Why the School System is Failing our Youth | Home Education and what to do instead

well this is how it must look because we've always done it this way so I'm sure there were some experts back here at some point right that developed like this is what human development needs there were experts but they were experts on how to break a human system because this Prussian system designed for Mass obedience in the times of the Industrial Revolution the most damaging part of a conveyor belt school system is that we are teaching the young people they are not to be trusted you are only allowed to really speak to for the majority of the day people of your own data manufacturer if I'm six I'm only around other six-year-olds I'm going to stand in my straight line I'm going to raise my hand and ask permission for anything and everything for years on end including I'm going to ask another human being even though I'm 18. if I can go to the bathroom I'm learning to be blindly obedient to anybody who claims to be an authority this is your assignment this is what you're going to do if you obey well I'll give you an a if you go outside the box on this you're not going to get the arbitrary letter grade that I'm going to give you okay sounds good I'm working on it ding Bell Rings move on to the next part of the conveyor belt whether you're enjoying what you're doing or not it doesn't matter right it's this Industrial Revolution model based on authoritarianism that builds that mindset into the young Heroes you leave there going I don't know anything about me but I know how to obey I know how to follow directions tell me what to somebody tell me what to do next and there's this old saying it's like a bird's born in a cage thing flying is an illness the last 150 years or so has been this social experiment of schooling and so what happens for a lot of parents too is they even if they see this from an intellectual standpoint and they try to leave they fly out of the cage there's still this emotional tie to what everybody else is doing and what they've already known foreign that was Matt Boudreau provocative thought leader in educational and personal development practices he's a two-time featured tedx speaker and was named corporate trainer of the year at Stanford University with an extensive qualification list he not only has been both a public and private school teacher and administrator he's also a keynote speaker consultant and Coach to organizations around the world with clients who have ranged from Wells Fargo and Honeywell to American Eagle and the United States Air Force in 2017 Matt Boudreau founded Acton Academy Placer schools that emphasized on self-direction and cultivating confident independent young people with a strong sense of character and personal responsibility he is changing the game in education today and has since helped to open multiple campuses around the world as a husband and father his life and family drives him to be the best example he can be for his children who are watching him I cannot wait for you to hear our conversation I could have gone on for hours with this guy and I'm so glad I was able to get him on the podcast welcome to the Ellen Fisher podcast welcome into the podcast I'm at I am so excited for this conversation and thank you for being here I am honored it's been a been a long time coming so it's gonna be fun yeah there's so much I want to talk about and I just want to jump right in and ask you what do you believe is the purpose of Education isn't that a great question yeah what should education be for you know and I talk about that a lot because people don't ask that question you're not asked that question when you go to become a teacher you're not asked that question as a parent you're not asked that question as a student that's it so my personal question and or my personal answer that and I believe it is a very personal question right when you ask somebody what should education be for what you're asking is what should education be for for you for your goals for who you are designed to be and what you want to accomplish all right so education for me is really it comes down to sovereignty if you're taking a look at the roots of of the words education and you know EduCare means to to draw out you want to draw out the unique the abilities of that specific individual but there's also you know you want to scaffold the the awareness the self-confidence the um you know the understanding how to build the life that person wants to so ultimately it comes back to sovereignty and freedom to be who you want to be to do the things you want to do and how do you think that differs from our modern education system today and it's gracious it's the antithesis you know and it I always I always like to preface these kind of conversations with the understanding that I I am on the side of good human beings who are teachers and administrators in our modern system and when I say modern system I don't just mean Public Schools I also mean private schools because private schools are modeled very much after the the public school system if you're a good human in those systems I am on your side I love you I thank you I appreciate you I want nothing but the best for you I think you need to be there because those systems aren't going away and there are some young people the reality is you're going to be the best human beings they're going to meet because they go home and the humans that are raising them are not quite as as uh intentional not quite as loving right so I want those people there my beef is always with the system itself so you asked how is that different well the difference is the system that we utilize is a system of schooling schooling and education aren't the same if education is for sovereignty and drawing out that unique ability and being able to scaffold a life that you want to live well it's the antithesis because schooling says everybody do the same thing at the same time in this very narrow uh scheme of Academia that doesn't really necessarily transfer over to anything else in life it's not a system that is easily transferable and I always tell people it's like you know you go for 12 years every day to learn how to play checkers and then all of a sudden you graduate and everybody's like okay cool here's your basketball go shoot a three-pointer and you're like wait I've been playing checkers for 12 years right it's well like yeah but they're both games okay but they're very different games that require very different skill sets and they have very different rules so being good at school and and we know this being good at school does not necessarily mean you're good at life some people are good at school and then they go out and they crush it but I would say it's in spite of not because of because you and I both know people that didn't do well in school but they're phenomenally successful they're wildly happy they're very intentional about their life we also know people who got the Straight A's and are miserable and have you know the success hasn't transferred over right so that's my problem with it is it's actually the antithesis of what education should be first of all I'm so glad that you brought up teachers and affirming the good teachers the good people that are in our education system because I think a lot of times people hear criticism of the education system and assume it that means that there's criticism of just all the teachers lumping everyone together when really that's not what you're talking about so yeah so I'm so glad you brought that up at the beginning of this conversation and then secondly when you're talking about our education system and the difference between what you think education should be versus what our modern system is um a lot of times it feels like education is meant to be for how to get a job not how to be successful in life and when you say success in life some people think well that means when you get a good job that's success in life but success in life is um could mean a lot of different things and it's right not just to that so it's a personal question right success for me looks very different than success for you because we're different people there's some things that cross over for sure and if you ask parents and I've had the opportunity and again I've been a public school teacher I've been a public school administrator I've been a private school teacher a private school administrator I worked at Stanford I've worked with universities all over the world I know the game inside now and if you talk to parents and you say hey what are you you want for your young Heroes when they get older there is a somewhat of a baseline answer right but the Baseline answer is I want them to be happy I want them to be healthy I want to be productive I want them to have good relationships you know I want them to be somewhat Sovereign I want them to spend every day excited I want those are the Baseline answers nobody says I want them to be wildly proficient at Algebra 2 when they're you know that's never the answer right so those are the baselines so when you understand that that's the Baseline you go crap well how do you make sure that you have that for every person it's a really tough thing to say well there's a standardized process when life is anything but standard your you know our backgrounds are anything but standard right it's almost impossible to really make that to make that happen yeah because school is kind of set up like our modern system is set up to kind of for one type of learner as well and I look at that the way my sister my sister and I grew up because like you said some people didn't do well in school but are successful in life I would consider myself one of those people I wasn't horrible at school but I wasn't great at it I hated test taking I had to study so hard for it and then just as soon as I finished the test it was in one year out the other didn't absorb any of it yeah right well and you're talking about earlier getting a job right and like that's the ultimate like that's the end-all be-all that's the goal so my career in public speaking and when I say career in public speaking there's a lot of people who uh you know they say speaker uh or because they've done some Keynotes and that's fantastic I actually for many many years was doing 60 to 70 Keynotes a year for the largest corporations in the country so I actually had a career and this was while I was building these schools so the reason I was working with these organizations so they were asking me to come in because they were saying they were hiring all of these Harvard and Stanford and MIT and these graduates there really really really really smart really smart they're really good at school and they're going oh but we kind of want to fire all of them because they're not really good at work they're not really good at resilience they're not really good at right so even the grades to job the employers are going okay this isn't working either so they're getting the job but again it's not transferring over and so you've got that experience it's the same thing some people did really really well at school I I did really well at school I'm not that smart I got the game I understood the game I understood the pattern very early so I got my Straight A's and then I got done at school and went crap I don't know who I am I don't know what I'm good at actually I I really don't somebody please give me a job right and it there's so many people that fall in that Spectrum you know and none of that is what you would call efficient or effective by any stretch yeah and growing up my like I was saying my sister is actually was actually really good at school and yeah and seeing us comparing it was like why is it such a struggle for me I mean I'm I'm saying it a little bit bigger than it was I was not a like a really bad student it was just that I had to work a lot harder for it I was like a b and sometimes a student and my sister could just get A's without even studying it was just came really naturally to her and so growing up there's also that comparison factor with kids like why is it that you know my sister's having an easier time and I'm not so I think all of that comes into play in his really relevant discussion that so many people are forgetting to discuss when it comes to our education so true and again there's the natural component right because you're a wildly intelligent human being I don't know about that you know but that's the best thing is I do know about that because and I agree with you know we talked offline before we started we were talking about John Taylor Gotto and one of the things that John said was that he had come to realize that that genius was as common as dirt hmm and I believe that wholeheartedly I believe that and genius has a weird we have this weird connotation in society where we think that this is okay if you could label somebody a genius well that means they're Ultra academic and they know everything all the time well nobody knows everything all the time nobody knows one percent of one percent of one percent of all the things there are to know in the world right but there's a capability that is there there is a potential that is there and it's a unique capability and potential that can really go forward and make big waves can really go forward and change the world you just have to find out what that unique genius is for each person and so again we're talking about this very very very narrow game of school that some people are inherently going to be good at just like some people are going to naturally be better football players than others but just because you know um I'm here my brother's here we're same household he's really good at football I'm not and then we go uh I guess that means he's going to be successful at life what it's not the same game yeah it's not the same quick little break for our sponsor bite the best toothpaste on the market that once you try it you'll never want to go back 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the best toothpaste I've ever used bike makes plastic free alternatives for everything on your bathroom sink from toothpaste mouthwash toothbrushes and deodorant so you can cut out the harsh chemicals and plastic waste without compromise and bite is offering our listeners 20 off your first order go to trybite.com Ellen or use the code Ellen at checkout to claim this deal that's t-r-y-b-i-t-e.com slash Ellen so what would be in your mind how you would change our modern education system let's say you had that ability to do that what would you make it what would you do to make it different well and I love that question and some people will agree with a lot of what I say and there's people obviously that will probably disagree with certain components and I think that's great I think these are the kind of conversations you need to have and we need to understand that civil discourses uh wildly valuable if we're ever going to actually make progress now uh the one