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March 12, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:56:09

2111 Natural Education, Homeschooling And the Rebirth of Liberty!

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, talks about the hows and whys of homeschooling, and how natural education is the surest path to a freer future! http://www.unpluggedmom.com

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	All right. It's the...
	Well, I don't know.
	Oh, that sounded like it was going to be really good.
	Hi, everybody. It's the Lorette and Steph show.
	We're back. Hey, that has a nice ring to it.
	I like it. Absolutely. And I have decided in the interest of peace to shave off a syllable and give you the extra syllable.
	So we'll have to Loretta.
	We'll have to give you an extra syllable and I'll just be Steph.
	The sidekick. I'll be the orangutan to your Clint Eastwood.
	So we are back.
	back, we're going to talk about home education.
	And it's a topic that is near and dear to my heart because my daughter is three and I do get peppered with questions a lot, which is how on earth is she going to be educated?
	And tell me what you think, Lorette, but I don't even like the form of the question, if that makes any sense.
	It's like sort of asking, well, How is she going to learn how to walk?
	How is she going to learn how to talk?
	You know, it seems like we look upon education as something that is external that needs to be imposed.
	You know, like the way that you make a gingerbread man by putting that cookie cutter onto the dough.
	Or, you know, in the old days they used to put the signet ring into the wax to give the sort of royal seal.
	That education is something that needs to be imposed from outside.
	And it smacks to me, it's not exactly original sin, but it's almost like we're born ignorant or we're born wayward or we're born somehow wrong.
	And adults need to fix and correct us.
	And I just, I don't really feel that to be the case at all.
	So let's start with just the general sense of what education is.
	What does it mean to you, the education of children?
	Okay. Well, the first thing I want to touch on, I mean, there is a definition for education and it goes along with learning, but I want to kind of springboard off of what you were saying.
	And there is a problem with the question in and of itself when people ask, because that's the first thing that people ask.
	Well, there's actually the first thing that they ask is how are they going to socialize?
	And the next one is how are they going to learn?
	Well, if you homeschool them or, you know, you home educate them, you don't send them to school, how are they going to learn?
	How are they going to be educated?
	And the first problem I have with the question is that it opposes upon itself.
	It's like my initial reaction is I can't answer that question because I reject the premise of the question.
	It assumes upon itself.
	And what I mean by that is it assumes that school is the golden standard for education.
	Because the automatic question is, if they don't go to school, how are they going to learn?
	So school is the only place where people can learn.
	And that's the problem that I have.
	Fundamentally, it's flawed right there because we have an entire society of people who are...
	We're indoctrinated, and I'm going to use that word, to believe that school is the golden means.
	This is the only opportunity we have to learn.
	And then, as far as education goes, like you said, we're just so accustomed to this idea that That education is something that has to be done to a child.
	A child is born flawed and we have to fix them and we have to put information into them.
	And that's like filling a jar with beans.
	Now you can do that all you want.
	You could fill that jar with beans.
	You can take a child and you can fill them with all sorts of dates and facts and information and some of the information is useful and a lot of the information is not useful.
	But to me, that's not truly learning.
	That's just filling a jar with beans.
	Learning is something that a human being is equipped to do from the moment that they're born.
	We learn how to walk. We learn how to talk.
	We learn how to get along with other people.
	We learn how to count.
	We learn how to write, okay?
	And yes, we do do this with the assistance of adults in our lives, whether that be our parents, our grandparents, other adults in our lives, sometimes not even adults in our lives.
	Sometimes we learn from other friends.
	Sometimes we learn from brothers and sisters.
	Sometimes we learn from Actually, weirdly enough, until about four minutes ago, I was.
	And now I feel like I'm done. I feel like just because we're having this conversation, that's it for me for learning.
	I've reached the pinnacle.
	You don't climb past Everest.
	You just get to the top, you go back down the other side.
	No, and this is something that drives me nuts.
	I was watching TV the other day, and there was one of these shows on, you know, like High School Geniuses or something.
	It's buzzer stuff, you know, like if you push the buzzer and spout out the correct answer, you're really smart.
	And I couldn't think of anything more oppositional to genuine learning than being a bad computer.
	Computers can always store and regurgitate stuff.
	Much better than human beings can.
	I really hate that buzzer stuff.
	What is the 31st element of the table?
	It's this! What is the atomic structure of helium?
	It's this! That is not learning.
	That is regurgitation. That is what is considered to be intelligence, unfortunately, in today's society.
	You're exactly right, Stefan.
	The problem is that that is not intelligence.
	That is no more than Pavlov's dogs that's reacting to a situation.
	Okay. And that's why I use the analogy of filling a jar with beans because what you're essentially doing is filling a jar with beans and then...
	Having those beans jump out on command, so to speak, or just pulling for those beans on command.
	It's not learning, and I don't believe what is going on in school is true learning either.
	I believe what is going on in school is simply a filling of the jar with beans, a filling with data, a filling with trivia, and just information that, and this is important too, that some other entity, some other elusive board,
	some people sitting in an office somewhere have decided this is Yes, it does involve...
	Assistance and help from the parents, but like I said before, it involves assistance and help from a bunch of people in your life and all sorts of sources and different kinds of stimulation, not just one.
	And you have this assistance, but the person, the learner is doing it.
	That's where the action is happening with the learner.
	Just like with a child, the same with an adult.
	The action is happening with us.
	We're the ones that are learning.
	It's not being done to us.
	We're doing it.
	And yes, sometimes we're doing it with assistance, but we're doing it.
	It's not being done to us.
	When you have the freedom to discover that and learn that from real-world situations, you're able to process the information and analyze the information.
	Because here is how learning happens.
	Learning happens in steps.
	First you discover, then you understand, and then there's the rhetoric.
	Then you communicate. You discover something.
	The first time you lay your eyes on something and with any of your five senses, the first time you touch something, smell something, see something, or sometimes with a sixth sense when you experience something, you discover it.
	Then you analyze it.
	it.
	You understand it.
	You pull it apart.
	You look for contradictions.
	You look for the logic in it.
	You try to understand it.
	Sometimes that happens all by yourself.
	Sometimes that happens with assistance, but it happens.
	Then you communicate it back out into the world.
	When you communicate it back out into the world, that's when you're really mastering your understanding of it and you're helping other people to understand it too.
	It's the spiral approach because then it comes back on itself and next time you're introduced to that same subject matter or that same idea or philosophy, you understand it even better and then you communicate it out even better.
	School doesn't operate that way.
	School operates like filling a jar with beans and then you have the buzzer and like you said, it's just a bad computer.
	The only way to really do that is naturally and to have an actual genuine respect for the fact that learning happens with the learner.
	Right.
	Well, and the one thing that I think everyone who's gone through that, and it's not, I mean, this happens in private schools too, though they're heavily regulated by the state.
	But I think before we say, what is education?
	I think the fundamental is defined by the why.
	Why do we want to be educated?
	Why do we want to learn?
	That's something that school never answered for me.
	Why are we learning about Mary, Queen of Scots?
	Why are we learning about the British North America Act?
	Why are we memorizing the dates of the emperors in the Roman Empire?
	Why are we learning this stuff?
	And that is something that I've really noticed being a parent, that my daughter doesn't learn how to walk for the sake of learning how to walk.
	It's a means to an end.
	She wants to go somewhere and it's easier to walk than to cry and point and hope that I'll guess the right thing.
	Why does she learn how to speak?
	Because she finds it easier to ask for what she wants, to communicate what she thinks, to have conversations.
	So it is for the goal of achieving ends.
	It is for the goal of fundamentally of achieving happiness.
	That's why she's learning all of these things.
	And so...
	That's the goal. There is a goal for which her education or her self-knowledge or her growth and expertise, it's designed to achieve a goal.
	And that is not the case with memorization, with regurgitation.
	What is it trying to achieve?
	Why on earth? That's not a rhetorical question.
	I think it's very important. What is the purpose of education?
	Why should we even bother?
	Well, again, it comes down to perspective.
	If you're asking someone with a free mind, so to speak, like you or I or many other people out there, you would say, well, we choose to be educated because we want to learn something more about a particular topic because we want to follow our passion and we want to understand that topic better or as far as building a foundation so that we can learn more, like in the case with young children.
	And we consider education to be The building blocks, the ABCs and the 123s.
	And that really just lays the foundation so that they understand communication, they understand the world around them, and they can go ahead and learn more and pursue their own interest after that.
	But if we're talking about school, the purpose of education that they're doing in school, which I don't really know that I define as education anyway, I very, very strongly feel, based on all the experience I had and all the...
	been doing over the last 10 years and everything that I've researched, I very strongly feel that the purpose of schooling is specifically to mold as many quote unquote citizens as they can to fit into certain places in society and to respond I very strongly feel that the purpose of schooling is specifically to mold as many quote unquote citizens as To respond to certain stimulus that is put out by society.
	That we just have this automatic reaction to things because we're trained in that way.
	So it's a very canned and pre-selected information that's being downloaded into students.
	So when you say, what is the purpose of it?
	I mean, the purpose of learning is to learn more.
	But the purpose of learning has got to be to serve...
	Happiness, right? This is an old Aristotelian argument that happiness has to be the end goal of life because we don't achieve happiness in order to make money.
	We don't achieve happiness in order to have a good night's sleep, right?
	Happiness is the one thing that we will take in and of itself.
	It's not in order. Right.
	Right. Right.
	Right. So how does education serve happiness?
	And when you're memorizing facts and dates and numbers, and obviously there's a certain amount of memorization with everything that we do, and there's nothing wrong with that as a means to an end.
	And I remember asking that question, and I think everybody's sort of, why do we have to learn this?
	Why are we learning this?
	What is the point of this? I think everybody has that experience in school, and there's no answer.
	No, there's no real answer. And that, I think, is the great tragedy that turns people off learning because then it becomes boring and dull and obedience and empty, useless regurgitation.
	And they've actually found, studies have shown, studies have shown, if you take economics in college, you know less about economics two years later than somebody who never took it.
	Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely.
	Because they're teaching it wrong on purpose.
	And I don't know if that's too crass to say, but...
	No, they're teaching it. I think there's a number.
	But the first is that... To me, if you want to achieve happiness, there has to be a moral element to your education.
	Of course, morality, you know, nutrition is the science of health through eating, and exercise is the science of health through activity, and philosophy is the science of health through morality.
	And so if you want to achieve happiness, you have to be good.
	You know, reason equals virtue equals happiness.
	That's the old equation from the pre-Socratic days.
	And so you can't be happy if you can't be good, and you can't be good unless you know morality.
	But modern education has specifically and explicitly stripped morality from the curriculum because it offends too many people.
	If you start talking about morality, you may hit three people and 27 other people are going to go home and say, the teacher said this was moral and that's the opposite of what this book says or that book says or granddad says or whatever.
	And then you get this shite storm coming down on the teacher.
	So you have explicitly emptied out the very thing which makes education worthwhile, which is the moral element, the virtuous element that allows you to be good and therefore be happy.
	You know what? I want to touch on that.
	Actually, I want to skip back first to the purpose.
	When you ask the question, why do I have to learn this?
	They do provide an answer, or at least they did when I was in school, but it was an answer that I was never satisfied with.
	The answer was, elusively, to be successful.
	You have to learn this so that you can be successful.
	You have to learn how to...
	all these meaningless dates and everything else that we're teaching you that you're never actually going to use in real life so that you can be successful.
	And I always picture in my mind, I remember seeing this poster.
	And I don't even remember where I saw it, but I remember laying my eyes upon it and really wondering what the meaning was behind it.
	Like, what is the message behind this?
	And it was a photograph of like a five-car garage and all these fancy cars are in each slot.
	You know, like you have your Beamer and your Mercedes and, you know, your Jag or whatever else.
	And there's these like really great fancy cars.
	And underneath the caption reads, justification for higher education.
	And that really sticks in my brain because I say, okay, the first message that I'm seeing here is you need to go to school so that you could get rich and have all these fancy cars.
