have,

01:24:23.100 | of course, we have some discussion of Adam, Eve, et cetera,

01:24:26.840 | and then figuring out the timeline of Adam and Eve

01:24:30.740 | related up to Abraham, et cetera,

01:24:32.900 | can be challenging depending on what perspective

01:24:35.400 | you come at and how you apply.

01:24:37.720 | Your, how you come to that.

01:24:40.560 | But by the time we get to Abraham,

01:24:41.700 | we get a fairly specific timeline.

01:24:43.560 | So Abraham, of course, somewhere around 2000 years BC,

01:24:46.620 | something like 4,000 years ago, something like that.

01:24:48.660 | We get to Abraham and then the patriarchs.

01:24:50.660 | So you have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,

01:24:53.300 | and all of Genesis from, so Genesis one through 12,

01:24:57.000 | the account of creation, Adam, all the way through Abraham.

01:24:59.500 | And then from Genesis 12 through 50,

01:25:00.960 | you have the account of the patriarchs.

01:25:02.500 | Again, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

01:25:04.920 | Then we have a 400 year gap

01:25:07.720 | from the time of Genesis to Exodus,

01:25:10.760 | where we have no information of what was happening.

01:25:14.020 | As best we can understand, during that 400 years,

01:25:16.960 | God was silent and inactive.

01:25:19.160 | And this was the time that the children of Israel

01:25:21.400 | were enslaved in Egypt.

01:25:22.960 | And so here you see, in this time period,

01:25:25.120 | you see the great, the development,

01:25:26.700 | the Genesis of the great civilizations in Egypt,

01:25:30.400 | India, and China.

01:25:31.660 | That's where those civilizations

01:25:34.060 | start to have their development,

01:25:35.460 | in that 400 year period when the slaves,

01:25:38.620 | when the Egyptian, sorry,

01:25:39.600 | when the Israelites are enslaved in Egypt.

01:25:41.720 | Then in somewhere around 1500 BC,

01:25:43.920 | then you have the Exodus,

01:25:44.920 | you have Moses, the prophets, et cetera,

01:25:46.920 | and you have the basic beginning of the children of Israel

01:25:49.460 | with the high point of about a thousand years BC,

01:25:52.260 | where you have King David, et cetera.

01:25:54.060 | And then you start to have the decline

01:25:55.600 | of the Israelite emperor with the major prophets,

01:25:59.660 | the minor prophets, and then the exile of Israel.

01:26:02.360 | And then you have a period of 400 years before Christ,

01:26:06.960 | where we have no information of what happened.

01:26:10.220 | We have no information of what God was doing.

01:26:13.060 | As best we can determine, God was entirely silent

01:26:15.500 | and totally inactive in the world,

01:26:16.960 | as Nietzsche would say, God is dead, right?

01:26:19.820 | Totally silent, inactive, and not active at all in the world

01:26:22.520 | during that 400 year gap.

01:26:23.900 | And that's the point in time,

01:26:26.120 | during that 400 year period of 400 BC,

01:26:28.560 | that's the point in time that we have Socrates,

01:26:31.220 | Plato, Aristotle, that's when we have the development

01:26:34.460 | of Roman and Greek thought.

01:26:35.760 | That's also when you have Buddha, Confucius,

01:26:37.400 | Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,

01:26:38.620 | all of these names of history,

01:26:40.600 | but they're not involved in Christian history.

01:26:43.300 | They are certainly very involved in history,

01:26:45.760 | but they're not involved in Christian history.

01:26:47.800 | So now, where do you see Christians

01:26:49.700 | interacting with that culture?

01:26:51.360 | Well, you go to the book of Acts,

01:26:53.100 | most especially Paul, and you see Paul.

01:26:55.200 | What did Paul do when he was in Athens?

01:26:58.420 | Here he is in Athens debating the Athenian philosophers.

01:27:02.200 | Here he is confronting them, and what you don't see

01:27:05.160 | is you certainly do not see Paul sitting down and saying,

01:27:08.160 | well, let me sit down and listen

01:27:11.800 | and try to learn from your knowledge of the gods.

