Accessibility Disclaimer: Below is a computer generated transcript of our conversation. Please note that there are likely very many errors, and may not make sense when taken out of context.
Auto-generated Transcript
00:00:01:16 – 00:00:30:13 Speaker 1 I went to the public school for my entire K-through-12 experience, and when I went to school, I was just kind of going through the motions because my family didn’t have any strong positions on schooling. No one in my family had graduated high school before and they certainly didn’t have a good understanding of of what it took to navigate through education.
00:00:30:15 – 00:00:54:16 Speaker 1 And I never had any expected lessons or pressure from my family. And so I just sort of thought of school as the place that I had to be every day just to wake up, go to school, because that’s what you did. And what you did there didn’t really matter much in elementary school. Kind of everyone did okay. Right.
00:00:54:18 – 00:01:29:23 Speaker 1 The only class I think I ever failed was penmanship. And in second grade and and they still move me on to third grade. And yeah, when I went to middle school, I ended up going to a small farming town in our county. And I was I was definitely out of place there because of my race. Most of people there were white and and I didn’t fit in because it was a different culture in that school.
00:01:30:01 – 00:01:58:20 Speaker 1 And I got into a lot of fights. There were some there was bullying. And and so I just got into a bunch of fights and I got suspended, I think four times. And and I started to get really bad grades. And my brother used to joke that I was the only person who ever had a3d report card, three dimensional report card, because I had three DS in my classes in middle school.
00:01:58:22 – 00:02:24:02 Speaker 1 And yeah, it was just it was just a weird situation. And I didn’t I didn’t think anything of it other than I’m just not good at this long division stuff. I’m just not good at this, whatever. And then I moved back to my hometown of Pottsville in seventh grade, and when I moved back, I was all of a sudden a smart kid, right?
00:02:24:02 – 00:02:53:10 Speaker 1 The teachers identified me as a smart kid, and I started to do well. And I never tried other than just trying to do well in the moment. But all of a sudden I started having access to classes with a little bit more freedom. I don’t know if it was actually a gifted or talented program. I don’t think it was, but but I just had more freedom than other kids had, and it changed my perception of who I was in a schooling context.
00:02:53:12 – 00:03:18:12 Speaker 1 And then when I went to high school, I was kind of fortunate that the school wasn’t too competitive because I look around at the high schools today, particularly in affluent areas, and you just see how hyper competitive it is. And I would never have succeeded in a context like that, but my family still put absolutely no pressure on me.
00:03:18:15 – 00:03:42:11 Speaker 1 I was just going through the motions and and I had one or two teachers who just told me like, hey, you know, you can go to college and you can probably go to college for free. If you go to like a service academy or something. And and so I said, that sounds like a good deal. And I applied to one school only West Point.
00:03:42:12 – 00:04:08:01 Speaker 1 I got in and it was and they said it was free. Everyone in my family had served in the military. My school made a huge deal of it. I would say that going to service Academy, all my high school’s a bigger deal than going to an Ivy League school or than maybe Harvard and so so once I got in, it was just like kind of a no brainer.
00:04:08:03 – 00:04:36:14 Speaker 1 So at the time I thought that I, I was a hotshot like, look at me. Right? And, and with lots of experience and time, particularly since I got focused on education as an adult, I realized that I’m I was one of those people that the sort of education system allows to trickle through. And they say, hey, look at the system can work.
00:04:36:18 – 00:05:02:21 Speaker 1 The system can work. If you work hard, you know, anyone can make it. Anyone can get into good schools and change your life. So don’t look at the system as the problem. You know, this is this is the vehicle for social progress or social equity. And I bought into it and and I became pretty arrogant along the way, thinking that I was something special.
00:05:02:23 – 00:05:36:02 Speaker 1 But looking back, I realize that there are just so many things that are completely out of our control and that and that. Yeah, I was playing in a big game and I thought I was winning, but I wasn’t necessarily. I was just benefiting at the expense of other people who were trying to win the game. But you know, in actuality, most people end up losing you.