	Right. Get there.
	You need to have higher education.
	You need to go to school. So what they're saying is you actually cannot find happiness without school.
	Okay? And I always found that interesting.
	Even when I first saw it, I found it interesting because I said the message here is go to school so you can find happiness.
	And happiness is what? Happiness is riches.
	Happiness is money. Sorry to interrupt.
	That goes so much against every philosophical tradition in the world.
	If money, fame, looks, and talent were enough to make everyone happy, then Whitney Houston, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Hutchins, whoever you name it, would still be alive today.
	But anyway, go No, you're exactly right, Stefan.
	You're exactly right. And I think most people on a primal level know that, but not on a daily level, if that makes any sense.
	When we talk about it and when we bring it to light, people nod their heads and say, yeah, you know, money doesn't bring happiness, blah, blah, blah.
	But yet, we're still controlled by the ever-elusive dangling carrot, the golden carrot.
	That's how most of society...
	And I saw those same posters.
	Sorry, I'll let you go on in a second. I apologize for interrupting.
	I saw those same posters.
	Do you know what I thought? I thought they were referring to the teachers and the professors because the professors make a fortune for teaching three or four hours a week.
	It's like justification for higher education.
	I get to be a professor and get paid $160,000 a year for showing up in classroom three hours a week.
	You know, the public school teachers who take home some pretty coin and benefits and summers off.
	And it's like, I didn't think it had anything to do with the students at all.
	Like, you have to be here so I get a pension.
	Oh, that's funny. That's funny.
	The first time that I've seen it, I took it upon myself to assume it was for the students.
	And I think it's a disturbing message because it does infer that you need a lot of money in order to be happy and you need all these cars and everything.
	And like you said... You know, money doesn't necessarily buy happiness, but I think that this is something that really plagues us, especially today.
	And I think this may have been a problem throughout all of human history.
	I mean, everybody went chasing gold throughout all of history, but I think it's especially a problem today because as much as we can say, no, money doesn't buy happiness, look at the society that we're living in, okay?
	And all those names that you mentioned and, you know, Whitney Houston and everything else, but The general media focuses its attention on glamour and glitz.
	And you have these goofy shows with these goobers like the Housewives and the Kardashians.
	Yeah, the Kardashians.
	And up until recently, I didn't even know who the Kardashians were.
	I thought it was like some mythical thing.
	It was really funny. And then you have these like Snooki people.
	And this chick has actually given speeches.
	Oh, the Oompa Loompa. Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, and she's given speeches, commencement speeches at Rutgers University, which is an institution of learning.
	So what is that? I mean, what are we doing here?
	We're training people.
	Right. We're training people that this false kind of glamour and glitz is what you want.
	So ultimately, we're conditioning people to consume.
	To learn to consume.
	What you want to do is consume.
	You need to consume because this is what you need to be happy, but then people are never truly happy, so they keep looking for it.
	They keep looking for that magic apple, but the problem is that the apple is poisoned because it's unnatural.
	It's Monsanto. Look at the karmic justice, Lorette.
	It's a beautiful thing in a terrible, awful way.
	It's a Shakespearean plot because the teachers...
	Say to the students, you must be greedy and materialistic and make lots of money.
	And the students go, hey, that's a great idea.
	So if I grow up and I become a Wall Street banker or an investment broker, then I can make a complete fortune.
	Now, one of the sad byproducts is that I will end up blowing up the teacher's pension plans by losing them all the money in the world.
	But on the plus side, at least I listen to my teacher's Yeah, well, that's the way to go, right?
	Anyway, so let's go on. Sorry, I didn't keep interrupting.
	Here's more of a problem with this, okay?
	And this flows into the morality issue.
	There's a segue in a minute there.
	So what we're basically doing is training people that in order to be happy, you need to be successful.
	In order to be successful, that means riches.
	That means money. And in order to get that, you need to stay in school and get this, like...
	Cockamamie thing that they're calling an education and just let us download information into you and useless information.
	Now the sad part is though, in most cases, it doesn't work.
	Most people get out of the school system and enter into mediocre middle class jobs.
	And, you know, I would say that the majority of people out there are stuck in what we're calling now, we're dubbed now the dead end job, you know, and they don't like their job and they don't like what they're doing.
	And they have this nine to five rat race life that they're dealing with.
	And, you know, then they have a couple of kids and they become a soccer mom and they find themselves stuck in this life.
	It might sound like doom and gloom right here, but let's just take a look at society as a whole.
	This is reflected in everything, all the products that are available to us now, especially pharmaceuticals.
	One in five adults is on some kind of psychotropic medication just to get through their own day because they're depressed or they have social anxiety order because they're not happy.
	Okay, so all that they're doing, and most of these people stayed in school.
	Most of these people graduated from college, but yet they're not happy.
	They're stressed out. They're unhappy.
	They're physically sick.
	They're mentally sick. They're spiritually suffocated.
	But hey, what's the problem?
	They went to school. Well, maybe one in 50, and I'm being generous.
	It's probably more like one in a couple of hundred, okay, that actually end up getting these fancy cars in the five-car garage.
	And how do we know that? Because they're being called the 1%.
	Okay? These people, a lot of them, didn't do very well in school.
	And if they did, they became this genius that they are, despite the school system, not because of it.
	And that's where a lot of people make the mistake also.
	Okay? Now we're going to go back into the morality issue.
	Does everybody that makes a lot of money, and this comes back to the 1% issue now, everybody that does make a lot of money...
	Are they all evil people?
	So, okay, if we say that money doesn't buy happiness and we don't want to be trained just to go after the dangling carrots, does that mean that if we do make money, we're bad people and we're evil people?
	No, not necessarily.
	But here's an even more confusing part.
	And like you said, it's like a Shakespearean comedy because one thing crosses over the other with all this complexity.
	But you got to kind of sit down and pull this all apart when you see that it's all just a tangled mess, is that this system is also kind of training people to believe that you need to rely on the state and relying on the state is good.
	and having any independent wealth or independent money is evil.
	So we need the state to step in and control the cash flow and control the money.
	So everything just becomes this tangled web.
	It pits us against each other.
	We forget our individuality.
	We forget our freedom.
	And we think that everything needs to be controlled and manufactured in order for us to get by.
	But when you look at the results, and the result is that we think that, you know, Snooki represents America.
	We think that it's perfectly okay to behave like the housewives of Beverly Hills.
	We think that it's perfectly normal for most of us to be sick or to have Monsanto poisoning our food.
	And we feel hopeless.
	We feel like there's nothing we can do in most cases.
	We think it's perfectly normal for one in five adults to be on a medication just so they could wake up in the morning.
	And we see these commercials and we think, well, yeah, that's life.
	But it's not life. It's unnatural.
	Because these are the things, Stefan, that have been done to us.
	That is what school does.
	It does something to you.
	And that brings me back to your very, very first point.
	Learning is not something that could be done to a person.
	Intelligence is something that I believe that we are all born with.
	As far as... What a parent's role is in helping their child learn, it's about nurturing what is already there.
	It's not about fixing or correcting anything that has gone wrong.
	Yeah, when my daughter learned how to walk, I didn't move her legs.
	I just held her arms.
	Exactly. And that, you're a support and a structure, and I made sure that her path was clear to learn.
	I didn't sit there and grab and move her legs and say, this is how you do it, because that would make her passive and also would have her not learn what I think being there as a support and getting things out the way is the key, at least for me so far, and that's the complete opposite of what government education does.
	It's the complete opposite.
	And you also didn't stand up and do some crazy wiggle and say, walk this way.
	You have to walk this way. And if you don't walk this way, you're all wrong.
	You kind of just made sure that her path was clear, made sure she had the foundation.
	Then you held her hand as long as she needed it.
	That's how learning takes place.
	It takes place very real.
	Now, a lot of people will say, well, walking is something different because algebra doesn't come naturally to people.
	You know what? No, maybe algebra doesn't come naturally to people, but understanding comes naturally to people.
	And counting comes relatively natural to people.
	If you gave your daughter, like you said in our last interview, she likes to play with these bits of rope, and you gave her three bits of rope, and you said, here, this is one, this is two, this is three.
	Now you have three. You watch how fast she catches on to that.
	Oh, she's already done it. She said, I had five candies.
	You took one. Now I have four.
	Exactly. I didn't teach her that.
	And look, algebra will come.
	I hated algebra in school.
	I learned algebra when I started to learn how to program computers because I needed it because it was a means to an end.
	That sort of stuff should never be an end in itself.
	It should be a means to an end.
	And that way it has utility on the road to somewhere called Because you need to learn it.
	It's completely circular.
	I believe that the system exists for the sole purpose of sustaining itself, and in that it means that it's a Ponzi scheme because it's using our tax money to do it.
	Well, I mean, I've mentioned this before on the show, but one of the heads of the American Teachers Union said, I will start representing the interests of children when they start paying union dues.
	Well, there you go. No, the children are held hostage so that people can get salaries for four hours a day and get summers off and great pensions and healthcare.
	And yeah, it's got nothing to do with the actual, you know.
	And it's funny. Everybody tears up of Whitney Houston.
	I believe the children of the future.
	Oh, the children of the future.
	They're everything. They're the citizens of tomorrow.
	It's like... Yeah.
	no, we can't do that.
	You know, it's crazy.
	And that's exactly what home education is, Stefan, is liberation and education.
	Because they're being held hostage is exactly what is going on there.
	And they're being manipulated.
	And what is actually happening is they're coming out of that system and they're automatically programmed to get married and have children and put their own children right back into So you want the livestock to reproduce, obviously.
	Exactly. Let's talk about the gypsy curse that's put on homeschooled kids, right?
	The gypsy curse is like, well, you can be free, but I'm going to curse your crib with a lack of social skills.
	Let's talk about the socialization aspect that is often railed against when it comes to homeschooling.
	Yeah, that is the number one question that any home educating family around the world hears.
	It's the number one question.
	You announce to somebody upon first meeting them, or they ask you about your kid's school or whatever, and you say, well, you know, we don't go to school, we home educate, or whatever you call it.
	People have a whole different way to name it, which is another problem for me.
	I don't think we need to name what we do.
	We do.
	We just don't go to school.
	And then the very next thing is this, they come down with this kind of weird look on their face and it's kind of dumbfounded, you know, Oh, well, how do they socialize?
	And it's interesting to me that that question usually comes before the education question, because I think by now people have kind of accepted that school really doesn't do that great of a job turning out intellectuals, you know, but they figure, well, how are they going to socialize?
	We're now question because what they're assuming is that what happens in government school is healthy socialization.
	Don't go there.
	It can't happen.
	It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	That first assumption is where you need to stop.
	Exactly. It's a question that is hard to answer because, again, it assumes upon itself.
	You have to reject the premise of the question.
	It assumes that school is the place to socialize.
	And not only does it assume that, but assumes that school is the only place where a young human being can meet people.
	And be around peers and have some kind of social experience.
	Now, when you kind of think, really think about what's going on there, okay?
	A parent, you have a child and the child becomes four years old.
	And four is the average age for when they start pre-kindergarten, okay?
	Some kids start even younger, but it's four.
	Four is not that old and they take them into this classroom situation which is a closed environment and they're with the same children day after day and all those children are usually around the same age within a year of the same age and even if it's a public school We're good to go.
	And they plop them into the situation and usually the child cries and they don't want to be away from the parent and they experience some kind of stress or nervousness or anxiety.
	But you say, no, no, no.
	I'm going to leave you now with these strangers and you're going to go make a friend.
	And the kid freaks out.
	Now, that's a really...
	Warped and crazy situation when you really break it down and look at it, but that's what we're doing, and that is what we have defined as proper socialization.
	So I've come to hear the word socialization and cringe because I feel like it's actually something that's being done to a child, like a process that's being performed.
	Again, like you said, they're born broken without the ability to interact with other people, and we have to fix them.
	But the truth is that human beings...
	On a very natural and primal level are social creatures.
	We are social creatures. We want to communicate.