01:27:13.800 | You see Paul instructing them and saying,

01:27:16.000 | back to the story of the unknown God,

01:27:18.000 | the monument to the unknown God,

01:27:19.660 | let me tell you about the true and unknown God.

01:27:21.200 | It's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

01:27:23.800 | And so it's very hard to, if you present the claim,

01:27:27.260 | it's very hard to say that the number one focus

01:27:30.260 | for a Christian should be studying

01:27:32.100 | the Roman and Greek philosophers.

01:27:34.000 | Now, as a philosophy student, you can't help

01:27:36.040 | but study the philosophers because they have certainly

01:27:38.000 | shaped modern philosophy, but I would not point to them

01:27:42.100 | as Christian in any way, and certainly,

01:27:45.500 | if you look at what the Roman Empire did to Christians,

01:27:48.920 | you look at how, and you say no more.

01:27:52.600 | There's a reason why the Roman Empire

01:27:55.360 | persecuted and killed thousands and thousands

01:27:59.300 | and thousands of Christians.

01:28:00.900 | So now I get a little nervous when all of a sudden now,

01:28:03.660 | we start to ascribe the same thing to,

01:28:06.800 | in an educational model, and you say, okay,

01:28:10.020 | well, let's go ahead and have the classical education

01:28:12.300 | and let's start studying the Romans and Greeks

01:28:14.560 | as our primary examples.

01:28:17.020 | To me, that seems dangerous, right?

01:28:18.300 | As a Christian, you serve the God of Abraham,

01:28:20.100 | Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of Socrates,

01:28:25.500 | Plato, and Aristotle.

01:28:27.400 | They're very different.

01:28:28.440 | The gods of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

01:28:30.000 | are not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

01:28:32.100 | So I get concerned with that, but I think that in general,

01:28:36.300 | the classical Christian model is not generally

01:28:40.360 | on that level, and so what people are trying to say

01:28:44.000 | is we're trying to understand the history

01:28:45.360 | of Western civilization, which certainly should involve

01:28:48.700 | reading Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle,

01:28:51.040 | and then the many Christian philosophers

01:28:54.400 | and secular philosophers, et cetera,

01:28:56.060 | who've been involved in the great conversation

01:28:58.100 | throughout the last several thousand years of history

01:29:00.000 | that led to Western civilization as we know it.

01:29:03.340 | So is it a bad thing?

01:29:04.240 | No, I don't think so.

01:29:05.160 | Perhaps the most robust defense that I would refer you to

01:29:08.000 | if you're interested in the actual background of this,

01:29:10.500 | way back in the '90s, Doug Wilson,

01:29:13.700 | who was a pastor in Idaho, wrote a book

01:29:16.000 | called "Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning,"

01:29:19.040 | an approach to distinctively Christian education.

01:29:21.940 | Douglas Wilson, "Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning,"

01:29:24.060 | an approach to distinctively Christian education.

01:29:26.940 | And of course, the allusion there

01:29:28.200 | is to Dorothy Sayers' essay,

01:29:29.800 | and he talks about his experience

01:29:31.960 | starting a classical Christian school

01:29:34.460 | there in Moscow, Idaho.

01:29:36.340 | He and his wife had young children,

01:29:37.760 | and they didn't think that they wanted to homeschool,

01:29:41.300 | but there wasn't a good Christian school available,

01:29:43.200 | so they started one.

01:29:44.760 | And ironically, he did the same thing

01:29:45.960 | when it came to college.

01:29:46.800 | His children came to college age,

01:29:48.440 | and he couldn't look around and find a good college,

01:29:50.200 | so he started one there.

01:29:51.040 | He's a good starter of stuff like that.

01:29:53.460 | But I would encourage you,

01:29:54.300 | if you're considering the classical Christian model,

01:29:56.660 | especially in a school,

01:29:57.960 | go and read that "Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning."

01:30:00.740 | 'Cause Wilson, Wilson is certainly not shy about,

01:30:03.240 | he's certainly a serious biblical,

01:30:06.500 | like he takes the Bible serious,

01:30:07.560 | he takes biblical worldview, et cetera.

