MATT BEAUDREAU | The Clear Path to Alternative Education
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 26 minutes
Words per Minute
192.24374
Summary
In this episode, host Ryan Michler is joined by Matt Boudreaux, founder of Acton Academy Placer and ACTon Academy Sacramento, to talk about alternative education options and home-based education. Topics covered include: 1. What are the differences between being educated and being home schooled 2. Common myths about pulling your kids from government education 3. The role of parents in choosing their children s education 4. School choice for parents and so much more.
Transcript
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Man, you know that I've been a long time outspoken advocate for pulling your kids from government education to home-based education.
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But I also understand how many barriers are in place to actually doing that from the mindsets and skill sets and financial resources.
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It can really be daunting to even consider educating your kids within the walls of your home.
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Today, my guest, Matt Boudreaux, and I talk about how to make that a reality.
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We cover the resources you need to homeschool your children.
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Also, alternative paths outside of government and home-based education.
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The difference between being educated and being schooled.
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Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
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When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time.
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You are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.
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At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement.
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If you are joining us today for the very first time,
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this is a podcast dedicated to giving you the tools, resources, conversation,
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whatever you need to thrive as a man in a society, frankly, that doesn't really want men to be men.
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I want you to be bold and assertive and capable and independent.
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And to that end, we have conversations with my guest, Matt Boudreau today, guys like Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Tim Kennedy, Tim Tebow, Terry Cruz, Ben Shapiro, Matthew McConaughey.
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The list of men that we've had, which is over 300 at this point, is absolutely phenomenal and a testament to the work that we're doing here and the value you guys are deriving from this podcast.
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So, uh, I'm going to get into it with Matt here in just a minute, because I know there's a lot of questions about alternative education and home-based education, especially since I've been talking about it so much over the past several years.
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Before we get into that, just want to let you know that if you do want to support the show, and I humbly ask that you do, I don't do ads.
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Uh, I don't, I've literally walked away from nearly six figures of ad revenue because I don't want to hawk underwear or mattresses or any other bull crap to you guys that I don't personally use.
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Uh, you're going to hear a lot of shows that do that and teach their own.
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So what you can do so I can keep this ad free is leave a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Pandora, blah, blah, blah, wherever you listen, leave that rating and review.
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And then also just take a screenshot right now and share it.
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Just send a text to your dad, your brother, your cousin, your uncle, your neighbor, your colleague, your coworker, and let them know what you're listening to.
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Very simple, simple ways, free ways for you to do it.
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It takes two minutes and it goes a long way in promoting what we're doing here, which Lord knows.
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And hopefully, you know how much this is needed.
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All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest today, Matt Boudreau.
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Uh, he's the founder of Acton Academy Placer and Acton Academy Sacramento, which are both alternative schooling options or educational options to the traditional schooling model that we often think of.
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Uh, he's a former public school educator, administrator, and professor at Stanford University.
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Uh, he's also the host of the essential 11 podcast and a world renowned keynote speaker.
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He's got clients ranging from Lockheed Martin to the United States air force, Caterpillar, Honeywell, so many more.
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And frankly, he's just made it his life's mission to find alternative and powerful education opportunities for our young men and women, including, uh, of a fairly recent partnership with Tim Kennedy in a young men's mentoring program called Apogee.
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Let it open your mind to the possibility of educating your kids outside of the government schooling option.
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All right, Matt, I got to say, I'm a little worried.
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Um, cause we're going to be talking about alternative based education and you sent me a message.
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Like I can't log on to your, I'm like, Oh, great.
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We're going to talk about schooling your kids at home or in an alternative way.
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And this guy can't even log into a simple website.
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And yesterday I was, I was helping some other Acton owners, um, too.
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And actually, uh, guys that are friends with Tim, uh, as well, man.
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And we, the, the, between the three of us trying to get something done yesterday, it was the same thing, man.
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Like we couldn't figure out the technology to even have the conversation.
