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Feb. 9, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
52:05
2324 Dayna Martin and Philosophical Parenting

Stefan Molyneux, host Freedomain Radio, discusses philosophical parenting with Dayna Martin.

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Time Text
Hello, hello, Dana.
Martin is back on Free Domain Radio.
Welcome.
Great to have you back.
Thank you.
Great to be back.
Good.
So you were on, now this, Jeff Probst, how is it again?
Probst, okay.
You got Probst, which is not good.
But I saw your interview, you seemed very composed, very maternal, very centered, which is a very nice thing.
So what's it like?
I mean, I've been on sort of TV remotely and I did a little bit in Texas when I was down there.
For a libertarian convention, but how is it?
What is that experience like?
Well, we've done a few things with TV over the years.
We were on Dr.
Phil six years ago, speaking about unschooling, and that was really intense.
And we did Nightline.
Which was really different because they were here filming.
So live talk show was really intense.
But having Devin with me was really different.
I was able to relax a lot more.
And he was so calm.
It wasn't even a big deal to him.
So I kind of fed off of his calm energy.
And it was...
The beginning was tough because they had told me that they were going to be very positive and focus on the learning aspect.
And I had a really good feeling about it.
The producers were amazing to work with.
But once I sat down, the way he began, I think you could kind of tell by the look on my face, I'm like, where are we going with this?
Like, he started in with the no rules and all the sensationalized aspects of unschooling.
And I got a little nervous, but I quickly shifted the energy, I think, and turned it around, hopefully.
No, it was good.
And it's not too surprising to have the old bait and switch.
I remember I had such a bad bait and switch once, I just refused to go on.
It was sitting with me, you're on next.
Wait, wait, this isn't the topic we had discussed ahead of time, so I'm just not coming on your show.
So I'm glad that it wasn't that extreme.
So good for you.
And what sort of...
Does it feel surreal to be there?
I mean, it's these bright lights and these guys who seem to have monochrome complexions, lots of gel around.
What's it like?
Is it surreal?
Does it feel conversational?
How is it?
Well, it was really weird to go to makeup and, you know, have them do my hair and have them do my makeup in a way that I wasn't used to.
I didn't look like me when I looked in the mirror, so that was kind of a little strange out of my identity in a sense.
I walked in with my headband on like I have because it's just kind of what I wear and my hair like this.
And the first thing the lady said to me was, do you wear your hair like that all the time?
And I said, yeah, it's kind of my thing.
And she says, it looks awful.
You can't go out on stage like that.
No, no.
Tell me what you really think.
Any self-esteem I had was just like gone.
And the way she created me to look Hollywood, it was kind of weird.
But Jeff was great.
He was really calm.
Before we started filming, he looked at me and said, are you nervous?
And I said, a little bit.
And he said, don't be.
We're just going to hang out and have a conversation.
So he calmed me down pretty well.
Looking into the audience as I was speaking about unschooling, it felt really good.
The people were curious.
I felt...
I was really supported.
The audience was pretty small compared to the Dr.
Phil show, which was huge when we did that.
So it was great.
And what sort of prep went into the Dr.
Phil show when you were on?
I've always been sort of curious.
I watch it occasionally, and the behind-the-scenes stuff always seems, the prep stuff always seems kind of very interesting.
I'm sorry, you kind of cut out stuff.
Did you ask me about the experience with the Dr.
Phil show?
Yeah, what the preparation was like and how it all went.
It was so different.
We had no clue we were going to be on stage with Dr.
Phil.
They contacted us and asked if they could film us for 12 hours, a day in our life.
And we said, sure, come on over.
And it was great.
We had a great positive experience.
And they flew us out and told us that we would probably be in the front row in a really small part of the conversation of the great school debate.
And as they were doing my hair...
I overheard somebody say, the unschoolers are going to be on stage with Dr.
Phil, and I almost fainted.
They didn't tell us.
They wanted to catch us by surprise.
So that was really unexpected.
We had no preparation at all, and it was pretty scary.
So we did really well, though, I thought, despite Dr.
Phil's intense, you know, drilling us energy, but...
That was okay.
In the whole historical perspective of things, it was six years ago.
The world really wasn't ready for it.
It was kind of ahead of its time.
And I really think times are changing.
And so our experience with Jeff Probst was awesome.
People are ready to hear about alternatives.
And it was a completely positive experience in contrast to Dr.
Phil.
Yeah, the world has gone dark over public schools.
I mean, this is something that I'm still processing.
And I don't watch a lot of media because you just – you can't feel clean enough afterwards, with the exception of you on the Def Probe Show.
But the world seems to have gone pretty dark about public schooling.
When I was growing up, I remember there was lots of student activism.
Let's get these schools better.
Save our teachers.
SOT was one of the big things in Canada that I was working on when I was in junior high school.
And there was lots of debates in the public sphere about how to improve schools.
Are we going to do this with the curriculum?
Do that with the – Now, I mean, that debate is gone from the public sphere.
I mean, maybe it's different where you are, but it's just gone.
Nobody is talking about how to improve public schools anymore.
That's astounding.
I mean, shockingly, that's what we call progress in modern society.
When a topic goes dark, it means that people are ready for an alternative.
What are your thoughts?
Have you noticed that as well, or is that more just from where I am sitting?
Yeah, when I first started on this path of advocacy, it was all about school reform, and so much of the focus was on school reform.
People have dropped that altogether.
People have stopped trying to fix a broken system and have really looked in other directions.
So I love seeing that.
People are interested in alternative schools and all different methods of homeschooling in this day and age.