01:30:09.300 | He's not trying to preach,

01:30:10.560 | he's not trying to preach Aristotle and Plato and Socrates,

01:30:16.100 | but yet he does do a good job of talking about

01:30:18.800 | the classical Christian model in that.

01:30:20.600 | It's probably the best defense that I have read

01:30:22.360 | on the classical Christian model.

01:30:24.800 | In addition, I would say then,

01:30:27.300 | if you have it, you're likely to get much better results

01:30:29.940 | with a school that styles itself

01:30:31.240 | as a classical Christian school,

01:30:33.800 | just because they understand some of these things,

01:30:35.760 | the trivium, et cetera,

01:30:36.900 | and it's gonna be a significant hardcore environment

01:30:40.340 | of good academic instruction.

01:30:41.900 | I think that's a good model to be in.

01:30:44.340 | And before, just to acknowledge,

01:30:49.560 | I think that in our context as modern Americans,

01:30:52.960 | even if we are,

01:30:54.560 | even if we identify as Christians,

01:30:58.200 | and even if we would, as I would,

01:31:01.260 | I would seek to encourage a more Jewish identity

01:31:04.000 | than a Roman and Greek identity,

01:31:06.440 | without question, the Romans and Greeks

01:31:09.000 | have exercised massive influence over our societies.

01:31:13.200 | And so if we are not conversant in the philosophies

01:31:16.700 | that the Romans and Greeks developed

01:31:19.340 | and taught, and if we are not conversant

01:31:22.340 | in the massive impact of those philosophies

01:31:25.200 | on our world today,

01:31:28.340 | I don't think we are treating our,

01:31:33.060 | perhaps people who disagree with us, our debate partners,

01:31:36.600 | I don't believe we're treating them appropriately.

01:31:38.900 | We should know and understand the philosophies

01:31:40.920 | that led to modern Western civilization.

01:31:43.700 | And then it's our job to continue to trim out

01:31:46.160 | the ungodly, unbiblical philosophies,

01:31:49.360 | and to substitute for those biblical and godly philosophies

01:31:53.420 | based upon the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

01:31:55.240 | But because the Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle

01:31:57.680 | have been so influential in our world,

01:32:02.020 | we need to understand the impact of their philosophies.

01:32:04.520 | And of course, everyone else through since.

01:32:07.040 | I don't think we're dealing with things properly

01:32:09.720 | if we just ignore and say,

01:32:11.120 | you know, we don't study David Hume.

01:32:14.680 | We say, oh, I'm not gonna study David Hume

01:32:16.240 | 'cause I don't think he was a Christian.

01:32:18.040 | You better understand what David Hume's contributions were

01:32:21.200 | to modern philosophy,

01:32:23.280 | even if your goal is to disentangle those philosophies

01:32:27.040 | and point out the error in them.

01:32:29.800 | You can't choose the world that we're in.

01:32:31.160 | So for that context, I think there's a good argument

01:32:33.000 | in favor of classical Christian education.

01:32:35.040 | Finally, then I guess you get to the kind of

01:32:37.040 | the question of Latin.

01:32:38.760 | It's an interesting question.

01:32:40.120 | I've wrestled a lot with it, the value of studying Latin,

01:32:43.240 | and I've read the arguments on it.

01:32:45.760 | In general, my bias is in favor of,

01:32:47.640 | let's do it all the way.

01:32:48.560 | If people say Latin is important, let's study Latin.

01:32:51.720 | But I really get conflicted.

01:32:52.920 | Is that really a good use of the child's time?

01:32:56.480 | There are a number of arguments in favor of studying Latin,

01:32:59.380 | but I just think, it seems like, to me at the moment,

01:33:03.800 | it seems like too much time for not enough reward.

01:33:08.680 | The arguments on this subject just to me often seem thin.

01:33:13.020 | And it seems like the time could be put to better use.

01:33:17.260 | I mean, on the one hand, it seems like many of the reasons

01:33:20.580 | people give for studying Latin, for example.

