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July 25, 2012 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:09:14

2180 Don't Do Drugs - Stay Out of School

Parenting, schooling, society and a new book! reedomain Radio is the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web - http://www.freedomainradio.com

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	Hello everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux with the fabulous one and only Lorette Lynn of Unplugged MOM.com.
	How are you, Lorette?
	I am doing fantastic, Stefan.
	How are you?
	Great, great thanks.
	Okay, so let's start with your book because it's good.
	It's really good.
	So you've got a book called Don't Do Drugs, Stay Out of School.
	And I think it's a little tough to get because the subtext, you know, it's very subtle.
	But it seems to me in reading the book that you may have an issue With school.
	I'm trying to read between the lines.
	Some of it's printed along the edge of the paper, so you're going to have to put all the pages together.
	But let's take a tour through the central thesis of the book and also make sure that we can tell people where to get it.
	Yeah, it's very vague.
	You can never tell by the title, can you?
	No.
	Yeah, you know what's funny?
	There actually have been one or two people that said, well, I don't like the don't do drugs part because, you know, we have to make sure that hemp is legal and marijuana is legal.
	And I'm like, dude, really?
	You're really taking it that seriously?
	But that's okay.
	This is not about your pet issue.
	This is about something a little more important.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, here's the thing.
	I was doing a show for Unplugged Mom Radio, and this was back in the early days when the show first started.
	I'm kind of getting into a little bit of a rant and talking about the benefits of home education, but a lot of times when you talk about the benefits of home education and why parents should consider this option for their family, you almost have to contrast it against school.
	And you have to kind of say, well, because people say, well, why would anybody do that?
	Reason is because we don't want our kids in the school system.
	So I went on a little bit about that and it turned into a little bit of a rant, a little bit of a Mike Savage style rant, if I'm being honest.
	And I said, sort of tongue in cheek, as a matter of fact, my advice to kids everywhere is don't do drugs and stay out of school.
	And, you know, my producer laughed and said that should be a bumper sticker.
	And I said, why not?
	And, you know, I started out writing an article.
	And then it got a little bit longer, and I said, well, maybe I'll make a series of articles.
	And then I said, well, maybe I'll make like a little e-book.
	And then before you knew it, I had this big thing, and I said, you know, I might as well just make this a book.
	I'll just write a book.
	And it is the tone, because I figured there's so many books out there already, John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Isabe that really go into depth on And really provide a lot of well done research and well documented facts and just a lot of I
	don't think you should go to school, and here's why.
	And that's how the tone of the book is written.
	That's how I meant it to be, and I'm pretty certain that that's how it came out.
	Now, I do provide reasons.
	I provide several of what I have come to believe in the last 10 years are the most important reasons to pull out of the school system.
	And I back them up, and I provide some kind of avenues for fact-checking, but it...
	It kind of dares the reader to take a journey further and say, look, you need to go find this out.
	You need to go investigate more because no one's going to convince you more than yourself.
	You really need to check this out.
	You need to look into this.
	But I also ask a lot of questions in the book.
	I bring up a lot of questions that I don't think people are asking enough, and that's about what is the purpose of schooling?
	Why are the kids here?
	Why do we just compulsively say, oh, you're four, go to school?
	What is that all about?
	So it really does dare the reader to ask those questions of themselves, I hope.
	Well, I think it does a great job of that.
	And I'll sort of get into the parts of the books that I really like, which is pretty much all of it.
	But I wanted you to share your thoughts about this conception that people have, that government-run, involuntary, coercively-funded Schools have become synonymous with education.
	Because when, you know, when you...
	I think there was a show, what was it called?
	30 Rock.
	And it started out with some kids who had been homeschooled.
	And the cliche was, you know, that they believed that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs and they were ridiculously ignorant.
	But there's this belief that...
	Government schools are synonymous with education.
	And for most adults, you say, well, where did you get the most valuable information that you use today?
	And I don't sort of mean if you're a dentist, you know, which tooth to drill or how to drill.
	But I mean the information that you use in your life to understand the world, to make better moral decisions.
	Where did you get that information?
	And I've yet to meet anybody who says, I got it from a professor.
	I got it from a teacher.
	How do you think people can break out of this idea that government schools are synonymous with being educated?
	You've got a quote by Mark Twain in the book, I've never let my schooling interfere with my education.
	And that's, I think, the two different aspects of human learning.
	Well, I guess one wouldn't be human learning that people seem to confuse quite a bit.
	Yeah, and you know it's interesting, Stefan, once you see it for what it is, once you, so to speak, step outside of the forest and look at the trees for what they are, it's so clear and it's so obvious.
	And you see this, this is really not some kind of new, trendy, modern idea.
	People have known this throughout history.
	Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, has talked about making the distinction between education and schooling.
	They are two very different things.
	Schooling has a very different purpose.
	And I don't think it's so much of a stretch anymore.
	I do think that there are people that really do need to make that distinction, and I urge people to make that distinction, but I don't think it's difficult.
	In fact, I think me saying...
	Let's make that distinction is almost enough because the school has vilified itself.
	And, you know, that's something that people have said to me in the past.
	Well, can't you just talk about the positive aspects of life without school?
	Why do you have to vilify the school system?
	And I say, well, I don't really think I need to.
	I think the school system has done a really good job lately in the last 10 years or so of vilifying itself.
	So when we say the kids are really not getting a quality education in school, it's not that much of a stretch for people to kind of nod and go, yeah, well, that's true.
	I want to take it a step further and say they never got not only a quality education, but any education in school.
	What they're getting is filled up with facts and statistics and trivia, and sometimes those facts are fallacious.
	They're not even correct.
	Most of the time, well, a lot of the times, incorrect information.
	Because when you break it down and you think about it, The information has to be delivered to millions of students.
	So there has to be a specific curriculum, a specific method of delivery.
	It has to be unified.
	Somebody had to choose what information to feed to the children, how to feed it to the children, why that information.
	So I want parents to ask themselves, What information are your children being filled with in school?
	Who chose that information?
	And when we do figure out who it was, what made that group of people the elite that should be in charge of what your children should come to accept as truth?
	This is really important.
	We really need to think about this, okay?
	And another thing that I really want to pro parents to think about is why do we do it compulsively?
	Why, when our children turn four or five years old, the first thing we do is say, okay, off to pre-K, off to kindergarten.
	We don't think about it.
	We don't question it.
	We do it.
	Why?
	Why?
	The answer is, Stefan, because we've just accepted that that's how it is.
	But that's not how it is.
	That's not how it's supposed to be.
	These are very important things.
	So as far as...
	Getting people to understand that there's a distinction between learning and what goes on in school, I don't think that's very difficult.
	I think people are kind of on the cusp of realizing that anyway.
	That's not an education.
	That's just filling a jar with beans, and I know we've talked about that before.
	But you've got to take it a step further and say, what beans?
	Who chooses the beans?
	Why those beans?
	And who gets to do the filling?
	Yeah, it's like what we used to hear about, you know, that reporters have to be objective, that the media tries to be neutral and so on.
	And of course, as you get older, you realize that that's all such errant nonsense.
	And I think another thing that troubles me, and a lot of reasons why Christians homeschool, which I actually respect them for, is that school is creepily neutral about the meat and juice in life.
	And the reason for that is, you know, you really can't get into...
	Does God exist?
	You can't really get into how should society be structured.
	You can't really get into what is virtue, what is truth.
	I mean, the things that I think are actually really valuable for people to live good, meaningful, and hopefully moral lives.
	And the reason you can't is because Muslims can't have their own schools, Christians can't have their own schools, atheists can't have their own schools, and then you end up having to jam everyone with different belief systems into an environment where And then what happens is you can't talk about anything meaningful because no matter who you please, there's going to be lots more people that you're going to offend and upset.