cave you got before I answer this too is understanding that uh government School government schooling is not going to go anywhere it's not going to change um you know I've had so many people say okay well how do we change this we won't there's too much money power politics to keep things the way that it is it's too big of a clunky machine there's not going to be any real change there but what there is a there are a lot of entrepreneurs mompreneurs dadpreneurs who are stepping outside and going okay then let's build something different So my answer to how is really around the how it's actually being done right now building something different including the schools that I built you know I had all that experience in the public and private sector but I had my own young Heroes who were growing up and my oldest I'm looking at her going I can't send you to these places I just can't and it's not a Sheltering thing it's a I know this isn't real education thing so I had to build something different and I've now partnered with entrepreneurs around the world to do this very thing so um it's a multi-faceted approach one thing that we've done that's been wildly successful is I mentioned civil discourse we utilize the Socratic method and the reason we do so is because we want to stoke the Flames of curiosity we want to make sure that Curiosity does not die in a Traditional School System curiosity is snuffed out on average by about the age of eight kids come in super fired up they're ready to go they're super creative and that just gets crushed out of the habit of schooling by the time the rate they're like all right well I'm just playing this game and and I'm either going to play it well or I'm not or you know whatever that looks like right so the Socratic method we want people to understand we want young Heroes to understand how to think not what to think how to think how to articulate what it is they believe and why they believe it to provide evidence like what does a good conversation look like what are the rules of engagement on a good conversation how do I listen to somebody else's point of view and go okay I'd love to hear your evidence and why you think that and then they can have that that you know they can share that back and forth and at the end of it they can go okay we agree on this we disagree on this and hey by the way we can still be friends right like that's such an important component of success no matter what because at the end of the day Ellen you and your husband don't agree on a hundred percent of the things 100 of the time you're probably the closest person to you right so what you just pack it up and call like that's ridiculous you know you come together on the things and you and I would be the same way we could find a lot we agree on we'll find a lot we disagree on that doesn't take away from the fact that I think you're a really cool person and I like to be your friend like that totally so so that civil discourse and the Socratic method uh is wildly important uh as a foundational pillar another foundational pillar is uh learning to set one's own goals so we don't you know on our campuses we don't issue Academia altogether we just go okay we don't put it on a pedestal we want you to have different ways to tackle certain Concepts not just the Rope memorization and regurgitation how does this apply to the real world can we give you like a little mini project that exemplifies this more than just I'm gonna you know uh repeat repeat after you kind of thing but I learned to set my own goals around that I learned to go okay by the end of the week I want to accomplish this so I become more Purpose Driven because I'm starting to and I get some awareness too of what I'm actually capable of accomplishing in a short amount of time so individualized goals matter collaborative goals matter around experiences so we put together big experiences big exposure experiences and let people collaborate to try to figure out how to solve real problems together and the exposure piece is again to let people have a true sense of self-awareness because they've actually tried a number of different things you know the analogy that I use for this is if you've only ever grown up eating five different foods right and we have like five different subjects in school as if Life Works in subjects which it doesn't but we have these five different subjects right so yeah if you only had five different foods and I said to you Ellen what's your favorite food you're like um it's this one right or or maybe if you're crazy or like oh I like to combine these two okay but if you've grown up eating a buffet and you've been exposed to all different foods from all different then you are actually making a choice it's an informed Choice and then you can start to really get creative because you're like oh if I take a little of this and a little of this right and so it's the same thing we want to expose them to all kinds of different concepts we want to expose them to all kinds of different problems all kinds of different theories all kinds and we do that in a collaborative nature uh then we give them massive amounts of responsibility that's another thing and it's to me the most damaging part of a conveyor belt school system is that we are teaching the young people they are not to be trusted um can you elaborate on that like explain it a little bit more you bet you are only allowed to uh really speak to for the majority of the day people live your own data manufacturer right like if I'm six I'm only around other six-year-olds so true right if I'm 12 I hang out with 12 year olds I automatically get to look down on the youngers I automatically have to Revere the odors but then I'm going to stand in my straight line I'm going to raise my hand and ask permission for anything and everything for years on end including I'm going to ask another human being even though I'm 18. if I can go to the bathroom that human being might go no and I go okay all right I'm learning to be blindly obedient to anybody who claims to be an authority I am this is your assignment this is what you're gonna do you're if you obey well I'll give you an a if you go outside the box on this you're not going to get the the arbitrary letter grade that I'm going to give you okay sounds good I'm working on it ding Bell Rings move on to the next part of the conveyor belt whether you're enjoying what you're doing or not it doesn't matter right it's this Industrial Revolution model based on authoritarianism that builds that mindset into the young Heroes you leave there going I don't know anything about me but I know how to obey I know how to follow directions tell me what to somebody tell me what to do next and we wonder why when the government or whoever claims to be Authority goes look this is what you're going to do and this is when you're going to do it people go yep you got it sure whatever you say right that's a big problem so we want young Heroes to have massive amounts of personal responsibility and that comes on our campuses in many forms whether it's teaching other young Heroes that you're working with whether it is taking on a job on campus it's cleaning up you know the bathrooms at the end of the day it's becoming the chef at school and you're cooking the food for everybody whatever that looks like you're taking on massive responsibility and you're also starting businesses you're taking on internships you're taking on apprenticeships you're doing hard things early so that you see you're not fragile and so you're building self-confidence in that way too because self-confidence doesn't come through affirmations right affirmations have to be tied to something otherwise you don't actually even believe it so you've got to actually do some hard things and stack some victories there so that you can go back on that so it's yeah it's a multi-faceted approach to how you scaffold that but we think all of those things are are valuable pillars and we've had a lot of really good success with that that's amazing and I think it's very important like you brought up about just thinking we have to do whatever we're told and losing our power basically because you've said something before about how this this statement that we like to say that we want to raise critical thinkers and we want to help people our children to grow up independent yet the actions that we're we're doing to help them is actually the opposite of that can you elaborate on that a little more yeah that's exactly right so it's the it's that walking contradiction and it's the lack of transferability right so I think anything you're doing I think there's a lot of power when things are uh transferable but there's a lot of power though what I mean by transferable is and I use the sports analogies um I use Sports analogies a lot but there's a concept in sports of of like squaring up your hips and and having a little bit of flexion in your knees and kind of this ready position right in that ready position you're ready to go tackle the guy in football you're ready to field the ground ball in baseball you're ready to play defense in basketball you're right it's a transferable thing right there's a lot of skills that should be transfer barely any of the schools are School skills are transferable to to anything else because what you're doing is You're Building these habits and theoretically these habits are supposed to transfer into okay now I know how to be a self-sufficient human being well when your habits are thinking no no you're telling me what to do you're telling me to regurgitate the information there's a very specific thing I'm supposed to regurgitate back there's a very specific time I'm supposed to do this everybody does this specific thing at this specific time you are stripping the individuality away from that person for 12 years straight and then releasing him or her into the world and saying now go be an individual yeah it is nothing like what it's actually nothing yeah it's so true and I think a lot of people have never even asked the question what is the purpose of Education because we're just told this is what education is it's these five subjects and no one has really thought well what about all these other things that are just as important if not more important to have a happy life a fulfilled life a life where you can communicate well with other people like you said going back to that civil discourse thing that should be a core important aspect of everyone's lives growing up because so many people grow up not knowing how to have conversations with people that they disagree with and getting tense about it feeling like I can't speak to you yeah so much about that and I think a lot of times people might think well all those other things about how to be a good human or self-reliant human that's what what your parents are supposed to do and then education is just specific subjects what would you have to say to that yeah that's and that's great parents should be leading by example a hundred percent they should but if you have to go somewhere else to learn quote-unquote subjects when we already know life doesn't work in subjects what about statistics that show uh you know maybe a home educated young person who can go from when they're ready developmentally speaking when they go from uh just really starting to mess with numbers until wildly proficient in algebra and that takes about a hundred total hours total wow it doesn't take eight years it doesn't take nine years so what are we actually doing for that long yeah and and again school was not designed by if this was the 12-year plan and all this kind of stuff was what was going to make and the Academia Focus if that was what was going to make strong citizens well we've got like 92 percent of our population has gone through this system do we have a whole bunch of educated happy well-rounded productive human but we don't now I'm not saying it's just school's fault but I'm you know it's a multi-faceted thing but man you would think we'd have so much more success so um you know especially with how much time that we spend in school like there's so much time because at home if you're homeschooling you can get that amount of work done at such a shorter period of time and then you have the rest of the day to fulfill all these other important aspects of raising healthy happy humans for sure and again the academic focus of it is like yeah does some Academia matter yeah a little bit but it's very very little and to think that it needs direct instruction at a very specific time it's a cult mentality we've been raised into and I you know I asked people we did this kind of like a little interview on the street for this TV series that I shot that's going to come out relatively soon and and um people like okay yeah but I have to say I'm not a teacher so I have to send them somewhere so they learn this I'm like oh that's great where did you send them to learn how to walk you're like well I didn't send them anywhere right so they were just at home with you how did you teach well I didn't teach them so they just naturally what you did was you encouraged the natural trajectory that included failure you encourage them to try something to fail at it and to keep going they fell when they tried to walk you went yay and they went oh okay cool well guess what learning how to read learning how to do any kind of math that actually matters and shows up in day-to-day life including things like budgeting and you know spending and all those kind it's the same thing it's the same process so if that's the case what are we doing for so long so again it goes back to what should education be for and why does school look the way it did and I love that we've been talking about John Taylor gato because teachers are not given his materials when you go to get your teaching credential and it's because if you were given his materials a lot of the teachers would leave can you explain for the people listening who don't know who John Taylor Gotto is who he is and what you like about him yeah the man was a legend so he passed away a couple of years ago um he is a an absolute National Treasure that almost nobody has ever heard of um so John was a phenomenal teacher in the public school system in fact he was a New York state teacher of the year uh multiple times so this man was in the the game for over 30 years uh his resignation letter went viral uh because he started talking about how he could no longer hurt children and not in a physical sense he was talking about the system of schooling so John is from my money the foremost historian for why School looks the way it does in terms of the system why do we start at a very early age why do we segregate based on on age why do we segregate schools based on class why do we have subjects why do we have the processes and he brings it back to this historical narrative around this being a Prussian military a lot of people think like oh well this is how it must look because we've always