The resources are everywhere.
Schools are so old school.
It's like a caveman way to learn.
So people are just going to be using it as one choice in the future.
When I have grandkids, they'll be asking each other, oh, are you going to put your kids in school or homeschool or unschool?
It's going to be so the norm.
So I can totally see the progress already.
Yeah, it's really fast.
I mean, I think in America, probably it was the catastrophic failure of the No Child Left Behind Act probably had something to do with it or just the very entrenched nature of the unfireability of the teacher.
It's just a general sluggish jab-of-the-hut mess of the bureaucracy.
But people really don't think it can be changed anymore.
It's kind of cowardly, of course, for society to not process that and say, look, we've completely given up on changing schools.
They suck.
They're getting suckier every year.
We no longer believe we can reform them.
So now what?
But everything's just stasis.
It's just like, well, we can't change it.
We can't fix it.
We can't undo it.
Everything's just off the table.
What I'm trying to say is public schools have become Voldemort.
That which cannot be named.
It is a weird kind of progress, but I think it's still worth prodding to try and get people to actually talk about what it means that we're not talking about improving this mess anymore.
And it's really interesting.
So many unschooling mothers are teachers or were teachers in the system, and they saw how the system was so broken.
And so they're so interested in learning alternatives and theories, and so many friends of mine that are unschooling mothers were teachers.
And with the school shootings now, that's a whole other topic.
People are petrified to put their kids in school.
So some people are driven by fear.
I know that was my initial motivation to even look down a different path.
My son Devin was born, and like I told you before, Columbine happened within hours of his birth, which got me searching for other alternatives.
And since then, there's been so many school shootings.
And so that's really pushing along the whole progress as well, I think.
Yeah, Adam, but obviously they're the You know, the geysers of violence from the system as a whole, but I mean, the bullying seems pretty chronic, harassment and so on, and yeah, it is chilling to, you know, it's chilling as a whole just to see how much propaganda we get about how society cares about its young.
Oh, we do anything for our children.
Children are the future, we are the world.
And yeah, when it comes to actually attempting to confront and dismantle a completely broken and predatory system that, in a sense, really holds children hostage for the sake of benefits to adults.
We do seem to lose a little bit of our Mary Poppins aura and we just become kind of sneaky.
Yeah, I love feeling the shift just working with the media in the last six years and seeing the shift and how it's approached has been huge.
So times are changing.
We're right in the middle of the shift of it all.
And it's really exciting when you're on this end of it going, wow, I can see it from here.
I can see that people are contacting me that I never would have guessed would have contacted me for alternatives.
And what is this unschooling all about?
And not only when it comes to school, but when it comes to parenting, people are shifting from the whole focus on obedience and conformity and training their child to be You know, good little people that meet the parents' needs.
People are shifting to more understanding that children are people, too, and their needs matter just as much.
So, it's a shift of parenting and education in our culture right now.
Yeah.
I was reading Robin Grill's Parenting for a Peaceful World recently.
I actually had him on the show, and he's a great writer and great thinker.
And he was talking about Lloyd DeMoss from Psychohistory.com.
He says sort of the pinnacle of parenting is that which leads to the sort of democratic political model.
And he says that before that you have this kind of socializing parenting where you're trying to get children to conform to the parents' cultural expectations.
And there's some affection and some...
Comfort and some intimacy and so on, but basically it's like, well, okay, but you have to be Greek, you have to wear this, you have to go to this church, you have to do this stuff in society, and that's just not open for negotiation.
And then there's a stage beyond that which is much more consultative.
But I really think that there's parenting, the improvement of parenting seems to have no end.
And the idea, I think, that we can go beyond that to a really egalitarian form of parenting where you are a potential resource for your children.
To access, which is sort of the way that I view myself.
And I viewed myself as that when I was a boss in the entrepreneurial world as well.
And I think that people are ready to look beyond, I think, even what is considered to be good parenting in the here and now because I think there's so much further to go for most people.
Yeah, for sure.
You cut out a little bit, Stephan, for me.
I couldn't hear all of that.
Oh, sorry.
It's okay.
Let me ask you a question then, since I'll keep it brief.
What do you do as a parent with a child who's going through a no phase?
Going through a what phase?
A no phase.
No.
So, for instance, I like to go outdoors.
I'm an outdoorsy kind of guy.
My daughter is not such a fan of outdoors when it's cold.
And so I don't want to be like, we're going out.
Suit up!
We're going out.
I want to be consultative, but she says no.
And I sort of have trouble trying to figure out where to go from there.
Because I don't want to have my needs met at the expense of hers, but I also don't want to have her needs met at the expense of me getting some fresh air.
Well, what is leading up to the no?
What is she doing?
Is she in the middle of something when you're suggesting it?
I try to do it in the breaks between lunch and lunch.
But there's something that she wants to do, obviously, more than going outside.
Yeah, it's one of those situations, parenting this way is finding win-win situations and trying to say yes as much as possible.
Of course, our kids don't say yes to us as much as possible because they're not in that space yet to be able to be altruistic at your daughter's age.
So it's a matter of just problem solving and figuring out what she wants to do and finding a way to meet both of your needs.
Because I think a lot of people coming to this life, they know they don't want to be the traditional authoritarian parent.
Yet, they tend to not know what to do in its place, and so they tend to just meet their child's needs, and then their needs fall to the wayside.
So your need to go outside was just as valid as your daughter's need not to go outside.
So what did you do?
What have you done in that situation?