	And I think not wanting hordes of angry parents saying, what are you teaching my children?
	They have to make it really almost purposefully as bland as possible.
	And that's my main memory from school is just boredom.
	Just feeling like I was just like a conveyor belt of dry data was being shoveled into my brain, which had no use and no value and no purpose and no tying to any sort of larger thing.
	Now, I mean, as an adult, I'm ravenous about, you know, I think this is quite common.
	The people who tend to be most curious and intellectually driven as adults were usually mediocre students who were completely bored in school.
	And that break out of the prison kind of thing is important because, you know, when you're home, you can teach your kids real values.
	But in school, if you're a teacher who tries that, I think you get into, I mean, almost no matter what values you teach, you're just going to get into trouble.
	Well, the nature of what it is and the size and scope of what it is, like you said, they really can't pander to any particular group or race or religion or spiritual belief or anything because there's too many kids jammed into one machine.
	And I hate to use the word machine, but that's really how I picture it.
	This is a machine.
	So by its very nature, it can't really cater to the needs of the individual.
	And there are so many teachers that will try to come forward and say, oh, but the way I teach, I respect that each student is an individual.
	But Stefan, I mean, when you really think about the magnitude and the size of the institution that we're dealing with here, it is impossible.
	It just logistically cannot be done by an operation of this size.
	You cannot respect the individual needs, wants, desires, and beliefs of each individual student.
	So yes, it does have to be bland, but what has happened is that blandness now and that nothingness of morality or ethics has been replaced with a fabricated version of morality and ethics.
	So now there's actually a contrived and deliberate version of morality and ethics that is being implanted into the kids and taught to the kids that doesn't really have anything to do with religion, but does clearly serve some kind of political agenda.
	I mean, it's out-and-out fascism as far as I remember.
	Your fellow citizens are really dangerous.
	Authority is the only thing that can save you, and you have to obey those in power.
	I mean, that's all the...
	And I got this in England.
	I went to school very briefly in Scotland, toured some schools in South Africa, came to school in Canada, went to three different universities.
	That message is universal.
	Right.
	No, well, I mean, that's what it is.
	It is what it is.
	That's exactly what happens, and it's...
	It almost happened naturally by itself because when you can't have any kind of individual morals or ethics that really Would cater to any particular belief system, then you have to replace it with something and you replace it with this agenda.
	And not only a political agenda, but there's definitely a consumerist agenda there too.
	And we realize that when we look at who's funding the textbooks and who's funding the supplies that are being used in schools and who's funding the programs that are being created and who's ever funding it gets a say in what's being taught and what's being delivered and how it's being delivered.
	And there's, you know...
	Billions of dollars of research that goes into the psychology of how to get into these kids' heads.
	I mean, even as simple as having Coke machines in school.
	These things are also taught into the lesson plans, though.
	So literally, it's like this mind-numbing, very purposeful kind of thing.
	And when I talk about the beans, they're filling jars with beans.
	These beans are very carefully selected to serve a future purpose.
	And the future purpose is...
	This is what you learn about life.
	We're gonna give you the fundamentals.
	You're gonna barely know how to do basic fundamental math.
	We're gonna teach you just enough about reading and writing so that you can express yourself just well enough to get by.
	And we're going to teach you morally and ethically that the way to live your life is you go to school, you graduate, you get a job, you get married, you have some kids, you buy stuff, you get credit cards, you take out bank loans.
	This is what you want.
	You want a big house.
	You want a white picket fence.
	You want a few kids.
	You want nice cars.
	You want big screen TVs.
	You want good food.
	And you're going to continue to work and you're going to continue to pay your taxes and you're going to continue to buy things and depend on bank loans.
	And then you're going to have some children and you're going to put them back into the same machine.
	And we're going to do the same thing to them.
	And that's the ethics that are taught.
	That's the morals that are taught.
	So that by the time you are 11, 12, 13 years old, you think, yeah, well, that's life.
	This is normal.
	But I urge parents to consider, is that normal?
	Or do we just accept that as normal?
	If most of us are tired, if most of us are sick, if most of us are stressed out, if we have, I think it's something like 1 in 10 Americans that are on some kind of psychotropic drug because of depression or they can't get through their day.
	Now we have as many as 10% of the children in schools across the United States, Stefan, that are on- One in four women just last year, not even over the course of their lifetime, last year, one in four American women on antidepressants.
	Right.
	That is not normal.
	That is not natural.
	That is not human.
	And I don't care what religion you are or whether you're an atheist or whatever beliefs you might have or not have.
	Everybody must recognize that that is not human.
	It is not natural.
	And when you think about that and when you say, well, gosh, it isn't natural.
	It is not natural for 10% of the children across America to be sick, to have depression, to have suicidal tendencies.
	That's not natural.
	Normal.
	Something is wrong.
	And we have to think about what is universally true for most of these kids.
	They all share the schooling experience.
	Now just going back to the...
	Because that's something I hear quite often too.
	People are kind of turned off by homeschooling because they think about like uber-Christian families that are locking their kids inside and, you know, they all have biblical names and they're teaching them, like you said, that Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs or there was no such thing as dinosaurs and whatever it is.
	So...
	These folks are very concerned, if homeschooling becomes popular, that everybody's going to have these beliefs.
	And I understand the concern.
	It seems like a legitimate concern, but it's not.
	Because those people are really rare.
	If you really get to know the home education community, and you get to know the, I think it's almost two and a half million families now that are home educating just in the United States alone, you realize that The majority of us are not those people.
	We don't fit that profile.
	And we have to stop mixing up weirdness with home education because weirdness is a separate issue.
	And that family, even if they were in school, they'd be weird.
	So it has nothing to do with home education.
	But when you cut it down, too, when you think about it, so what?
	God bless them.
	Let them be.
	Who cares?
	You know what I mean?
	We have the right to be weird if we want to be weird.
	Well, yeah, just because some drunk drivers use the road doesn't mean that every driver is drunk.
	Exactly.
	That's a basic rational thing.
	Exactly.
	Now, you said something a little earlier about the last 10 years, and I thought that was interesting.
	Is it people over the last 10 years have begun to accept that public schools...
	Because I've noticed a big change.
	It's a huge change.
	Of course, when I was a kid, they sucked.
	But I think they sucked a little less bad than they do now.
	Although, you know, I think fundamentally people are, it's almost like they forget what it was like to be in school.
	It's the only way you could conceivably advocate for it unless you're profiting directly from it.
	But I think it's gotten worse over time, which is kind of inevitable.
	I think it was in the 60s that they really unionized heavily.
	You couldn't fire bad teachers, and now it's just ridiculous.
	It's impossible really to fire even criminal teachers, let alone teachers who just aren't very good.
	But over the last, I'd say five or 10 years, I've really noticed that people don't have the usual response to problems in the school.
	Like there's not a lot of people who now say, well, we need more schools, like more spending on schools and it'll be solved because so much spending has gone into schools and the problems have only gotten worse.
	So I think we're kind of in an eye of the storm.
	We're kind of in a stasis point at the top of an arc where I think people are like, I'm not ready to commit to something new, but I'm also not ready to defend the old.
	And I think that has happened over the last 10 years.
	That's sort of my observation, but what are your thoughts on that?
	I think that, yeah, most parents now are deers in the headlights, you know, saying, okay, clearly there's something wrong here, and it doesn't take that much of a mental leap.
	I have not run into anyone.
	When you say, you know, I'm skeptical of the school system.
	I don't think there is a very healthy place for kids anymore.
	I have not met anyone who said, oh, no, it's lovely.
	It's beautiful.