done it this way so I'm sure there were some experts back here at some point right that developed like this is what human development needs there were experts but they were experts on how to break a human system they were experts on how to break a mentality so is this Prussian system designed for Mass obedience in the in the times of the Industrial Revolution and if you go read John's work he is far more articulate than I am as far as that goes and he breaks it down better than anybody it was meant to make you a Slave period that's the problem it is meant to make you a slave and there's this old saying it's uh and I think I even sent you this in the voice message last night but it's like a bird's born in a cage think flying is an illness we're born at this point into the cult mentality of schooling we forget that for all of humanity we learned by being at home together pursuing the purpose of whatever the purpose was for our family and we just learned by doing that's how we've always learned throughout Humanity the last 150 years or so has been this social experiment of schooling and the problem is well there's nobody older than 150 right now that can tell us like nah man this is the way it used to be right so you're reward into this cage and so what happens for a lot of parents too is they even if they see this from an intellectual standpoint and they try to leave they fly out of the cage there's still this emotional tie to what everybody else is doing and what they've already known and they're like oh oh it is just like if somebody was to leave a cult and they're like oh but I think I'm still still supposed to do the sacrifice over here right still thinking right to try to bring the cult back because they can't quite emotionally let go of it that's where we are with school in this country it's the biggest cult we have well it's something that like humans tend to do in a lot of different ways that if a majority of people are doing something they like well I guess I gotta do it there's so many um visual experiments that they've done where you're sitting in an office and everyone else is doing this very bizarre thing like standing up every time they hear a bell and then they sit down but they have no idea why everyone's doing it and then they just start doing it yeah that's right so that's that's the important factor it's critical thinking that's right it's like the and it's in it yeah I mean critical thinking enough to actually make you know critical thinking is one part of that but then there's also the self-confidence and self awareness to avoid social Conformity when it doesn't make any sense yeah right that's a whole extra level of Courage that you also have to develop and scaffold in right you say yeah I've seen those kind of experiments the um you know you've got the the whole and it's not even just humans you got the whole like crabs in a bucket you know they're in there and they won't let the other crab get out they'll pull the crab back in because it's like you're gonna Escape nope not you we're gonna pull you back in right um you know monkeys doing the same thing when they're getting sprayed going to get bananas and they're they're not like it's a it's a weird thing that's baked into us that we have to really think our way out of totally and can you expand a little bit more about why our modern education system became what it is today like the history of why did it why was it created this way this model yeah so I you know I always defer to John's work on this because he will explain it better so I'm going to give you kind of the rudimentary you know sort of explanation in the real thirty thousand foot nuts and bolts but go go read what he has to say about it but um the reality was we're on the precipice of the Industrial Revolution and there was a lot of uh there was a there's a multifaceted thing but there was a lot of money to be made in the industrial revolution if we could get a lot of people to automate the system through you know getting all these Factory workers they need to be smart enough to obey and follow instructions but not necessarily uh think for themselves they needed to be made uh comfortable and shown that hey if you just come conform life is going to be okay and we are going to take care of you and so there were a lot of people that stood to make a lot of money around that the Rockefellers being one John Rockefeller put in what nowadays would be the equivalent of about one and a half billion dollars into the system and he said his words not mine people get mad at me when I say these things his words we want a nation of workers not thinkers they just wanted obedience and so there was a giant push to make it so that the you know there was just Mass obedience but it also started this whole chain uh this whole chain of of issues where we wanted more more and more obedient people let's start splitting up the the the natural family um there was this entire element of how do we control a population well if you make it mandatory you require the young people of the nation to go into your religion your training system for multiple hours a day for years on end not only will they not break out of that religion when they get older they will turn around have kids of their own and feel compelled to put them right back into that religion and that's why no matter what I said at the beginning Alan about the true my True Heart of I care about good teachers and administrators some of them will still listen to this and they'll still be mad at me they won't go research the they won't go research anything they'll say oh Matt's against us they won't actually hear what I'm saying but there are still also yes that's true and then there are also some teachers who really feel you and are like I totally agree with you I feel like there's so many issues and I'm just doing my best to hold it together and help the kids oh yes yes I talk to them all day every day all day I talk to teachers and administrators from all over every single day who are saying exactly that and some of them are going some of them are going I'm out I can't do it anymore some of them are going oh my gosh I still I just have to hold on because you know retirement is eight years away I talked to an administrator from Pennsylvania this morning who's like dude I'm nine years away from retirement I just have to hold on all of this is spot on you know I mean yes that's that's real and a lot of people a lot of teachers have these amazing um ideas on how to help kids grow but they feel tied down to the system so they're just doing the best that they can so what yeah so what are some things that you think our current modern system is doing right is there anything that they're doing well you know the the best things aren't even the things it's the people you know we get a lot of there's a lot of uh focus and understandably and rightfully so on some of the woke agenda kind of nonsense that gets thrown in schools and I I agree like that's not okay and there are some people that have you know less than uh honorable intentions for for being where they are doing what they do yes those people exist the majority and again I was in that system I have a lot of friends still in that system there are a lot of really good humans who are leading by example nothing to do with the subjects they're teaching they care and they show love and they lead by example because they're having civil discourse because they're excited because they're coming with a smile they're coming right that's the biggest and best thing uh that that we do um you know and then some schools depending on where you are you know I mean they do provide uh they do provide various Outlets the sports programs are are great and sports are something that I think is actually wildly underrated in terms of things that are helping our young Heroes so you've got you know programs bits and pieces here and there but to me it's like you know it's almost like okay yeah I'm gonna eat my broccoli but I'm also gonna you know drink this poison it doesn't cancel it out so you still have the bad habits that are being created there but you do have some of those shining lights but the majority of it is the people man totally so why do you think people are so afraid of customizing their own education like why do people believe we should put that in the hands of our government is it just because of like the Conformity factor or is there anything else oh it's a conditioning thing but it's the human nature is such that freedom scares people because freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin so if you really want to be free you really want to be Sovereign there's a massive level up in the amount of responsibility that you have to take on so that level of responsibility is scary to to humans in general that's the reality it's easier it's why um so many people are like ah be healthy that's easier if you say there's a pill I can take I'd rather take the pill right it's not think about exercise I love what Gary vaynerchuk uh says and we had him on the podcast a while back and we were talking to him about it and says look everybody knows how to work everybody knows how to be in shape everybody knows how to be healthy eat eat good food and you work out like everybody knows that but it's the responsibility of actually doing that day in and day out where people walk right so education all education is self-education I actually can't teach anybody anything they have to grasp it they have to own it they have to decide to incorporate that into their into their life I can point to the Horizon I can try to inspire uh you know I can try to give you some information but ultimately the end of the day Ellen's got to receive it take it implement it act upon it to make it a reality so freedom is the same way you've got to grasp that and all of the responsibility that comes along with that that scares the hell out of people yeah and the leading by example thing is so under like underappreciated people aren't thinking about that near as much as it should be because that's related to even parenting um the way that we raise our kids we can teach our kids try to tell them what to do but it's really what we're doing that's going to affect them the most Bingo yeah I always say like your kids will do what you do before they do what you say and they there's a massive if they see a massive disconnect between you say if you're like hey honey you can be anything you want to be you can do anything you want to do chase your dreams and then simultaneously they're hearing you say like oh what was me money doesn't grow on trees I'm so upset oh your father drives me nuts I hate my job God it's Monday oh thank God it's Friday can't wait for the win there's a disconnect there and even if they don't consciously get it subconsciously they see it and it erodes trust for between you and and your child but it also just makes them not necessarily believe that what you're saying is true so they start to embrace that and like ah well life's gonna kind of suck a little bit totally and that's the bigger picture things you're talking about and then it also comes down to the individual things we're telling them like don't yell when your brother does this don't yell at them but then you're yelling at them for yelling we don't hit yeah exactly yes it's that yeah exactly it's called it's called contradiction all right it's called it's called being a hypocrite yeah uh we can't we can't do it but it's really hard for parents to like see even what they're doing sometimes because you think it's different I'm I'm parenting my kids I I have to do this to teach them but then your children start acting in the same way that you're acting and you see your father or your husband in them and you see you in them and you start it's like a huge mirror reflecting onto you that's exactly what it is I love the way you said that it is a huge mirror that's exactly what it is and people um you know I'm always quick to make sure I say this too because there's no such thing as a perfect parent there is not no and I've made you know just as many mistakes as anybody else has on this right there's no such thing as a perfect parent but I do believe we should always strive to be the perfect parent and I think that's okay to strive to really get it right and to knock it out of the park because we only have them for a short amount of time and the way you parent them is a gift that keeps on giving for the rest of their life yeah right so you want to try to do it as well as you possibly can or you're going to screw some stuff up of course you are but let's do it the best you know to the best of our ability but I'm very very thankful because I always I get uh the question very often how do you discipline your kids when people meet my kids because they meet them and they go okay there's something different they're very self-confident they're very self-assured they're very at peace they're very articulate they're very friendly there's a joy that comes off of them that is not what you normally see for an 11 a nine and a six year old there's a confidence that comes off of them that you don't normally see so they go how do you discipline your kids and I love it when I get that question because I always tell them I don't discipline my kids I have taught them how to be a disciplined human being and that's a very different thing and it starts with me being a disciplined human being it starts with my wife being a disciplined human being it starts with us being very very intentional about who we are how we're going to pursue our purpose how we're going to lead this family and bringing our young Heroes along with us totally I love that and I want to read something that you've said online before which I think is just incredible and I want people to hear it he said at the end of the day your kids will have watched you live or they will have watched you exist your intentionality around remaining inspired tackling challenges with Grace remaining calm in chaos and spreading positivity will be noticed or it will be missed be noticed I thought that was so good such a good reminder for people um and just in regards to the the whole parenting education thing is all tied in together and I love that you talk about both yes ma'am it is the same thing it's one and the same they're not separate you know and thank you for that and even with that you know when I'm you know I say something like that and and I don't always dive into the comments because you never know what was going on over there I try to answer as much as I can and help um as much as I can but even with that you know somebody's like okay yeah easy for you to say but I get that a lot a lot I actually get that a lot too I think anything you do yeah I think anyone anybody who speaks boldly about anything is going to get that because it's very triggering for a lot of people and instead of realizing that the trigger is actually some something to notice that