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It's, it's interesting to me because we always think about the educated as being the, like the rulers of the world, the people that are going to build the businesses, the people that are going to build.
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And, you know, everything, but it's, you know, outside of like lawyers and politicians, it's really not the educated.
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It's the wise, it's the people that have put some of this information into practice.
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And so I differentiate, man, when I talk about this subject, I talk about the difference between being educated and being schooled.
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And we've confused those two things in our country where we think the people that have the most schooling or have done, you know, gone to the most prestigious school, that that equates to capability.
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And that's clearly not the case because it's what you said.
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It's the people that can actually do and produce results.
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And that may have absolutely nothing to do with the actual school that they went to.
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But so here's the problem I have, though, or maybe not problem, but concern I have is when you look at the elite, we'll just use that term.
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But what I mean is politicians, the ruling class, if you will, most of these individuals are schooled.
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So how does a guy who's not schooled like me, I mean, I went through K through 12 in a government school.
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And that's, I use that term deliberately and I went through about a half a semester of post-secondary education and realized I'm out.
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That's the extent of my formal schooling education.
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I'm like, man, if I was a lawyer, if I was an attorney, if I was a doctor, if I was whatever, you know, would I be more influential within society?
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And you mentioned the, you know, the quote-unquote elite.
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You know, we can go as far down the education rabbit hole as we want to go or the schooling rabbit hole.
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So what you're talking about with those politicians is the game of schooling.
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I can tell you this, because of their network, because of their family lineage, they have access to opportunities, including getting into the Harvards, the Stanfords, the MITs.
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And they could have a 1.7 GPA and be on probation.
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This is that whole – this is that whole – I watched a documentary on Netflix or something about all these elites and these Hollywood people getting their loser children into Ivy League schools on swimming scholarships when, you know, they've never been on any sports field in their entire lives.
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There's always this level that has nothing to do with a meritocracy.
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So if you're wealthy, if you're connected, welcome to wherever you want to go.
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If you feel a need, welcome to wherever you want to go.
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And then there's different levels of the game every year too, right?
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You know, I mean, I was at Stanford University, right?
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And so we get down to various levels and we start going, okay, I need less white dudes.
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So it doesn't matter if the next most qualified individual is a white guy.
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He's not getting in that year because we've got to fix our ratios, right?
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I got to stop you right there because I hear what you're saying.
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And if you were to look at the political spectrum and you were find the middle ground, I'm to the right.
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Not extreme, but I'm pretty far past the middle line.
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And so I hear when you say things like, oh, this is the way it's always been.
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What, you know, it's, this is how people, I'm like, okay.
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And then, and then you're talking about, okay, we, there, there's a white guy.
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We're not going to admit him or enroll him to me as somebody who I think most of the guys understand, like I'm, I'm right of center.
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So, and thank you for making me clarify the word.
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So I shouldn't say it's always been that way because at the beginning of our, our institutions of higher education, it was not, it was not that way.
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I will say over the last 30-ish years, it's slowly, well, now rapidly continue to go that way.
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And I used white guy as an example, probably a bad idea since you and I are two, two bearded white guys that are more to the right of that line.
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It could just as easily be, we need less Asian guys.
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And that was something that actually came into the news a couple of years ago, right?
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Where Harvard went, hey, we have too many Asians.
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And so we've got to, so the point being that college admittance itself is a game.
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And when I talk to parents all the time, I'm going, you know, I try to differentiate between school and education.
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Education is something that you should be taking on every day, all the time.
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If you're trying to grow in any area, you're going to have to educate yourself.
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School has a very particular game and there's a lot of ways to play that game.
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But, but my question is how blatant is it really?
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Like, is there a board of, of individuals sitting around saying, okay, we need to bring these many, this, this many students in this year.
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And so we're going to bring in at the risk of being misogynistic or even racist.
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We're going to bring in these many African-Americans.
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We're going to bring in this many females versus males.
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Like again, at the risk of being misogynistic, I really am trying to get to the root of it.