Well, I've obviously resorted to the pinnacle of parenting, which is to leave a trail of M&Ms out into a snowbank outside, because I feel that Sugar trails to my...
It's win-win.
I mean, it's obviously a lose for her liver, but it's win-win for her.
No.
I mean, we have encouraged her to go out, and the annoying thing is that when she does go out, she actually has a great time.
You know, we make snowmen, we climb and all that, make snow angels.
So she does have a great time when she goes out, but the next time it's just like, no, again.
And so it's...
I've tried to sort of negotiate and say, well, it's short or we'll have some hot chocolate when we come back in or something like that or something that she wants to do later.
We can do more of it if you come out.
But she really is just kind of a sticky bot that way, just when she gets the no.
I think finding a way to make it, what's in it for her?
That's what you have to look through her eyes and say...
What's in it for her?
You have to speak in such a way that it's going to meet a need of her.
So the M&M's is one way, for sure.
You know, focusing on something that she'd like to do outside instead of getting locked into that power struggle of you versus her.
No matter how gentle you approach it in your dialogue, energetically sometimes we get so frustrated as parents.
And with you being as connected and close with your daughter as you are, she senses that.
She senses that power struggle no matter what you're saying to her.
It's a matter of just breaking that pattern, especially if it's going on.
You said it's happened before and you ask again and she says no.
This is like a power struggle dance, no matter how subtle or gentle, that will dissipate once you just, you know, just relax yourself before you approach that situation.
I like to breathe and, you know, kind of see everything working out well.
Because sometimes I remember we had this issue going into the grocery store.
My son, Orion, who's five now, Didn't like to go to the grocery store.
And before we'd talk about it, I'd say to myself, oh gosh, this is going to be so hard.
I know what he's going to do.
The same thing he does every time I ask.
And that would inevitably lead to the same situation happening.
So once I started to just feel better before I approached the situation, it really did change things.
He was more able to, you know, focus on my needs too.
And so it's a matter of recreating this pattern that's happened with the two of you.
So it's more of a Jedi mind trick of coming in the lotus position kind of thing and being more relaxed about it.
I guess you could look at it that way.
You could look at it that way.
But what's in it for her?
Focusing on what you're going to do with her outside instead of, oh, I really want to go out, I have this need, and come on.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, I've certainly, you know, is there anything you'd like to do outside?
Or, you know, we could go visit the neighbors or, you know, play in the snow where you snow snowballs.
Yeah.
And I know that if she goes outside, you know, it's the only thing.
You know that when she goes outside, she's going to have fun because she does.
But I also understand that it's a big hassle for a four-year-old to get into her snowsuit.
You know, it is cold outside, so it can be a little...
And of course, you know, inside her toys and stuff she likes to make, crafts and so on and all that.
So I think it's hard to appeal to her greed for outside.
But yeah, after a while, I sort of feel like I'm living in a A giant space station.
You know, you can't go from the house to the car to the mall to the gymnastics to whatever, right?
I mean, it just can't actually get any air.
So, yeah, maybe I'll try and just ask her what the things are that she likes to do outside and see if we can appeal more to that.
But also don't judge the fact that she makes the best out of it once you're outside.
Is it being almost validating, pushing her to do something she doesn't want to do?
Because I was a child that hated to go to school, but once I was there, I made the best out of it.
Humans make the best out of these situations by nature, so that shouldn't be really something to go by.
If anything, maybe can your wife stay with her while you go outside?
If she really doesn't want to go outside, there's so many different alternatives you could get.
A teenager to come over and hang out with her while you go outside and find a way to meet her needs too.
So just because she's not kicking and screaming and hollering the whole time she's outside doesn't mean that it's okay.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
No, and I think that's a very fair point.
And I certainly have never made her go outside.
I mean, that's obviously something that I didn't force her and drag her.
You didn't drag her by her snow boots outside.
I understand.
I get it.
Absolutely not.
So no, I mean, it is just one of these things that I'm still trying to work on when there isn't something in it for her that she can perceive of ahead of time or be negotiated into, then it is kind of a stopping point, right?
Yeah, or maybe you can be the one that can be flexible and say, all right, well, just let me know when you're ready to go outside then.
If you need a few more minutes, I can find something else to do.
We'll do it in about half an hour.
I don't know what concept she has of time at her age and developmental stage, but is it okay to just stop and wait until she's in a better place and try again in half an hour or an hour?
It's a matter of...
Yeah, we've tried that.
She really doesn't.
I mean, in half an hour, she still doesn't want to...
So I think if inside is more fun for her than outside at this point, and she's still pretty young, so if we go skiing or tobogganing next year, it'll be more fun for her.
But it's a challenge because obviously I don't want to make her do stuff.
I want to respect her wishes.
But when her wishes are in perpetual, not perpetual, but repetitive occasional conflict, that does become a challenge because she's not...
Of course, at the point where she's going to say, Ah, yes, Father, I recognize that your needs are superseding mine, and I'm quite willing to sacrifice a few cells on my cheek to frostbite just so you can go out and get some fresh air.
I mean, she's not obviously at that place yet, so that is a challenge.
And I think it's one of the only things that is a conflict.
Most of the other stuff we can negotiate fine, but this getting outside thing is...
Yeah, it's hard.
And I think, you know, I think it is mostly for me.
She does seem to have some reasonably good time when she goes out.
But maybe I'll just go for a walk when my wife's home.
And, you know, obviously, if she wants to join me, that's fine.
But I think that's probably the best thing to do.
You're the one that can be flexible.
You have a lot of years of experience of being able to meet your own needs and shifting.