	We want to understand our world and we want to ask questions and we want to communicate.
	That's why babies learn how to talk.
	They want to. Like you were saying about your daughter, she wants to communicate with you.
	Okay? And that's why they're so interested in learning how to talk.
	So we want to know other people.
	It happens very naturally.
	To meet other people.
	When somebody says how do they socialize, what they're saying is how are they making...
	There is an entire world out there, Stefan, that exists outside of the classroom, not inside of the classroom.
	And there are people in that world.
	And we meet people and we talk to people and we make friends.
	But here's the thing. We do it naturally.
	We make friends with anybody no matter what age they are, no matter what their background is, no matter what their culture is.
	And here's... An even better part is that the kids get to choose who they want to be friends with instead of being forced into these manufactured and pre-selected relationships where they have this limited choice of people in the same classroom and they say, well, I know you want a friend because it's instinctual and primal to want a friend, but this is it.
	This is your choice. That's it.
	I can't wait for the day when I say to somebody, you know, I've never been to jail, and they say to me, well, how did you learn how to socialize then?
	Seriously. That's exactly, that's very accurate because that's exactly what they're asking when they ask that, you know, because you're inside of this closed situation.
	So when you explain it to people, they understand it and they get it.
	But we're so used to thinking that this is the only place to socialize because we're so used to this procedure, this mind-numbing procedure where you just go through your life and you have a couple of kids and you send them into school and, you know, they meet their BFF in school and they have friends.
	So, well, of course that's where they make friends because it's like they don't know any different, you know?
	Like when you have a flea in the bottle and you keep the flea in the bottle and you take off the cap, it doesn't try to jump out anymore because that's all it knows.
	Yeah. So an entire civilization has gotten used to this because it's all it knows.
	So they think, well, you can't meet people unless you go to school because that's all they know.
	Yeah, it's like if the government arranged everyone's marriage and then some crazy lunatic idiots like us came along and said, we should get rid of the government assigning you a husband and wife.
	And people would say, well, we can't do that because then nobody would get married.
	They would just get married to people they chose rather than people who were assigned to them.
	Right. And it's actually really kind of disturbing and sad when you think about it that we would rely on an institution to provide friendships and relationships for us or even friendship and relationships opportunities for us.
	That we think that the only opportunity to meet someone is in this system, in this building.
	It's very disturbing when you think about that.
	We live in a world with people.
	And you know, here's something very funny, Stéphane.
	I've never asked this question because then they'll say, well, you know, I figure because you home educate, you're just stuck in your house all day.
	And that's funny to me because no one ever asks me that question when I'm home.
	Because nobody's there but us.
	They asked me when I'm at the park and the kids are out playing or when I'm at some kind of sports activity and the kids are playing baseball.
	And I can't tell you how many times that my son's baseball team, a parent, will say, oh, your homeschoolers, okay, but how do they socialize?
	And I look at them and I look at the kids playing baseball and I look back and I say, really?
	You know, are you really asking me that?
	You know? So that's what's funny to me is that we're out here.
	We're in the world. This is where we meet people.
	Or I'll meet somebody and I'll make a friend and I'll say, did I meet you in the classroom?
	We're friends. How do adults make friends?
	How do adults meet people?
	You know? Right. Well, and...
	I think that for most people you have, if it's anything like me, I had a small circle of friends when I was in school, but frankly I was pretty nervous of the other kids.
	The one problem with when you put a bunch of kids, we had a pretty diverse neighborhood.
	We had sort of, you know, there's a real cheap rent controlled apartments where I was living with my family and then we had some pretty ritzy homes behind the school.
	It was a real mixed up neighborhood.
	So we did have a whole sort of different level of classes.
	The son of the head of the Toronto Stock Exchange went there, as did some of the real roughneck kids from my section of town.
	And what happened was that it tended to devolve to the lowest common denominator when it came to socializing.
	So the people who were mean, the people who were bullies, the people who were scary.
	And I don't just mean like the sort of punchy bullies.
	We were back before social media, so you couldn't do cyberbullying.
	But the sort of verbal abuse bullies who would sort of make fun of you or whatever are Of course, I was the kid who came over with the British accent and a slightly over-formal dress sense and not knowing how to skate or play baseball or any of the things that the Canadian kids did.
	And it really wasn't that great a social experience.
	I mean, it was keep your head low, get your friends close and just try and get through the day.
	And there were guys who would, I mean, the very first day, grade six, so I came to Whitby, went to grade eight, and then when I came to Toronto, they put me back two grades, and anyway, it doesn't really matter why.
	Very first day, I go to school, and it's recess, right?
	So we all go pouring out, and I'm like, hey, I wonder what's going to happen here.
	Know what happened? Oh, oh, oh, too horrible for words.
	They chased down the girls and punched them in the groin.
	That was the Lord of the Flies situation that I was, you know, oh my god, the colonies are unbearable!
	And it was just astounding.
	And I was like, I'm not doing that.
	I'm just not doing that.
	I was 11 and I just, that's not right.
	And that's what people call socializing?
	Are they mad?
	Do they just not remember?
	I mean, what? That is another very, very disturbing idea when you think about it, is that we think that this is natural.
	We think that this is normal.
	But the problem with bullying, okay, and all this has been in the news like crazy lately because they want to set up legislation to outlaw bullying, basically, and have all these bully protection laws and everything else.
	But This kind of behavior, this kind of bullying to that degree, and yes, sometimes it gets very, very bad and very, very dangerous.
	That's not normal, Stefan.
	That's not natural.
	That is not normal human behavior.
	There was a situation a few years ago, and you might remember this, with pit bulls in California.
	Was it Mike Vick, the football player, and he was raising pit bulls?
	Oh, yeah, where they had the dunk fights, right?
	Right. They had the dog fights.
	And this brought to light what was going on with these pit bulls.
	And this actually went on since the early 1900s, actually.
	They would do this with pit bulls.
	And that's why they're called pit bulls, because they were bred to fight in a pit.
	Now, what they would do with these dogs is a lot of times they would starve them.
	They would lock them in rooms.
	They would leave them alone.
	They would lock them in crates.
	Sometimes they would lock them in closets with nothing but like the static from a TV, white noise to drive them crazy.
	Yeah, and dogs are social animals, right? So that's the worst thing.
	Exactly. Right, yeah. Exactly.
	And then they would put them together and purposely get them mad at each other.
	And, you know, they would become aggressive.
	So they did this on purpose.
	Now, we're talking about dogs here.
	We're talking about pit bulls here.
	But it needs to be a little bit more clever.
	When it's done to human beings.
	So this process of quote-unquote socialization done to human beings is they're actually being put into these situations where they are closed off from the real world.
	This is not the real world. I don't care how nice the school is.
	If you're spending all of your youth in there, and basically it is all of your youth, because from the time you're four years old until you're 17 or 18 years old, that is all of your youth.
	Yeah. They're in control of how long you can spend learning it because when the bell rings, you're done and it's on to the next subject.
	So life isn't integrated.
	Life is very categorized for you in a very fake situation, this artificial reality that you're in.
	And you're fed usually very unhealthy food, okay?
	And everything is just this really unhealthy situation.
	You spend all this time in there, you're going to go a little crazy.
	So what naturally happens to these kids is they start acting out.
	And then they start developing either very aggressive behavior or very submissive behavior.
	And that's how you end up with your bullies and the ones that are submissive and the victims to the bullies.
	So these are manufactured situations by the school.
	We would not have to deal with bullying situations if we didn't have the school system that we have.
	Richard Attenborough does not go and make nature films by going to the zoo because he knows he's going to see aberrant caged behavior.
	It's the same thing with human beings.
	You put human beings in a zoo and you do not get the natural state of the human soul.
	Exactly. So when people say that kids need to be, you know, subject to that or kids need to experience that so they could deal with the real world, they say, but that's not the real world, okay?
	When you leave high school and you get into your adult life, how often do you really encounter a bully?
	And if you do, it's not the same as when it was in school, okay?
	You're not going to have to go back every day for the next 10 years and deal with that same person.
	You can quit your job if your boss is a bully.
	You can move if your neighbor is a bully.
	There's so many things that you can do.
	But in school, you've got to go back, and that completely limits.
	I say, well, kids, you've got to deal with the bullies.
	It's like, no. Actually, the school system needs to be reformed so that it's voluntary, or at the very least, the people who cause trouble should be moved out of the school.
	But you say, well, you can't get away, but you need to find some way to deal with it.
	I mean, law isn't going to do a damn thing.
	No, of course not. The laws never do a damn thing for that, okay?
	Now, the first thing is, yeah, there are going to be jerks in the world.
	Like we said we had in our last conversation, of course there are jerks in the world.
	Whether we have school or not, there are going to be jerks, okay?
	But first of all, it's not going to be the same level because, like I said, school breeds this kind of behavior.
	Now, the argument to that that I hear a lot is, oh, no, that's not true, Lorette.
	There are a lot of people that behave like that even in their adult life, and I say, right, because they've been manufactured.
	Because most of us are products of this system.
	We've been created. So what do we do?
	You have to stop the flow.
	Something has to stop the flow.
	And it is not going to happen overnight.
	We're not just going to shut down all the school doors and let everybody fend for themselves and then all of a sudden we wake up to a utopia tomorrow where everybody's peaches and cream and there's no jerks in the world.
	Of course that's not going to happen.
	But if it happens generation after generation after generation, the less kids we have in this system, the less problems we'll have.
	I mean, this really is, Stefan, this really is the root of the woes that we have.
	And a lot of people really have a problem with this.
	They'll say that the state needs to be in charge or the state needs to have this charge over what parents are teaching their children to make sure that they're not teaching their children wrong things or they're not teaching their children incorrectly or whatever.
	That just bugs me so much.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Who gets to decide what is the right thing to teach the child?
	Who gets to decide that?
	Is it Diane Ravitch that gets to decide that?
	And if it's her, why her?
	Is it Arne Duncan that gets to decide that?
	And if it's him, why him?
	Who made him, who made them two king and queen of learning?
	Okay?
	Now, that's the problem.
	That's the philosophical problem with this, is that if we say we want to make sure that the parents are teaching the kids correctly, there has to be a standard.
	And if there must be a standard, then who gets to decide that standard?
	And that's what the problem is in the school situation, because someone has decided, and it wasn't you, what the standard is going to be.
	And it wasn't you.
	It completely strangulates any fathom of Of individuality.
	There is no individuality in school.
	There is only the collective, which drives me crazy because philosophically...
	No, and the state owns the kids. Exactly. A collective doesn't actually exist, okay?
	Only the individual exists, but that's ignored in a school system.
	Sorry, how can we possibly say that parents have the right to vote on complex issues of the military, of foreign policy, of domestic policy, of economic issues, that they are perfectly competent.
	To choose between Keynesianism and Austrian economics.
	But when it comes to the education of their own children, their own flesh and blood, who they pay for, who they keep, who they feed, who they take to the doctor when they're sick and stay up all night mopping their brow when they have a fever, we can let the parents decide the most abstract and obtuse matters of foreign policy and economic policy, but we cannot let...
	The parents who care for the children actually make a decision about their own education.
	You can vote for a school board, but you cannot actually have the choice to educate your own children the way you see fit.
	That is completely insane.
	If parents are not competent to educate their own children, let's just take away the facade.
	Let's have a full-on meritocracy dictatorship and forget about voting because if they're too retarded to even teach their own children properly, let's never give them the vote.
	Well, that's exactly.
	We're back to circular reasoning again, okay?
	But this is on purpose again, Stefan, because they create the illusion that the parents have some say by letting them get into PTA meetings and being a part of the school board or whatever else.
	But again, it's an illusion because when you cut right down to it, they really don't want the parents' involvement.
	They just want to placate the parents and let the parents think that they're involved.
	And we see the evidence of this becoming blatantly clear lately.
	If you read Diane Ravage's book, On the American school system.
	It's the death and life of the great American school system.
	She's very clear in that book that parents need to stay out of it and let the school do what they need to do.