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Is that blatant where it's like, no, we have to hit these numbers.
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And so every one of these schools has their own game that they're playing.
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If you're going to, you know, small little Brevard college, it's up the road for me.
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I, I don't think they're playing that heavy of a game, but I can tell you when you start getting into your quote unquote elite schools, you know, I'm at Stanford university.
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I know for a fact, we have 40,000 applications coming in every year.
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If we accept blanket, if we accept more than 5% of those applicants, we ruin our rankings in U.S. news and world report.
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Any applicants that want to come in as an undergrad student.
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So if there is a meritocracy there, whereas we say, all right, we're Stanford university.
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And if anybody meets this criteria, A, B, C, D, E, F, welcome to Stanford, right?
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Even if 10% should be there, we can only accept five.
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And then you start doing those other layers of, well, they're uber connected.
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So somebody who very much deserves to get in may not get in in a given year to a given school based on the given game being played at that school in that year.
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And it might look different the very next year.
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Because they're not black or they're not a woman or they're not based on some immutable characteristic.
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That has nothing to do with their performance going in.
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But let me, again, I'm going to come back and clarify because I really want to get to the root of this.
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I hear so many people and I'm trying to be as objective as possible.
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I hear so many people use the term they, right?
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Like, is there a, is there a, is there a, like a, a, a group of people making these decisions?
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And so, you know, when you get into the regions who, who kind of control admissions, right?
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And so you've got donors at a certain level that are playing into some of these decisions that I've seen.
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And I'm just speaking from what I've seen, right?
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You've got specific donors that are able to speak specifically into what some of this criteria needs to look like.
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And I wasn't at the top of that funnel making any of those decisions.
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I'm speaking more from the experience of not just having students that have faced backlash or gotten in when they shouldn't have gotten in,
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but from having admissions records right in front of me and going, Ooh, this student makes sense.
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And, and people being able to, and as I send it up the line, people go, no, we're going to, we got to take that one out.
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And I wasn't high up, high enough up the food chain to see who's pulling the ultimate strings on that.
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But were you high enough up the food chain to say, Hey, this person, we ought to reconsider.
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It sounds like you're saying that you had some sort of influence over this.
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I had very clear, there were some very clear yeses and nos in my short time there.
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And I had very clear directives to change, or I had some things that I said, look, based on our criteria, that's a no.
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And I got word later, no, that's absolutely a yes, because of who that is.
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And so again, whoever's, you know, whoever is pulling the ultimate strings up there, you know, I don't know.
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And I'm speaking from my experience at one university where I had that position, right?
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And again, it's, it's, it's, I'm just trying to be more open.
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Again, I already said, like, I'm, I'm right of center.
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Everybody that listens to this podcast for any amount of time knows that, but I'm trying to see it like, okay.
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Is there really a quote unquote, they, is there really some sort of grand scheme or strategy?
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And based on the people I've talked with, the answer is yes.
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And that's, and it's more, I think it's more readily obvious when you start looking at K through 12, right?
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And you start looking at the teachers unions that are truly pulling the strings, right?
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You don't have your school boards and all that.
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They don't have the influence that, that everybody thinks the site administrator has no, you know, the principal has no power there.
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The school board has a little bit, but the, the unions are the ones pulling the strings in most of these districts to make a lot of decisions there too.
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You see it more clearly there, but the question for me is always, why do you want to play that game in the first place?
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Like you said, you know, if you, if I see, if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, yep, you bet you have to legally, right?
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Well, actually you can become a lawyer without going to law school.
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That's one thing that I learned from a lawyer, a friend.
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It is interesting, but like, if you want to be a doctor, yes, you've got to go, you've got to play that game.
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So if he knows that's his path, what are we doing?
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Making him spend two, three semesters, four semesters taking, you know, liberal, uh, liberal studies of Chinese ideology of 1800.
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Like there's so much superfluous garbage that they've got to take still too, right?