is going on with inside them instead of focusing it and putting it out on the person who said the thing that made them feel triggered Bingo man that's exactly right yeah and they it's that that uh that emotion gets drawn out so I don't you know I never take it personally when somebody comes back and it's just like what I don't take it personally at all and and if anything I just feel empathetic I'm like man I wish you could get up you know and I there's a part of me too that wants to come back and go okay cool well I grew up in an abusive household I was also homeless for a while I was also right um in order to build all these schools and to provide for the families that we actually uh took a pay cut went from six figures to 30 grand a year when we had our you know our first kid and I went a seven year stretch where I didn't take a single day off but yeah easy for me to say you know I there's a part of me that still wants to come back with that I know but yeah it does no good um it's understanding exactly what you just said man that doesn't have to be a personal thing that is their own thing and I I genuinely want people to find six of the people that come back and they're like easy free I genuinely want that person to find success or I've had people come back later and go hey I got pissed at you a couple years ago but now this but now this but now this thanks for at least being honest you know yeah that's awesome I've definitely gotten that to some emails before and it's just it's really heartwarming because you really just are trying to um put out information that hopefully can Inspire and maybe make people think a little bit a little bit about something they never thought about before and there's kind of two kinds of people that you often see either someone that can take some information that they're not doing it but they see that and you can be inspired by it or you can see information and then just internalize it start criticizing yourself and and just going Inward and feeling I could never be that I could never do that but then all that goes back to education and the way that we raise our kids because we want to raise them to be inspired to be go-getters to not take things personally to be critical thinkers to be able to communicate well all those things to me seem more important than like you said algebra yes ma'am because then you can you know you learn that resilience you learn um you know what's a lifestyle is an anti you're anti-fragile right at that point yeah learn right how to learn you learn how to learn once you understand how to learn and you understand that you have the ability to learn anything you need to learn and just as importantly you understand that you're okay unlearning something that's no longer relevant you learn to let those things go when you have those two things you have a superpower that's going to last you the rest of your life that's wildly important right and that's not to say like you said like I said about algebra it's not to say that algebra is an important or we shouldn't learn that or we shouldn't teach that to our kids but what you're saying about the ability to learn the ability to be inspired and excited to learn that is going to set them up for Success long term to be able to learn whatever excites them that's right that's exactly it and whatever is relevant to to them you know I tell people you know I have people uh come back while I'm an engineer and I use calculus every day awesome you need it then good for you like that's great then go get it I got an A in calculus right now I couldn't pass anything past basic algebra if you gave me a standardized test on anything I could maybe pass an algebra test yeah and that's about it but I know I could go back and teach myself how to do all that stuff if I needed to for some reason right it's just not germane to my specific goals and purposes yeah again it's personal and that's why with homeschooling I think a beauty of it is that you get to tackle all those subjects to get them the wide range of things that they could figure out what they're most excited about as they get older and what they're good at but then you also have more time to be able to do all these other things that you're mentioning before and what makes an excellent education that's right and you get to audit your own you get to audit your own kids too because it's not you know I have three I have three young Heroes all three of them have the same dad but they also have a different dad right they have a different Dad too because all three of them need something different from me they're all very different humans so they need me to show up in different ways and support them in different ways because they're three different people so you know we get to do that as a parent uh and and have that level of intentionality and it's it's pretty awesome you know and we've got um you know I have a group of families from around the world that I lead through through home education and so you know I'll provide resources every month but more importantly than just the resources we jump on you know we have a daily interaction through a platform we jump on uh q a calls every single week so that we can just talk through how's everybody doing you know and what's going on uh in this last week you know one of the um moms who came on and and she just they just joined the just joined this group they've been uh in public schools for a number of years she goes just in these last two weeks I realized I don't I don't actually know my kids I knew the you know I got a couple hours a day and I knew the version of them that was post school and I knew the version of them that showed up on the weekends but they were on the weekends getting ready to go back to school I didn't actually know them and that was powerful I wanted to know I wanna know I know my kids inside and out mm-hmm I know what they're think I could look at them and I know what they're thinking yeah because I'm paying attention to them so hard yep you know and that's the level of intentionality that I personally want as a father okay so two questions stemming from that going back to that reel that I shared when I was having a chat with my sister and I shared a quote that you had said triggered a lot of people people were really upset by it I know that you and I had talked a little bit about that um for those listing that don't know what I'm talking about I shared a quote that you said about how people feel like they don't they're not qualified to educate their own children so they send them back to that same system to educate their children unqualified yes exactly and you mentioned this earlier in the conversation so what is your response to someone who would say well it's different because there's a difference between learning something and learning how to teach something and so basically the criticism was teachers are different but I mean I want you to share your thoughts but I also want to share one thing to me my initial thought is well if that was the the only prerequis requisite for being a good teacher then that means anybody who went to school to become a teacher would be a good teacher but that's not the truth because not everyone who becomes a teacher are good teachers that doesn't mean none of them are but not all of them so it's more than that but I would love to hear what you would have to say exactly right I mean I've had teachers again I've run schools I've built schools I've had teachers that work for me that had phds in education and they couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag because they didn't actually care about young people they didn't act you know that it was uh teaching is more of a DNA thing educating truly educating it's more of a DNA thing than it is even a skill set because you have to love the individual you have to love people in general and then you have to be showing and walking alongside somebody through a process not barking in order at them that's a very different thing and so you know and yeah you're right people got very upset and triggered by that but a lot of the comments were well he's not a teacher he doesn't they didn't know that they just didn't know it's my whole career yeah I'm actually you know yeah I was a uh you know I feel like I'm a good uh teacher coach Mentor but it's it has nothing to do with a specific skill set I'm willing to go hey Ellen let's you and I walk along this journey together and figure that out right that's what good education actually looks like is that it's the willingness to go side by side with you and go explore together not for me to give all of my answers to you and bark a bunch of information by the way Google can do that yeah we have so much information at our fingertips now that we didn't have before we have so many types of ways to uh have curriculums if we want to have curriculums within our education to help that's right teach us how to teach our children and all of it is together but I also think when I look back at my own education growing up it wasn't the teachers that necessarily knew how to quote unquote teach me something that made a good teacher it was the passion it was that the teacher was passionate and excited to teach and grow with us that that is what made a good teacher that's what makes a good teacher and if you and again all education comes back to self-education so if you can you can have the most excited I can have the most excited person in the world who loves the cello more than anything and is so passionate and and is like Matt I am going to teach you how to play the cello I'm so excited about this look and they're passionate and they're funny and they're engaging and they're awesome humans I could have that person and I will appreciate their passion I will love to watch them in their element I am so like there's no part of me that wants to learn to play an instrument there's just is not I just I've got zero desire I will fight it tooth and nail and their passion is not going to convince me to do it so there's that other element too right of like all education is self-education the receiver has to be excited as well so with that being the case then really it goes back to that DNA part the good educator is the one who looks at who the individual is too and goes okay how can I Stoke their curiosity how can I maintain that how can I audit them to the point where I know what they're thinking and I can ask them the question that's going to make them go oh my gosh and light up and get inspired yeah right so always and forever parents are the number one educator in their kids lives and there's not even close to a second place if the parents doing it right cool so I'd love for you to expand a little bit more for people who feel concerned or worried that they won't be able to be good Educators and how they can help educate and walk alongside them their children if they choose to homeschool like what specific ways but before you answer that question a little tangent something you said about music uh it reminds me of growing up how my mom put me in piano class I did it for a short while but then I didn't feel like going so my mom said okay she's not interested you don't have to keep going but as an adult I kind of look back at that and almost wish that my mom nudged me to keep going in some things not like I had to do everything but she was very very much like that like oh if your child's not interested like okay you don't need to do it but looking back I kind of wish that I learned some of those skills of certain things that would be harder or take longer to learn as an adult that I wish I would have learned younger so do you feel like there's a balance at all with like if your child expresses interest in a certain thing like a muse certain uh music aspect or sports or something else what's your rule of thumb for that with kids like as they're getting older like oh Mom I don't want to do this anymore dad I don't want to do this are you like all right they're not interested or do you kind of nudge them to keep going yeah that's a really good question and I think that's a really nuanced um it's got to be a nuanced answer and I don't think there's a blanket statement here so um commitment matters I still think that matters and if somebody is truly interested in their showing interest and you know with my son's like hey I want to go play t-ball and um I want to go try okay cool you're going to play and you're gonna finish the season like if you can't be probably through the season and say well I'm not interested anymore because sometimes what happens is they're not interested right that second and they because they're just tired or they want to go play they know you'll give them another option that sounds better at that point and so they're pulling the trigger on you to allow you to go oh okay well then you go ahead and go do this right so a lot of times when our young people are saying they're not interested in Summits because we have given them Alternatives um that sound better in the moment too right so are you aware of those kind of things because one of the things that I talk about for parents is look my young I think young people need massive amounts of responsibility as there's always chores to be done and things they can do and things they can tackle and take on and I think they also need to be uh really protected from distractions that aren't wildly beneficial so if you've got a young person that's got a lot of responsibility does not have a lot of distractions you're gonna see what almost seems like an inhuman level of commitment to some of these other bigger ideals where it's like oh yeah I want to tackle that and you'll know if there's a genuine interest or it's a feigned interest and you'll you'll know if they've got other distractions that they're really trying to manipulate you to get back to again you will know all of this if you pay attention to them so what would be some examples of distractions besides like video games or TV so video games are huge distractions uh TV is a huge distraction um the if I'm honest those are probably the two biggest distractions for for most people right the the tablets the electronics like currently those are the biggest distractions for young people um I also you know it's not necessarily falls under distractions but when I talk about this with parents I talk about medications and all that kind of being a distraction too because it distracts them from who they really are too and puts them in this weird state so if that's a whole another conversation that parents get very upset at me about but yeah you know it's another thing but those electronics are some of the biggest some of the biggest distractions uh so far so let's see before I have that other question there's so many things I want to talk about I know get back to that get back to that but about the um the video games that's a big one especially for boys huge super big so what are your thoughts on how you manage