01:33:23.300 | They say Latin helps you understand English vocabulary.

01:33:26.820 | And I think it does.

01:33:28.380 | English is a Germanic language, but the vast majority

01:33:31.700 | of the words that we use come from Latin.

01:33:35.620 | And so you have this weird amalgamation of a language

01:33:38.460 | where you have Germanic roots, so it doesn't follow

01:33:41.140 | the traditional structure that the more Latin languages

01:33:43.460 | like Spanish or French or Italian would follow.

01:33:45.920 | But much of our vocabulary does come from Latin.

01:33:48.820 | So they say, well, it enhances your vocabulary.

01:33:51.420 | I think that's true, but I never had to try

01:33:53.180 | to learn a language to enhance my English vocabulary.

01:33:55.420 | I learned my English vocabulary simply by reading books

01:33:58.100 | that expanded my vocabulary.

01:34:00.340 | And then if you get used to studying new words,

01:34:02.780 | you start to learn when you see a word,

01:34:04.540 | hey, that looks Latin to me, and you can go and look up

01:34:06.540 | the Latin word if you're interested in it,

01:34:07.900 | or just read about the etymology of the word

01:34:09.860 | in your dictionary.

01:34:11.220 | You don't need to learn the language for it.

01:34:13.040 | Another argument that people give in favor of Latin

01:34:16.380 | is that it helps to order the mind,

01:34:18.540 | that by learning Latin, which is a concrete,

01:34:22.740 | structured language, it orders the mind,

01:34:25.740 | and it teaches you a discipline.

01:34:27.060 | I think that's true, but I think the same exact argument

01:34:29.680 | could apply to mathematics, and wouldn't the time

01:34:32.820 | be just as well used studying mathematics

01:34:34.740 | as studying Latin?

01:34:35.900 | Or another argument that you often hear presented

01:34:37.620 | is something like, well, Latin makes it easier

01:34:39.460 | for you to learn other languages,

01:34:41.340 | especially languages such as the Romance languages,

01:34:44.340 | Spanish, French, Italian, Castilian,

01:34:47.820 | what are some of the, Romanian, I think,

01:34:50.700 | is a Romance language.

01:34:51.820 | Anyway, there's about five different Romance languages.

01:34:53.980 | And I think that's also probably true.

01:34:55.740 | It probably is true.

01:34:56.940 | But in the same time that you spend learning Latin,

01:34:59.460 | which you're not gonna speak with anybody,

01:35:01.740 | then shouldn't you just spend the same time

01:35:03.540 | learning Spanish?

01:35:04.900 | For example, you do certainly, one of the arguments is,

01:35:07.600 | by learning Latin, you enhance your understanding

01:35:09.600 | of English grammar.

01:35:11.020 | I think that's true.

01:35:12.880 | And in Latin, they call it the declensions,

01:35:14.540 | learning your declensions.

01:35:16.440 | But I learned, my English grammar improved

01:35:19.660 | when I studied Spanish, and I studied

01:35:21.500 | and understood the Spanish conjugations.

01:35:23.780 | I didn't ever think about or understand

01:35:25.620 | the subjunctive sense in English

01:35:27.660 | until I studied Spanish, where the subjunctive sense

01:35:29.700 | is very important.

01:35:30.820 | So I, again, say, why not take that same time,

01:35:33.380 | and can't we get more from studying Spanish?

01:35:36.220 | So it just seems to me still, even though I am inclined

01:35:39.780 | to wanna say, yeah, I gotta study Latin,

01:35:41.780 | I'm inclined to say, spend the time studying

01:35:45.940 | Spanish and French instead.

01:35:48.100 | And then you'll have actually useful skills

01:35:50.980 | in addition to what I would guess would be

01:35:53.100 | at least most of the benefits of learning Latin.

01:35:56.540 | The idea of going back and reading the classics

01:35:58.820 | in Latin to me just seems silly.

01:36:00.980 | Why read it?

01:36:02.060 | Why read it in Latin when there's lots

01:36:03.460 | of good English translations?