	We had the recent article a few months ago by Ron Clark.
	It was this huge controversial article that he wrote called What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents.
	And that was basically, stay out of it and let us handle it.
	It's our job. We're the trained professionals.
	We know how to impart the knowledge Information that was pre-selected and canned onto your children and you don't know how to do it, so stay out of it.
	So all that choice is an illusion.
	So what is happening is they want the parents to stay out of it because they don't feel that we, the ones that are the actual parents, can do a good job of teaching our own children.
	But we are also products of that same system that But yet we're ill-equipped to pass that down now?
	Yeah, you'd figure if you had 12 years exposure to something, you might know how to do it.
	Like, if I spent 12 years learning how to play the violin, then I might actually be able to teach little kids how to play the violin a little bit.
	No, no, no. No, no, no.
	You have to leave that to the trained professionals, because the problem is that the trained professionals, quote-unquote, have been specifically trained by that system to do what the system wants them to do.
	Right. Okay? To play out the agenda of that particular system.
	Now, I can't say that every single teacher out there is a part in this or a cog in this, or at least not purposefully.
	They are, but most of them are inadvertent.
	I think most young teachers, they come out of the school system themselves after their 12-year indoctrination process, and they're 18, 19 years old, and they say, I want to help Oh, children, I want to be a teacher.
	And, you know, they go into it for noble reasons.
	But five, six, seven years later, it just really becomes about the unions and the benefits and having the summers off.
	And before you know it, they're just part of the system.
	Most of the young teachers leave within a couple of years.
	They do. There are a great many teachers that come out of the school system.
	John Telegato is probably the most famous one with his line, I left because I'm no longer willing to hurt children.
	But there are a great many that come out of the school system that I know personally that I've done interviews with that are in my friend circles that said, no, when I had kids, I stopped being a teacher and I decided I was going to home educate.
	I don't want my kids in that system because they know.
	And they said, it didn't matter about the benefits.
	It didn't matter about the union.
	It didn't matter about the paycheck.
	They wanted out. Because they knew that it was just morally corrupt and there wasn't anything that they were going to be able to do about that.
	And speaking of morality, another popular question I get is, well, what if the parents are crack parents?
	Or what if they're teaching their child about violence or hate or something like that?
	Now, first of all, Stefan, these situations where the parents actually are crack parents or Or they are actually teaching their children some kind of swastika ritual or whatever.
	These cases are so far and few in between that they're almost meaningless and they have nothing to do with home education or not.
	The problem goes beyond that.
	If a family is a crack family, the least of their worries is how they're educating their children.
	Believe me. Okay? And those kids are not going to be in a fit state to be educated in the current system anyway.
	They'll need incredibly extra special attention and resources.
	You stick them in a row. We're good to go.
	For that matter at all, that are outside of the system.
	There are more of them inside of the system because families that choose to home educate usually are not those types of parents.
	Now, this is another example of circular reasoning or this backwards crossover argument because what will happen is someone will say, well, there's cases where the teacher is abusing the child or teachers are accused of sexual abuse or physical abuse or accused just for neglect.
	Educational neglect. They're not actually teaching the child.
	They're sitting there reading a magazine and the children in their class are going crazy.
	And the response then to defend the school system is, well, you know, those are isolated incidents and they only happen once in a while.
	You can't really judge by them.
	Okay, so why can you judge the whole home education population by the few incidents of crack parents then?
	Well, and of course, you know, we all freak out about sexually molesting priests, which is, of course, terrible.
	Children are hundreds of times more likely to be molested by a teacher than a priest.
	Absolutely. It happens all the time.
	Hundreds of times more likely. And you don't hear a lot about that, of course.
	No, of course not.
	You know, so, I mean, these things just cross over each other all the time.
	And as far as the family that is not teaching their children correctly or incorrectly or teaching them, you know, morally incorrectly or whatever, again, it comes back to the golden mean.
	Who gets to decide that?
	Who gets to decide the standard for that?
	Who gets to knock on your door, Stefan, and say to you, what are you teaching your daughter and I need to approve of it?
	And, you know, when you choose who gets to do that, why that person?
	What makes that person special?
	When did we have a monarchy on education?
	Who gets to be the king of that and why?
	So, I mean, it really gets very philosophical when you think about it, but you have to break it down.
	You have to pull it apart and just understand that the only reason we even ask ourselves these questions, the only reason we even ask ourselves, how are the children going to meet people?
	Or the only reason we ask ourselves...
	How are the children going to be safe?
	How are the children going to learn?
	It's because we have been programmed to believe that school is the only place that we can meet people or learn a thing.
	All right? First of all, it's not the only place where we can meet people or learn a thing.
	And on top of that, it's actually a very unhealthy place to meet people and learn a thing.
	Right. Yeah, and I mean, it's funny, of course, in a country like America that was founded by people who never went through government schools.
	No, no, that's actually true.
	Ben Franklin didn't even get through grade six.
	No, he was self-educated, yeah.
	Yeah, all of these guys were self-educated.
	I don't believe that Socrates himself went through...
	12 years of government education, otherwise we'd never have heard of him.
	No, and the Socratic method of learning is probably one of the most well-respected methods of learning, true learning, because it's based on talking and communication and spending time with children in one-on-one situations.
	And you have to respect that ancient wisdom, and school does not use that.
	It's considered archaic and no good.
	Right, right. Well, because it's tough.
	It requires concentration and work to educate children.
	My daughter, of course, is going through the phase of infinite why.
	Why? Why is this? Why is this?
	And, you know, at some point, you know, I'll answer questions and then I have to turn back and say, well, you know the answer to this and let's remember how we can do it and she'll sort of sit there and figure it out and I'll give her prompts and she'll, oh, that's how I... So I'm getting her to internalize the why and answer it herself.
	That is... Demanding.
	Because, you know, to break it down into a language that she understands, you know, why is the sky blue is the classic question the kids have.
	How do you explain wavelengths and, you know, the distance to the upper atmosphere to the ground, you know, so you get a little rope out and you shake it back and forth and you say, oh, you see how there are ripples?
	Well, that's like light and whatever it is, right?
	So there's different ways, but it's hard.
	It's hard to intelligently communicate the value and the content of knowledge in a way that maintains interest.
	It's hard, hard work. No, no, it's challenging.
	Seriously. It's challenging.
	And not in a bad way. I mean, it's challenging.
	Well, that's what I mean. It's not in a bad way.
	It makes me think a lot. Right.
	It makes me think a lot more when I think, how am I going to break down the answer to this very legitimate question in a way that makes sense to her?
	And of course, I'm so used to using words that everyone else knows, but I have to remember her vocabulary is limited to like 700 words.
	Right. And so I have to use words that she knows and I constantly have to sit there and say, I can't use that word, that's too abstract.
	She knows this word, which is kind of like this.
	Is it like this enough to make sense?
	And if I add too many, it's like this, then it gets confusing for her.
	So how can I make it as physical?
	It's a challenge just because I'm used to operating at a fairly high verbal level and I have to break it down in a way that makes sense to her.
	It's a great challenge. I really enjoy it because it helps me to think of things in a really new light to try and see how knowledge comes from her side.
	But it's a hell of a lot harder than memorize these dates and spit it up on an exam.
	Yes, it is challenging and it does require a lot more effort and it does require a lot more time.
	So as far as it being challenging, I understand what you're saying and I understand why we feel that way.
	And in a sense it is, but I see it as being challenging sort of in a positive way.
	And almost everything I do as a parent We're good to go.
	You hear it in a whiny way.
	It's hard. It's difficult.
	I don't want to. I think that's exactly it.
	I think that's exactly it.
	And that's not how my experience as a home-educating parent is.
	I don't find it to be something that's dreadful.
	I find it to be something that I'm excited about.
	And yes, it is challenging at times.
	And it does require effort.
	But it's supposed to require effort.
	You know, you're the parent.
	Now, I know that there are some parents out there that actually find it difficult and that would think that before they start home educating and they think that they can't do it because they say, well, no, that's too hard.
	It's too time consuming.
	There's no way I can do that.
	And, you know, the thing is that it's challenging.
	It is challenging. It causes us as parents to have to step up to the plate and that's the good thing.
	But I think the reason why we see it as something more than challenging or something so difficult that we can't do it or maybe in a whiny way is that we...
	Not we as in you and I, but parents that are new to the concept think that they're supposed to replicate the system at home.
	They think, okay, school isn't working out for us.
	And somebody says, well, what about home education?
	And they think, wow, I can't do that.
	That's too hard. Because they think they're supposed to bring school home and duplicate what's going on in the classroom.
	But you know what, Stefan?
	That is too hard.
	Yeah, so it's like, well, so yes, it's a biology class, it's a physics class, it's got a math class, so I've got to become experts in all of these things, like the division of labor means nothing to me anymore, and I think that's what people think.
	Right, that's crazy.
	Nobody can do that.
	I don't advocate for that.
	I don't advise trying that.
	You don't need to become an expert in each one of these subjects.
	I think our perception is very much shaped by our own experience having been schooled ourselves.
	It is so important that we let go of that when we start to embrace the idea of educating without school.
	And I'm not saying that education is not important.
	Education is crucial as far as I'm concerned.
	But education, quality education, is not something that we're actually receiving in school, that kids are receiving in school.
	If you and I are educated, Stefan, it is despite the school system and not because of it.
	Because most of what we've learned and that made us the people that we are, we were able to learn and experience outside of the walls of the classroom.
	I know that's true for me.
	I'm guessing that it's true for you because it's true for most educated people.
	So I'm not dismissing education.
	That's so important that people realize that.
	And I think the reason why I'm making such a point of it is because there are those in the home education phenomenon now that will dismiss education and kind of take it to a whole other extreme where they say, no, it's okay.
	You know, some people just aren't interested in that kind of thing.
	But I think education is very important.
	And, yeah, of course, it's still our choice whether or not this is important to our family.
	But I think it's very important because when you are educated and when you have to, in order to become truly educated, you need to have unlimited access to all the information that's out there because the learning happens with the learner.
	So you need to be able to have all of this access.
	School gives you very contained, restricted, and limited information.
	It's being artificially spoon-fed.
	The information is then dispensed according to whatever corporate or political interest that is funding that particular district.
	So this fosters a very limited perspective and feeds the illusion of this paradigm effect that we have in our culture.
	And it also makes people...
	All they have is that particular information and ignorant people are very easy to control and often rely on an authority and they're used to depending on some kind of authority to live their lives.
	But when you are outside of that system and you're allowing your family to have the freedom to learn in a more natural way, okay, we have unlimited information and we have access to this unlimited information.
	And when the parent is involved and actively participating in that, you don't need to be an expert because the information is out there.
	All you need to do is be a parent and help your child learn and grow as well.
	As they're going to do naturally anyway.
	We are born hungry and thirsty.
	We want food. We want nourishment.
	But we're also intellectually hungry and thirsty.
	Kids want to learn and we went over this before.
	They naturally want to understand their world and they want to communicate their world.
	And that includes the foundations of grammar and language and includes the foundations of mathematics.
	They will want to learn this.
	So it's your job to give them the tools and to clear the path, as you said, so that they can learn this and they can get this nourishment of the brain so that when they grow up, they're able to think critically and they can decipher between truth and propaganda and they will not be so easily controlled and they will not be so easily dependent on some outside authority to dictate their lives for them.
	So it's important that we understand the difference between education and schooling.
	You don't have to do schooling at home.
	That will be extremely difficult.
	I would even say that you can't do it, but you can help your children.
	Find education and nourish their brains.
	Not only can you do it as a parent, but you're supposed to.
	So in those times where it's challenging, step up to the plate because it is supposed to be challenging.
	It's supposed to be challenging for you and it's supposed to be challenging for the learner.
	You have to constantly be challenging yourselves.
	This is the way life is supposed to be.
	We've just forgot. Yeah, no, I think it's a muscle works.
	A muscle is strengthened through resistance and nothing else.
	And there is a muscle called integrity and wisdom and all of these, they're hard.