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That has nothing to do with it, but it sure does cost a ton of money.
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Um, so there's still an element of a silly game that's being played, but for the majority of the people.
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And I asked a group of college professors, this, uh, university of South Carolina, and I was speaking there.
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Do students learn when they come into your classroom that they cannot absolutely cannot get anywhere else.
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And probably for free, like it's, can they, if they, can they YouTube your material?
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Are they going to be able to experience something that's going to teach them the same lessons?
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What, like, why do they have to take professor Ryan Mickler's class?
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Everybody knows why they should take professor Mickler.
00:18:00.680
It's like, why do they have to take your class?
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They said, and this is a room of, of 80, 80 to a hundred people.
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And they said, they don't necessarily need our class, but they need us to sign off on the material so they can get their diploma.
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And, and I don't, I don't know if I totally agree with this, but my answer.
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Like, if I'm being objective as possible is that, yeah, you could go to YouTube, but like, are you really going to do it?
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The majority of people aren't just like the majority of the people that sit there and take professor, whoever's class.
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And they're going to play the game of school to get whatever grade they want to get to, to go on to the next thing.
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Some people go there very intentionally and they're, and they're better off for it.
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And they would have been fine, even if they didn't go through some sort of government education or post-secondary formal education.
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I don't even know if that's still even a thing.
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A bunch of people can get into like a chat room and then you can join that and hear like live conversation or whatever.
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So I was in, I was in a clubhouse things probably like nine, nine, 10 months ago with a couple of friends of mine.
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We were in, there was some CEOs, a CEO of Coors, the beer drinker.
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And I, there was a business professor from Princeton.
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And we started talking about education, started talking about the schools that I, that I run.
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He's like, yeah, I just think those, you know, that's, I don't think that's going to be effective.
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And he started going down the parenting, the way I was talking about parenting.
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He's like, ah, gosh, man, I'm just not sure that's the way to, to really raise kids.
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And I said, hold on a second, how many business, you're a, you're a business professor.
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And that's another big problem in academia is that we play a whole lot of theory in there and you're supposed to espouse this theory back.
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And that's like you said, you and I are the ones that are going out and the people that are going out that are autodidacts that are going to go actually put in the work.
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They're the ones that are going to create the impact, whether they went to school or not.
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I've thought about this with my kids, somebody several weeks or months ago on Instagram, because I'm a big proponent of home-based education.
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I've, I've typically used the term homeschooling.
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I'm going to call it home-based education for some specific reasons.
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And, and somebody had, you know, they always make snippy comments.
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They, again, some of these people make snippy comments.
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It's about, you know, like, oh, well, you know, your kids aren't going to be socialized.
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And I just said, you know, my four children are going to run circles around your kids.
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They're going to, they're going to be their bosses.
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They're going to be the managers and your children who are government-based education are going to have to report to my kids.
00:21:25.060
My, my 11 year old and you, you know what I mean?
00:21:28.040
And so she said, I think it was about two years ago.
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And they had just purchased their first horses.
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They purchased their first horses based on the businesses that they are running.
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And they haven't been government school of the day in their life.
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And Morgan said something along the lines of, I'm glad there are still people that are kids our age that are going to go to college though, because if our business gets big enough, we're going to need to have people work for us.
00:21:59.960
You're going to need to have lawyers and accountants.
00:22:07.720
And as much as that breaks my heart for the, for, you know, the kids that are going to experience that government schooling throughout, the reality is my kids are my responsibility.
00:22:18.640
And we want to make sure that they have the best opportunity.
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And this is what's going to make the best opportunity.
00:22:29.720
Um, you know, you see it when I have to get into it.
00:22:33.960
Let's talk about, cause that's what there's usually four or five, Matt, and you know, this better than I do.
00:22:41.500
There's, there's an infinite number of arguments, but they fall into four or five categories.
00:22:51.060
So the whole concept is, well, how are you kids going to, going to be socialized if you, if you educate them out?