00:05:36:03 – 00:06:18:16 Speaker 2 You mentioned that you moved away from your hometown and because of your race, you were bullied. You were sort of othered. Lots of things happened in your grades went down. And I kind of wanted to flesh that out a little bit. Like, how did that happen? Did it just happen all at once? Were there were there like incidents that escalated or how were you how were you othered?
00:06:18:18 – 00:06:50:06 Speaker 1 When I went to this small town for those two years, I don’t mean to say that because I was one of the very few people who weren’t white, that that’s the reason I was bullied, although I think it was. But I was also from a different town. I was a new kid and people bully for a lot of different reasons and a lot of people are just looking for, you know, someone that they can go after.
00:06:50:08 – 00:07:20:10 Speaker 1 Right. But I do remember that I was picked on a fair amount and that I was egged into confrontations. Typically with bigger people. And yeah, and otherwise I was kind of oblivious for most of my youth. I just sort of I didn’t really know what was going on around me. I just sort of did my own thing. I was lost in my own head.
00:07:20:12 – 00:07:54:16 Speaker 1 So I’m just I can’t I can’t state very clearly why the bullying happened or why I was getting into fights or why my grades really plummeted. But I think that ended. It was more with a situation where it was a confluence of factors as opposed to like a causal. One thing that created a bunch of, you know, created everything else.
00:07:54:18 – 00:08:33:09 Speaker 1 But I do I have a firm belief that bullying is persistent and common in our society because of the way that we structure society. We have all these hierarchies in schools. We we cram a bunch of kids that are the same age together, and we tell them that they have to rank and sort themselves and kids are going to follow the lead of the adults and and some of them are going to work their butts off trying to succeed in the hierarchy academically.
00:08:33:09 – 00:09:09:18 Speaker 1 Some are going to do so socially, some are going to do so athletically. And and in those situations, you have people all throughout the people who are completely failing in the ways that they want to do well and the people who are doing extraordinarily well and people who are stuck in the middle. And there’s a lot of people in those systems that will resort to bullying because it’s the only way they can find a sense of agency in some awkward way in a situation where where they seemingly have very little.
00:09:09:20 – 00:09:49:03 Speaker 1 And so I think that bullying is is a huge problem. And and it’s not just about this kid’s a bully, right? It’s sort of like in a different context, that kid very likely would not be a bully. We just put them in situations, you know, that promote bullying. I think schools, prisons, fraternities, the military investment banking like there’s just there are certain environments where bullying is it you know, it’s just it’s like a petri dish, right?
00:09:49:03 – 00:10:01:05 Speaker 1 It just explodes in certain environments. And I think very unfortunately, because most kids don’t have a choice in it, very unfortunately, one of the biggest environments for that is school.
00:10:01:06 – 00:11:04:08 Speaker 2 Absolutely. And, you know, I was reading about your history and you went to West Point, you went to Stanford, you went to Harvard. You’re classic. Your classic definition of what intelligence is by almost every standard that society has has said. Right, has stated. And so I’m wondering, how does someone who has heard from society throughout his entire life that he was very intelligent, very smart, kind of pivot and create an entirely new system that goes against that sort of upbringing, that sort of societal message saying, you need to perform and, you know, pass these tests to be successful, and then you switch around and do something completely different.
00:11:04:08 – 00:11:10:10 Speaker 2 So I kind of wanted to hear that pivot or, you know, what led to that pivot.
00:11:10:12 – 00:11:30:12 Speaker 1 When I was younger, I defined smart or intelligence by how one performed in school. And I don’t think I’m unique in that the people who did really well in school, I always considered to be very smart.
00:11:30:14 – 00:12:00:05 Speaker 1 And and even though I wasn’t ever at the very top of my class, I was close enough to the top. And and I did well on test. There was like a math, some sort of math competition that I was like the first person in my school to ever qualify for, like a higher level. You know? I was just like, Wow, I must be smart, right?