I think that's the important thing when we have children and we're walking this path is being the flexible one and just respecting it and saying, okay, you'll be so surprised when you do that repetitively, being really flexible and say, okay, we can stay in.
No big deal.
I'll wait till mom gets home.
You'll be so surprised with how in a week or two from now...
This phase will be over because it truly is just kind of a phase and kids change all the time so quickly.
And once you meet her need and you're respecting her need, she's going to be so much more apt to go outside and this will all be behind you.
So I would recommend having your wife stay in with her and see what she does, see what it changes.
Okay, you gobbled a little bit.
bit what i got was get a huge giant chocolate bunny and place it outside in the snow and go and hug it with your arms and your legs wrapped around it and eat its face that's what i got uh so um i'm sure that was the gist of what you were saying that would if that works sugar-based parenting is is the it's what happens when you don't have a time out right It's all carrot and no stick.
I was going to ask you about parenting.
Ooh, what was it going to be?
I'm sorry I didn't get a chance.
I tried a couple of different browsers to click on your son's appearance.
I couldn't find your son's appearance on the show.
It didn't work on the actual website for me and I tried to find it on YouTube and I couldn't.
But you say he did a great job of communicating on the Jeff Probst show?
Yeah, he did so great.
He was a little nervous once he got out there and he's looking at all these lights and camera guys.
What's behind the scenes is amazing.
What you're seeing on the actual show is just like a quarter of what's really happening in the environment when you're being filmed with a dozen camera people and lights and makeup people.
So it's a pretty intense experience.
It was his first time on live TV. He was a little nervous at first, but he relaxed and he did great.
He loved it.
He was one thing he said that I'll never forget and he had no plan before going on there.
We didn't know what he'd ask, what Jeff would ask Devin or anything.
And Jeff said, well, how do you know this is the right thing to do?
How do you know that not having a curriculum and just following your interests and passions every day is the right thing to do?
And Devin said, because I'm happy, because I love my life.
What other reason?
How could this not be the right thing to do?
And that answer almost made me cry right on stage, because really that's the epitome of everything.
People in our culture don't think of happiness as being of any value, and to us it really is.
So it was great to hear that he loved his life, and I knew he did, but to hear it, especially on national TV, was great.
Oh, that's a lovely thing to hear.
We're trying to just sort of work on the school, no school concept, and I've really been thinking a lot about my own experiences in school and the degree to which that leads me to not want to put my child in that environment, no matter what.
Public is not going to happen, but even private or whatever, because I was just thinking the other day about How much I learned in school for the sake of learning something in school.
You know, what is the purpose of learning this?
Well, we're going to get tested on it.
You know, that was sort of the essence of what was going on.
And I remember every time they'd show a film in the science class, the saddest question would be asked of the students, is this going to be on an exam?
Is this going to be on a test?
And if the teacher said no, it'd be like, woohoo, you know?
Great, I don't have to take any notes or whatever.
And...
I've really been thinking about the unschooling approach of you learn something to achieve a goal.
The goal is not to learn something to find out if you've learned it.
Again, I'm probably paraphrasing it quite badly, but knowledge is a means to an end.
And of course, I mean, I study all the time now.
Like tomorrow, I'm doing an interview with Warren Farrell, the author of The Myth of Male power and just an interview with a wonderful psychologist on the West Coast yesterday and getting up to speed on what they do and that makes sense.
It's because I'm doing it for a show because I really like to help get people's information out to the world who I think have great stuff to say.
So all of that is a real pleasure but all the stuff that I remember it Learning in school was for the sake of being tested whether I learned it.
And I honestly...
I mean, other than sort of reading and writing, which was done by the time I was five or six, I really can't...
You know, I did some math when I was in computer programming, but, you know, nothing hugely more sophisticated than percentages.
And I just...
Boy, the amount of years that I spent learning stuff that had no goal, had no end point...
And was never utilized, took up space in my brain and prevented me from doing other stuff that had a purpose.
It almost prevents you from almost thinking of knowledge as purpose-based but rather just exercise-based.
I don't know if that makes any sense but it's really been sort of thinking about that.
It makes perfect sense.
That's why I think unschooling is the most perfectly individualized education, because I don't believe that we're all meant to do the same thing in life.
And Devin was put on this planet, like my other children, to follow what they're interested in, to become experts in their own interests.
And they truly are.
I'm blown away with how Devin has surpassed me in knowledge about topics that interest him and that have true meaning to him.
He's a master.
He was a great craftsman.
He built a survival shelter out in the forest.
He was inspired by a program on television, Man vs.
Wild, and began researching, and he was intrigued, and so he jumped online for days from Googling to Wikipedia to YouTube videos and learned How to build a survival shelter.
And not only that, but he, oh my goodness, I took a picture of it actually.
I'll have to send it to you so you can see it.
I was blown away with it.
And he had the time.
That's the thing about unschooling that I love is children have the time to pursue these things and they're not living somebody else's agenda.
So much of what we learned in school was busy work.
It was given to us to keep us busy.
And it was just this...
Everybody learned the same thing from the same curriculum.
How on earth could, when did that idea come across as being normal or right?
We're not all meant to learn the same thing.
We're all meant to have individual skills.
So I know exactly what you're talking about.
And there's a big difference between memorizing and learning.
Much of what we did in school was memorization to pass something on a test and we forgot it a month later.
That's not true learning.
The term learning is thrown around in public schools or schools in general so much, but is it really learning or is it memorization?
There's a big difference.
Yeah, or what they used to call parroting.