	Let's all go.
	Couldn't be better.
	I'd love to go back.
	I'd love to be younger so I could do it all over again.
	Even if they have kids in school, they say, yeah, it's not very good.
	Even if they claim that their kids are in good schools, you know, and there are parents out there and of course, you know, The kind of running joke is when parents have their kids in school, they always kind of say, well, not my school.
	My school is a good school.
	I realize the school system on the whole is not doing very well, but at least my school is a good school.
	Every parent says that because no one wants to admit that they might have made a mistake in their selection.
	And it's pretty clear now that it's just getting worse and worse.
	And when you and I went to school, yeah, they sucked.
	But they suck more now.
	And it's so obvious.
	It's so blatant.
	But yet we keep putting our kids back into it.
	And that's the way I say these parents are a lot of times just steers in the headlights because they're saying, yeah, it kind of sucks.
	But what can I do?
	What do I do?
	And then someone like me comes along that says, OK, don't do drugs.
	Stay out of school.
	And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
	You can't just not go to school.
	So the book is really about saying, why not?
	Why can't you just not go to school?
	And here I am telling you, actually you can.
	You can just not go to school.
	It's very simple.
	And they say, but how do the children learn?
	And I say, but do you really think they're learning in school?
	Well, no.
	And what are they learning in school, right?
	Right.
	Well, okay then.
	So, I mean, you have to kind of answer the question with another question.
	And that's not to be difficult, but that's to kind of point out the illegitimacy of the question itself.
	If they're not getting an education in school, so what's the point?
	And a lot of parents will say, well, I have to work.
	And this is a problem.
	This I do understand because there are a lot of parents out there where both parents choose to work because women have this idea that they need a career in order to feel like a valuable person or whatever.
	Which they learned where?
	In a government school.
	Exactly.
	You need to pay taxes to be a valuable person.
	You need to contribute to the government to be a valuable person.
	Female empowerment, in my view, female empowerment is about choice, not a career.
	But, yeah, I mean, it's no accident that the government teaches you that it's much more valuable to go to work and pay other people to raise your children, which is a net plus for the tax coffers, than it is to stay home and actually spend time with your children, raise them yourself, which the government loses out on.
	But somehow the nanny who's getting paid to raise your children, she has a legitimate job.
	Right.
	Oh, it's just tragic.
	That's okay.
	But not you.
	For you to stay home and raise your own children, that's pathetic.
	But the nanny, if she stays home and raises your children, that's okay.
	I don't know what's going on with her kids.
	Or the other thing, too.
	You see, dear lady, you're just too smart.
	To be a mom.
	You see, you got a bachelor's degree or a master's or heaven help you, a PhD.
	I mean, what do you want to be changing diapers for when you've been trained as a lawyer?
	You're too smart to be a mom.
	Stay-at-home moms are portrayed as very stupid.
	And that became more and more popular.
	I mean, the 50s and 60s, they were all stay-at-home moms.
	But then it became more popular in the 80s and 90s to have these double-income parents, double-working parents, and we saw that all over the sitcoms, right?
	And then we had shows like Married with Children that was funny, but the housewife in that was a buffoon.
	She was portrayed as a mouth breather.
	Exactly.
	Kind of like this trashy buffoon.
	And women didn't really want to aspire to that, so they wanted to make sure.
	When I went to school, that was the thing.
	We were very conditioned.
	We were very much trained to accept that, okay...
	Look at what the suffragettes did for you.
	Look at what all these feminists did for you.
	If you don't appreciate that, then there's something wrong with you.
	Because now you see, Lorette, women have come a long way.
	You don't have to just stay home and be with your kids.
	No, no, no.
	You can be smart.
	You can get an education and you can work so you don't need your husband.
	You don't need a man.
	I don't need a man.
	That was like a big thing.
	You know, so now we have the deterioration of marriage to begin with going on in there.
	It's like kind of that seed is planted and now we have this like, well, if I do stay home and take care of my kids, that makes me weak.
	I think, you know, I think, sorry to interrupt, but I think that...
	If you have the choice to stay home, whether it's the mom or the dad, and you go to work, it's like you're having an affair on your kids, because you should be married to your kids.
	Anyway, that's just my particular way of thinking.
	Well, you know, I agree with you, and I do get a lot of heavy criticism for that, but Stefan, you have some kids, okay?
	They're not going to be kids forever.
	And if you are a normal, healthy human being, which most of us are, even moderately healthy, most of us plan to live more than the next 20 years or so, when your kids grow up, you've still got a whole life ahead of you.
	Yeah.
	And most likely, you'll be even more experienced and more intelligent.
	You can go and pursue a career in medicine or law or anything you want.
	It doesn't have to happen now.
	And that was a big thing, too.
	I mean, that's kind of like a big thing with women.
	Women figure, well, we have to do everything right now or we're not going to do it.
	The only thing you will miss out on biologically if you don't do it by a certain age is actually having the children.
	You know, by the time you get into your 40s, it gets more difficult.
	And then by the time you're in your 50s and 60s, you just simply can't.
	No, sorry, it's 30s.
	Mid-30s, your fertility begins to decline.
	Well, your fertility does begin to decline.
	There are women that have children in their late 30s.
	It does begin to decline.
	So the prime age to have children, and this is not me being anti-feminist or weird in any way.
	This is science.
	This is reality.
	The prime healthy age for women to have children, physiologically speaking, is in their 20s.
	This is when...
	And you also have more energy.
	You have more energy.
	You're able to keep up with the kids a little bit more.
	This is great.
	So, you know, you have children.
	Maybe you have, you know, I don't know, two, three, four, however many children you have.
	By the time you're in your 40s, your children are grown.
	Go and have a career.
	40 is not old.
	I'm not saying women shouldn't pursue a career.
	I'm saying that your children are precious.
	And like you said, you should be married to your children.
	If you have the choice to stay home, stay home.
	They need you.
	They want you.
	They love you.
	They don't want the nanny.
	And that's what people will say now.
	Yes, I know school sucks.
	Yes, I know it's a bad experience for my child.
	Yes, I know it can even be harmful, because that's another thing, Stefan.
	Not only do I not think that it's such a good idea, it's actually harmful.
	I mean, consider you have one in five kids in a classroom that are given an ADD medication or a psychotropic drug to keep them calm.
	That's not very healthy.
	Consider the fact that one in three kids gets beaten severely or tormented emotionally by some kind of bully.
	Or they get bullied by their teachers.
	They get hit by their teachers.
	There are actually some states that allow the teachers to hit the children.
	And even if that's not your kid, your kid is being exposed to that and seeing it on a daily basis.
	You're being exposed to it and seeing it, or they're a victim of it, or they're the perpetrator of it.
	Exactly.
	But, you know, I don't even blame the kids and say, well, they're bad kids.
	They're in a situation, an environment that actually breeds that kind of behavior.
	I mean, think about it.
	They're four, five, six years old, and they're kept for five, six hours a day, five days a week, ten months out of the year, away from their parents, and locked We're locked in a cell, literally locked inside of a cell where they do not have permission to stand up if they want to.
	They need to ask permission to speak, to stand, to pee.
	They're given unhealthy foods to eat.
	If they bring food from home, the teachers are now inspecting the lunch bags, and if they decide it's not healthy, they take it away.
	This is an insane asylum.
	It's crazy, and kids are locked in this space, so by the time they're 13 or 14 years old, yeah, They're a little violent by that time because it's nuts.
	It actually breeds this kind of behavior.
	So now, not only is school a good idea academically, but it's actually potentially dangerous.
	Not a good idea academically, I think.
	I did something recently where I kind of compared, and maybe I spoke too soon, maybe it was a little harsh, but I compared sending your child to school to child abuse.