00:12:00:11 – 00:12:29:19 Speaker 1 And then when I got to the West Point, I’m just like, Yeah, I’m smart, right? So but it’s easy for you to tell yourself that you’re smart when you’re winning, right? And then some, you know, to Well, it for me it was it was easy to create counter-narratives as to why when I didn’t do well, that didn’t mean I wasn’t smart.
00:12:29:19 – 00:12:54:20 Speaker 1 But I acknowledge that that’s not actually the case for a lot of people. A lot of people really internalize this, that they’re not smart if they’re not doing well. But when did it shift from that for me is the question. And I really sadly think that it was it probably took me until my thirties to really move away from that.
00:12:54:22 – 00:13:21:13 Speaker 1 I remember there was a I had a a former partner who was doing a Ph.D. and and I drove her up the wall because when I met her, I wanted to know what her g r e scores were because I’m like, Oh, know, that’s a good thing. But are you smart? And and she’s like, Why do you care about them?
00:13:21:13 – 00:13:57:11 Speaker 1 Like CRT scores where you talk and yeah, I it, it really probably did take me until I was in my thirties to start questioning what intelligence what intelligence is what does it mean to be smart. How is that different than than schooling? And I’ve read I read some I think there’s a Stephen Gould book, The Measure of Man.
00:13:57:12 – 00:14:29:08 Speaker 1 It’s a it’s it’s an amazing book. It’s one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. But it it talks about it talks about intelligence. It talks about it’s kind of it was written before Charles Murray’s Bell Curve book, but it’s it’s like the best takedown of of of terror memories if you don’t know what book that is. That’s Charles Murray’s in some circles.
00:14:29:08 – 00:15:03:11 Speaker 1 He’s considered like this really great academic in our circles. He’s considered a white supremacist academic. That tried to make the argument that there are certain races are more intelligent than others. Stephen Gould’s book is a fabulous takedown of it. And he does. He explains sort of the history of eugenics and and and and intelligence intelligence testing from a academic perspective.
00:15:03:13 – 00:15:48:03 Speaker 1 Wonderful book. And I think it was when I read that book, coupled with my experiences more in retrospect, not in the moment, but working with people who had never really done much higher education, who just blew me away, that that that allowed me to sort of recognize. Oh, and I guess the third thing is, is like seeing people who do extraordinarily well in school, who just were completely out of it when it came to doing anything meaningful.
00:15:48:05 – 00:16:20:01 Speaker 1 Yeah. And so I don’t know what it was, but it was sometime in my thirties where I really started struggling with like, what does it mean to be successful? What does it mean to be smart? And and it probably coincided a lot with my dive into the topic of education in general that allowed me to recognize that, you know, there is no I don’t believe at least I think a lot of people agree with me.
00:16:20:03 – 00:17:17:21 Speaker 1 I know at least the writers do that that general intelligence is is a really tricky thing to claim that that IQ in particular is a really poor measure for what intelligence is. And and even if you believe that IQ was a good measure for intelligence, I mean, a lot of people do, particularly race realists, but but yet if we just change what we decided we were going to measure, you know, all those bell curves would be completely scattered.
00:17:17:21 – 00:17:50:04 Speaker 1 Right. And so there definitely is some notions of general intelligence that that may seem sticky there. But but I just think that the notion of intelligence is and is just really problematic. Right. And it’s just like, you know, you look at countries like Singapore, you know, and you know how they shot up, you know, their IQ like jumped like 30 or 40 points over the period of a couple of generations.
00:17:50:04 – 00:18:29:23 Speaker 1 And you’re just like, okay, well, that’s certainly not an inherent or inborn. Right? That’s that’s definitely context dependent. And and and what we consider intelligent intelligence today completely disregards many things that were pretty vital in the past. So it’s just a really complicated topic, but when I applied to West Point, it was the only school I applied to, partly because I just had no clue what I was doing and I’d even realize that college admissions was a competitive thing.
00:18:30:01 – 00:18:55:12 Speaker 1 I thought that you just apply, and based on that, they had some way of measuring your worth as a human being, right? And then they either accepted you or rejected you. Based on that. I’d even know that there were there were things such as college admissions consultants and whatnot. I didn’t know that there were, you know, parents who were molding their kids since they were in preschool to get into certain schools.