	We hope to make a world where these things become easier over time.
	I think it's unduly hard at the moment because the world is kind of a confused and messed up place.
	But, you know, if not us, who?
	And if not now, when, right?
	So let's look at some of the practical ways that this can be applied.
	So if you want to homeschool, Or unschool your kid.
	What are the resources that people can practically attach themselves to so they don't feel that they have to become vertical experts in every field known to mankind and womankind and childkind and perhaps some space aliens as well?
	Well, the more and more popular this has become, and it's become more and more popular as the school system is becoming so much more obviously broken, the more information that becomes available out there.
	Now, the problem is, just like anything else, when you're so saturated with information coming from so many different sources, it's up to you then to exercise your intelligence and critical thinking if you're able to do that.
	And kind of decipher the difference between healthy information and not so healthy information.
	It's like being presented with a platter of food and you have to decide, well, okay, that is high fructose corn syrup and this is a little bit more whole and natural, so this is going to be more healthy for me.
	But the beauty of it is, Stefan, is now the decision is up to you.
	So now the responsibility is yours and you have to make these decisions, yes, but...
	You have to celebrate the fact that you're free now to make these decisions, and you should be making these decisions.
	They're not being made for you by some strange, elusive board within the school system.
	So now you have this bevy of information before you, and you have all these different methods ranging from a well-trained mind kind of approach, which is very much based on, I don't know if you're familiar with the Trivium concept?
	No. No?
	No, no, I'm not.
	Okay, the Trivium, well, you're familiar with the Socratic method of learning.
	Yes, somewhat. Okay. The Trivium is based on that, is based on the Socratic method, okay?
	I mean, there's lots of information available on that, but then someone like Susan Weisbauer, who is a very widely known expert in the home education field, bases her well-trained mind series on this concept of the Trivium, okay?
	And that's, by some, it's considered very rigorous because it's very, there's a heavy emphasis on academics, So that I would consider one end of the spectrum, and the other end of the spectrum is complete radical unschooling, and that's what I mean.
	They kind of don't really put any emphasis on academics at all.
	And I don't really advocate for that either because I think that puts us on a slippery slope to educational apathy, which leads to intellectual sloth.
	And I think that intellectual sloth makes us kind of easy to control and manipulate.
	But the fact of the matter is that we have these two ends of the paradigm.
	In between those two ends of the spectrum, there's most people, okay?
	And most people will find the resources in that.
	And when I say resources, there are so many different methods out there that I would encourage everybody to, of course, become familiar with, but never marry yourself to.
	And I always say never marry a method because you have to decipher what's going to work best for your family based on your particular interests, your particular needs, what's important to you.
	And when I say you, I mean your whole family, including your children.
	Okay? Okay. As far as books and resources and everything else, I mean, we have the internet.
	So we have everything available at our fingertips.
	And yes, it does require some effort in deciphering junk information from good information, but that's what you're there for.
	That's what you're supposed to do.
	You know how many things I've learned on YouTube?
	We learned the Greek alphabet on YouTube.
	It was fantastic. So the internet is a wonderful resource.
	Your library is an awesome free resource where you have books and you have the internet.
	So when you say where are the resources, they're there.
	It's just a matter of recognizing that they're there.
	And there's more of them there outside of the classroom than there are inside of the classroom.
	Now there are home education co-ops in every single state and in most counties in every single state.
	So there are support groups and cooperative home education groups almost in every geographical location that you can think of And I'm going to say around the world, really, even in places where, you know, home education might be remote, but especially in the States and in Canada.
	So you have your live support groups, and you have your online support groups, and you have your resources at your fingertips.
	Right, right, right.
	So, it's not an isolating thing.
	This is the myth, right?
	That you're basically just out there in an igloo with a scratch pad and an abacus and trying to get all of that stuff going.
	But it can be a very social thing if there are people around doing similar things.
	Well, I mean, there doesn't have to be people around that are doing similar things.
	It helps. And the reason it helps to find a homeschool support group or a home education support group, socialization, it does help for socialization, I guess, but it's really more for the parent than it is for the kid because it helps us to be able to connect with other families during doing it because we learn from each other and we pick up techniques from each other.
	And it's nice to just We just become friends with other families that are doing it because there's other people to play with in the park at 11 o'clock in the morning when everybody else is in school.
	So that's nice, but it's not completely necessary because our kids don't have to exclusively interact with other home-educated kids.
	They can interact with anybody.
	I mean, they walk outside the door and there's neighbors everywhere and you meet people when you're out and about in the world all the time.
	And yes, that is a myth that it's isolating.
	I mean, you have to think about the question, though.
	I can't answer it because the question doesn't make any sense.
	When you say, well, you know, home educators are isolated, why would anybody think that?
	You have to really pull it apart and say, but why?
	Why do you think that?
	Why are we assuming that because we're home educating, we're locked inside of our house and we never leave our kitchen?
	Yeah, and of course, it's what people think.
	They think the existing system works, and any deviations from that system need to be justified.
	And that is not rational.
	Half the kids who go to high school never even complete it.
	I mean, that's a complete disaster.
	Even if we assume high school is great, even if we assume it's not great, that's the stated purpose of high school.
	So, yeah, I agree with you.
	And as we talked about in the first half, Socialization to what?
	To bullying, to dysfunction, to kids who aren't interested, to kids who have parents who aren't interested in education, to kids who are just parked there during the day, to kids who are hungry, to kids who are mean, and to themselves.
	Do we really want our kids to adapt to that?
	I think not.
	You know, that's the old, we'll throw them in the river and maybe they'll learn how to swim.
	I think we've grown a little bit past that as a species, at least some of us.
	I would think most parents wouldn't want their kids to conform to that.
	And they're just not thinking about it.
	But when you stop for a minute and you think about it, most parents would say, no, I don't want my kids to adapt to that.
	I don't want my kids to conform to that.
	And I go so far as to propose, Stefan, that it's actually the opposite, that school is actually isolating.
	Because think about it, okay?
	Here you have a kid that's three or four years old and you're putting them into a school system.
	You're putting them into a building and locking them inside of a classroom and even the physical structure of the building itself is depressing because most of the time it's cinder blocks and gates and bars and metal doors.
	And they're locked inside of there because they're not allowed to leave.
	Who would supervise them if they leave?
	So they have to be locked inside of there.
	And they're forced to categorize their entire lives.
	This is time for math and this is time for history and this is time for this.
	And they're forced to make friends with a very limited amount of people and they have very limited access to the real world.
	And they are spending most of their day in here for most of their week, for most of the months out of the year, for 15 years of the most crucial years of a person's life.
	That is extremely isolating.
	So to say that home educators are isolating, I don't know, maybe it's the word home that confuses people that we're actually staying in our house all day.
	We're We're home so little.
	Most of us, this is true for most of us, we're so busy, we got so much on our plate, and we've got so much going on that we spend very little time actually at home.
	We're out in the real world experiencing the real world.
	My kids learned, and you're going to yell at me here, and I'm just going to have to let you yell at me a little bit, Stefan.
	Yeah, because that's what I'm all about. Go on now.
	My kids learned about politics and the legislative process from going to the Capitol and watching it happen.
	They learn about voting by going with us to these things, by going to the meetings.
	They don't learn about it from a textbook in school.
	Now, whether or not parents are out there agreeing or disagreeing whether I should be teaching my kids about politics, that's not the point.
	The point is you learn by actually experiencing it, not from sitting inside of a classroom.
	Look, first of all, I think if you live by the beach, you need to teach your kids about sharks.
	Right! And if you live in a state of society, as we all do, you need to teach your kids about the state.
	I mean, of course, my daughter's going to learn all about that.
	Trying to explain to her what I do when I go to conventions and talk is not always the easiest.
	Well, they're at least leaders, see?
	So, no, I think it's great that they learned how to do all of that.
	Just sort of wanted to mention that.
	I don't think you get places in the world by hiding realities from your kids.
	No, no. And we don't.
	We don't hide any realities from them.
	And that's just the thing. They're not hidden from reality and they're not hidden from the real world.
	That's a complaint too that people have.
	Well, what about exposure to the real world?
	And I look at them and I say, and that's the real world inside of the classroom?
	This is the real world.
	And it's funny because what do they say to kids all the time in school?
	You know, this is going to, where do you get out into the real world?
	This has to prepare you for the real world.
	They wouldn't be saying that.
	If the classroom was the real world, because they keep saying you've got to prepare for the real world.
	So clearly they're acknowledging that that is not the real world.
	Well, we're out here already in the real world.
	We don't have to wait until we're 17 to graduate and get out and experience it.
	So that by the time these kids are 17, 18 years old, they've had a whole life of experience in the quote-unquote real world.
	But then what is the real world?
	Inside of a cubicle? That's not the real world either.
	Oh, God, let's hope not...
	And there's another thing too I wanted to mention as well that school, traditional school – well, I shouldn't say.
	Traditional school is what homeschoolers do.
	That's what traditional school is.
	This is weird Prussian aberration that's going on in the modern world.
	Right, right. The school system is the alternative.
	We're normal. And, you know, I mean, I got to like kind of – that takes away my cool factor if I say that I'm normal because now I'm not so hip and cool anymore.
	But the truth is that we're very rational, normal people.
	It's the school that's maniacal and twisted – Right, right.
	Actually, I think being on Free Domain Radio has taken away your cool factor, but it may be this as well.
	But I sort of wanted to point out that one of the things that drove me nuts about being in government schools was that I was consistently and constantly told to concentrate.
	You've got to get your focus.
	Stop daydreaming. Focus and concentrate.
	But this completely bizarre phenomenon where you get 40 minutes of study in something and then, you know, you're ripped off to something else.
	This is like constantly being awoken from a deep sleep.
	You just get into something.
	You'd really start to get into a good discussion or debate.
	You'd really start to get into the topic.
	You got ripped off to the next thing.
	And that weird assembly line cookie cutter's time slicing, I just found so bizarre.
	And so I guess I wanted to ask you, do you find that Your kids, when they get into something, they go real deep.
	Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Well, we've got to give this kid ADHD because they have trouble paying attention.
	It's like, they have trouble paying attention?
	I mean, these are the same kids who play video games until their hands fall off, right?
	But this weird time slice was very disorienting to me because when I concentrate, I really go deep into concentrating something and constantly having to check the clock and get ripped out of it.
	I just found completely nuts.
	So I really like the idea that your kids can just go deep until they've drunk as much as they want from a particular topic.
	That's one of the advantages.
	I mean, imagine that. Imagine if I was doing something with, say, my son, and he was getting really into it and really learning about it, and one of my sons has a math head.
	He has an affinity for math.
	He sees it as a language.
	He's really good at it. So we could get really involved in something that's scientific and go for it.
	And suppose a timer goes off at 40 minutes, and I ring this bell in the house, and the alarms go off, and I say, that's it!
	Now we have to go spell words.
	I mean, that's insane.
	And that's how school operates, you know?
	But he, like you said, he can just get drunk on it.
	They can just have as much as they want from it.
	I mean, until they fall asleep, basically.
	And that's another thing. They could stay up as late as they want.
	And my daughter stays up sometimes until one o'clock in the morning reading.
	And I'm going to have a problem with that.
	I don't have a problem with that.
	That's fine. I mean, she's reading, she's having a great time, and they can really have that time to get involved in something.
	And you mentioned ADHD. That's another hot button for me.
	That's another thing that drives me completely nuts because so many kids are diagnosed with ADHD. And Stefan, just in and of itself, just the fact that we have an average of one in five kids in America that are diagnosed with a disease, isn't that a problem?
	Don't we see that as some kind of problem that we have one in five kids that are supposedly broken in the brain?
	Shouldn't we be, I don't know, asking ourselves why?
	What is causing this deficiency, even if it is real?
	But I don't think in many cases it even is real.
	It's not real.
	If you are reading, okay, and you have a three-year-old, so you know this, and you're reading a book, and I think this is more true for boys than it is for girls, but sometimes they fidget while they're listening to you.