01:36:05.780 | So I'm unsold on that.

01:36:07.860 | I'd like to be sold, but I'm unpersuaded.

01:36:10.500 | I would just say this, if I were in,

01:36:12.780 | if my children were going to a classical Christian school

01:36:14.660 | where they were learning Latin, I'd encourage it,

01:36:16.020 | and I would, I'd learn it with them.

01:36:18.420 | But in terms of in a homeschool environment,

01:36:20.280 | my taking Latin and trying to say, well,

01:36:22.140 | this is the key in a homeschool environment,

01:36:24.100 | it hasn't clicked with me yet, right now.

01:36:27.460 | So in summary, my answer to your specific question

01:36:30.780 | would be this, if I could not homeschool,

01:36:33.180 | I would very much be looking for something

01:36:36.180 | like a classical Christian school.

01:36:38.700 | And my hope would be, and I've seen this,

01:36:40.720 | I've looked at websites and read essays

01:36:43.360 | by people who are involved in classical Christian schools,

01:36:46.140 | because there tends to be a greater level of rigor,

01:36:49.460 | I think you probably are gonna get

01:36:51.440 | a much more Christian education

01:36:53.260 | in a classical Christian school

01:36:55.280 | than you are in a mainstream Christian school

01:36:57.460 | that just says, oh, we're a Christian school.

01:36:59.420 | Because in general, when you bring the academic

01:37:02.500 | and intellectual rigor of faculty

01:37:04.920 | that are going to teach in a classically Christian school,

01:37:07.580 | and when they're gonna build on the trivium,

01:37:09.220 | which is super helpful and super important,

01:37:11.300 | and they're gonna bring the conversation

01:37:13.380 | from the great books to life,

01:37:15.460 | then I think you're going to be dealing

01:37:16.860 | with professors and administrators who value education,

01:37:20.320 | and who have grappled with the contradictions

01:37:23.200 | between a biblical worldview and a classical worldview,

01:37:26.960 | and who have answers for those things.

01:37:29.420 | And so, although I don't see how classical and Christian

01:37:34.100 | can go together, like they're at direct odds,

01:37:37.520 | again, the people who designed the classical education

01:37:40.380 | and the people who were studied in it

01:37:41.620 | are the ones who murdered thousands and thousands

01:37:44.980 | of Christians in the most horrendous of ways.

01:37:47.060 | That should be fairly obvious to anybody.

01:37:49.100 | So I don't see how they can even go together

01:37:52.820 | without really considering it,

01:37:55.120 | but yet I would trust that the people who are doing that

01:37:58.820 | would have a rebuttal for that,

01:38:00.660 | and talk about how the ideas had developed,

01:38:02.780 | and would have grappled with the integration

01:38:05.940 | of what is biblical from the traditional great conversation

01:38:10.940 | and what is non-biblical,

01:38:13.260 | and that because our civilization is a civilization

01:38:17.580 | that was shaped by the classics, by these philosophers,

01:38:20.700 | by these philosophies, because these things

01:38:23.820 | were what led to the modern American civilization,

01:38:28.520 | I think that by having your child understand that

01:38:32.300 | and be part of that conversation,

01:38:34.100 | will suit them for life in a way that most won't.

01:38:39.220 | I mean, at the end of the day, if you go to Washington, DC,

01:38:42.840 | the buildings don't look like a Jewish synagogue

01:38:45.900 | or the Jewish temple.

01:38:47.180 | The buildings look like a Greek temple,

01:38:49.620 | or the buildings have Roman architectural influences.

01:38:52.660 | And so, understanding and being conversant in that language

01:38:56.020 | I think is important for modern Christians.

01:38:59.160 | And so, I think that if there's a good local

01:39:02.020 | classical Christian school, I think that's a good choice.

01:39:04.920 | I think a lot of parents would also be happy

01:39:06.600 | with some of the homeschool variations.

01:39:07.980 | Again, Classical Conversations being the most famous

01:39:10.320 | brand name in this space, it's just growing left and right.