00:18:55:14 – 00:19:20:01 Speaker 1 But I went to West Point. I did that. I went to military, I went to Ranger School in the military, kind of on a whim, I had a classmate from West Point who I played football with and in our officer basic course, he said he went to go to Ranger School, but he didn’t know if he could get through the physical train up for it.
00:19:20:03 – 00:19:43:09 Speaker 1 And there was this Ranger school prep thing in our officer basic course, and he asked if I’d be willing to do it. Ranger School is it’s not the hardest thing you can possibly do in the military, but it’s definitely one of the hardest thing for like a regular military person to do. And and it and I had no no desire to do it.
00:19:43:09 – 00:20:02:16 Speaker 1 I’m just like, hey, I’m just here biding my time until I figure out what I’m going to do after the military. And he convinced me to just help him out. He’s like, You don’t have to go to Ranger School. Just just do the training with me. And so I did training with him and then they gave me a slot and and that wasn’t very common.
00:20:02:16 – 00:20:29:16 Speaker 1 But for some reason, a bunch of people in my in my sort of course got the slot. And so I was just like, I guess I’m going to go. And I didn’t want to go. And I hated the experience. It lasted five months for me and I got out and I wasn’t like I got recycled twice. And it’s not uncommon to get recycled in Ranger School, but that’s basically you go through one of the three portions of the program and they’re like, You didn’t do very well.
00:20:29:16 – 00:20:56:08 Speaker 1 You got to do this again. And it’s just a big suck. It’s just a terrible like just sleep deprivation, food deprivation, lots of stress, lots of misery. And so I got recycled twice, but I eventually graduated. And and when I graduated in the military, you get this tab that you wear on your shoulder that says Ranger and nobody knew that I got recycled twice.
00:20:56:10 – 00:21:24:20 Speaker 1 Right? People who’ve gone through the course don’t care because they’re just like, Hey, you know something like half the people get recycle. But everyone who didn’t go through the course was just like, Wow, you’re a ranger, right? They’re just like, Whoa. Like, that is so impressive. And and this five month program that I didn’t want to do, and then when I did do it, I just suffer through just a miserable experience.
00:21:24:20 – 00:21:55:22 Speaker 1 There were moments where I was actually hoping that I got injured so I could have a way to leave without quitting. Right. And just like, I just hope I break my leg. Right. Like I didn’t want to be there, but then I graduate and then for the for my five or I guess, you know, three and a half years after that in the military, I just got all this instant credibility from everyone just, Oh, you’re a Ranger, Like, you’re squared away, you’re smart, you’re tough.
00:21:55:22 – 00:22:31:05 Speaker 1 Right. And and I think that that really was kind of a defining moment for me in understanding that you don’t have to be hardworking, you don’t have to be smart if you have the right credential of some sort, it will get you a lot, you know, open doors for you. It will get you you know, people will, you know, be more patient with you, etc..
00:22:31:06 – 00:23:01:07 Speaker 1 And so when I decided I was going to leave the military and go to business school, I think part of me was just like, there’s only two two schools that that I can go to Stanford or Harvard, which is absurd. Right? That’s ridiculous. Right. You can you know, there’s lots of great business schools. Yeah, absolutely. But but that was my mindset when I was applying.
00:23:01:09 – 00:23:16:17 Speaker 1 And I just looked at the U.S. News rankings and which were the top two and how much did their graduates make upon graduation and so I’m like, those are two schools. If I don’t go to one of those two schools, I’m not going to go to business school. Then help that I had a really low GPA in college.
00:23:16:19 – 00:23:54:03 Speaker 1 And so so I spent a ridiculous amount of time reading everything I could about business school admissions. I was on forums. I was talking to people who previously went to business school from military. I was I saw how people kind of got in with red flags that somehow they got into these schools despite low GPAs. And I was just like, wow, like, you can actually get into some of these top programs even if you are a bad student, right?