	You're reading a story to them, whatever it is.
	It could be War and Peace or it could be The Three Bears, whatever it is, and they're young, so they start to fidget and they start to play with things or my sons will start to play Legos while I'm reading aloud.
	They're still listening.
	That's okay. In school, if that happens...
	They say that there's something wrong with that student, and if the teacher can't manage them, if the teacher can't handle them, they want to give them a drug.
	Now, of course, this is what has to happen because the teacher is overloaded.
	The teacher has 30 kids that she has to deal with, and if they're all running around the classroom and fidgeting, she loses her mind, so she wants them on drugs.
	But to tell you the truth, to get through that 15-year system without any problems and conforming, you would have to give me drugs, too.
	I was a problem in school because I didn't want to conform.
	And believe me, if ADD was around, if it was popular when I was a kid, I would have been diagnosed.
	But, you know, it's an unnatural, very straining and mentally straining environment to be in.
	That's why these children are acting out.
	But as far as just fidgeting and moving around, that's called being a kid.
	Well, yeah, I mean, I've had Roger Whitaker on my show.
	Sorry, Robert Whitaker, who's...
	I've written Anatomy of an Epidemic, which is a very powerful work which I'd recommend to people to talk about There's no scientific or medical basis for this stuff.
	There's no brain chemistry.
	There's no brain disorder. There's no lack of particular chemicals within the brain.
	The school is there for the convenience of the teachers and the state and some parents.
	The school is not there for the convenience of the children.
	And that's so easy to figure out.
	It only takes a moment's thought, which is you just ask yourself, well, how many times was I consulted when I was a child about What was pleasurable to me in school?
	How many times did I fill out surveys that actually had any kind of impact?
	How long was it before I get to choose which topics I could work on?
	The children have no say.
	Whereas if you're trying to sell something to children in the free market, you do market research, you do test cases, you get constant feedback.
	I mean, you can't get out of Chuck E. Cheese without having to fill out some sort of car.
	And so the children are there.
	So the drugs are there because the children are restless.
	We've got the free market giving them Nintendos and Xboxes and iPads and all kinds of funk and Chuck E. Cheese and great playgrounds.
	And then we have the state.
	Giving them, you know, sit in a dead row like a bunch of sardines while the dust settles on your brain.
	And so, this doesn't work.
	And so, you know, does the system change?
	No, of course not. A brutal system will always, always squeeze the guts out of the most vulnerable members.
	Whoever has the least power is the one whose interest will be sacrificed in a coercive system.
	And so, this is, you know, this is just another way of squeezing kids into, you know, turning them into a kind of lubricant.
	So that the system can move more efficiently for those it serves, which is, you know, teachers and union leaders, politicians and some parents.
	Sorry, end of rant. I just wanted to sort of mention that.
	That's all absolutely true.
	And it's self-serving also.
	It serves itself. Because again, we have these crossovers like we talked about before.
	Like when you start to pick it apart and when you start to really dissect it and look at all the pieces, it starts to all come together for you.
	And you start to realize these are all symptomatic branches of the same tree, okay?
	And The root being school and that's why you have to cut it off at the root, but they all interlink and they all cross each other over because we have this society that we're living in where our nutrition is just horrendous and we have high fructose corn syrup in everything and we have Monsanto in all of our food, even the natural food, they want to sneak into the natural food as well.
	So aspartame and everything else and all these toxins that are going into our diets and we're feeding them to our children and then we have all these other outside overstimulants Like the overuse of video games and overuse of internet and TV. And I don't...
	Of course, every kid's going to play some video games or whatever.
	But clearly, there is an overuse of this going on.
	So they're overstimulated.
	They're overfed with lots of sugar.
	And they have these diets of...
	Red Bull and Skittles.
	So they're all hopped up and all over the place more than natural.
	Now, a kid has natural energy anyway because they're supposed to.
	They're kids. But when you have them on a steady diet of Skittles and Coca-Cola and McDonald's, they're even a little bit more wigging out.
	And then you take them and you put them into a classroom and say, now just sit still and shut up.
	Yeah. So, you know, of course. You can't win the war on drugs.
	War on drugs. I love that term.
	It's ridiculous. But you can't expect kids not to take drugs when you're teaching them from the time they're six years old that they need a drug in order to cope.
	It's a very self-serving, perpetual kind of system that exists for the sole purpose of serving itself, and it uses your children as pawns.
	That's why home educators have chosen to get our children out of that system, because we realize that they're children, they're human beings, they're not pawns.
	Right, right, right.
	Right. And I think that's – to me, the homeschoolers are refugees from a bizarre system.
	It's almost like – it's a strong way of putting it, and I apologize if the metaphor reaches too far.
	No, I don't think so. I think that's accurate.
	It's like the underground railroad.
	That would get slaves out of the South in the U.S. and try and get them to Canada or other places where they could live more free.
	To me, there's an underground railroad.
	When I was a kid, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie The Wall by Pink Floyd.
	Of course. Come on.
	The scene where the kids are falling into the meat grinder, just falling in and coming out faceless.
	They come out of this kind of sausage-like goo.
	Mm-hmm. And, you know, that really gave me chills when I first saw it as a kid.
	And that really did feel like what was happening.
	And there is this weird kind of undifferentiation that happens among people who've gone through a system and never questioned it.
	You can almost – they're almost like robots, you know.
	You can almost predict the responses that you're going to get.
	They've been programmed. They've been programmed to – To respond to issues of freedom with rote responses.
	You know, we should not use violence.
	It's not violence. We should not use violence to solve social problems.
	It's not violence. It's a social contract.
	Beep! You know, input, output.
	You know, we should not have the government run X, Y, and Z. Oh, well, then there'd be no X, Y, and Z, and therefore we have to...
	It's subtle and it's powerful, but everybody has the same answers, which aren't in fact answers.
	But mere ways of...
	Like magic spells to ward off the anxiety of not knowing the answers or having bad answers.
	They're responses, they're not answers. Yeah, it's Pavlovian.
	It's just... And they don't even know it.
	No. And they don't even know it.
	And in some ways...
	There is a novel by Gogol called Dead Souls, which was set, of course, in Russia in the 19th century.
	And it sort of reminded me, to me, the existence of a soul.
	I don't believe in the supernatural element of it, but the existence of the soul is having a mind that can accurately and curiously approach and analyze reality.
	And if you don't have that, to me, you're kind of not even a machine, right?
	Because a machine doesn't have anxiety and doesn't have depression and doesn't have alienation, as it's called.
	And of course, the Marxists said this was all to do with your role in the means of production, which is kind of true in a way, except it's about education, not capitalism.
	But there is a soullessness to the people who come out of that system if they've not tried to swim against the current, if they haven't participated in the horrors and examined the horrors that they went through, ask themselves why they have only responses and not Not thought.
	I would throw myself in front of trying to keep my kid from that kind of system.
	And you're supposed to, because this parent is supposed to have that natural instinct to protect its young.
	Every animal on the planet has a natural instinct to protect their young, except for us.
	You know, it's kind of crazy when you think about it, because I think something went wrong with our conditioning.
	And that's why I say everything that you're saying, I'm nodding, and that's why I've been known to say to people when they say to me, you know, but, you know, this person and Mary or Jane or whoever went through the school system, and they're just fine.
	They got straight A's, and they did well, and, you know, everything they tried to do, and they were on the honor roll.
	You know, they graduated first in their class and everything else.
	And I say, you know what? I actually worry a little bit more about them.
	Because they seem to be the ones that have conformed seamlessly.
	And those are the ones that I have actually more concern for.
	The ones that are rebelling, I'm worried about them because if, you know, if they're kind of lost and they're not having any direction, then it could go in the wrong direction.
	Like for me, when I was okay, I turned out okay, obviously.
	But for a lot of kids, it didn't turn out so great.
	So there is concern, but I'm actually more worried about the ones that are conforming seamlessly.
	because we seem to have more of those in our society.
	And the more drones we end up with in our society, the more scared I become because then it starts to remind me more and more of a, Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. It's not just like some far-off fiction to me.
	So every time I hear another story about some student that conformed seamlessly with the system, I get a little bit more concerned.
	Well, I was just talking about this with a friend of mine today.
	Greece, their yield on a bond for one year is over 1,000%.
	And they're just going to go through the mess.
	They're going to go through the mess, and their society is going to go through convulsions, and it's going to spread to Europe, and it seems pretty inevitable.
	And, you know, the fact that this has been coming for 20 years has been predicted, was mathematically certain for 20 years that their existing system was completely unsustainable.
	What they were paying their civil servants was completely unsustainable.
	The amount of debt they were getting into was completely unsustainable.
	And you have an entire population now that is feigning surprise that this is happening.
	Right. They're feigning surprise.
	Like, who knew?
	I mean, that's completely...
	Mental. And, you know, this is like so long, and thanks to all the democracy grease, the payoff for putting Socrates down with Hemlock.
	But the reality is, is that these people all went through government schools, and they have this astounding inability to process reality, or this weird, like, greased eel way of wriggling away from reality, as if that's going to make reality go away.
	And... It's like somebody jumping off a cliff and they say, well, I'm fine now.
	I'm fine now. I'm fine now.
	I guess I'm fine. Splat!
	It really is strange.
	I don't think that people understand how far we've come from how we're supposed to be as a species.
	We're not supposed to be this way.
	It's like looking at a veal-fed cow and saying, well, that's pretty natural.
	I'm sure that's how they evolved.
	I'm sure that's what they're used to.
	No. This is not how we're supposed to be.
	We're not supposed to be penned in.
	We're not supposed to be silent.
	We're not supposed to be jiggling our feet because we've been sitting still for four hours straight watching somebody squeak on a blackboard.
	We're supposed to be out exploring and turning over frogs and gathering tadpoles and learning about nature by being in it and learning about the world by being in it.
	We're supposed to be around people that we care about and who care about us, not people who are paid to be there and don't even really want to be there.
	Parents don't want to pay for it, otherwise it wouldn't be forced out of people through property taxes.
	I don't think people get just how far we've come from our natural state.
	The fact that you've got kids going into daycare You know, at six months of age or going into pre-kindergarten at three or four years of age, that is a long, long way from how we're supposed to be as a species, where we're supposed to be around our parents, we're supposed to be learning while they're doing, we're supposed to be out in the fields where they're farming, they're learning hunting while we're hunting and so on.
	I mean, that's where we've come from and I think that as society gets more technological and more abstract, we need more of our roots, not less of them, because we need to be more grounded given how much our head is in the clouds these days.
	That's right. That's exactly right.
	We have been so far removed from nature and from how we, like you say, how we are supposed to be as a species that I think that we've actually forgotten.
	And the few of us that come to terms with it and that start to see it and start to recognize the patterns and see everything that's there, we're the ones that are speaking about it.
	We're the ones that are speaking up and we're saying, hey...
	Maybe we shouldn't be behaving like this anymore.
	Maybe there's something wrong.
	And at first, people respond with kind of that insignificant, oh, yeah, whatever, whatever.
	You're just one of those crazies.
	But I think the good news, Stefan, is that more and more people are, so to speak, waking up.
	Oh, yeah.
	As we move forward, we're returning, so to speak.
	And that's definitely a good thing.
	But I do wholeheartedly believe, after 10 years of reading about this and experiencing it and talking about it and just being in this world, I do wholeheartedly believe now that the school system, this Prussian system that we've implemented in our society, is really one of, if not the...
	Root cause of why we are the way we are.
	Because it trains human beings from the time that they're very, very little to accept this as okay.
	That's why we look around and we say, yeah, that's normal.
	Feeding veal to a cow, sure, that's normal.
	Or all these things that are going on where we have a money system that's based on absolutely nothing and we have politicians that lie and they get away with it because we say, well, that's just politics.
	That's okay. And we have all these other things going on in our society and we have chemicals, dangerous chemicals in the food, toxic chemicals in the water and everything else.
	And we say, yeah, that's fine.
	That's fine.
	The reason why we think it's fine is because we've been trained to believe that it's fine from the time we were very, very young.