01:39:14.520 | And I think one of the things that I see

01:39:16.400 | about an organization like Classical Conversations,

01:39:19.100 | what they do is they bring together

01:39:21.440 | some of the really good things of the school model

01:39:25.180 | with the good things of the homeschool model.

01:39:27.680 | So, Classical Conversations, it's not inexpensive,

01:39:30.780 | it's time consuming, et cetera.

01:39:32.320 | So, this is not for those who need

01:39:33.580 | just the cheapest bare bones homeschool curriculum,

01:39:35.420 | they can, and it is very much focused on the classics.

01:39:39.560 | But what they do is they have a comprehensive curriculum

01:39:42.680 | that goes from the kindergarten years

01:39:44.760 | through the high school senior years.

01:39:47.520 | The comprehensive curriculum is academically rigorous.

01:39:51.520 | They have all the materials available for you.

01:39:53.600 | One of the things I like, they do this timeline song

01:39:58.320 | in the beginning, they have the children

01:39:59.440 | memorize vast quantities of information

01:40:01.700 | during that grammar stage.

01:40:03.800 | And then they basically revolve around into it.

01:40:05.640 | So, they flow through the trivium in their model.

01:40:07.760 | And then by combining some of the good things

01:40:10.080 | of homeschooling, where most of the academic work

01:40:12.300 | is done at home, with some of the good things

01:40:14.400 | about teacher instruction, where you have a facilitator

01:40:17.200 | and a teacher, especially one who's not the parent,

01:40:18.840 | which I think could be really helpful for a child.

01:40:20.880 | Many parents and children struggle with authority

01:40:24.280 | and how the teacher's authority conveys

01:40:26.760 | to the parental authority.

01:40:29.000 | I've watched one of my children doesn't respond well

01:40:31.920 | to authority that's not my wife and me.

01:40:35.080 | And so I've tried to correct that by bringing in

01:40:36.980 | other teachers to try to bring in and put him into his,

01:40:40.560 | I just gave it away, put him into a situation.

01:40:43.600 | You try so hard to protect the anonymity of your children

01:40:45.520 | and yet you fail.

01:40:46.920 | Put him into a situation where he's forced to confront

01:40:50.000 | authority figures that are not our own,

01:40:51.880 | so that we can help him to learn

01:40:53.440 | to respond better to authority.

01:40:55.480 | And so the classical conversations model does that,

01:40:57.360 | where they come together once a week.

01:40:58.960 | There's a collaborative environment, friends, et cetera,

01:41:02.200 | social activities, et cetera.

01:41:04.080 | And I see a lot of people really enjoying it

01:41:06.340 | and really doing well with it.

01:41:08.260 | So that's one model for those who are in the in-between.

01:41:10.360 | And I think that's probably a more successful model

01:41:12.920 | where people just say, I like this philosophy

01:41:15.440 | and I'm gonna go in with this hybrid approach

01:41:17.920 | than the standard homeschooler

01:41:19.560 | who's trying to put everything together themselves.

01:41:22.000 | Many parents, especially many mothers,

01:41:24.240 | don't seem to have the confidence or the clarity

01:41:27.120 | on putting together a good homeschool curriculum.

01:41:29.720 | And they should, but they often don't.

01:41:31.600 | And so I think that's a good solution.

01:41:36.000 | I guess the last thing I should have mentioned earlier

01:41:37.920 | that I find inspiring, one curriculum

01:41:40.580 | that I think is pretty neat,

01:41:41.920 | would be the Ron Paul curriculum.

01:41:44.100 | That was developed by Dr. Gary North,

01:41:46.280 | who's been on the show, Christian economist

01:41:48.640 | and prolific writer.

01:41:50.080 | And he coordinated the different professors.

01:41:51.960 | He teaches some of the courses.

01:41:53.040 | He teaches the literature course

01:41:54.160 | and the history course, I think,

01:41:55.120 | but then many other professors,

01:41:57.000 | including at least one listener of the show

01:41:58.600 | who teaches in the Ron Paul curriculum,

01:42:00.880 | who's written to me privately.