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And so I like to turn that question back around to parents and say, okay, well, how are your kids going to be socialized if they spend their entire day only with other people of their same date of manufacture, right?
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They're only dealing with people that are their exact same age.
00:23:14.380
They're being taught to look down upon younger.
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They're being taught to automatically revere older.
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They're being taught that anybody that claims authority is somebody they should be blindly obedient to, including ask permission to, you know, go and go to the bathroom.
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They're in a, in a system all day long, five days a week for 12, 14, 16, 18 years.
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That does not transfer to any other system we have in society.
00:23:44.380
Again, I'm trying to look at this as objectively as possible.
00:23:51.020
Because if you think about it for a second, there's always a hierarchy, right?
00:23:56.620
There's, so let me just give you a little anecdote here and we can keep going.
00:24:00.980
But years ago I went to, I think it was my oldest son's, I don't know, like, like house warming party or something.
00:24:10.320
I don't know what they even called it, but it's like the priest, like before school starts, like come meet the teacher, meet and greet, something like that.
00:24:17.900
And so I went and I went into their classroom and I'm like, all right, I don't want to see how their classroom is organized.
00:24:22.540
And there was a list of 10 rules and the 10, and I thought the 10 rules were solid, like good rules, you know, civil rules, like all kids should need to know this.
00:24:31.680
But at the same time, I was like, oh man, like this is what they're teaching them.
00:24:36.920
I made a post and a bunch of people were like, well, what's wrong with those rules?
00:24:39.780
And as I looked at it objectively, I'm like, no, that's actually not wrong.
00:24:48.080
Like when my kids get into the real world, like there is going to be some of that hierarchy there that I think I would want them to know.
00:24:58.040
But what's that hierarchy in the real world going to be based on?
00:25:01.980
It's going to be based on how you treat other people.
00:25:04.640
It's not going to be the way that everybody is divided in a, in a traditional, what I call conveyor belt school system, where you're only with a specific group of predefined people.
00:25:23.240
White guys speak with white guys, black guys with the black guys, right?
00:25:29.980
And so they've got to establish their hierarchy.
00:25:33.140
And so then you want to show that your dominance.
00:25:35.160
So you, you know, you show dominance through physicality and you show dominance through manipulation and you show dominance there because that's also a way for your group to have a voice.
00:25:45.200
Because the reality is the rest of the day, you're being told when to go somewhere, what to do, when to do it, all of those things.
00:25:52.940
Again, very similar to how that looks in school, right?
00:25:56.060
So yeah, there's always hierarchies, but a hierarchy that naturally develops because we are figuring out our tribe, figuring out if we're each part of this tribe, figuring out I'm the leader here because I'm competent here.
00:26:11.740
You're the leader there because you're competent there.
00:26:14.140
You know, that's, that's a much different hierarchy.
00:26:18.260
Um, I would argue then, then what you get in a, in a conveyor belt school system.
00:26:22.920
Well, I had a really interesting conversation with two of my children yesterday.
00:26:28.340
In fact, I was sitting there and I was washing some dishes.
00:26:33.240
We had made breakfast for dinner and I'm sitting there washing the dishes and outside of our.
00:26:39.100
Kitchen window where the sink is, I can see my wife's garden in the, in the, in the backyard.
00:26:44.200
And I saw my daughter in one of the garden boxes and her brother, my son had pushed her from what it looked like, had pushed her into the garden box.
00:26:57.820
So I, I hollered at him like, Hey, both of you come up here.
00:27:02.000
And they both came up and I really, I'm, I'm trying to be more deliberate and intentional about this.
00:27:07.600
So my oldest son, you know, he lied to me, right?
00:27:10.480
Like he, he, he kind of manipulated the lake, but he lied like that out.
00:27:34.240
Son, you're wrong for being a bit of a bully and daughter.