00:23:54:07 – 00:24:15:08 Speaker 1 Or even if you have bad GMAT scores. Right. And there’s this holistic application process which if you can present yourself in the right way, they’ll accept you. Chances are they will not accept you if you have like 70 per diem at school. But they might.
00:24:15:10 – 00:24:47:07 Speaker 2 Yeah. And I think that, you know, is in alignment with how a lot of people in our societies view what intelligence is and isn’t. And I think, you know, I am sort of like on the opposite spectrum or on the opposite side of intelligence because, you know, here you are, you know, you were someone who was told who was smart in compulsory during compulsory education.
00:24:47:09 – 00:25:13:04 Speaker 2 And I’m sort of like, not that right. So I was told from a very young age that I was not intelligent, that, you know, I was underperforming against all of my peers. I, you know, was an art major. I went to grad school for filmmaking, like, yeah, none of the things that if you look at my resume, you would be like, Oh, this is a person who is intelligent.
00:25:13:04 – 00:25:57:18 Speaker 2 This is a person who is smart. You know, our society would never say that of that of me. And, you know, as I track like my history and part of my podcast is sort of like documenting this journey of why was I not considered smart, you know, why was I not considered intelligent? Because by every now I mean, like you mentioned earlier, a lot of, you know, people sort of deal with this inferiority complex and, you know, it does decrease like self-confidence and all of those things.
00:25:57:20 – 00:26:42:20 Speaker 2 And so I went through that period and I’m still kind of in the tail wind of that, but I’m realizing that, you know, I have a very successful marriage. I have a child who I really love. I’m pretty good with my family members. I’m pretty happy with, like the direction I’ve gone, like, why are why have why have I been, like, shrouded under or like, why have I been like, buried under these, like, layers of society telling me that I’m not intelligent and not sex and therefore not successful when if I actually look at my life, I am very happy with it, you know?
00:26:42:23 – 00:27:08:19 Speaker 2 And so I kind of wanted to hear from you like, you know, you I think it was seven years or six years. You had your self-directed learning center. And, you know, you’re somebody who is a very big advocate and champion for self-directed learning. Have you heard of the concept of companion planting?
00:27:08:21 – 00:27:10:00 Speaker 1 No.
00:27:10:01 – 00:27:18:09 Speaker 2 So in gardening, I’m not really a gardener, but so there’s a book braiding sweetgrass.
00:27:18:09 – 00:27:24:03 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I know. I read multiple times. It’s great. Yeah. You talking about, like, the three sisters?
00:27:24:05 – 00:27:25:10 Speaker 2 The three sisters? Exactly.
00:27:25:10 – 00:27:26:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:27:26:06 – 00:27:31:18 Speaker 2 The corn. Right. And the beans and the grains, Wheat.
00:27:31:20 – 00:27:32:20 Speaker 1 The crops.
00:27:32:22 – 00:28:04:04 Speaker 2 The beans and the squash. Exactly. Yeah. So the way that you plant them, they all sort of benefit each other. And as opposed to like, you know, raising plants that compete for the same resources. Right. And so sort of like what I’m thinking about is the community, the society that I would like my daughter to grow up in is not so much this sort of hierarchical.
00:28:04:04 – 00:28:25:10 Speaker 2 There’s only one or two people at the top kind of model, but sort of, you know, we’re all different people. We’re all and I kind of believe in spirituality and that we all have some sort of, you know, purpose here. And I just think, you know, not everybody wants to be a lawyer. Not everybody wants to be a doctor.
00:28:25:10 – 00:28:59:14 Speaker 2 And, you know, in the society that we’re headed in, we’re going to need lots of different jobs. We’re going to. And so I’m just thinking like, how do we create a schooling system or an educational ecosystem where we can kind of harness the gifts of everybody’s talents and group them in a way where they can all help each other rather than, you know, take take each other down as we try and race to the top.