	But there are so many people now that are challenging that, that are saying, wait a minute, I don't think this is okay.
	And I think that there are so many of us, Stefan, that are challenging it because eventually nature will win eventually.
	Eventually, what is natural, what is real, what is whole, will rise to the top and will surface and will win.
	Because we inherently, and you can't take this away from humanity, it's primal, it's in us, we want to be free.
	So we can only be captive for so long until we'll finally say, wait a minute, this isn't right.
	And we'll return to that.
	I hope so anyway.
	And I think maybe I'm being too positive, maybe I'm being a little bit too much of an optimist here, but I'm trying to be an optimist because in the last decade that I've been involved in this and that I would consider myself quote-unquote unplugged, I've met so many other people that are awake also, and it gives me hope.
	And I can see it growing.
	The data is clear.
	I mean, the information is clear.
	What was it? Like a quarter of American women are on antidepressants last year?
	Just last year. Not even in total.
	Not even in total. Just last year.
	I think we all get, and everybody gets that the system is not, it's not only not working, it's not working really, really badly or really well, I guess.
	Well, I mean, if it's done on purpose, then it's a brilliant success.
	Well, no, I think politicians are just trying to survive.
	But for human beings, it's very bad. Yeah, and the other thing to remember too, not that I try to promote a huge amount of sympathy for politicians, but politicians have inherited a population that was educated in this system.
	It's not just the political class.
	It's also the voters. I just had Brian Kaplan on the show.
	He wrote a book, great book, well worth reading called The Myth of the Rational Voter.
	And it makes a very convincing argument as to, you know, you can't tell the population the truth because they'll just vote your ass out of power.
	You just can't. You have to pander to their prejudices.
	You have to lie to them. You have to say, USA number one.
	You can't be critical. You can't bring the truth to them.
	And you certainly can't give them responsibility.
	Like, you can't say, hey, national debt, look in the damn mirror, people.
	I mean, you ask for more than you want to pay for.
	But isn't that sad that we've gotten here?
	Well, but the politicians, everybody has inherited everybody who was designed and created and programmed through a system that is 200 years old and that nobody chose for the last 150 years to have inflicted upon them.
	We're all wearing this heavy mantle of irrationality and we're all lost in these foggy discotheque mirror balls of confusion and subjugation.
	And the leaders In a sense, don't have, particularly in a democracy, they don't have much choice if they want to remain leaders.
	I mean, you start to, you know, you can get Barack Obama up there, you know, that silver-tongued devil, and he can spin you a fantasy of hopey-changey while people go through your pockets, but he can't tell the truth to the people, even if he wanted to.
	I'm not saying he ever would, but even if he did want to, if you and I were suddenly given that.
	Because the people would revolt. I understand that.
	Right. You know, you can't handle the truth.
	Yes. No, I mean, no.
	See, I think people can handle the truth.
	We've basically just been told that facts don't matter.
	Reality doesn't matter.
	That what you need and what you want matters, right?
	Right. We've been trained that way, yes.
	Yeah, we've been trained that way. We've been spoiled.
	We've been softened. We've come to expect that roads will be provided, healthcare will be cheap, our old age will be taken care of.
	We've been put in this state of infancy, the cradle-to-grave infancy, and people have a very tough time shaking that off and saying, I was just thinking, give a speech to Europe.
	I was talking to a friend of mine who said, what do you think is going to happen in Europe?
	Since I come from Ireland and England, my wife is Greek.
	We have some I was talking and I said, well, if you can get somebody who would be like Churchill and could come up and just basically slap Europe silly and say, come on.
	Come on, people. I mean, we fought off Nazism.
	We fought off fascism. We survived communism.
	We survived the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, the First World War, the Second World War.
	We were the progenitors of the Industrial Revolution.
	We brought philosophy, science, and machinery to mankind.
	We've got to stand up on our hind legs, remember the pride of our heritage, and stop whining that our pensions are going to be cut 10%.
	I mean, for God's sake, where has our spine gone?
	Where has our spleen gone?
	I mean, we've got to get it back.
	But people have gotten this weird thing where it's just like, oh, somebody's going to provide, and I just have to yell and hold a sign up, and everything's going to be given to me, or I'm going to have a tantrum.
	I mean, what I see going on throughout most of the world when everybody...
	Whenever anybody's entitlements are threatened even a little bit, it's like, I'm sorry, do you have to dip down to, instead of the top 0001% of human income, you have to go to 00015% of human income?
	Is that what you call tragic?
	I mean, God, spend a summer in Uganda and see how life is for those people.
	I mean, we've just become so enervated and soft and...
	Pathetic, in a way. This is what the state of perpetual infancy and expecting that the nanny state is going to do everything for us has reduced us to.
	I think it's just tragic. You're absolutely right, Stefan.
	We are perpetual infants.
	And yes, we do expect that entitlement or else we throw a tantrum.
	And, you know, that's one of the things that drives me completely insane.
	And all those things that you mentioned throughout history, that we survived the plague and the industrial revolution and all these other wonderful accomplishments throughout humanity and throughout human history, we accomplished all of that without schooling.
	Yeah. When schooling was introduced, enter schooling in the late 1800s, early 1900s, and all of a sudden we get on a road to...
	What's the vacation? Look at all the great things that people love.
	They love movies.
	Well, is there a PhD in making movies?
	No. People just go out and make movies.
	They're not educated in it.
	They just love it and they learn it.
	Look at the iPhone. Did Steve Jobs become an engineer and get a PhD in engineering?
	No. He just made the iPhone.
	These guys started out as hackers, stealing long distance phone lines from companies.
	Look at everything that's great around your life.
	Look at, if you like Windows, well, Bill Gates didn't go to computer school.
	He just loved it and learned it from when he was a kid.
	We're a society addicted to Facebook and that's not a result of college education either.
	No, that's a result of voting on who's hotter or who's not.
	So if you look at all the things that people really like and enjoy, I guarantee you that it is not the result of people who've gone through formal education but people who followed their passion.
	And if you look at all of the crap that sucks Well, that has a lot to do with people being over-educated.
	So, yeah, so just, you know, instead of people thinking in theories, just look at your actual experience.
	What are the things that you most like in the world and where do they come from?
	Do they come from people who are exquisitely and formally educated in these things?
	I can almost guarantee you that that's not the case.
	Well I want to just make a distinction again between education and school because to me education is acquiring knowledge of the world and that's actually a beautiful thing to acquire knowledge of the world in the way that you're free to do it and you have a passion and you follow your passion and you become educated in that particular passion.
	I'm really interested, say, in learning computer programming, which I'm not, but let's just say that I'm really interested in that.
	I'm going to educate myself in that particular field.
	Or I'm really interested about health and wellness.
	My husband was very, very interested in natural and alternative health and wellness.
	So he became educated in that field and now he runs a very successful business in health and wellness.
	So education is a beautiful thing.
	It's a sacred thing. It's a wonderful thing.
	And it's a highly respected thing as far as I'm concerned because it's sharpening the intellect.
	I want to draw a distinction then between education and schooling.
	Okay, schooling is training, schooling is conditioning, and like you said, all of the bad things, all of the crap in our society, all of the things that are oppressing us, and all of the people that are in a position of power to think that they have some kind of authority over us, and all of the... Those figures of authority that all these other people are bowing to and accepting them, that's all a result of schooling, of this manufactured, conditioned, artificial schooling.
	It's not really a result of genuine, natural education of the mind and building of the mind.
	Someone like Steve Jobs was interested in technology, so he educated himself in his passion.
	So that was a result of pure, natural, not homogenized education.
	Okay, but when you have like a packaged artificial homogenized schooling, that's different.
	So I just wanted to, in my mind, I see it with that distinction and I wanted to verbalize that.
	No, and that's absolutely right.
	That's a great distinction. I do conflate the two sometimes.
	And the thing I really, really like about The education that follows your passions and your curiosity and your interests is that it helps the world make sense.
	Making the world make sense to me is the most fundamental aspect of education because if we live in a world that makes no sense, we don't understand why things happen, then we really are You know, we're like savages doing rain dances instead of learning something about meteorology.
	Yeah, we're captive. You know, there is no slavery like ignorance.
	And there's no worse slavery than avoidance, where you have the knowledge available to you so easily through the internet or whatever, but you avoid it.
	Willful ignorance. Nothing worse than willful ignorance.
	Yeah, those are self-forged chains.
	And when you have the key in your mouth, you're just not putting it in.
	But what...
	What I treasure so much about the education that I got from myself is it makes sense to me.
	It makes sense to me. I was talking with some kid the other day when I was in Odessa, Texas.
	I was just chatting with some kid and she was talking about how, oh yeah, she said, oh yeah, we're learning about some, I think, Mary Queen of Scots.
	She was studying that in school.
	I said, oh, well, tell me, well, she was born on this date and she was married to Henry VIII and then this and then this happened and then she was beheaded and blah, blah, blah, right?
	But what about her? What about Mary Queen of Scots herself?
	What about her experience? What about that?
	Or what about why? Exactly.
	Why was this even happening?
	Why were there kings?
	Was it chosen? Why did she as a woman feel that that was an advantage to her?
	But she just learned a series of facts.
	And it's like, how can you assemble that?
	That's like a jigsaw puzzle that's entirely random with no pieces that fit together and you still have to memorize them all.
	I mean, it's just completely pointless.
	It's like giving a kid a box of nails with no hammer.
	Yeah, saying, okay, well, now do build something.
	And so the lack of shape, the lack of narrative, and I use the word narrative just in more of a philosophical sense, that you can understand the movement of the world because you understand something about ethics and human nature and so on.
	But there's no narrative in government education.
	It's a series of disconnected facts that people come out just bewildered and exhausted from using the wrong kind of muscles.
	We don't need, particularly with technology, who the hell needs facts anymore?
	I mean, it's completely ridiculous.
	You need that stuff, you're a smartphone and 10 seconds away from getting the answer.
	we don't need facts anymore.
	I can understand in the past you needed more facts, but now you really don't.
	What we need is narrative.
	What we need is a story that puts these facts into context, that has them make sense, that connects the dots.
	All we learn is stars, no constellations.
	Right, exactly.
	And that's one thing that I think only passion and curiosity and philosophy and some kind of rational structure, and particularly in ethics, that can give it to you both But in the absence of that, people are basically just their mental bulimics.
	It's like swallow and throw it up.
	You know, swallow the data, throw it up on a page.
	Swallow the data, throw it up on a page, you know?
	And it doesn't become meaningful then, because all you're doing, like you said, is swallowing and throwing it up and just regurgitating it.
	And you're, again, you're not answering, you're responding like Pavlov the dogs.
	So therefore the information is always superficial.
	It's never meaningful.
	It doesn't mean anything to you.
	You don't become passionate about it.
	You don't care about it.
	You know, but if you introduce, like you can have a kid that's, you know, 10 years old, 11 years old, and they can say to you, well, I don't know, I don't really think I'm interested in history.
	But then you say, you know what, though, history is pretty important.
	And they say, all right, well, why?
	And they'll give it a chance because kids are naturally curious.
	Now, now you have a choice.
	Now you can present history in one way and give them dry facts and data and say, okay, you know, Like, Marie Antoinette or whatever.
	And she lived here and she did this and she died on this date and that's it.
	And the kid will go, well, geez, that's boring.
	Or you can read some kind of story.
	Like, they call them living books, okay?
	A living book is a story, but everything that takes place in the story is based on fact, right?
	Okay? Sort of, you know, like Gone with the Wind or something like that.
	And there's more factual ones out there.
	And you make it exciting.
	And you read the book with the kid.
	Okay? And then maybe they act out a play or something.
	And you talk about it. And you discuss it.
	And you talk to other people.
	Or you find some historian.
	And you talk to them about it.
	And maybe the book you're reading is not really interesting to the kids.
	So you get another book. Or you look on the internet.
	Or you get some kind of documentary.
	And all of a sudden it becomes fascinating.
	Because now you're not talking about the dates.