You just learn the sounds or the shapes or the numbers or whatever.
You learn the process.
You don't learn critical thinking.
You just learn some particular...
You know, in algebra or whatever, functions and relations, vector calculus, and then you regurgitate it and then it's largely gone.
I remember having a conversation, oh man, what was this, 25 years ago?
I was working as a prospector in Gold Paner up north and I was working with some guys who were very well educated, some geologists and so on and we're all living in the bush and Smelling like bear.
And these guys were saying that, you know, they studied a huge amount of math in school as part of geology.
And I think the only one time they ever used this stuff was when they were pulling something radioactive out of the bowels of the earth and they needed to figure out.
When it was going to decay by the time it got to the top.
And they had to take one time.
We could have looked that up in 20 minutes.
That conversation really struck me when they were just thinking about everything that they'd learned that they never used.
It really is.
It's amazing.
It's like learning Japanese and never going to speak with anyone who learns Japanese.
I mean, it's...
It's so futile, and I think that's why school is just so fundamentally depressing.
I remember this as a kid, just thinking, why do I have to learn this?
Why can't I choose what I want to learn?
I can remember my mother saying something like that to her, and her saying, well, I had to do it, so you do too.
And your grandmother had to, so...
You know, I had to.
And then it's almost this legacy of torment that's passed down, that you almost have to suffer because you're the generations before you suffered.
And that's the reason.
And I was like, oh, okay, that doesn't really make sense.
But that's what they believe.
And yeah, I mean, think of all the things you could have been learning about, or any of us could have been learning about.
There's so much I wanted to learn about as a teen, the ocean, and I wanted to learn how to horseback ride and I loved baking and sewing and I wanted to design these really cool clothes for rock bands.
That was what I wanted to do and I was never ever able or allowed to pursue any of those interests because even when I wasn't in school everything was filled with homework every spare second and then the time where I didn't have to be living somebody else's agenda.
I wanted to just zone out and watch TV or listen to music.
So my entire childhood and teen years were robbed of me because of the institution of school.
And not only that, but I couldn't wait to graduate because once I turned 18, I didn't have to learn anymore, thank God, because I thought that was learning.
However, that's one thing about our children is we really need to model that learning never ends.
Learning doesn't end because we graduate or turn 18.
Learning is part of being human and it feels really good.
By nature, it's supposed to feel good to learn and grow.
So I've had to relearn how to learn since having kids.
And oh my gosh, I have so many interests now.
Every moment I'm awake, I'm learning something and growing and pursuing something.
And I love it.
I've relearned how to learn.
So our kids aren't going to have to go through all this.
They're just going to be learning and growing and surpassing us in so many ways because they have the freedom.
So it's wonderful.
Yeah, I... Sorry, you pushed the right button.
Yeah, it's okay, because I only have one.
But it's to do with this, you were saying, like your parents said, your mom said, well, I had to do it, and so you have to do it, and your grandmother had to do it.
But you try using that excuse when you're eight.
Why did you do that?
Well, everyone else was doing it.
Well, if everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too?
But you all have to go to school together and you all have to do what I did.
It's like, well, why do you guys have different morals?
Why have I got this high moral standard of individuation when I'm eight?
Like, if everyone jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge, I'm not supposed to.
But in everything else, I just have to go with the herd.
Anyway.
Our childhoods were like this giant hypocrisy on so many levels.
And thank goodness some of us are waking up and we're not going to do this to our kids.
So I feel so grateful that...
We're really learning.
And looking back on what it felt like to be a kid, I think that's so important to look back on those days and remember the feelings of being in school, the injustice of having to raise your hand to go to the bathroom, being forced to do things that you didn't want to do, being forced to cheat because that's not even in your nature, but you need to pass to get an A to be approved of.
Schools, what they're forcing are children to become bad people on so many levels and they wouldn't necessarily by nature.
I can remember cheating on a test.
I was put in this awesome college class.
I was so proud.
I was only in 11th grade and I was in this college level course called International Relations and I was considered gifted in that particular class.
I did not want to let down that teacher who thought I was so awesome.
I can remember cheating on a test for the first time And, oh, did I feel awful about myself because of that.
So you're forced to cheat, lie, steal, you know, when you're in that institution because there's just so many unrealistic expectations put upon you.
So that's something that I'm glad my children never have to go through either.
Yeah, you know, I remember cheating at a grade eight, a grammar test.
I just I hated grammar so much.
I really did.
I mean, I've never had a problem with grammar.
I write, but I just hated having to dissect a sentence.
To me, words were such beautiful things that it was like taking a machete to the Mona Lisa to dissect a sentence in the way that they said.
And I just hated it, never wanted to study, and then I ended up doing the test in the hallway.
I bet you this is going to come back to haunt me someday.
Someone's going to phone my school...
But I remember doing tests in the hallway, and they were marking the tests inside the class so I could hear everything.
And, you know, of course, I knew the teacher knew I wasn't interested in it, so I only gave myself like a 65 or something like that.
But, yeah, I just, you know, and when has that ever been a problem?
I mean, I don't...
When has grammar ever been a problem?
But we spent like months and months just dissecting sentences with various squiggles and lines and bops and drops.
And it was like, oh my god, when is this ever going to be of value to me?
Like, why don't they teach us how to actually express ourselves?
Why don't they teach us something about public speaking?
That's a fantastic skill to have or something like that.
No, we've got to, you know, Frankenstein up these beautiful sentences into their component parts and watch them die in little links.
Anyway, so yeah, it does.