00:28:59:16 – 00:29:19:06 Speaker 2 And so because I know you’re a father and so I’m wondering, like, what is your plan for schooling your child and what is the future that you would like your child to be in and how do we get closer to making that a reality?
00:29:19:08 – 00:29:57:05 Speaker 1 And I agree with you that our society would be much better off and individuals within the society would be much better off if they had the opportunity to follow their interests and passions and to develop their skills and competencies in the things that they’re really interested in, in deep and meaningful ways. And that it would create that alone would create a better society, right?
00:29:57:07 – 00:30:28:17 Speaker 1 You mentioned lawyers, like there’s too many lawyers in this world, right? It’s just it’s a it’s something that we as a society don’t really need much. I mean, we definitely need a legal system. I guess if you’re, you know, dealing with complex systems. But we don’t need as many lawyers as we have. Right. But what is law school law school is a is kind of a place, say, kids who do good at school that don’t know what they want to do with their lives just fall into because that’s what that’s everyone says this is a good option for them.
00:30:28:17 – 00:31:02:20 Speaker 1 Right. And and so the schooling system, if you do believe in a sense of like there are just some kid, some people who are just smarter than others. Right. And that aligns with doing well in school. What schools do is they suck out of society. All these people who do well in school and into a very small world clustered in in certain parts of in the United States, for example, you got Seattle, San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Austin, New York, Boston.
00:31:02:20 – 00:31:30:21 Speaker 1 Right. They can just be small clusters where all these people congregate to in a very select number of fields. You know, academia, I guess academia is the exception because they get stuck everywhere. But but academia, finance, consulting, law, medicine. Right. So so we’re stuck. We’re taking the so-called smart people and we’re sucking them into these very tiny pockets.
00:31:30:23 – 00:32:00:07 Speaker 1 And then the rest of society is just sort of like, oh, we didn’t make it. So we’re going we’re going to we’re going to slog along, do our 40 hour work week and hopefully, you know, have access to Social Security. At the end of the day. And it’s sad for everyone. It’s sad for the people who do well in the system because they end up often again, their souls are just completely depleted.
00:32:00:11 – 00:32:20:09 Speaker 1 They either slave away making a ton of money, doing stuff that they don’t care about, and at the end of the day they’re like, What did I do with my life? I did nothing meaningful or worse. They do real harm for for personal benefit, and that can’t be good for the soul, right? And they left everyone behind. I left my hometown.
00:32:20:11 – 00:32:53:17 Speaker 1 Right now, there’s just a huge so-called brain drain from all these towns, right? Because everyone who can leaves and then and then everyone who’s left, right. It’s just sort of like I You just take what you can get. Yeah. And I think that this is school’s not the only problem, right? Like it’s a societal problem, but school is definitely something that what I like to say is schooling amplifies and perpetuates social inequities.
00:32:53:21 – 00:33:24:10 Speaker 1 Right? Everyone thinks that schooling is the great equalizer. The biggest crock of you know, what ever like schooling is not the great equalizer. Schooling consistently amplifies disparities. And then every once in a while you have someone like me and they’re just like, see, see, the system works, right? And just like, no, I’m just a chump that like, that allows you to have that talking point.
00:33:24:12 – 00:33:57:04 Speaker 1 Yeah. So, so I do think that if we can cultivate communities where everyone was valued at the beginning, not based on what they did, not based on what they, you know, what they’re going to do, but just everyone is valued from the beginning and accepted. That’s a great start. And where they’re not quite in competition with one another is necessary.
00:33:57:06 – 00:34:26:11 Speaker 1 I think that self-directed education is unique in that it really allows for every single person to be doing their own thing. They don’t have to be in competition with anyone because they’re doing something that’s unique to themself And everyone else in that community, if it’s a healthy community, is cheering them on. That’s what I plan on doing with my child.
00:34:26:13 – 00:34:48:00 Speaker 1 My child is not going to be put into any kind of school, not even the most progressive marketed school that exists, unless they choose that they want to go to school. If they say, I would like to go to school, we’re going to allow that. We’re not going to deny the person. You can’t talk about youth autonomy and then say, Except for that, you can’t do that.