	And I said, you know, a parent telling me, I just don't have time.
	You know, I have to send my kid to school.
	It's like saying to me, well, I have to abuse my child.
	And oh my gosh, I took so much slack for that.
	And I did kind of apologize because I didn't mean to insinuate that parents that send the kids to school are hitting them.
	That's not what I meant at all.
	But For me to really explain the magnitude of how important I see this, school is a dangerous place.
	So when you're saying to me, I have no choice, I have to send my child into a dangerous place, I'm trying to illustrate to you the magnitude of what you're saying.
	That's how it sounds to me.
	I know it's dangerous, but I have to send my kid in.
	Would you put your kid in a car without a seatbelt?
	You wouldn't do that.
	But people say, well, you're exaggerating.
	School's not that bad.
	And I'm saying, yeah, it is.
	It's gotten that bad.
	Maybe not when you and I went there.
	It just sucked a little.
	Now it sucks that bad.
	It's actually that dangerous.
	So there is a way.
	You may think that you have to go to work because you need to pay the bills, but there are many, many parents out there who said, you know what?
	Let's reduce our bills.
	Let's reduce our spending.
	Let's move into a smaller place.
	Let's cut down on the things that we need because we need to be with our children.
	We don't need a Cadillac.
	Right, right.
	So there are adjustments.
	And if there are not, if you are in a situation where you must, then what we have to do is start supporting the alternatives.
	OK, because now we have this paradigm where I didn't and I didn't mean to do this, but I think I inadvertently in my shows sometimes create a false dichotomy where you either go to public school and you subject a child to danger or you home educate.
	And that's not right.
	That's a false dichotomy.
	There are other options.
	There aren't as many as there need to be, though.
	So more of us need to support that.
	More of us need to support these independent learning, very community-run, very localized, no strings from the government, nothing from the government, very volunteered, you know?
	And the only time I would accept, okay, public funding is in...
	In the sense of like a library or a community center.
	I visit libraries.
	I visit community centers.
	I'm okay with that.
	But there has to be a line because once you say, okay, the state can control and pay for this particular learning center, well, the state gets to decide what the children learn then.
	And that's exactly what we don't want.
	And I'm not automatically saying that that particular state is evil, but you don't know.
	You don't know the people that are deciding what beans to fill your kid's head with.
	You should be involved in that.
	So there are alternatives out there right now, Stefan, but there needs to be more.
	And I would say, sorry, just about your comment about public school being abused.
	I think you can say that public school is abusive to children, but very few parents are aware of this fact.
	Yeah, I think that...
	I mean, and I think so, to me, you know, like I'm obviously virulently against spanking.
	And somebody asked me, you know, does that mean all...
	I would say, well, there's two answers to that.
	One is objectively yes, in the same way that everyone who owned a slave was immoral.
	But in the absence of knowledge, I think that we can't really blame people for some of the choices that they make.
	So the purpose is to illuminate, to give people a choice where formerly there was only an absolute choice.
	And then once they've been exposed to the information, if they then continue.
	So to me, there's a knowledge gap and sort of working to try and get people unplugged from the matrix is the key.
	That gives them a moral choice that almost they didn't have before, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	And that's why delivery is important.
	And I learn as I go and I understand that more and more.
	But there are still some times where it happens to all of us where we're like, oh, yeah, what did I just say?
	Yeah.
	So, listen, let's talk about, because a part of the book that I thought was fantastic was the chapter called The Family Circumvention.
	And, of course, as the writer you know in it, you argue about the degree to which we're substituting peer relationships and school relationships to familial relationships.
	I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.
	I thought that was a very, very great, great chapter.
	Well, family circumvention is a big deal.
	And that is something that I think most home educators, whether they're doing it for religious reasons or academic reasons or whatever, can recognize.
	And I will also reiterate that many of us are not doing it for religious reasons.
	But we don't feel that we should be circumvented as parents.
	And any parent that has their child in the school system knows that they feel circumvented.
	This happens to parents all the time.
	And these things like...
	Parent trigger that was going on in a few states that failed miserably was set up to make parents feel like they had some power, that they could actually protest and sign this petition to say, oh, this school isn't doing well and this principal isn't doing well, so we can have him fired.
	The parent trigger laws were set up to make parents think they have that power.
	But ultimately what can happen is the school board can say, oh, no, sorry, veto.
	So it's really just an illusion.
	PTA's really just an illusion.
	One of the most controversial things that happened last year It was an article written by this teacher of the year, quote-unquote, Ron Clark.
	And he wrote an article that basically told parents, you need to just shut up.
	You need to just stay out of it.
	We're the teachers.
	We get paid to do this.
	We went to college to do this.
	So we know what we're doing.
	And you need to just leave us alone.
	Because when you get involved, you're messing it up.
	That is such a blatant, a blatant statement.
	This subjugation of parents and family, and it broke out into a fury.
	Parents went crazy, and rightly so.
	But this happens all the time, and parents know this all the time, because they're told, a lot of teachers complain all the time, the parents are getting in the way, the parents are getting in the way.
	School does this on purpose, okay?
	And they have your children, and they have them there captive for five hours, and they're Putting their authority onto the children.
	And they're putting their agenda onto the children.
	So when the children come home and start arguing with you and telling you that life is not what you say it is, you put them in a situation to absorb that.
	It doesn't care about the family.
	School doesn't care about the parents.
	That's not their concern.
	Because that would mean that they would have to take time out to really care about the individual needs of each student and each family.
	And like we said before, they cannot.
	They cannot.
	Oh man, nobody ever asked me in my entire time in school what I wanted.
	No.
	No, if they do, they're kind of just placating you.
	They say, well, what do you want to be when you grow up?
	Because we want you to write this 500-word composition.
	But they don't really care.
	They don't really care.
	No, what I mean is, no, sorry, like even in the moment.
	Like, they didn't ask me if I wanted to be there.
	No.
	They didn't ask me what kind of education I wanted.
	Did I want self-study?
	Did I want to be in a group?
	They didn't ask me until later on, until I was in my mid-teens, what courses and even some of those were required.
	Because that's irrelevant.
	They didn't ask me if, hey, is it okay to finish doing what you're doing and move on to something else?
	Or do you want to finish what you're doing?
	You've got this bell that goes off every 45 or 50 minutes that just jars you right out of whatever you're doing.
	It's crazy.
	I go buy a slice of pizza and I get three little things saying, hey, how was your pizza?
	Did you like the store?
	Was it a good price?
	There's so much feedback from something that's unimportant as a pizza slice, but the actual education of children, I mean, if they say they care about children, how about actually asking the children?
	I mean, it doesn't mean you have to take what the children say as an absolute, but how can they claim to care about the kids if they never consult the kids?
	I mean, that's just ridiculous.
	Because what the children want is irrelevant.
	They have to respond like Pavlov's dogs to the bells and just move on to the next thing.
	And that's another thing.
	Everything is subjugated and compartmentalized so that math is its own separate thing and spelling is its own separate thing and grammar is its own separate thing.
	And the children don't learn that all of these aspects of life are all together.
	It's all part of living.
	It's all part of communicating with the rest of our world and understanding the rest of our world.
	But we see spelling is spelling.
	Grammar is grammar.
	Math is math.
	We can't see the relationship between science and history.
	We can't see the relationship between history and literature.
	We can't recognize those relationships because they're all taught in little 45-minute bursts, and we have to stop thinking about it as soon as that bell rings and prepare to think about the next thing.
	So no wonder we grow up and we can't have any meaningful relationships with anything in our lives.
	And we're all confused and everything seems to be all compartmentalized.
	And that, you know, we spend the rest of our lives, a lot of us in cubicles or in office spaces or whatever, because that's just this artificial process.