It does end up with you having to do stuff.
I mean, to my credit, I never felt guilty about it for a moment because it's just such a silly system.
Well, that's good because I felt so guilty about it when I got the paper back and it was an A. I just, oh, I felt terrible for weeks after.
Wow, you cheated and gave yourself an A? That is some confident stuff right there.
If I'm cheating, it's because I'm not going to stick up and do the A thing because I'm just like, that's going to be too obvious for me, but good for you.
I put a lot of pressure on myself.
I'm a perfectionist, and I was then.
It was part of my personality.
And if I got less than an A, I'd just really beat myself up.
So it made me do things that I normally wouldn't do to get A's.
That sounds really bad.
I didn't go too, too far, but cheating.
I'll tell you, math is one thing I just want to talk about really briefly.
You're talking about parsing sentences and breaking them down and what a waste of time breaking apart the language was.
Math is so much the same way.
I can't tell you how much I hated math and these workbook pages and learning all these correct ways to proceed with math when, in fact, they were all so false.
Devin, there was a study recently.
I'll have to send it to you.
It was done saying that a 17-year-old can learn an entire high school career, actually an entire school career, 12 years of math in less than six weeks because their brain's ready, they're ready to absorb it.
All that time so wasted when if you just wait till the human being is developmentally and able to learn it, they just learn it all really easily.
And not only that, but Devin will...
We'll solve math problems in his head in ways that I never learned about or never comprehended.
Somebody was telling me, an unschooling mother recently, that she was talking to somebody else about all the different ways their children learn math, that there's so many different ways to solve math problems, and we're taught one way on paper, thinking it's the right way, and it's limiting our learning and closing us off from a lot of different options to solve problems.
So that's another negative thing I wanted to point out.
Yeah.
I think this brings us to another issue, which I think when people think of school, they think of the building that you send your kids to.
But I was talking to someone the other day who was saying that the ideal is 10 minutes of homework per grade.
So grade 6, they're doing an hour.
I guess grade 12, they're doing two or whatever.
And Boy, you know, talk about the withered undead hand of the state reaching into your very family table.
The amount of, I think, stress and friction and unhappiness and conflict and just negative emotional programming that goes on in families...
With homework, which has never, even within the status paradigm, has never been shown, as far as I know, to increase learning and to make people even better at the crappy stuff that school puts you through.
But it is so endemic to our culture that you have to just take this work home.
And so then it's like this zombie that follows you home.
You have to keep him and bring him in and Give them dinner.
The amount of conflict is just horrible.
What is the homework thing?
Can teachers not teach enough with the six or seven hours that they have?
Do you think it's just intrusive?
Is it just disruptive?
What the hell is the point?
I don't remember it being like that when I was a kid like it is now.
It's really intense now.
The pressure put upon kids.
I think it's so wrong the way our culture and schools view their role and families.
They put themselves before families.
I love that we can reprioritize all of this and put families first.
If you have a child in school, you literally have to ask permission to have time with your child.
You need to ask permission from the school before you go on vacation.
Everything comes before.
Homework comes before.
A birthday party.
Somebody just sent me a message saying, can you believe that I sent a note home, a note to my child's teacher saying that it's my daughter's birthday tomorrow.
Can she please be excused from homework because we're taking her out for her birthday?
And the teacher actually wrote back, homework comes first.
I'm sorry.
It's ridiculous.
Yeah, it's Stalin-esque.
It's like everything for the party.
It's so selfish.
It's so narcissistic of the institution to not even care about the needs of the school.
So in a sense, living this life of meeting everybody's needs and the family equally, we're really in a mini microcosm of what it should be.
The schools are so narcissistic in their approach.
And yeah, I'm so glad that we have nothing to do with ourselves.
I don't mind.
I like to talk about it and share about it.
But when I've done these interviews and these talks about it, we live life as though school doesn't exist.
It's not even part of our reality whatsoever.
Right, right.
Yeah, and I think the homework stuff, I just remember when I was a kid, I mean, I barely did any homework.
I just, I mean, my home life was pretty chaotic and I just, I just didn't, I was tired.
I didn't want to.
I didn't have anything to do with school once I got home.
I wanted to go do sports or learn how to program a computer or read books or something like that.
I just didn't want to grind my way through some pretty pointless stuff that I couldn't see the value in.
But it hung over me, you know, like, oh, the homework, the cloud, you know, just this general ogre that sits on your shoulder saying, not done, not done, not done.
There's kind of unease.
And it is horribly discriminatory as well, right?
So the kids who have, you know, stable homes with educated parents who are interested in their kids, well, homework kind of, quote, works for those kids.
But for the kids who are not in that situation, it's pretty...
It's pretty bad for the kids who don't have those kinds of advantages or the sort of stable middle class environment.
It's not really often talked about because school is supposed to be so egalitarian.
Everyone goes in and no matter where you come from, you all get the same instruction.
But if a significant amount of instruction occurs outside the school, then the home life is a big factor and it's no longer nearly as egalitarian once it spills over that way.
For sure.
And then once the child is labeled of not doing their homework and not being a good student, they carry that through their entire school career too.
And it may not even be their fault.
There's a lot of kids that go home and the parent's working full time and they're in charge of taking care of siblings, getting dinner on the table.
I can't even fathom the pressure that are on some of these kids.
And then going into school the next day with homework not done and getting the criticism and labels of being a problem child.
It's really, really unfair.
Or just hungry.
I mean, the hunger among kids in America is a pretty big problem.
Problem, and it's an increasing problem in Europe as well.