00:34:48:00 – 00:35:09:16 Speaker 1 Right? Right. But but yeah, you know, I’m actually planning on being a stay at home dad and and I plan on trying to do some stuff on the side to make money. But my but I’m going to be at home so that they can never have to go to preschool or or to school. And I realize that I’m very privileged to be able to do that.
00:35:09:16 – 00:35:44:10 Speaker 1 A lot of people simply don’t have that choice. But but I think that if if people came together in communities where that was the norm, where at least for the kids, even if we as adults can’t pull that away from from sense of value, personal worth, at least we’re going to give that to our kids. I think that’s a great starting point.
00:35:44:12 – 00:36:12:15 Speaker 1 It can be unschooled. It can be self-directed education communities. I’m a big fan of libraries. Libraries are great because it’s it’s a place where you get to come as you are. No one really cares what you want to learn about the librarians are just there to help you, help support you in that. And I think that is if if we’re going to talk about public education, I think that’s the type of public education we should be talking about.
00:36:12:19 – 00:36:43:09 Speaker 1 How do we provide people with the resources to really go down what they want to do instead of constantly trying to push them into very narrow silos, which are often contributing to, you know, many of our societal problems. Right? But school is insufficient to do this change. Like society has to be restructured in order to really get to a place where we have a healthy society, where we don’t have throwaway, throwaway people.
00:36:43:15 – 00:37:12:16 Speaker 1 Right. And I’m not I’m not making policy suggestions. But I do think a society where nobody is houseless, right, where nobody is living in poverty, where like there’s this conservative talking point that if you give people money, they’re just going to sit on their butts and do nothing with it, right? One is, no, they’re not right. Like everyone wants to do something meaningful with their life.
00:37:12:18 – 00:37:39:05 Speaker 1 Right. And to the extent that they do sit on their butts like there’s there’s stuff like that’s an opportunity to help them, you know, because something’s obviously blocking their ability to to do something. But two is who cares? We as a society, we should we should want people to be able to survive even if they aren’t producing economic value for someone else.
00:37:39:05 – 00:38:19:02 Speaker 1 Right. And and I think that that is something that we as a society would have to move toward. You know, we’d have a lot of things that we’d have to really flesh out that our society is unwilling to flesh out to to get there. I think that schooling could help if you create these communities where we don’t force the kids to compete against each other and where they can actually focus on on things that they’re interested in and on caring for other people, that that could help seed more potential for society itself.
00:38:19:02 – 00:39:06:00 Speaker 1 But I also think that at the end of the day, there has to be like a really intense focus on people who are trying to shift culture, even outside of schooling, to get us to the point where every human being is valued and welcoming, accepted. So that’s that’s what I’d like to see, you know, for our society. And and that’s just one of the reasons why I’m going to make sure that my child has the has the option of not going to school so that they can so that they can create create community around things that are relevant to them.
00:39:06:02 – 00:39:57:18 Speaker 1 We could talk about white supremacy. We could talk about neo colonialism. We can talk about like, you know, capitalism. We could talk about like so many sort of oppressive social and economic systems that do great harm. But I think that when you have a schooling system that basically 99% of kids go through, if you’re including the homeschooled kids who are schooling at home, that 99 plus percent of kids go through that really drives home, insists upon the notion that your self-worth is tied up in how you compare with other people and how you rank that.
00:39:57:20 – 00:40:31:01 Speaker 1 It’s really hard to have a moral culture when we do that to kids. So that’s one of the reasons why I’m such a fan of self-directed education. Self-Directed education is not sufficient on its own to do that, but it’s it can be a very powerful tool. And unlike a lot of people who really care about education, I just I do not believe that the conventional education system, compulsory education, does more good than harm.
00:40:31:01 – 00:40:53:02 Speaker 1 I think it does more harm than good. And I also don’t believe that it can be reformed. I think that you have to let it go and rethink of it in terms of a museum library model that doesn’t age, segregate and divvy up resources so that everything goes to the people at the most.