something like that do you have like a strict no video games in the house or do you have like a healthy amount aspect what are your thoughts on all that yeah I am not a huge fan of video games period And this is another thing that gets people very very upset about well you can build a you can you can have a a great life as a video game designer you could yes you can you bet yeah you bet it's gonna be a rare exception to the role it's going to be very rare yeah for sure and if but you know what if you want to give them something where they're jumping on game star mechanic or whatever it is where they want to learn to build out a specific game yeah you want to put a certain amount of time around that and just have a time frame cool man Go Get It Go Get It yeah like let's see if that Designer if really what they're after is the designer part of it they want to create like great go for it 99.9 percent of the time that's not the case right now video games are works of art especially now they are phenomenally done they're they're wonderfully done and they're meant to suck you in what happens for our young men and again I'm not just the old guy with the white beard that's anti video game like that's not it I work with young people and I've worked with thousands at this point I can tell you especially for young men there is a DNA component for being a young man and hey by the way I was a young man as well right so there's a DNA component where you want to go on an adventure you want to go conquer something you want to go save the princess you want to go slay the dragon you want like that's wired into us that we want to express it it's why we want to go play sports we want to get outside we want to we want the adventure what happens for too many young men as all of a sudden the adventure is in this box and we're checking off all of that DNA component inside of us but we're doing it in a virtual world that doesn't actually transfer to anything good so then when we're outside in the real world it's just the noise is turned down by comparison totally don't want to go get after our Drive goes down because man I can go get all my dopamine over here I don't actually have to go even talk to the pretty girl anymore and and potentially get rejected I can just you know I can just do this here swipe this way or that way whatever way you're supposed to swipe right like I can do everything virtual everything gets turned into that and so it really has been killing the drive for a lot of our young men so I'm just not a huge fan in general yeah personally can people will go my son that's where he learns he socializes he leads he great man go get I'm not telling you how to parent that's fine but there is a difference between socializing via headphones and actually having to look somebody in the eye and interact there is a difference between leading leading somebody on a mission in Call of Duty versus leading in a public setting at a in a sports game where now I'm shooting free throws to win the game or lose the game and everybody else is around me my failure is public or my success is public there's a there's just a different level of stakes it's not an Apples to Apples comparison um so you know I I worry about it a little bit because again based on experience I've had so many young men who have told me this firsthand yep I 100 feel you and I am actually having a conversation with Chris McKenna next week I don't know if you know who he is but he has um protect young eyes I'm interviewing him next week for the podcast on um kids and social media um and all that getting on screens too early totally 100 on board with you I feel like a lot of people listening and watching right now might be in the same position as maybe I am where you have the same thoughts about what you're saying but they also are around other kids and friends who have video games and you also don't want to be like no you can't play video games ever you don't ever get you know so you're like what's the healthy balance and the way that we have it in our family right now is um like working for like it's like a a short reward at the end of the day after you accomplish all your other things well that's good right yeah it is it is the freedom gets handled or responsibility gets handled first and then you get freedom and it's always that order right so that's I you know I always try to express to young people that responsibility again responsibility and freedom are linked the more freedom you want well if that moved up responsibilities got to move up as well right because they are linked together you've got the more freedom you want the more responsibility you've got to take and responsibility always comes first and it's such a good thing to teach kids that it's so good to teach them like to get everything done check everything off your list that you know you need to get done for the day and then you can relax and do you know the little thing that you want to do and then you can do the things you want to do yeah that's exactly right that's exactly right and then if you find yourself whether you're a young person whether you're an older person you're a full-grown adult you're whatever you find yourself in a spot where you're complaining about something you wish you had or wish you could do or wish you well that is your your you know trigger to understand cool I'm gonna have to level up on the responsibility first and and maybe let the freedom you know the freedom piece slide for a little bit so that I can get to that next level of whatever that looks like I think that's a healthy way to go about it yeah and not um over exposing like picking very specific types of games that are you know gentler on the mind you know Kinder games and also short periods of time rather than long periods of time yeah that's kind of our rule of thumb but I it's such a fascinating topic because it's one of those things where you don't want to be the one that your kid goes up and goes my mom didn't ever let me ever do this this or this in the name of quote unquote protecting me but you also want to have find healthy balances yeah for sure and that you know it's I I agree 100 and it's that it comes down to the intentionality you know and I I don't worry about my young my my young Heroes really being like Oh dad never let me whatever because they're so busy kicking ass yeah that's not you know what I mean like it's not even necessarily it's not even necessarily a draw because they're so busy doing something that they're not looking backwards at whatever is over there and I'm guessing does that have a lot to do with what you're providing them and this goes back to education for parents they're like okay well how do I do this I don't feel confident I was raised in the regular system like what would you suggest for them to set their kids up for that to where they feel totally inspired and excited to go after and learn throughout the day all day that's yeah so is the parent excited to go after and learn all day every day yeah that's where it starts I wake up every day I am Purpose Driven I've got a mission I am wildly curious I know I'm going to learn some things I know I'm going to talk to some amazing people I know I'm going to have something that's kind of hard and I'm gonna have to get through it like I know all those things are there and I'm excited and I'm taking my kids along with me right so we are meeting as a unit it's almost like this business sort of structure where it's like cool man what do you have today what do you have today what do you have today we all have our list our purpose like all right man let's get after and like then let's check in and see how everybody's doing I mean we run it almost like a um you know it's really this tight military unit or business operation I mean we are all like let's go um and if there's any downtime too I want them to come with me and take a look okay here's what I'm doing right now here's what's going on here's what I'm looking at in terms of um you know our budgeting or this various company that we run over here and and here's kind of the cash flow and I'm looking at the p l they don't have to understand all of that people get mixed up and they go well your kids don't understand you know a full p l right now at six no I didn't say they did yeah but they're excited that I'm excited and then I'm like this is where money comes from you know yeah yeah yeah okay cool right and so it's a concept that they're now being made aware of what parents need to remember is we are establishing for our young Heroes what they consider to be normal we're establishing that so if being excited and Purpose Driven and focusing on real world outcomes and intentional about our relationships and intentional about what we stay away from but focus more on the few like if all those things are the normal that becomes the mentality for them that becomes their Baseline right and and you can individualize at that point right so I can't give a parent a blanket State you know when I work uh with all these parents that I bring through a home education uh situation I send them a menu of projects and challenges for a month that have a given theme and the whole thing is cool man if you guys want to test these out do these together do these experiments these projects these things together but take a look at the rest of your day what else do you guys want to put in so for our family you know we've got I'm doing specific things in the morning my heroes are all there's specific chores out on the farm that they're taken care of then they come back and they've got individual academic goals that they're jumping into individual books that they're excited about in the afternoons um you know we're taking a look at projects together whether that's projects they're working on projects I'm working on for work like we're collaborating around that just so we can see what each other is doing and then they each have their individual you know ones goes to work with horses and go ride horses the other one goes to gymnastics another one goes to ninja warrior class and we're all doing all of this together we are living what we feel like is an adventure yeah and that's the Baseline for normal that's awesome so it's all I'm encouraging people to do love that and I I think it's helpful to bring to this conversation um something that I've spoken to shafali saberi about do you know who she is she's a parenting author no ma'am okay well she has this counter experience about the obsession that sometimes parents have with doing too much like constantly getting your kids to go here and go there and go there all in the name of creating the perfect quote-unquote kid and so her message is very like let your children be normal like let your children be average is the word average she's like there's nothing wrong with letting your children be average and I find this beauty in what you're saying and what she's saying at the same time to be a good balance because someone who might be listening what you're saying is like great great but then also if if there's also neglecting the other aspect of downtime averageness what are your thoughts on that yeah and and you know I want that I I I'm glad you brought that up because I want to be able to articulate dude there are times when they don't have something scheduled especially in the afternoons because they've gotten all of the the responsibilities have been done right and then I might have a day where i'm doing um I guess on four or five podcasts right and I got it today I get to do a few podcasts today gets it like this is awesome this is great amazing this is part of my mission and this is uh well that's not anything they're necessarily going to join me for so that in the afternoon they don't have anything to do so the distractions are still not an option this afternoon it's not like well sit around just watch TV the whole afternoon and play video games right you got down time so you figure out who you are and what you want to do with that they might just go they might just go outside and hang out and play they might sit on the porch and read they might decide to grab Legos they do yeah like they just decide to be a kid and they guess what it's okay for them to get bored because boredom fuels creativity right yeah like all of that is is fine as well so what do you say to a kid who's like I'm so bored dad I don't have anything to do and I don't want to do any of it what's your what's your response to that they don't say that anymore because because the only if the times that they've had that they have said that to me my response has always been there's no such thing as being bored there's only being boring I love that that was my response and so now they won't even say it to me because they know that's the response yeah I love that so they know that we don't care if they're bored it's okay if they're bored are there other responsibilities taken care of if there are responsibilities are taken care of then at that point it is up to them to decide what they want to do love it because guess what that's how it works forever yeah Alan gets bored Ellen's got to figure out what to do with herself I can't even remember the last the last time I've been bored the last time that I've had nothing to do or nothing I wanted to do is very like never that's a great thing and there's too many adults that will go I'm bored so I guess I'm gonna binge watch eight hours of Netflix and then they're also usually the ones that complain about how they wish they had or they wish they could or they wish they did you know so I want I want them to just grasp uh that's again that sovereignty early love that so so do you have a list of resources for anyone who's new to homeschooling and wants to figure out how to navigate what you're saying to do and what they what resources they could provide their kids like what are your favorite homeschooling resources yeah my my favorite resources because again when you're talking about resources it's like okay well what should education be for what do you want to do so there's a you know Ranch down the street and that's a homeschooling resource there's gymnastics center over here that's a homeschooling because you're just living life and and being educated in the process you can go like everything is a resource everything is a resource so my favorite when people ask that is it's anything that's going to get the parent out of the mindset of bringing School home right because like I gotta teach Academia dude my friend Sal Khan has something called Khan Academy that will literally teach you every single academic subject you could ever want for free the resources are there right master class is there udemy is there you can look up moocs moocs most universities put a ton of of their courses online for free interesting you're not going to get credit necessarily you're not going to get school credit yeah but you can take the course right you can go take a lot of Harvard courses if you