So it's another big issue that is a whole lot less egalitarian than it's portrayed.
Yeah, I agree.
Let me ask you this question, if you don't mind, because I've been asking this of my last couple of people who are in the field.
Do you think that the average child's life in America...
looking at sort of, let's just post-war, post-Second World War period, do you think that the average child's life in America is getting better or getting worse or staying about the same?
That's a good question.
I just think it's so different.
I think it's getting worse on some levels.
I mean, I think physically it's really Was challenging probably a long time ago compared to now.
And now it's like this emotional challenge that's huge.
The pressure put upon kids is really unrealistic.
I think kids are pushed to be adults so much sooner and children aren't allowed to have childhoods.
And that's just from a human development standpoint that's so damaging.
And you carry it around with you for the rest of your life.
So I think from an emotional standpoint, things are much harder now than they were.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I think...
I was reading this book by Philip Zambardo called The Demise of Guys where he talks about how in the past children were much more exposed to adults than they are in the present, right?
So there used to be about a 4 to 1 ratio of adult to child, you know, in an extended family, in a tribe, sort of in how we evolved.
But now children are mostly socializing with each other and the ratio is completely, it's more than reversed because you have like For the most part, one adult for 20, 25, 30, or 35 children throughout their school day and so on.
And their time with adults is vastly diminished.
So he quoted a statistic which said that the average boy consumes 13 hours of video games every week.
And upwards of...
I think it was twice that in terms of total media or whatever, right?
So 20, 25, 30 hours of media...
And yet, has less than 30 minutes conversation with his father every week.
How could that be?
That makes no sense to me.
Not that I'm disagreeing with that, but the pressure put upon kids in schools and homework, how do they have 25 hours to play video games?
I don't see that in the average child's time frame.
However, maybe they're staying up all night to play.
Age segregation in itself is so unnatural.
To put children all in their same age group all day, every day in a brick building is really damaging.
It's stunting learning.
It's stunting growth.
I love that our kids have friends based on common interests.
That's much more natural to connect with other people as opposed to just because of the same age.
In fact, some schools are punishing kids for socializing with another grade, which I think is ridiculous.
Things are getting worse and worse.
I love that people have a choice now and are really learning about this.
Much the same happened in the whole birthing movement.
When birth moved to the hospital, it was really a lot similar.
Hospitals were getting really afraid of getting sued and liability came into play.
So they enforced all these interventions to try to prevent it, yet all these interventions caused so many problems.
And the same thing is happening in schools right now.
The pendulum is swinging the other way.
People are seeing the problems and people are making more informed choices.
Yeah, I think in some ways, childhoods are getting better.
I think that physical punishment seems to be on the way out in certain sectors of society and so on.
But I think that kids, it's a bit Lord of the Flies for kids.
I just don't think that for most kids where parents are working and they're in school, that there's a lot of adult coaching.
That I think is necessary for good social development within kids.
But yeah, so in some ways I think it's getting better.
And certainly, of course, the kids and infants in daycare and stuff I think is a throwback to like French practices of the 15th century with wet nursing and stuff.
I mean, it's just wretched as far as that goes.
But certainly the kids seem to be getting smarter every generation.
That's something I take into account.
My daughter may not be smarter than me now, though sometimes it feels like she is, but she sure is going to outstrip me soon.
And that's something that keeps you humble as a parent.
Two other things I'd just like to mention.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, and our goal is happiness.
That's so important too.
Not only, you know, smarts are definitely valued in our culture, but happiness.
Is your child happy?
I don't think many people ask that of children.
And children need love.
You're talking about the father not being around maybe for an hour a day.
Humans need love as much as they need air.
And without a loving parent there, who's there to nurture that side of a human being?
So there's so many factors that come into play with the way that things are for kids now and It makes me really sad that thinking about these children with only seeing one parent for an hour a day.
Yeah, actually, well, for the boys, it was 30 minutes a week of conversation with their fathers, which I think was just, again, these are the quotes that he's got.
But two other things to mention.
The first is that I hear, I hear, rumor has it, rumor has it that you were on a reality television show.
I wonder if you could mention a little bit about that before we finish off the conversation with the unschooling conference.
Sure, sure.
Our family and I, we got a call one night at 10 at night, and they said, this is ABC, and we're wondering if you want to be on the show Wife Swap.
And we discussed it with our children.
I said, well, I really need to talk it over with my kids, and I need to give them the full scope so they can make an informed decision, because unless our whole family's on board, it's not something that we're comfortable doing.
The kids were really excited about it, and once we talked about it, we worked with ABC for months.
It was a very long process, and we filmed this October, and It was two weeks of filming.
I was flown out.
I can't really say where.
You'll find out soon when the show airs next month.
But yeah, we did do the show and it was a really positive experience on my end of it.
However, not so much on this end of it.
And you'll see why.
I see my children, especially Devin's reaction to extreme control.
And what happens to a child?
I think it's going to be amazing.
See, I haven't even seen it, that side of it, so I can't wait to see, but I've heard a lot.
The incredible contrast to a child who has total freedom and respect and then having the tables turned.
So it's going to be quite an experiment to see, for sure.
Must have been happy to see you coming back up the driveway after two weeks.
Freedom!
Free at last!
Thank God Almighty!
It was so amazing for my kids to experience because we've been...
Advocates for this life and we talk about these things and they see what goes on, but to really experience firsthand another human being, a mother who parents extremely differently, focused on obedience and not meeting the children's needs, they have true appreciation for their lives now in a way that they didn't.
We weren't even really aware of before, so it was an amazing experience.