	And, you know, I mean, there's so much to really think about or argue about.
	Well, is it really on purpose?
	Is it a conspiracy?
	Is it this?
	Is that really far-reaching?
	But you know what, Stefan?
	Does it matter?
	At this point, does it matter?
	It is what it is.
	Whether or not it was on purpose, it is what it is and here we are.
	And it's harmful and it's not useful.
	And the kids don't matter.
	They're irrelevant.
	And the parents matter even less.
	They're irrelevant.
	Parent-teacher nights are set up so that you can go in as a parent and be told by your child's teacher who your child is and how they're doing.
	I mean, really, think about that.
	That's why you're there.
	You're there to find out about your child.
	You're with my child, Mrs.
	So-and-so or Mr.
	So-and-so teacher.
	You're with my child for five hours a day, five days a week.
	Tell me about my child.
	How are they doing?
	You have no involvement.
	You have no say.
	And when you try to say something, most of the time the parents are told, well, we're the teacher.
	Let us handle it.
	You stay out of it.
	And they walk out with their tail between their legs figuring, well, they're right.
	You know, they're the one with the teaching degree.
	What do I know?
	I can't do this.
	Well, I mean, the other thing, too, is that parents are afraid to raise problems because they fear retaliation against their children.
	Yeah, they think that their children will be picked on.
	They've got your money, and for the most part, they've got your kids there, whether you like it or not.
	And so, you know, you don't go and piss off the prison guard who takes care of your kid.
	Right.
	And, you know, my message is that you don't have to...
	I want to tell parents, there's something wrong here, and you need to recognize it.
	And here are the signs.
	And then my second message is, you don't have to submit to this.
	You don't have to do this.
	There are options, and here are the options.
	And in the end of the book, I talk about some of the options.
	And then I even talk about reform.
	But I don't think school needs to be reformed.
	I think it needs to be kind of burnt down.
	Right.
	And then as far as children learning in a community setting, maybe not every family wants to just stay in their house and home educate or whatever.
	I get that.
	I understand that.
	That's a misconception of what home education is anyway.
	But, okay.
	We're with community centers, but it has to be community-driven, has to be alternative, and I provide a lot of resources and suggestions for people to go and learn more about these alternative options for parents so that we understand that there's options in between, you know, the two ends here, the school or home education.
	There are other options out there, and the book talks about them in a whole chapter.
	I talk about that in the end of the book.
	So by the time you're done reading it, you know school isn't a good idea.
	It's actually pretty harmful, and I don't have to do it.
	And here's how I can make this work for my family.
	And I think the abandoned ship approach, which to me would have been the second title if the first one had you, you know, there's not much point eight minutes before the Titanic goes down, rushing down to the boiler to try and plug it up with Kate Winslet or something, but...
	But I think the abandoned ship thing is, I mean, you can't reform.
	I mean, they've tried.
	They've tried reforming.
	I mean, the reforms were going on before I ever went to school.
	And, you know, you got the No Child Left Behind Act.
	You got all of these reforms.
	And I mean, none of them were working.
	I shouldn't say there was one little one.
	I'd recommend a book called, I think we mentioned it before, called The Bee Eater about Michelle Rhee, who tried to reform, I think it was Washington schools, by firing bad teachers and so on.
	Yeah, right, right, right.
	And I mean, she...
	I mean, it was ridiculous.
	She wanted to give incentive-based pay to teachers, so teachers could either stay on the old system and just have pay based on seniority, or they could go to a new system where if they improved the grades of their kids in objective tests, they could make up to six figures or more.
	And the union wouldn't even let it come to a vote.
	I mean, because obviously, then anyone who wanted to not be on merit pay would be revealed as a bad teacher, and nobody wanted that revealed, and she ended up just getting kicked out by the next wave of politics.
	So I think everyone recognizes that once you have this massive multi-hundred billion dollar industry that's based entirely on coercion and control, you can't reform it.
	It's like trying to reform the Soviet Union and it's just going to crash.
	Right.
	And then it gets rebuilt and something fresh takes its place.
	And ideally, we need to understand as a society that what our children learn, how they learn, and how they experience the world is part of our job as parents.
	Just like clothing them and feeding them and making sure that they have a roof over their head, helping them learn is just part of the whole experience.
	It's part of the parenting experience.
	Does it mean that you're going to know what to do in every situation?
	No, but you don't know what to do in every situation in other aspects of parenting.
	It's like almost school has stolen that experience from parents.
	We're supposed to experience that and we're supposed to love it, Stefan.
	We're supposed to revel in it.
	We're not supposed to think about standing with a blackboard in our kitchen and going over the ABCs until our fingers are scabbed.
	That's not it.
	It's supposed to be a wonderful and awesome experience.
	Let me tell you something.
	I had the pleasure, the great pleasure...
	Of experiencing that light that goes on with all three of my children when they understood how to take letters and form them into a word.
	When we were reading and when we were learning how to read, a lot of times it's very disjointed in the beginning.
	They don't really get it at first.
	They're just like, okay, D sounds like duh, uh, guh.
	And they just kind of look at you like, I don't get it.
	Duh, uh, guh, you know?
	But at some point, and they do it.
	It happens themselves.
	There's nothing you can do to make this happen.
	It has to come from them because that's where learning happens.
	Learning is from the person who is doing the learning.
	All you can do is practice with them and practice with them and practice with them, and then you watch.
	And all of a sudden, and it could happen as young as three, sometimes kids are a little bit older, but for my kids, they were around three or four years old, and we were reading together, and we just did it every day.
	And it was kind of like, duh, uh, guh, duh, guh.
	Dog!
	And it's like they're so happy because they get it.
	Oh, I get it.
	These letters go together and it's a word.
	And all of a sudden they take off and they want to read everything.
	And they're reading signs in the supermarket and they're reading things you don't want them to read because all of a sudden they're saying shit.
	And you're like, okay, wait a second.
	Right.
	But it just goes crazy after that.
	When you first start introducing them to basic math and you say, look, you have two M&Ms and now I give you two more and now you have four.
	So two plus two is four.
	And they're like, hooray!
	And they're so excited about that.
	And that happens as they get older too.
	And they become adolescents, they become teenagers, and they're introduced to a new concept, whether it be a philosophical idea about history or science or whatever it is, and they don't understand something.
	You have a conversation about it.
	Sometimes I don't understand it either, and we talk about it together, and we both have a revelation, and we're like, hey, I get it now!
	I have the honor of witnessing that with my kids, experiencing that with my kids, learning together with my kids.
	I have the honor and the pleasure of doing that.
	I don't need to walk into some cold classroom lined with cinder blocks and a steel door for some stranger to tell me how my kid is doing or whether or not my kid could read.
	I had the pleasure of experiencing that and it's phenomenal.
	That is supposed to be part of the parenting experience.
	We're supposed to witness that the same way we're supposed to witness when they take their first steps and we're supposed to celebrate it.
	We're supposed to do this as a family.
	We're not supposed to give that up to somebody else.
	That's ours.
	That's ours and it's sacred and it should be ours.
	It is truly tragic the degree to which People have forgotten that children are designed to be with parents, and really parents who want children are designed to be with children.
	I mean, this is how we all grew up.
	You know, they've done studies that say that infants in daycare for 20 hours a week or more experience exactly the same symptoms as if they've been actually abandoned by their mothers or by their parents.
	I mean, it's horrible.
	And so this idea...
	I saw this in other families when I was younger, and I actually never really wanted kids in particular.
	I mean, I was open to it, but it was never something that was like, I gotta have kids.
	Because the way that I saw it was pretty horrible in the families that I knew.