want like the resources are abundant so when people say what are your favorite resources for home education the real resources are what are what do you need to learn and unlearn do you need to unlearn the school mindset go read John Taylor Gotto do you need to get more towards a freedom mindset you got kids that you want towards a freedom mindset go read total twins Tuttle twins are great you know yeah I love your kids love Tuttle teams oh Connor's a dear friend of mine man oh no way that's awesome oh he's a great guy and he just sent my kids a freaking rad video the other night um they loved it man he said um such a good such a good dude um that's awesome so you know I I don't have any specific like resources that I love because to me that's like a well if people are starting to eat what food should they eat yeah man that's a wildly wildly individual conversation totally there's there's a lot of different things to choose from and it depends on what your child is most inspired by yes ma'am that's exactly it and what's going to inspire you as the parent so what is your advice for those who would like to home educate I like how you say home education I'm so used to saying homeschooling or unschooling but I like education you've been using that home education it sounds more accurate to me because homeschooling isn't school you're not trying to replicate or copy what school is you're creating your own education yeah so that's that's a much better term but what's your advice for those who would like to home educate but feel they can't because of their life situation maybe they're a single parent or both parents are at work or um they like you said uh they are feeling educated up to homeschool but we covered that one or thoughts on those who live in a country where it's illegal to homeschool because I actually have a lot of people I get messages from that from people a lot about that me too so that in of itself is a much harder nut to crack because I get those as well um I've got a running conversation with quite a few families some who are quite literally fleeing the country they are in so that they can do this and is it different in certain are there other some countries that have better education systems than America are there are some countries that actually educate more versus school right right so Finland is one that comes top of Mind finland's government schools are much more like the schools that we have built out here not we as in the government as in myself and the entrepreneurs that I've worked with right there's their schools look much more like that and the students don't even start until they're seven and at that point it's not academic bases more character based and then they're done by 16 and they have no homework and they have you know it's all of these things they learn to self-educate and take on responsible ability so it's awesome you know so in that case I think you're you're in a great spot the families that are you know in in these countries where it is illegal um to me it's very similar to you know maybe somebody who is out here who is a single mom and really doesn't have anybody else around like to uh because I know single moms that can make it work too because they get uh somebody to watch the young Heroes during the day and then they focus on all the educational opportunities when they are together right like I know some moms that make that work I also know that it's not fully possible for everybody in that situation and I don't blame them for that so to me it's the same thing as the person who they're in a system that doesn't a lot or a country that doesn't allow them to home educate you're still home educating when you're together with them you still are home educating you just have to be intentional about talking to them about what they're going to do during the game of school right so one of my mentors a gentleman named Seth Godin do you know who Seth is by any chance okay so Seth is a phenomenal uh speaker author uh marketing genius he's written like 20 some odd bestsellers he's a phenomenal guy um Seth said you know my daughters went to school they went to Conventional school I just made sure that they knew the game they were playing while they were there we were very intentional about what that game was going to look like for them so that they understood what they were playing and why they were playing it they didn't take certain things too seriously they were very intentional about relationships about leading about looking for certain patterns and then we worked on their education when they got home um love that right okay so for parents I mean I I think it's that you know it's going okay look we've got a little bit of the deck stacked against us let's be intentional so they know what they're going into so that they're avoiding some of the bad habits the mental habits that we were talking about earlier and then they're really going after who they are and what they want to do you know when when they get home um so if you've got to do that find your balance you know in in that regard um you know I think that's that's that's about the best bet for so many parents though I think really what it is is they feel like there's a fear of doing they could they could make it work we could do it we could figure it out but there's all those fears of oh we're gonna mess up our kid yep oh there's also the or sometimes they just don't have a desire like knives no I've no it's unto me that that makes me beg other questions that makes me sad yeah I don't I want to be around my kids all the time yeah I want to be around them all the time I mean I enjoy the heck out of them man they're they're great human beings to be around like so what's going on there you know and for someone who is like both parents work but they would like to homeschool a lot of times there's ways around that if you can reassess your life situation feel like is there a way to downgrade so we don't have to earn as much money and we can have one parent going to home or going to school the other parent could be at home or could we do part-time somewhere so that we could switch off with other families maybe there's a lot of different ways to get creative that a lot of people just don't consider do a homeschool Co-op kind of deal where it's like okay well our off days are you know we're off Saturday and Sunday but they're off you know Wednesday and Thursday and these guys are off Monday and Tuesday and they and yeah and you can make those kind of things work you're right but it's that kind of thing too where you're having to prioritize and downsize and shift that's where it irks me when people go oh easy for you to say no I left a six-figure position and went to thirty thousand dollars a year with my wife no longer working uh-huh and we still made it work so she could be home with our oldest yeah so that we and there was a big sacrifice and it was really really hard and I would go back and do it again ten times out of nine yep ten times on a night I love that have you and honestly all of this ties into everything together like your parenting you're educating not like the example you're raising with your kids and even finances right so if you're inspired by this you're like oh we're just stuck so much so much of what is status quo is just being stuck in this conveyor belt life it's not even just conveyor belt school but conveyor about life of like that's right you gotta earn this amount by the super nice car and you have to keep up with the Joneses and then we don't have time to be with our kids as much send them off here I gotta go to work drive in the car to get home to pay for the house that you know all that stuff together that's right that if you re-prioritize your life there's this great documentary called playing with fire I don't know if you've heard of it it's a financial Independence retire early and so it's all about how to be able to um spend less save more to retire early like there's this Obsession or not Obsession but there's just mindset that we all have to retire at 65. but where does that even come from we have to work all day every day until we're 65 like that's nuts to me so yeah that's crazy to me on a number of accounts because so number number one to think that I have to work a job I don't like for that long yeah to to pay for everything is crazy and number two the concept of doing a bunch of things you hate for 40 years today theoretically enjoy your life but to sit and do nothing at 65 too because you don't know who you are or what like that also sucks I will be working until the day I die because I enjoy what I do in my mission but I don't want to have to for any kind of financial reasons at all yeah I just want to be living my life the way I want to live my life exactly you want the freedom yes that's the freedom the freedom the sovereignty yeah that's what we're talking about I do what I want to do with who I want to do it and all the other needs are taken care of like yeah that's what we should be going after and that's not in a braggadocious way that's just what Freedom means yes love that and that I'm sure you know who Dave Ramsey is right I know Dave yeah I know I'm going out to Ramses I'm going out to their Studio relatively soon right that's awesome I interviewed uh his daughter Rachel for the podcast earlier I would love to get him on the podcast too I just love the topic of finances and that's actually one of the reasons why I started this podcast because I want to talk about all the things that I feel has like made our life excellent you know and what what can help other people make their life just so excited about everything that they do um but I brought up Dave Ramsey because it's like something he says is like live like no one else so that later you can live and give like no one else and so it's it's the long-term thinking yeah it's huge and again it's a different game it's a game you don't learn how to play you don't learn how to play the finance game you don't learn how to play you know you're taught okay well you got to go to work you got to pay your tax what if I told you you don't have to actually even pay taxes right you just have to know how that game works yeah and then you choose to play that interesting most people don't want to know that there's other games outside the conveyor belt thing they've been told that their parents also did that everybody in their neighborhood they don't stop to take a look and go is there another game to play here that's interesting I don't know much about this tax thing you're talking about I have to do a whole other episode on that I'm telling there's a million different games to play you know and so it's choose the games you want to play man because there's a lot so what about let's let's switch gears a little bit on something um many people have uh concerns about home education because of socialization it's compulsory School Quality Social socialization or not what are your thoughts on that that's such a great yeah I love that question and when people ask me that I always go yeah man you are right socialization is a big deal I would be really worried about the socialization somebody is getting in public school I would be really worried about that very much so because what does socialization mean and well who who is so you're always being socialized your young kids are always being socialized the question is who's doing the socializing what are they being socialized for right so again going back to those mental habits so you're telling me that you would rather have them have all the adult uh figures in their life teach them that you know anybody that claims Authority gets it you would rather have that be a social component you would rather have the majority of the people speaking into their life if your child's six the majority of the voices all day long or other six-year-olds you don't know who that six-year-old is and what kind of life that person has and what kind of things that person is seeing at home you want them being some of the main voices not you not you you want your other six-year-olds strangers to to be the main voices um that are there you've got all of these never mind the bullying things even in some of your quote unquote good schools you've got kids that are you know uh twerking in the freaking quad at lunch you got kids having sex and vaping in the bathroom so you gotta get this is the socialization that you want yeah like as an adult and parents go well yeah you got to learn that you know there's some things that aren't so cool sometimes you got so okay cool so then as an adult if you want to level up and get better do you go well I better put myself in prison for a few months to learn that there's shitty people out there like what no you expose them to Greatness you expose them to your ideas your morals your ethics and then you're intentional about other social situations and that's the so again what you make normal becomes they're normal so yeah do we home educate we do and guess what we sold some uh goats not too long ago there was a guy that was coming to buy them for Land Management over there we had a bunch of babies and so we had a whole bunch of goats so this guy comes to buy the goats and so I know he's on the way so I'm going down the hill to go bring these goats up to him and when he gets here my nine-year-old greets him says hi my name is Brielle you know she shakes his hand my name is Brielle nice to meet you thanks for coming you must be you know you must be Jed and he's like yep nah she's like okay so I've got the invoice for you right here so here's what I'm gonna need you to do I'm gonna need you to sign this and then I'll take a picture of it that'll be our copy I'll give this to you so you can keep this and then it's going to be you know we can only do cash it's going to be x amount of cash you can give me the cash dad's down there he's getting the goats right and so I brought the goats up and he goes where did she learn like what she's so wildly cough I'm like yeah she's this is normal for her talking to adults dealing with the adult adults they call the restaurants that we work with to see if they need new orders like they'll go do the deliveries they're talk that's socialization yep being able to interact with different age I think that's one of the biggest yes one of the biggest factors of socialism like healthy socialization in kids is when they can get in a group with different age people wide range of different age from children and babies to older cool kids or Just older kids in general and to adults like being able to interact with everybody in confidence um and help like help out with babies and all that that is like amazing socialization I think a lot of people a lot of people think that homeschool homeschooling they imagine like living off grid in this little cabin where you don't see anybody else for months at a time and they say where's your socialization but that's really like not the the rule that's