We would do it again, our whole family, and it was great.
So I can't wait to see how, I mean, there's 150 hours of video footage cut down to 20 minutes per each side, each family.
So it's going to be pretty incredible, but the one thing I loved more than anything was that you're with a crew of 15 people with you all the time.
You don't ever see these people, but They were blown away, honestly, with this whole perspective of parenting.
And if anything, these guys, these are young 20-something guys.
Most of them aren't married and don't have families yet.
We're so inspired by seeing our kids.
And they just about cried hugging us leaving, saying this changed our lives to witness this kind of paradigm, this partnership paradigm, and this whole approach to learning.
So we're told it's going to be a groundbreaking show.
And I can't wait to see it.
I think it's going to mean really big things for the movement.
So I'm really grateful.
It's part of my own personal philosophy as an advocate to take the opportunities that come my way without fear and always with pride and just living my authentic truth.
And that's what we did with the show.
So you have to tune in.
I absolutely will with rabid attention.
It sounds like a completely fascinating and does have, of course, the classic elements of drama to hopefully make it go viral.
Trust me, there was plenty of drama.
You get to see me do some crazy stuff and, yeah, you'll laugh at me.
Put it that way.
So, Life Rocks, the conference, THE conference in Texas in August.
Perhaps we could just mention a little bit about that and lure people out again with the aforementioned M&M trail.
People out to give us some details about that conference.
Sure, sure.
Well, I run two conferences.
One is in New Hampshire this April, the first week of April.
It's called the Life Rocks Conference.
And then I run a conference at the end of August, the last week of August, and it's called the Rethinking Everything Conference.
And I have the pleasure of you speaking.
At that event, and then we'll meet for the first time there.
I'm really excited about that.
So, yeah, the Rethinking Everything website will be up next month.
But if you visit danamartin.com, D-A-Y-N-A-M-A-R-T-I-N.com, and keep checking back, or you could find me on Facebook, you'll see the updates when the website's ready, and you could read all the details about it.
We're looking forward to having you.
Yeah, I'm hugely looking forward to it.
I think it's going to be very, very exciting.
I'm looking forward to meeting this community.
I know there's some overlaps with the libertarian community and so on, but it's a very different community from ones I've experienced in the past, and I think that's just a fantastic thing, so I'm hugely looking forward to it.
Yeah, I think there's something really interesting happening, Stefan.
I was recommended to connect with you, and I have a friend who is An anarchist.
And he said, you've got to get into this community.
I mean, they're living this life in a different way.
They're living freedom in different levels.
And I think these two communities need to merge together and really learn about each other.
And so he really encouraged me to connect with You know, with anarchists and this kind of mindset.
And I was nervous because I said, I don't know how much I know.
Like, I don't really pay attention to politics, to be honest with you.
I don't vote.
I totally stay.
It's not a part of my reality.
And so my first interview with you, I was nervous.
I said, oh, God, don't let him ask me anything about, you know, I felt like that kid in school on the back row, ducking down, praying you didn't, like, ask, you know, call on me.
In the meantime, though, I've learned so much from you and from other people who are walking the path that you are.
And I'm so excited.
This is a first at any kind of unschooling conference to have this message that you're bringing brought.
And people are excited and anticipating you're speaking and introducing this whole community to your whole mindset.
So you're welcome with open arms.
Well, thanks.
And if it's any consolation, bringing the non-aggression principle to the family structure in the libertarian and anarchist community is an exciting challenge.
Yeah, let's call it an exciting challenge because the communities, because they have yet to and probably never will achieve political power, they work a lot in the abstract.
I'm very much a tangible, calloused, hands-on empiricist.
So if you have values, the first place that you start is at home.
The first place that you start is in the areas that you can have some control over.
That is not the foreign policy.
That is not the money printing policies of the Federal Reserve.
That is not the policies of the Democratic or the Republican parties.
That is the relationships that you have in your life.
That's where you can really It's a bit of a shock, I think, for people.
And the work that I've done in that has caused some...
Some problems for people because when you profess a value system and then somebody says, ah, you know you can do all of this in the life that you have?
People can be a little shocked because I think one of the ways in which our tendency towards peace is neutralized is we are infected almost with the idea that it has to be global, that it has to be huge, that it has to be big.
But I've always loved that slogan of the environmental movement, right?
That think globally, act locally.
And yes, let's think in the biggest abstractions and the greatest and most universal virtues, but let's actually practice all of this stuff together.
And I think that's where the unschooling and homeschooling communities is way ahead of many of the people who talk about it a lot more in the abstract.
Yeah, the people that I've connected with since doing your first show have introduced me to so much, and it's really different to work one-on-one.
Very different community than what I'm used to, but I'm loving it.
I'm loving the learning.
It's like this whole new wonderful focus for me to connect with you all.
So thank you so much for having me on.
I feel really honored, so I appreciate it.
Well, it is my pleasure, and it is always...
It is always humbling to come up against somebody who is further ahead in a sphere that I have believed I have some expertise in.
So, that is always a deep and abiding pleasure.
So, danamartin.com.
We'll be, of course, meeting up in August.
I'm doing your conference before, tootling off to Libertopia in San Diego.
Thank you so much for the time.
Oh, thank you so much for your feedback.
Thank you for the work that you're doing.
To bring the word out.
And I'm hugely looking forward to meeting you and your family.
And I'm just completely thrilled that my family is coming too.
So I'm sure we'll talk to you before then, but I look forward to seeing you in August.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Take care.
Thanks.
Take care.
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