	And, you know, your parents would get up at god-awful farmer cow milking hours.
	And, you know, they'd have a rush.
	They'd get their kids out of bed.
	The kids would be tired and whiny.
	They didn't want to go to school.
	And they'd have to sort of fight to get some food in them and then fight to get them all dressed and jam them into a car, drop them off at a daycare or a school, and then rush off to work, sweating the whole way, hoping there's no traffic.
	And, you know, do work while they're tired.
	And then they've got to leave work, even if they're in the middle of something, and go and get their kids from wherever, some daycare after school or whatever.
	Then they come home and then they've got to, you know, six o'clock, they've got to help their kids with their homework for half an hour or 45 minutes.
	Then they've got to feed them and that's challenging and complicated.
	It does seem like a god-awful thing to have kids.
	Oh, it's terrible.
	And then you've got to fight to go to bed and start it all over again.
	I'm like, why on earth would I want to have kids when I get all the expense and All of the stress.
	And basically, maybe I get 15 minutes of quality time a day, if I'm lucky.
	I mean, that's crazy.
	It is crazy.
	It's not how parenting is supposed to be.
	People say I have kids.
	It's like, no, you have sleepovers.
	Maybe.
	That's it.
	Exactly.
	That's all you have.
	Do you think the American Indians did that?
	I mean...
	Let's really think about this.
	Let's go back through nature a little bit.
	Let's go back through history.
	Human beings have existed on this planet for billions of years.
	School has only been around for about 100.
	It's not working.
	I think the experiment has failed.
	We can quit now.
	We're done.
	We've gotten this far without it, and now we're kind of crumbling a little bit.
	We're not supposed to be stressed out.
	And you're right.
	When people think about having kids, they think, it's going to be so hard.
	Oh my gosh, I don't know how I'm going to do it.
	And when I first started home educating, most of my friends didn't do it and they had kids and they thought I was crazy.
	They thought I was out of my mind.
	And I'd say, I think you're crazy because you're fighting with your kid every single morning to get them out of bed, get some kind of breakfast in them.
	Half the time you're letting them have some kind of cookie or whatever because you just don't want to fight with them.
	And where's their jacket?
	Who lost their shoe?
	Who ripped their jeans?
	And now you have to go get a new pair of jeans.
	And who can't find this?
	And who didn't brush their hair so you're sending them to school with their hair a mess?
	Every morning it's a stress for you because you call me at 9 o'clock every morning and you talk about how hell was for you that morning and now you have to have a glass of wine by 3 o'clock in the afternoon or you just can't relax.
	And now you have to go pick them up from school and get them home and make sure you get the house cleaned.
	And some of them had jobs so they had to, like you said, leave work or...
	Who was going to work?
	Who was coming home?
	Whose mother-in-law picked them up?
	Who had to drop them off with the babysitter?
	They would ask me.
	I'd say, no, no, thank you.
	I got my own kids.
	I'm not going to babysit anybody else's.
	And then you talk to me about how you're so mad at the teacher because how dare that teacher send your kid home with a big heavy backpack that's breaking their back and they have to have all this homework, do all this homework.
	You're sitting on the phone complaining to me about how awful your day is.
	And you think, I'm crazy?
	We slept until 8.30 this morning.
	I woke up with my daughter.
	We had breakfast.
	We read a book.
	We played a game.
	We went to the park.
	We learned to read.
	We did some math.
	We took a nap.
	But somehow you think I'm crazy?
	Even then, even when I first started, it really started to seem like, wow, something is not right in this society.
	Something is very strange.
	And I kind of dedicated the next few years of my life to...
	Making people aware just how crazy and strange it is.
	And a lot of times it was just by living my life and being the example.
	And people would say, you know, you don't have these problems.
	These things don't go on with you.
	You seem like you're so close with your kids.
	And I'd show them and say, we're supposed to be.
	I'm not special.
	It's supposed to be like this.
	Yeah, everyone when they're young, you know, a lot of people when they're young, particularly if they're in college, they try a long-distance relationship and they find that it invariably doesn't work.
	How would that be any different from parent-child?
	I think basically we have these long-distance relationships with our children and it's heartbreaking.
	I mean, I think, I think, and it's a, you know, we can maybe talk about this in another show because it's a big topic.
	But in fact, let me make that a formal invitation.
	We should talk about this in another show.
	But imagine what it would be like if...
	We were more like Whitney Houston, the singer, and less like Whitney Houston, the mom.
	You know, like she's got this song, I believe the children are our future, the most precious things, angels, blah, blah, blah.
	And yet, you know, she of course was a pretty, I'm sure, a pretty wretched mom and drug addict and addicted in a violent relationship and so on.
	But we always say, oh, children are everything.
	Family is everything.
	My children are the most important thing in my life.
	It's the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning, blah, blah, blah.
	I always think it'd be fascinating To think of what society would look like if we didn't just mouth those platitudes but they became the gravity that we walked around on.
	If we actually had a society where we put into practice all the propaganda we spew on about how important kids are.
	Yeah, if we started to walk the talk.
	Yeah, wouldn't it be fast?
	The first thing we do is, of course, we just completely rewrite education from the ground up.
	We'd completely rewrite, I mean, how could you, I mean, just even every kid born in America is born at least half a million dollars in debt.
	Is that a society putting children first?
	Of course not.
	I mean, having a school system which leaps out at three when most people quit work at five is, I mean, just on so many levels, just completely anti-kid because then they've got to go shuffle off to some other place with some other new set of caregivers and some other set of kids they don't know.
	Mm-hmm.
	So if we actually said, okay, maybe if my kids are the first thing that I think of, and maybe if I do put my kids at the center of my life, and if we made the case for society as a whole, I mean, I think our society would be completely unrecognizable in about 19 minutes.
	That's my sort of theory.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	You're absolutely right.
	And that's a very good point that you're making.
	It's making me think of the popular mantra in the summer that you hear from typical mainstream folks, even folks that know that the school system is doing poorly and it's not very helpful to their child's academic future.
	They'll say stuff like this, especially at this time as we come into August.
	Oh my gosh, I can't wait for summer to be over.
	Oh, when does school start again?
	Oh, these kids are driving me crazy.
	And I always find that so sad.
	I find that so sad because we're not supposed to feel that way.
	And you know what?
	Maybe it's legitimate.
	Maybe they're not making that up.
	Maybe they really are stressed out when their kids are home bouncing off the walls.
	But think about it.
	These kids are just not used to this situation.
	They're used to the captive situation.
	So when they're free, especially for a couple of weeks at a time, they're celebrating and they're going berserk because this is the only time they have.
	To go berserk and be a kid.
	This doesn't really happen to home-educating families because they have all the time they want to be children and to explore, and they're not going back into any kind of capsule or any kind of prison.
	And also, Stefan, and this is important, the reason why these relationships are strained over the weekends and during the summer and parents are like, well, what do I do?
	Get my kids out of here!
	It's because they don't know each other.
	The parents don't know the kids and the kids don't know the parents.
	They don't know each other.
	There's no relationship there.
	They don't know how to get along with each other.
	They don't understand each other's personality.
	They don't understand each other's nuances.
	And it gets even worse when they're teenagers because teenagers are kind of weird to begin with.
	But when you know them, it's not so bad because you already know who they are.
	And more importantly, they know you.
	It's so important for your kids to get to know who you are beyond just the lady that puts dinner on the table and even if you can manage that.
	That's why these relationships are strained.
	So I try not to pass too much judgment when I hear parents say, oh, I can't wait for these kids to get out of here because I think they are stressed out.
	But the reason they're stressed out is because they don't know their kids.
	And maybe the kids are going berserk.
	But they're going berserk because they're going back into a prison in a few weeks.