00:27:42.160
And I couldn't help, but think how this would happen in government schooling, where the kid
00:27:48.160
would be, the, the, the, the boy, the brother would be suspended and, and it would be make,
00:28:01.420
And again, it's not transferable because what you just gave an example of is how things can
00:28:06.200
actually play out in the real world when there's context and you don't have context in a system
00:28:12.240
that is designed to have everybody doing and saying the same thing at the same time on,
00:28:17.900
again, that's why I call it kind of that conveyor belt schooling, right?
00:28:20.760
And notice what we're, what we're talking about too.
00:28:22.720
We're talking about socialization in terms of just habits and natural human behavior.
00:28:28.580
We're not even mentioning any of the agenda kind of stuff that turns into being a vast issue
00:28:39.900
What kind of mindset are you being, you know, are you being given?
00:28:43.480
That's a whole different conversation around that.
00:28:45.700
So again, there's the nuance just gets lost because it has to, it's a, it's non-effective
00:28:51.240
system if we allow for that nuance for our kids.
00:28:54.860
Well, the conveyor belt doesn't allow for nuance.
00:29:04.000
And it's designed that way so that you, that's it.
00:29:07.100
You can put the majority of people through as quickly as humanly possible.
00:29:11.800
Let's, let's talk about this term that you just used, the agenda.
00:29:17.140
I've been openly critical about government schooling for about three to four years now.
00:29:21.520
And I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this grand agenda versus a bunch of misguided
00:29:36.260
individuals who I think probably got into schooling and education for the right reasons.
00:29:47.480
Like what, like how many people have an agenda versus how many people are just misguided in
00:29:56.240
So the, the, I think the mistake in the assumption on that is that there is a lot of individual
00:30:05.580
choice or intellectual freedom for the majority of our educators, because there's not, I am fully
00:30:14.180
The majority of people get into this profession altruistically.
00:30:21.720
I have nothing but love and respect for the good people who are teachers and administrators
00:30:25.640
who are still in, in these government schools, nothing but respect and love for them.
00:30:31.280
The problem is you are told what needs to be promoted.
00:30:36.680
You are told what the curriculum is and you are to adhere to that curriculum.
00:30:53.380
So you've got a lot of teachers who are perpetuating things.
00:30:57.700
And then you have to do that because they're, because they're afraid to lose their job.
00:31:02.760
You know, I mean teachers I talk to on a daily basis, teachers and administrators that are
00:31:07.340
like, Oh, this is sucking my soul, but I'm eight years away from retirement.
00:31:17.660
If I don't, if I don't toe the line tenure, if I don't toe the line.
00:31:22.580
And so if I speak out against, you know, LBGT, whatever that, if I speak out against that,
00:31:28.520
if I, if I'm in higher ed and I say intelligent design, not even God, if I just say intelligent
00:31:33.720
design, I'm risking my career, I'm risking my tenure.
00:31:38.760
They're setting up, um, you know, setting up, uh, COVID, uh, vaccination centers at certain
00:31:46.420
schools where I was in, in California, and they're setting these up and teachers are having
00:31:50.740
to ask their students certain questions and offer these things to them when they themselves
00:32:00.300
They didn't believe that whether you do or don't, I don't care that these teachers did
00:32:03.740
not want to perpetuate that, but they were risking their career.
00:32:09.120
They were risking, um, you know, getting on the naughty list if they didn't go along with
00:32:14.200
And that's the same as the curriculum continues to get introduced.
00:32:17.040
If you're not on board, you were going to lose your position.
00:32:21.700
And if that's their livelihood and that's all they've ever done, that scares a lot of
00:32:25.340
I, I, I mean, have the experience of saying, well, F you, then I'm going to go do something
00:32:30.500
I mean, I, I, but I don't pretend that everybody, um, feels like they can, they can do that.
00:32:35.680
And there's a lot of teachers that feel trapped.