01:42:02.960 | And I really like the Ron Paul curriculum

01:42:05.280 | because it seems to bring together and integrate

01:42:08.040 | some of these disparate ideas.

01:42:10.340 | For example, the literature courses

01:42:12.560 | or the history courses are extensive.

01:42:14.880 | And by all accounts,

01:42:17.320 | all of the instruction is academically rigorous.

01:42:20.440 | The children are required to write many essays,

01:42:22.760 | and that's really, really good.

01:42:25.200 | It does take advantage of modern technology

01:42:27.040 | for teacher-student interaction.

01:42:29.280 | For example, the students post their essays

01:42:32.180 | on their WordPress site.

01:42:33.480 | So that gives them familiarity

01:42:35.080 | with things like blogging technology,

01:42:36.680 | which I think is particularly useful.

01:42:39.140 | And I like the fact that it's rigorous,

01:42:42.400 | but not what I perceive to be overly rigorous.

01:42:45.800 | And I like the fact that it's not done with textbooks

01:42:48.600 | and pretty little things.

01:42:50.800 | It's all done with reading the original papers.

01:42:52.520 | I think one of the major weaknesses of the modern student

01:42:55.360 | is that the modern student does not know how

01:42:57.740 | and is not trained to go and consult the primary sources.

01:43:00.760 | And so we tend to just simply regurgitate whatever pundit,

01:43:03.800 | meaning the person who wrote the textbook,

01:43:05.380 | says rather than actually consulting the primary sources

01:43:08.320 | and then developing our own understanding from that.

01:43:11.620 | So I really like the Ron Paul curriculum.

01:43:14.200 | My things I don't like about it

01:43:16.360 | is I don't like that it's all video-based

01:43:18.120 | 'cause I don't like video.

01:43:19.020 | I don't think it's healthy for children

01:43:20.360 | to stare at screens all the time.

01:43:21.960 | That's it.

01:43:24.840 | And I don't, so it's both an advantage

01:43:27.360 | because video-based allows somebody to do it

01:43:29.020 | from anywhere in the world

01:43:29.860 | where they have a video connection.

01:43:31.480 | It's a huge advantage, but at the moment,

01:43:33.800 | I don't see that as being something that I want to do

01:43:35.920 | to have video instruction.

01:43:37.520 | But that does seem to be the direction

01:43:39.740 | of many good homeschool curriculums,

01:43:41.700 | many good curricula, many good materials,

01:43:44.380 | is to use the video base.

01:43:45.700 | And so I would guess that at some point,

01:43:47.860 | I'll have to fold on that and say,

01:43:49.580 | well, there's so much value to the video screen.

01:43:51.580 | There's so much value to the internet connection

01:43:53.660 | that we'll just have to fold on the challenges

01:43:56.220 | of staring at a screen all day.

01:43:57.860 | Those are my thoughts.

01:43:58.700 | I thank you for listening.

01:44:00.020 | I hope they were useful.

01:44:01.420 | I know that many of you had written to me

01:44:03.300 | and said that because of some of the ideas

01:44:05.260 | and things that I have shared

01:44:07.060 | that you've pulled your children

01:44:09.460 | out of a government school.

01:44:10.380 | And I want to thank you for that.

01:44:11.580 | I think that's a great decision.

01:44:13.020 | Now I would just say, trust yourself.

01:44:14.640 | As a parent, maintain a close relationship with your child.

01:44:17.140 | Watch them to see what's actually happening,

01:44:19.340 | and then adjust accordingly.

01:44:20.780 | If you see that something's not working,

01:44:22.420 | don't be scared to adjust.

01:44:23.700 | Don't be committed to one certain philosophy.

01:44:26.500 | Watch your child and do what's in the best interest

01:44:29.080 | of your child.

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01:44:40.420 | - Once we stopped running,

01:44:41.460 | I found out what it was we was running about.

01:44:43.980 | - And Paul Rodriguez.

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RPF0659-How_My_Ideas_and_Philosophies_on_Education_Have_Changed_Over_the_Years