	You're not talking about the dry facts.
	You're talking about the meat of it, the nuance of it, the passion of it, the lives of these people.
	When you talk about American history, you could say, well, Columbus came to America in 1492 and then we did this and this and this.
	Or you can really talk about what happened and the genocide of the Indians and all the different cultural intricacies of going west and the pioneers and how dangerous it was and Even talking about the nitty-gritty of it and the dirtiness of it and the grime of it, how many people died building the railroads, this is fascinating to a child.
	It's absolutely fascinating and it sticks and it remains and it means something to them.
	And then when they get older, America means something to them because freedom and liberty mean something.
	It's not just a bubble sheet that you had to fill out, whether it happened in 1892 or whatever.
	It actually means something.
	They build a relationship with their world and they want to.
	You know, you're not forcing it because the child wants to know this.
	We're born hungry.
	We're born thirsty.
	And it's a parent's job to provide food and to provide mental nourishment in a way that we can or at least provide the path to mental nourishment.
	And it's just so much exciting, so much more exciting to live a life when you have a relationship with your world.
	Instead of just living on it, you're living in it.
	You know what I'm saying? I do.
	Yeah, no, it always struck me.
	It's not the story of the new world.
	It's also the story of the old world.
	Like, how bad, what a hell bucket did Europe have to be, you know, for people to risk this horrible voyage to a completely unknown land with unknown diseases and people who would scalp you if you were so bold as to take all their land and resources.
	But, I mean, how horrible must it have been?
	You know, you say to a kid, what would it take for you to go to some alien planet With, you know, aliens that would put a proboscis in your ear and suck out your brains if you mistreated them, and sometimes you wouldn't even know when you were doing that.
	I mean, how bad would it have to be for people to do that?
	And that gives them a sense that, you know, because the New World is often the hopey-changey place, you know, but it's more just like Europe was a Titanic and you just took your chances in the sea.
	I mean, how bad did it have to be for people that this was a viable and sought-after option?
	I mean, even the voyage alone would kill people.
	I think trying to bring it to life and trying to help people to connect with people in the past.
	So it's not dead series of lithographed faces and dates and tombstones, but these were living people who were pretty much like us in many ways.
	Certainly the mechanics of the mind and soul were all the same.
	And they faced some pretty difficult and exciting choices and what drove them to, you know, why was America, why was the American Revolution the complete opposite of the French Revolution?
	Those are things that are instructive about the past but also about the future since we're going to face those crossroads at some point too.
	It helps them build a relationship with it.
	And you know, the same is true for history, for science, for math, for anything.
	I mean, think about math.
	Of course, we need the mechanics of math.
	And a young child, they learn how to count and they learn how to add.
	And I think there is a place for some repetition and workbooks.
	I don't think that workbooks should ever be relied upon as the main way of learning.
	I think that we need to build a relationship with anything that we learn, whether it be math or grammar or anything.
	But I can understand parents relying on or in some way using workbooks as a supplement or something like that just to kind of bring it home.
	So I'm okay with that and I don't think workbooks are sinful.
	But I think what we need to do is not completely rely on them and we need to find ways to help the child build a relationship with the material that they're learning, okay?
	And build a relationship between that and everything else that they're learning so things aren't categorized into different subjects.
	For instance, the best example I could think of in math is cooking.
	There are some kids that love to cook, and kids especially love to cook cookies and cupcakes because that's just a wonderful thing, you know, cookies and cupcakes.
	You know, every time we do a show, I get hungry.
	I hope you know that.
	I know, with the M&Ms and everything else.
	For my Lorette shows, I need to get a buffet set in my study so that I can just graze while we eat.
	Because I remember thinking this the last time we did a show, you were talking about food the whole time.
	I'd like to continue this show, but I'm just eyeing my thumb thinking it would really look good with some shake and bake on it.
	I'm all of about 110 pounds and 5 foot, but I am Italian.
	Ah, right. So everyone around you is growing and you're staying the same size.
	Well, yeah, you know.
	So, well, back to cooking.
	Most kids love to cook, especially, you know, treats and candies and cupcakes and pastries and cookies and things like that.
	And when you're cooking, even someone as young as your daughter, you can show her how to measure and use math.
	So now they're learning math and they understand that it's math.
	You don't have to hide the fact that it's math.
	You know, it's not a taboo subject.
	They understand that it's math, but they're also building a relationship with math.
	So they understand how it applies to their lives.
	You go shopping and the child wants to help you shop and they say, you know, can I get And you say, okay, here, you know what?
	I have X amount of dollars to spend on shopping today.
	Here are my coupons. And depending on how old the kid is and what their abilities are, these are the coupons, these are the daily specials and the sales.
	Help me figure out how much we can fill this cart with.
	And, you know, whether or not we're going over a budget.
	That helps them build a relationship with math in their lives.
	They're doing science. They're out in the yard.
	They're finding tadpoles.
	And, you know, they're learning about the growth of the tadpole.
	Or they find a snake and it's a dead and they want to bring it in the house and dissect it.
	And you say, no, that's a rattlesnake or whatever.
	But you're building a relationship with science.
	I... We did some kind of science project the other day, and somehow it evolved, and they were asking about why we were using the water for something instead of alcohol.
	And we talked about that a little while, and I also said alcohol is flammable.
	And they said, but it's liquid. And I said, yeah, watch this.
	And I soaked a paper towel in alcohol, and I lit a match to it.
	And, I mean, like, you can imagine what happened, right?
	It was like, oof! It just went up in flames to the point where even in the back of my head, I was like, am I crazy?
	What did I just do, you know?
	See, that's called the missing eyebrow of truth.
	Right, exactly. Luckily, I have the fire extinguisher there, but now it built a relationship.
	You didn't just say, no, alcohol is flammable, let's move on.
	You're building the connection, you're building a relationship.
	Or when we were reading about Greece, and we stayed on Greece for a long time because they were just super interested in it.
	So instead of ringing the bell and saying, no, we have to move on to something else now, we just stayed on Greece for as long as we needed to.
	And even my youngest at seven years old, we watched Troy together and that's a really bloody movie, but we were able to watch it.
	And they were so excited talking about and criticizing the movie, like harshly criticizing the movie for the differences.
	And they felt that it took too many liberties for the differences in history.
	And my 10 year old is going, but you have to understand that it's all made up anyway.
	None of it is proven.
	And they got into this huge discussion.
	And I was like, this is it.
	Because the average kid will tell you some kind of random facts and dates about Greece and then forget it by the time they're adults.
	You know, my kids are going on Minecraft now and building the city of Troy because they've formed a relationship with what they've learned.
	And then you could apply that to math and you can apply it to science and everything just comes back.
	And that's the whole thing.
	And that's the thing that school doesn't give you.
	And, you know, I theorize, Stefan, that school doesn't give you that on purpose.
	Because if you don't form a relationship with your world, then people become dehumanized and your world doesn't matter to you.
	So you don't care about it.
	So you become apathetic and complacent.
	And then you're very easily controlled if you're apathetic and complacent.
	So on the whole, I see my family...
	I don't think that I'm just doing good for my kids by giving them a better education, okay?
	I actually think I'm enabling them to grow up more free.
	And I think that they will actually have the opportunity to grow up more free than I am.
	And that's what a parent wants.
	The parent wants better for their children.
	I don't think, I don't know, maybe they'll be more wealthy than me or not.
	That doesn't matter to me. What I am convinced of is that by keeping them away from that Prussian school system, I'm enabling them to be more free.
	Because they will have a relationship with their world, they will care about their world, and freedom will mean something to them.
	Yes, it will. And I think that there is no freedom save knowledge, and there is no integrity save consistency.
	And there is no consistency without reason and evidence.
	And this is why we're not taught anything about truth, is that if we genuinely were taught about truth, then when people were lying to us, we'd just say, oh, come on.
	Right? Pull the other one.
	Whereas we live in this world of unreality because it's a lot easier to manipulate language than it is to manipulate reality.
	And, you know, fraud is easier than production.
	And illusion is easier than creation.
	And, yeah, so, you know, if the world is to be saved, and I think it's going to be, then it has to be saved because people are no longer willing to live in the matrix of delusion, of propaganda, of lies and falsehoods.
	I mean, in some parts, I even think the rulers want to be free of that.
	I mean, it can't be a whole lot of fun leading the charge of the lemmings off the cliff of unreality.
	And so I think we're doing good even for the people who are in charge because I think it would be more fun to be in charge if such a word is even applicable.
	Of people who are not insane.
	It wouldn't be in charge.
	It would just be, you know, I don't know, help.
	I don't know what the right word would be.
	In charge maybe would take on a different meaning.
	There would be a new lexicon if it was a truly free society and it would mean something different than it means now.
	Now we hear the word in charge and we think totalitarian authority but maybe it would mean something different in a truly free society.
	Well, it's utility, right?
	I mean, my dentist is in charge of my teeth because she really knows what she's doing.
	Yeah, and that's acceptable.
	Not because she's got taxing me and going to throw me in jail if I don't show up, but because I respect her ability and all that.
	So I think that's what authority is going to mean, what it used to mean.
	At one point, which is somebody has authority because they're right a lot more often than they're wrong.
	And that's not the way it is right now.
	Authority just means I can throw you in jail, which is a really, really sad substitute for wisdom and the value of elders and more experienced and wise people.
	Anyway, listen, I want to make sure that it's a great conversation.
	I think that we've clarified a lot, at least in my mind, and I just – but all I can see now is cupcakes.
	And so let's make sure that for my listeners, we can give your information, Loretta Lynn, unpluggedmom.com.
	And you've done some interviews lately, some conversations lately.
	Did you want to mention those for people who might want to look for more specific stuff?
	Well yeah, you know also on my website there's a lot of practical information.
	I consider myself someone who advocates for home education and I also like to provide the why, the philosophical reasons like we talked about today, as well as the how.
	So I do also have some logistical information on my website as far as methods.
	And I provide information about all the different methods that are out there and we also have a lot of reviews themselves of resources that are out there to learn all kinds of different things and all different ways to learn on the internet and in the 3D world and everything else.
	So there's a whole lot of logistical, practical information If you want to start embracing life without school in your family.
	And I have on my show, Unplugged Mom Radio, I have done an extensive amount of interviews.
	And I am actually just re-releasing, next week I think, I'm re-releasing one that I've done with John Teller Gatto, which was very good.
	I also did a re-release one on vaccination recently, which is also very good.
	Coming up, I have some more coming up.
	But I also have information about, let's see, what other...
	Interviews I have here beside you, Charlotte Mason.
	I have some conversations that we've done on our own.
	I have interviews with different people from alternative education resource centers.
	So there's a lot of information there about education and you can just check that all out.
	And that's again UnpluggedMom.com and I believe you have some British listeners so I want to clarify that it's M-O-M. It's our colonized version of mom.
	No, because otherwise it would be Unplugged Mumsy Pie.
	That's quite different. And for your listeners, freedomainradio.com, I have absolutely no practical or useful material on my site.
	I just really wanted to clarify that.
	Yes, you do. Yes, you do.
	You just provide it for free.
	No, no. It's a lot of abstract arguments that just make your life socially difficult.
	That's really the foundation.
	I have been spreading social discomfort for six years now, and it's not at all practical.
	But if you're interested in that kind of stuff, that's a pretty good place to go.
	That's a brilliant tagline, spreading social discomfort.
	That's right. That's right.
	Creating uncomfortable silences at dinner parties for six years.
	I would love to have a dinner party with you, you know that?
	Well, I'm sure we will pass each other, I'm sure at some point, particularly as I get more into these conferences, and I hope that you'll come to them sometime and give a talk.
	That's where I'm sort of meeting people that I've met digitally, but I'm sure we will meet at some point in the not-too-distant future.
	Sure. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure, again, Stefan, and I have a very distinct feeling that we're going to be doing this again in the future.
	Absolutely. Well, take care and a real pleasure as always, Lauren.
	Yes, very good. Thank you, Stefan.

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