00:32:45.100
Um, not get out or you go along with the agenda when you don't believe, like you're out of
00:32:59.560
Um, I get what they're saying, but I also, I'm with you, um, at the end of the day, man,
00:33:04.280
And, and I say the same thing, honestly, to parents who see all this and won't pull their
00:33:09.820
So, but wait, but you say, pull, you're talking about kids or you're talking about teachers
00:33:15.540
I'm talking about, I was talking about teachers first saying, I agree with you, but let's
00:33:18.560
address that because everybody talks about not everybody, but everybody's heard me talk
00:33:25.580
Cause that's, or excuse me, pull your kids from government school, government schools.
00:33:29.740
I don't think I've ever had a conversation about teachers pulling.
00:33:35.540
So let, let, like, let's explore that for a minute.
00:33:38.760
So I, I, I don't know what the exact percentage is.
00:33:44.560
So somebody, if anybody's listening, can they can go check this for themselves, but the number
00:33:49.980
of, I remember talking to, uh, to a group of professors in California and it was somewhere
00:33:56.120
near 50 ish percent of teachers, new teachers that got their credential, went into the classrooms
00:34:06.400
They were leaving the career altogether within three years, like 50% of new teachers within
00:34:17.620
Never to come back to the profession to a mass exodus 50% in three years, in three years.
00:34:23.940
And they never, I mean, that's all a lot of these people ever wanted to do.
00:34:26.640
And they're, and they're pulling in, they're leaving.
00:34:29.260
So there are a good number of teachers who are like, Hey, and the earlier, usually they
00:34:34.540
see it and they see the handcuffs that are placed on them.
00:34:37.260
And they see the ideologies that they're told to pass down.
00:34:40.100
There are a good percentage who are like, Nope.
00:34:44.740
You see it less with the people that've got, you know, have 23 years and 24 years in the
00:34:57.160
There is the, the, the threat of being uncomfortable when in all, you know, they'd always
00:35:08.360
So, but let me, let me ask you this then let's, let's talk about educators in the government
00:35:16.100
Every time I introduce some of these concepts, people always say, well, right.
00:35:20.740
Have you talked to any, I have family members who are ed government educators.
00:35:25.820
I have friends who are, I don't think any less of them.
00:35:33.160
I think they went into it for altruistic reasons.
00:35:38.800
Like at some point it's, it's, it's, it's a little disheartening to me that for the most
00:35:44.560
part, does your wife work outside of the home or is she a stay at home mother?
00:35:50.280
And now that we're on, she's out here running the ranch.
00:35:53.860
Same, same with my wife, you know, not the ranch, but the homestead.
00:35:56.980
Cause we're not quite to ranch level yet, but she's the homestead.
00:35:59.440
And, and I can't help, but feel for a mother or a father who's like, Hey, you know, like
00:36:11.040
I've joined for altruistic reasons, uh, but also we need two incomes.
00:36:17.800
What does a, a, a government educator like that do?
00:36:26.260
Um, so it was, we have to figure out how to, we had to figure out how to get out.
00:36:33.800
And I, I went down, um, kind of the, not knowing what I, you know, didn't know at that time.
00:36:40.040
And I had a government, I was an administrator, right?
00:36:46.360
I was what I called kind of creatively insubordinate.
00:36:48.640
I was always getting in trouble for, uh, for doing what I thought that kid needed versus
00:36:54.620
Um, and I got brought into a superintendent's office and the superintendent was like, Hey,
00:36:59.480
Like your side administrator is telling me you, you know, you're, you're relatively insubordinate.
00:37:06.580
Your teacher or your, your principal or your vice principal?
00:37:12.840
It was like, you know, you're, you're, you're not really following through on what, um, what
00:37:18.000
But our problem is all the other teachers love you.
00:37:21.720
All the parents love you and nobody would ever want to get rid of you.
00:37:29.800
So I'm like, you know what, I'm going to go ahead and be a side administrator so that
00:37:35.060
And so then I go get my credential and you start to see more of the same thing.
00:37:40.760
This is about perpetuating the system as it exists.