generally not what's happening that's generally not what's happening no we're going out to the store they're going out to restaurants they're going to activities they're going to they're talking to other humans all the time but they're doing it in a real world environment they're doing in a real aspect they're very comfortable talking to older talking to younger like there's nothing weird people go oh I knew a homeschool kid once you know I was younger and they were very very weird did you know any weird kids at your public school too because you did right totally if school was the answer to weirdness we wouldn't have had any weird kids and you know it's it's yeah I think because my mom had this fat this idea of why it is that there's a stigma that homeschooled kids are weird and I I think that that stigma is pretty much dispensed at this point because homeschooling has exploded so much but back when I was growing up very few people chose to homeschool and my mom said I don't think it's the homeschool kids that weird I think it's just that the people who chose to homeschool were weird it was like the weird families at the time chose to homeschool and so they were just different but it's just not like that anymore that's it I always I always had Parents sort of you know oh gosh if I homeschool my kid aren't they going to be weird and I go if you're weird yeah if you're weird totally because I think about when my son Elvis he's my oldest he's 11 now but when he was like two years old we would go into the grocery store and all of the employees knew his name everyone knew his name and he knew all of their names and they would all talk to him say hi to him say goodbye to come give him hugs like he just knew everybody at such a young age and if your kid is at school obviously two is younger than in America where people are generally sending their kids to school but there is daycare and everything where they're only around one age a lot of times they can get into the real world and they don't know how to talk to anybody that isn't their mom or dad or a two-year-old or whoever whatever age that they're in bingo I know a lot of you know young people that are wildly well schooled but again that's part of why I'm getting brought into these organizations these kids are very well schooled but they're not very socialized they don't understand how to talk to customers they don't understand how to work with clients you know none of that is is necessarily prevalent for them yeah because yeah it's one of the biggest myths and it's one of those things where we just kind of repeat it because it's been a call again it's the cult mentality you just repeat it you just say it what about socialization you just say it because you're taught to be afraid yeah that that's like a thing without actually giving it some thought what does socialization means it means you understand how to interact with the world around you and that normally you are willing to conform to the environment well if that's part of the definition and I'm looking at the way the majority of the world operates I don't necessarily want to conform to the rest of the world that doesn't know who they are and they're kind of sad and they don't necessarily I don't want to conform to that sure as hell don't want my kids to conform to that right so true crazy too yes I love that um so how difficult is it to educate children of different ages together if you're trying to I know that though like your examples of just like doing life together and how empowering that is because so much of what we talk about the modern system is very disempowering for kids like you said you sit you listen to the teacher you can only go to the bathroom if they let you go to the bathroom and there's only the specific thing you're going to learn not this other thing you're interested in that's not part of the thing like all that stuff is disempowering for kids and I totally felt that growing up um but when it comes to home education and educating children of different ages does it make sense sometimes why like how the modern system became the way it is because do you find it difficult at all to do curriculum style things with different ages at the same time it's just you're just living life with people of different ages how old may I ask how old you are I am 35. dude I'm so much I'm 43. why are you talking to each other I know shouldn't we not right why are we ridiculous I know that's right and and gosh shouldn't I find out if at 35 you're making the same amount of money as I did at 35 so we could know who was ahead and who was behind and totally it's silly like that none of that plays out in real life um and it actually ends up being wildly beneficial because you know my young heroes are very self-directed they're all going after their individual things but they can all help each other as well so my six-year-old is like I don't understand this well awesome his nine-year-old sister or his 11 year old sister come over and go oh here it is totally how to help you and they come in and they actually help to teach him or to help walk him through something that he doesn't understand so I love that wildly beneficial and we and part of that you know the fear around that concept comes from this school uh mentality that there are certain things or certain boxes that need to be checked at a certain time of life and you know a certain developmental stage and that's just not correct um I think even a lot of homeschoolers have that like they might be really confident in homeschooling but there's still this like oh but I gotta do this specific thing or else they're not gonna yeah or else they're not gonna be at the same level as their peers or whatever right which is again just a silly thing right otherwise it does that map out in the real world does that map out for adults if another 43 year old is listening to this and he or she does not make as much money as I do are they behind or RMI ahead how do we measure who's happier how do we measure like it's just it's a silly thing that doesn't exist in the real world but we put this weird uh box around it in school you know and I I use the example A lot of times when I speak uh on education in public I'll I'll walk out and and um you know start having conversations and I'll ask the audience did anybody look at me when I walked out on the stage and think ooh okay that guy was a late Walker oh no no I didn't learn to walk until I was 18 months old so was I behind and did that hinder me long term well I end up being a really good athlete I end up being a good martial artist I end up being a five nine white guy that could dunk a basketball like I was a pretty good athlete but I didn't start walking until I was 18 months old well I know a lot of very successful people I know somebody who won a a very prominent award for writing a phenomenal script that got turned into a movie and was made well she didn't learn to read until she was 14. wow yeah totally I think it's kind of earth-shattering how much of that we're told it has to be this way really doesn't have to be because that's not how real life Works in any any capacity at all correct so it's really fascinating yeah yeah it very much is we just again we got to start really trying to think through what we think we know and being okay questioning all of the things we think we know again getting back to where we're curious right like that's we need to we need to make that the standard yeah because the standard that we have now of like did you get A's on these five subjects like that doesn't play out in the real one at all what really does something my sister and I were contemplating with my husband were like what is it that makes an intelligent person is it someone who knows really like everything about a specific subject or is it someone who is logical and is able to hear different opinions about something and change their mind and able to decipher I don't know it's such an interesting question like what same question is what makes a successful person is it somebody it's not really somebody who just has a good job because there's so many people who grew up in the modern system right God went to college even went to somewhere like Stanford has this incredible job makes a ton of money but are they happy there can be somebody who makes yeah there can be somebody who makes fifty thousand dollars a year and they're way more happy than someone who has this incredible job I've been I tell the story all the time I was on a private you know the first time I was flown on a private jet I was with the guy who owned the jet you know the guy's worth millions upon millions of dollars and he's crying on the jet because he hates his life he hated it and then we landed in this Airfield and I talked to another guy as the the executive went to go clean himself up in the bathroom because he'd been crying because he's absolutely miserable and hates his life I spoke to the airplane mechanic who was 40 years old and he was retiring at that point because he had lived below his means he'd saved all his money he'd only ever been in airplane mechanic since he was 18 he loved every single minute of it and was it was just the happiest dude on the planet you know is this like the the Paradox was just so it was so in your face and you know uh I think it's Tony was it Tony Wagner put him in Tony Wagner who's that but there's you know people who have done work on on the various types of intelligences too right and so that's that's a thing as well and that's part goes back to that Unique Kind of DNA aspect um you know one of the most one of the greatest compliments I think I ever received was actually a principle that I interviewed uh I was interviewing for a teaching position that I ended up getting and the principle that I interviewed with she said you know when I walked out of that interview I felt like you could you're the type of person that could get along with uh in-laws inmates and infants I love it that is an amazing compliment yes it was and I thought that was the coolest thing and I look back on my life and I go man I do I do have an ability to get along with pretty much everybody Under the Sun I can find something to relate to them I genuinely enjoy people I genuinely do love and appreciate them and so uh it's a very and so is that a specific intelligence right so because I'm I'm there's a lot of other ways that I'm wildly you know incapable and so the various types of intelligence that's always interesting too but but that's also a type of skill on some level would you say too like yeah so it's a skill and the example that you can pass on to your kids and so by being the example of how you interact with people in the world and like that would be I think the number one thing that parents can take away from this home education thing is like how are you living your life which is what I love about everything that you're sharing yes ma'am yes ma'am it's the most important part okay so I just have a couple more questions um can you address concerns people might have with homeschoolers not being able to go to college or get a degree which obviously is not true but can you just like explain that to people yeah that's a really good question I appreciate that you asked that because that's definitely one of the things that people have that's a that's a fear um so I always start these conversations again in a number of ways um one is college is college worth it right now anyways you know and I want parents to question that because again that the narrative has just been well yeah you get done with school you go to college and then college is what I would say as somebody who was at a university and somebody who has multiple graduate degrees I would say college is actually a net negative for more people now than it is a positive I actually very much believe that um so that aside that's a whole other conversation is college even worth it is it even a good idea that aside College admissions process is also a game right I use that phrase a lot there's the game of school there's the game of there's the game of taxes there's the game of relationships there's the game what game do you want to play the game that everybody plays isn't always necessarily the game you want to play so College admissions is also a game each College Plays the game a little differently and year to year it can shift a little bit too one of the things that I like to do to shake parents up is go well one of the ways to play the game very easily and to get into a lot of colleges is actually to not even have a high school diploma and they go what they go yeah drop out of school drop out if your kid drops out at 16 and then go uh to a junior college because most junior colleges you don't even need a high school diploma go to a junior college at 16 as an adult and play the junior college game for two years and then at 18 you've got an associate's degree you actually go in and apply as a an adult transfer student you're going to most likely be weighted more heavily than if you were an 18 year old that just came out of high school with a 4.3 GPA there's plenty of ways to play the game some universities actually prefer home educated students lots of universities actually have a separate application process at Stanford we had a separated application process for The Homeschool students interesting yeah so you had all of your 40 000 students that were applying the standard way and we'd play the game with that meaning well we're Stanford so we can't go above five percent acceptance rate of these students otherwise your rankings in the U.S news and World Report goes down so it doesn't matter if 15 of them deserve to be there by the you know the metrics that are supposedly what allows you to get into school five percent boom done but first and foremost we're looking for who are the rich people you're the future donors to Stanford you can have it 2.3 GPA and Beyond probation but if Mom and Dad are famous and are gonna put a lot of money in welcome to Stanford University all right so and then do you fill a need we need a point guard we need a you know somebody that swims the 200 IM whatever like if you fill a need welcome to Stanford and then we have to take a look at okay well this year we need uh less Chinese men and we need more black girls so that weighs you more heavily welcome to Stanford right so you're playing all of these levels before you ever get to the meritocracy that we're all taught that it is every university has a different level of game that is going on there but at Stanford oh yeah at the 40 000 over here oh but we might get 5 000 homeschool students and we're going to take 25 of them and the application process looks different we want to see a digital portfolio versus a traditional transcript right so home educated kids have been going to college forever and in this day and age it's actually easier for them to get into a school than it is if you come from a traditional environment it's