	Spend some time with them.
	Keep them out of school.
	Be real.
	And I think it was excellent what you just brought up.
	That is very, very important.
	Maybe we should, you know, we say our kids are first.
	Let's put them first.
	Let's really make it a priority and put them first.
	And you know, it's the fun.
	It's not that hard.
	A lot of people say that too.
	I don't know how you do it, home education.
	Oh my gosh, isn't it stressful?
	It's really not.
	I think the people that are going through all that school and daycare and back and forth and who lost their shoe and I can't find my keys, that seems like a crazy life to me.
	I don't want that.
	I have a really fun life.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's right.
	I think you have to call something crazy when it's actually quite enviable.
	I mean, there's a great rhythm to waking up when you wake up.
	You know, we just came back, as we talked about before we started the show, I just did a speech in Vancouver, and we were there for a couple of days, so we switched over to Pacific time, and then this morning we all kind of got up around 10, which is sort of 7 o'clock.
	Pacific time and you know but we could sleep in I didn't have to get her up early didn't have to rush her somewhere that you know right before she leaves she spills some apple juice on her oh we gotta you know like that to me that is not good and and not just the stress even of the uh but the stress I think of separation you know if we're designed to be close with our children and then pulling that invisible umbilical all the way across town every day for eight or nine hours That is stressful in and of itself.
	I mean, and when you think about the minimum wage people often who are taking care of your kids, I mean, it's almost like, you know, it's almost like I could say it's an insult to your kids.
	Well, you see, mommy's too intelligent.
	Mommy and daddy are too intelligent, too ambitious and too smart.
	To take care of you.
	So I'm going to foist you off on some person who makes six bucks an hour, who's been there for three weeks.
	And, you know, that's really what what you are worth.
	That's really what you deserve.
	I mean, it's very disrespectful.
	That's a very good point.
	It's very disrespectful to kids.
	And it's very insulting.
	I'm a professional.
	So I'm too smart to take care of you.
	What kind of message does that send to your kid?
	You're telling your kid, you're not worthy of my time because I'm too smart.
	I'm superior.
	I mean, And the sad thing is that I'm a pretty smart guy.
	I swear to God, I spent half the day out argued by a three-year-old.
	Oh, yeah, I know.
	That happens.
	Like, I was, seriously, like, I was just, you know, I was singing around, whatever, singing, and Isabella said, you know, I didn't, I, Daddy, stop singing.
	You are singing.
	I don't like your singing.
	And I said, oh, you know, I like to sing and blah, blah, blah.
	And, you know, I'd really appreciate it if you just let me sing for a little bit or whatever, right?
	So I sang for a little bit more.
	And then she said, and my snake doesn't like your singing.
	She's a pet snake, a toy snake.
	And my snake doesn't like your singing either.
	And it's like, well, you know, I mean, that's really good.
	So she's, I can't say it, but my snake can say it or whatever, right?
	I mean, and how do I answer that?
	I mean, she's really quite good.
	So I don't know how much smarter do I need to be where I'm smarter than a three-year-old, you know, on a consistent basis.
	It's really not easy.
	So I would really challenge people to think that, you know, they have these denigrating ways.
	Oh, what you want to do is wipe up spit and change diapers and stuff.
	Like, that has anything to do with parenting, fundamentally.
	That's like saying that the entire purpose of getting a car is to change the oil.
	It's just something you have to do once in a while.
	But it's really, I find it a huge challenge and a very exciting challenge.
	And Not intellectually easy, but very exciting.
	You know, how can I get her interested in stuff that, you know, how can I? And another great challenge, Lorette, is how do I explain?
	I was showing her pictures of the universe today, you know, because they found this new particle and I was reading a magazine article and we were talking about it.
	And how do I explain the universe to a three-year-old in a way that makes sense?
	I mean, that is a huge challenge to translate these kinds of big concepts into something that's interesting and exciting to her.
	And so I find it very intellectually interesting.
	It's really stimulating to be a parent.
	I wish people could get that it's probably a lot easier to win a court case than it is to win a fundamental argument with a three-year-old.
	Oh yeah, but I don't think we're supposed to.
	I think they are supposed to win arguments because I think we're supposed to be learning just as much from them as they are from us.
	I think we're supposed to be on the journey together and learning together.
	And like you said, explaining the universe to a three-year-old, I actually believe on some level they probably have a deeper understanding of what the universe is than we do because I think it's been stolen from us.
	And I think that's why we struggle to communicate that and explain it because we just fumble around.
	We think we understand these things, but we don't understand these things.
	They don't try to explain it because I think they get it.
	But I have a question for you.
	I have a philosophical question for you.
	I'm curious to see your take on this.
	We talk about, during our conversation now, we talked about how it is natural for children to be with their parents.
	This is perfectly reasonable and perfectly natural.
	But most of mainstream society doesn't see it that way.
	And one of the arguments against home education is often, and I have literally heard these words verbatim, it is not healthy for a child to be with their parents.
	And I'm always stunned by that because I don't even understand the question.
	What is your take on that?
	Like why do you think people feel that it's actually more healthy for a child to spend more time with strangers?
	Now I'm not saying that the children could never spend any time with anybody else.
	Of course they can.
	I mean, my kids spend time with friends and family or whatever and that's fine.
	But most of their time is spent around the family and I have been criticized and told that that's unhealthy.
	Why?
	Well, I mean, it's crazy, in my opinion.
	I mean, and the fact that it's stated, and this is implicit, you know, because this is implicit, because people say, well, I'm happier when I'm working, and so my child will be happier if I'm happier.
	And that's something, of course, you should think about before you have a child.
	Yeah, because you're projecting your feelings onto them.
	Well, and, you know, if you're going to be happier not being a parent, then there's actually quite a simple solution to that, which is to not be a parent.
	I mean, that just seems...
	And also, you know, you can't hold the child's happiness hostage to your happiness.
	You've got to put things aside.
	But, you know, if the scenario of the general sort of weekday thing that we talked about, where you get maybe 15 minutes of quality time with your parents, with your kids a day, and I've actually heard statistics even worse than that, you know, that the average dad spends about 10 minutes a week Talking to his or her individual children.
	Sorry, his individual children.
	But let's just say that it's, you know, 20, 5% of your time is quality with your kids or whatever, then that's actually quite easy.
	Then the analogy would be that you say to someone, listen, you know, oh, Lorette, I'd really, let's get married.
	You know, you and me, we should get married.
	You know, we've been dating for five years.
	We love each other.
	Let's, you and I, get married.
	And you'd be like, maybe you'd say yes.
	You know, maybe you'd be drunk enough.
	You say yes.
	And then I'd say, okay, so the way it's going to work is, you see, I'm going to live in England and For 51 weeks out of every year.
	But on that 52nd week, maybe it'll be around Christmas or something, I'm going to fly to where you are and we're going to have a great week and then I'm going to pack up, I'm going to move to England again for the next 51 weeks and then I'll be back.
	And then you'll convince me that's healthier for me.
	Yeah, and then I'd say, well, because, you know, it's not healthy for a man and wife to be together, even though we'd have other friends and we'd have a social life and so on, but we can't be together.
	So you're not, you know, so that's how it's going to work.
	And if you feel lonely, what I'll do, you see, if you feel lonely, I will pay people $6 an hour to take you out for dinner.
	If that, you know, go to a movie or whatever it is that you feel like doing.
	And that's the way that our marriage is going to work.
	Well, you look at me like I've grown four extra heads and a disco ball attached to my nose.
	What kind of crazy-ass system of marriage would that be?
	No, if we're going to get married, we should live together.
	We'll have a social life, blah, blah, blah, blah, but we go to bed every night together and that's our life.