actually easier okay that's helpful to share and then can you go into why you think college might not be the best option for everybody or even the majority of people yeah there's a there are a lot of reasons one um Academia as a whole for a lot of universities has been taken over by um of a political idea so when I say leftist people get upset and they're like oh okay well this is Republican no I'm I'm apolitical I'm not even talking about politics what I'm talking about is if Academia is supposed to be something that allows you to learn how to think and learn how to who you are but you've got 95 of your college professors identifying as far left and they're coming in with a very specific agenda you're not being educated you're being indoctrinated and I wouldn't care if that was far left if that was Far Right the point is it shouldn't be about any kind of ideology it should be about how to educate the human being right but that's been subverted by a lot of our universities unfortunately there's also the fact that a lot of professors now get paid based on Research versus teaching they're paid to publish they don't necessarily care about the educational aspect of it prices are now through the roof you have so many people that are going to massive amounts of debt to come out with a degree that everybody else has yeah it's not the same as it was when our parents not the same as we're going to college everybody's got a college degree but now you have a hundred thousand dollars in debt to do what really amounts to the academic work of what you did in high school it's really not all that much different and just longer yeah and and it doesn't guarantee you any any sort of job afterwards at all there's a lot of other Alternatives where you don't have the opportunity costs where you lose four five six years of your life wasting a whole bunch of time you can actually go into the workforce you can go into an apprenticeship or an internship in corporate jobs and and get ahead without that that debt there's so many other opportunities now that college ends up becoming a net negative for so many so what about for those who want a very specific job like to be a doctor or a even a teacher right if there's certain things that they have to check they have to play that you have to play the game right and that the percentage of people who know that going in is ridiculously low it's ridiculously low so true I mean I went to college as I was like what am I gonna do I don't know what I'm gonna do I guess I'll get a business administration degree because I just didn't know what I want to do I thought I better I better go to college and that's the majority right and I did the same thing I'm like I guess everybody's going to college I guess I will and I got all my Straight A's in college too and then graduated from college and went cool still don't know who I am what I'm good at what what and I I definitely don't feel like what I learned in college was something I needed to be able to do the job that I do today like I like I literally I didn't need any of that don't even remember most of it and most people feel that way the majority right but yeah are there is there a small percentage they know they want to go to med school yes so want to be an engineer yeah even engineering there are a lot of people that go into the engineering field without an engineering degree and interesting a lot of Engineers will tell you I have a good friend who is when I say he's a good engineer he built his company up to about a 500 million dollar a year organization as an engineer so I mean he's a top-notch world-class engineer and he will tell you none of the engineering courses that he actually took had anything to do with how he actually operated it was just playing the game it didn't transfer to what the skills were actually needed to use interesting so there's a difference there too but um if you are going to play that game then go play it as efficiently as you can meaning don't take on a massive amount of debt if you don't have to go do the JC route for a couple years and save a bunch of money right work on ways to make it very very economically feasible for you so that you're not trapped in anything you don't have to be trapped in while you go pursue that thing that you need to play that game um you know and understand again understand the game that you're playing is some of it is some of it not playing a game though like if it's like I really want to learn to be a very specific type of doctor seems like those types of degrees are needed and you would learn so much from that right do you feel that way or no uh no um so so what would you say what would you say is the alternative then so do you know well there for somebody you know that wants to go into a very specific field that requires that degree there is a no one there's not an alternative right right I'll try what would be the best like I'm saying if you had that ability just have to understand that you're still gonna have to self-educate so let me give you an example right do you know who rob wolf is no I feel like this whole conversation like do you know this person so so Rob super uh super smart guy really uh wildly intelligent does a lot of uh conversations around health and nutrition and um you know but it's just he's a super good dude and he's not dogmatic when it comes to any of it he's just like look man Tinkerbell works for you eat real stuff like yeah super good guy but he uh has been around for a long time kind of in this industry and he's been on you know Rogan's podcast a couple times written a bunch of books and really really good dude he was living in the same um city that I was getting my Bachelor's degree in and so I first got turned on to him I was a Kinesiology major and that was just because I liked sports like I didn't have anything I ever wanted to do with that so um Kinesiology major I had taken some nutrition classes you know for the kinesiology degree and I'm like okay this is pretty generic kind of stuff I went to one of Rob's seminars where we really dove into Human Performance and the way nutrition plays in the body and all the different variables and all this you know bioavailability and all that all these things that I had never heard of in my life taking nutrition courses I was like this is interesting but what was most interesting to me was that we had a number of doctors who were there who were raising their hand and they're like we don't know any of this wow we know none of this like we're taught more bedside Manner and pharmacology like what pills are we prescribing we're not taught this we take a 30 you know uh uh uh a uh six-month course you know in nutrition they're taking the basically the same stuff I was but then they were going to be so a lot of these um professions you know if you want to be a surgeon yeah then the actual surgeon like there are some things you're going to take that are wildly valuable but you're gonna have so much fluff and garbage that has nothing to do without you actually doing that you're again you're you're stuck in a game so how do you play that as quickly and as efficiently as you can yep and self-educate is kind of like your core message self educate yep love it find out what you need to know and disregard the stuff that you might even be taught to question it right not saying just question it dive a little deeper take a be willing and brave enough to look at the alternative option and just consider it yeah not to change your mind just look at other evidence too totally and it reminds me of uh the Ted Talk called hack schooling makes me happy by Logan laponte and have you heard of that one okay that does sound that one sounds familiar yeah it's it's a young kid so it's not like college age what we were just talking about but um basically it just talks about like how he does life schooling Life Education personal experience going into whatever field he is excited about he'll become an internship uh he'll become an intern at an internship for whatever company he's most excited about and if we can give our kids those resources they're going to love learning and and learn so much better by doing it in the real world which is just like the responsibility stuff you were talking about because we can talk to our kids about how to be how to be safe in the kitchen right but if we don't let them actually get in the kitchen then they're not going to learn how to do it very well that's not a young age yeah that's right I love that example too so that's with the home school group that I have the home education group that I have right now that's what our focus is this month is cooking and chemistry so we've got you know it's just an emphasis this month on just like Let Your Heroes get in the kitchen and start cooking and learn the knife skills and learn how you know these different things were like let's let's do that and that's why you know when when you're asking about college there's programs like Praxis have you ever heard of Praxis Praxis so if you if anybody listening you go to discover praxis.com and practice what they do is it's a six month uh kind of a boot camp of transferable skills so it's a boot camp of self-directed you know learning how to write ad copy learning how to do blog posts learning how to do some very basic coding learning how to do very basic communication emails things that are transferable to a lot of different Industries right you'll do that for six months do some projects around math and then you'll go six months you'll interview and you'll go work full time six months at usually at a startup but it's in an industry that you're kind of excited about and you kind of like you go take on this role it's a paid position and it's paid more than the cost of the program so you come out with no debt it's a one-year program versus four or five years and like 98 of them roll right into a full-time position with the average starting salary of 50 Grand a year amazing that's awesome why would you not like the opportunity cost there's no debt yeah you wrote like why would you not so there's so many Alternatives like that now too yeah that again just make the traditional College route far more unattractive and again yeah if you want to go to college man go to college but a lot of times it is an emotional thing we actually had um it just popped into my head but we had a student who at one of my campuses graduated from high school and walked off that stage at 18 and was offered a position with a nationwide organization that had up until that point with about a thousand employees Nationwide up to that point they had never hired anybody without a college degree wow they changed the entire structure to hire this young man at 18. it's amazing went in at like a seventy thousand dollar a year position leading other people career level job and his mom said to me oh yeah that's pretty cool but I still hope he goes to college and I said okay great how come well so that he can have that degree to fall back on so he can get a good job he has a good job what is that yes what is this that he has right it's again the cult mentality the conditioning runs so deep yeah you really don't think you have any other option to like live life this is what everyone's doing so I gotta do it this way so what are these what do these campuses you're talking about for anybody who doesn't know about you and what you have created yeah I got to partner with What's called the actin academies a-c-t-o-n um and you know it was I was on a mission to start my own thing um and was was building a community around uh what I thought education should look like for a group of young people uh and in doing so I was talking to a group of professors one of them said to me you sound like you're building an acting academy is that what you're doing I said I have no idea what you're talking about and said well I think you have to look it up because it sounds very similar to what you're doing so I looked it up and realized there was a group of entrepreneurs there was only a couple at the time who were working together not in a franchise way in a well I live in North Carolina Ellen lives in Hawaii we both feel the same thing about young people in education we're both trying to build something and we're just going to bounce ideas and resources off each other kind of way so I joined forces with them and and um you know I launched multiple schools in California I've now helped entrepreneurs launch these schools in multiple countries and in States and so there's a few hundred acting academies around the world amazing and can they just go to actonacademy.com to look those up they go to if they go to actonacademy.org.org they can do it yep then they can do a search um there and find it but you know if people don't want to go to a full-blown campus you know we've helped families open some of those small co-ops like you know you were talking about or we help families home educate the whole point of it is you have options it's not just oh kids you're five got to go to school now for the next you know 13 years you have options and they can all be really good options so I want people to just know that so they can be intentional about making a choice love it okay my last question for you what is your core message you hope to reach parents with whether they homeschool or send their kids to compulsory school or home educate or send their kids to compulsory school what would you like to leave them with at the end of this conversation stop being afraid love that stop being afraid most humans operate out of fear in almost every Arena and it's because they're not willing to take action and take responsibility and they're not willing to question all of the different games they are playing all of the different roles they are playing they're not willing to question is there something else I can do and a lot of times there is but it also means again stepping up in that responsibility right but they're afraid stop being afraid it is it is um the biggest pandemic epidemic whatever you want to call it that I that I see in society love it thank you so much this has been amazing I could go on and on with you I feel like it's such an such an empowering powerful important conversation to have and I appreciate everything you're sharing online everybody go follow his Instagram I think it's just Matt Boudreaux right yeah such an amazing such amazing content you put out there daily inspiration to help you just take charge of life and be the best parent you can be for your kids you're awesome thank you no honor is mine I appreciate your message I appreciate your voice I appreciate everything you do too so it was a pleasure thank you okay great I think we're gonna end it here and thanks everyone for joining foreign [Music]

Channel: The Ellen Fisher Podcast

Views: 42,797

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Id: o-Eypoqtjvs

Length: 119min 56sec (7196 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022