	But the way that modern parenting has become is literally like, you know, a week or two combined, right, in total with the kids and the rest of the time you're off doing other stuff.
	Or you're running errands dragging the kids along because you've had no time to do the errands because you've been off doing work or other stuff.
	And that's become normal to the point where people say, yeah, being married a week a year is, you know, being in proximity a week a year is just about right.
	And any more than that and, you know, it's crowding.
	I mean, that's what...
	It would be crazy if you'd suggest that for marriage, but that's what parenting in many ways has become and people just go with it because it's been this kind of incremental thing.
	It's the same idea, and not to go off on too much of a tangent, I know we're running out of time, but it's the same idea I'm thinking of co-sleeping when parents argue against co-sleeping and they say, well, it's not natural for your five-year-old to be in bed with you.
	And I would think, why?
	And they would say, well, then they won't get used to sleeping on their own.
	And I'd say, you know what?
	I have been with my husband for 20 years.
	And for 20 years, every night I have slept in the bed next to him.
	And I got used to feeling his body up against mine.
	And I got used to feeling his leg kick me in the back of my thigh.
	You know, I mean, even the nuances that aren't so pleasant.
	I've got used to the sound of his breathing.
	And I've just gotten used to that.
	To the point where if he ever has to go away on business for whatever reason, I have trouble falling asleep.
	That's okay.
	That's acceptable for me to get used to sleeping with another person in my bed.
	Why is it not okay for my five-year-old to be with me in the bed?
	And you know what?
	I used to say they'll grow out of it, they'll grow out of it.
	People say, what if they don't?
	And I would say, let me ask you something.
	Do you think my 16-year-old son is going to want to sleep with his mommy?
	I mean, they're going to grow out of it.
	Of course Of course they're going to grow out of it.
	And of course they did.
	And you know what's funny is I'm almost sad.
	But I don't make them sleep in the bed with me.
	But there are nights that I wake up and I'm like, oh, I miss my babies, you know.
	But I know that as a grown person, and I'm an adult, I've gotten used to sleeping next to my husband.
	And when he's not there, yes, I'm a little bit uncomfortable.
	So I think that's okay.
	Well, I mean, of course, way back in the day when there were wolves and bears and lions and tigers, oh my, I mean, of course children would sleep in close proximity to their parents.
	I mean, you didn't put your kid in another tree.
	Of course not, right?
	I mean, look at all the primates.
	There's nothing wrong with looking at primates.
	It doesn't mean we've got a fling poo all over the dinner table, but there's nothing wrong with looking at primates and saying this is kind of where we grew out of.
	And they like to all sleep together.
	So, yeah, I mean, my daughter sleeps in another room, but last night she had a dream and she didn't have a good dream, so she came.
	I left it up to them.
	If they wanted to sleep in their bed, that was fine.
	It was there.
	If they were more comfortable with us, that was fine.
	And all three of my kids were different.
	They all had different ways of sleeping.
	My daughter always liked to sleep on her own.
	She was bothered sleeping with other people.
	And even now, if she falls asleep next to me in my bed, like if we're together or whatever we're doing, because we can spend time at night because we don't need to get up at the crack of dawn.
	She'll usually wake up on her own and then go to her own bed and say, no this is annoying to me.
	But the point is that it's her choice.
	Right, right, right.
	And having those options, I think, is essential.
	So, listen, Lorette, let's make sure that...
	First of all, are you going to do an audiobook of this?
	I was just curious about that.
	I eventually will, yeah.
	My plan was to actually do an audiobook and release the audiobook at the same time as the e-book and the paperback, but I kind of guess in my mind I didn't realize...
	The undertaking that doing an audiobook really was, I kind of figured I'd turn on my microphone and just talk and there I am.
	But it's not that simple.
	So I'm actually going to be using outside of the studio.
	My studio here is kind of my office.
	It's in my house.
	I do this from home.
	But I'm going to use a professional recording studio and professional editing and do it that way.
	So it's going to be a number of months before the audiobook is out.
	For now, the e-book and the paperback are available though.
	Okay, so paperback and the e-book is all ready to roll.
	And just make sure, of course, you can go to Unplugged Mom, I assume, to get it.
	Yeah, if you go to unpluggedmom.com book, it's right there.
	And soon, if you do another one, you can add an S to that.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, I'm going to do Learning Curves.
	I'm going to do like a kind of, I talked to you out of school, now I'm going to help you.
	It's called Learning Curves.
	It's going to be like just helpful suggestions for parents that are getting started with self-education.
	Just kind of tips and tricks and ideas.
	Very simple, very non-challenging.
	Oh, fantastic.
	Yeah, we may avail ourselves of that.
	Yeah, so I mean, go get the book.
	I mean, how much is the Kindle or e-book edition?
	Well, it is an e-book edition and it's very simple to adapt to Kindle and that's $12.95 and then the e-book is $7.95.
	$7.95.
	Come on, that's a happy meal.
	Yeah.
	A happy meal and a juice.
	If you order the paperback, I will autograph it, so that's fine.
	But the e-book is instant.
	It's right there, $7.95, and it's yours.
	I should actually autograph, because I was in Vancouver, a bunch of people bought books as they did at Freedom Fest.
	I lick them, because what I want people to do is to have the ability to create clones of me at some point.
	You know, when the technology is sufficiently advanced that you can get in a home chemistry set, that way there can be lots of me's around.
	See, I'm only having one kid, that's sort of the plan, but I feel if I lick enough books, and people, if they buy the e-books, I'll actually even just lick their Kindle.
	A bunch of little mini-me's.
	Yeah, a bunch of little mini-me's.
	Trust me, I look pretty much the same as a baby as I do now.
	There's not been much of a transition.
	A few more teeth and bushier eyebrows, but really that's about it.
	But yeah, I just, you know, go buy it.
	I mean, obviously it's a great book.
	You know, you support a great lady who's doing fantastic work in waking people up.
	And yeah, it's a really, it's well written.
	It's passionately argued.
	I mean, I had to keep adjusting my sitting position when I was reading it because I had to jump.
	Ah, yes, good point.
	And so I would really just recommend it to everyone.
	And I'll, of course, put a link to it on this show so that people can click and buy.
	Thank you.
	You're welcome.
	And I guess we'll hold off for now then, and we'll look forward to doing a show again soon.
	Always a deep delight, and thank you.
	It is a real pleasure, and I hope we get to do more.
	I mean, as I'm a much more experienced parent than I am, certainly far more experienced in homeschooling.
	I mean, although, of course, homeschooling includes teaching them how to walk and take a bottle.
	Their education doesn't begin at five.
	It starts, well, actually before the exit of the womb.
	So I really appreciate your thoughts on parenting because you're further down the road with much more experience and, of course, experience with multiple kids.
	So it's hugely valuable for me.
	I think that the parenting conversations that I have are about the most important thing.
	I love all of the philosophy and economics and that stuff is great.
	But as far as really being able to build a better world and achieve virtue in the lives that we have, I'm not looking to overturn the Fed because that ain't going to happen.
	I really think that these conversations about parenting are where it's at and how the future is really going to get freed.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, I don't think it's going to happen either in my lifetime, but I think, like you, that parenting is where it's at.
	It's really important because if our children are free and their children are free and then their children are free, maybe then the Fed can be overturned.
	If we could produce a society of free people after a few generations of freedom, then maybe freedom will truly be achieved.
	So, you know, we've got to keep at it.
	All right.
	Well, thanks again, Lorette.
	And it's UnpluggedMom.com.
	And the name of the book is Don't Do Drugs, Stay Out of School.
	This is Stefan Wallinger from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Go get this lady's book.
	Have a great night, everyone.

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