00:37:45.600
We're not talking about kids and we're sure as hell, not talking about individualizing
00:37:50.880
anything, um, for these kids and putting any context on it.
00:37:54.460
So I naively let go of my six figure job there to go to a private school and make $31,000.
00:38:09.220
Because from going from a hundred plus thousand dollars and taking a minimum of 67% increase
00:38:20.820
Yeah, it was, uh, we're going to, we're going to cut down on our expenses and we're going
00:38:25.260
So we moved, we moved to a place where there was, um, where, you know, the rent was a whole
00:38:31.040
We got rid of one of our cars, um, and I took on side hustle cause we didn't want, you know,
00:38:36.740
if we could make it work, we wanted Heather to be able to stay home.
00:38:39.920
So I took on side hustle and started doing some teacher training things on the side too,
00:38:44.220
which is what kind of ended up sparking the speaking career.
00:38:46.340
So it was, you know, a maniacal amount of work on my side, um, and some, you know, a couple
00:38:53.200
years of living really, really lean man to make sure it happened.
00:38:56.160
And I knew I wasn't going to stay in that $30,000, you know, that was, we're going to
00:39:00.360
do that for this year and I'm going to start building out something else.
00:39:03.380
You know, what were, what were some of your fears when you did that?
00:39:06.820
Because I know there's going to be a lot of educators who are listening to that or this
00:39:10.440
And they're like, well, you know, I, I would like, that must be nice.
00:39:13.780
It must be this and that, but like, what were some of the fears that you experienced?
00:39:27.160
Like your wife go back to work at the time or you just buckle down.
00:39:34.900
The fear is that you're not going to be able to make it work financially.
00:39:38.020
The fear is that I'm not going to figure out anything.
00:39:41.180
And I'm going to have to stay in this, you know, $30,000 a year job, either more than
00:39:45.560
one year, or I'm going to have to go back into the public schools, or I'm going to have
00:39:50.360
Um, the fear is, you know, my wife's going to have to try to take something.
00:39:54.160
I mean, it's all of those, or she's going to get pissed and just be like, you better
00:40:02.040
We're like, all right, let's buckle down for this year and I'm going to make something
00:40:05.880
And so again, go, went into administration in the private area, which, uh, in the, in
00:40:09.800
the private arena, which, um, you still make vastly less than you do in the, in the
00:40:15.220
Um, but that helped in the speaking private, you do, you make less in private schooling
00:40:22.240
Almost always, almost always significantly less.
00:40:27.500
Um, and so, you know, started building out kind of these, these side businesses where ultimately
00:40:33.200
it got to the point where I realized I love working with young people.
00:40:38.820
I love working with the parents and the families and, and pouring into them and setting them
00:40:43.100
on these great trajectories, but I am not going to be able to do it in this conveyor belt
00:40:48.080
So, which is ultimately why I left to build something different.
00:40:52.340
And again, I make it sound like it was just a hop, skip and a jump.
00:40:55.100
No, there were five years at that private school too, which was when I started my speaking
00:41:01.340
So by the time I got done with the private schools, I was doing 70 keynotes a year, um, for
00:41:07.300
So I had made sure I had another income source altogether so that I could step away.
00:41:24.900
So for, for five years, I average, so one year I averaged 70, um, the next four years
00:41:31.240
I averaged, uh, like 40, it was like 45 a year.
00:41:34.620
So still almost one a week and almost never in California.
00:41:39.280
Um, so I was doing that while I was building out the schools that I built.
00:41:45.000
Uh, I'd, so I'd be on a plane, I'd go speak somewhere and I'd be on the phone all day talking
00:41:49.380
to prospective families and I'd get home and I'd, Hey honey, how are you?
00:41:54.440
And I was having breakfast with a stranger, lunch with a stranger, dinner with a stranger,
00:41:57.680
um, to build up our initial communities of the schools that we were building.
00:42:04.960
My wife is a, is a rock star a hundred percent.
00:42:13.520
But, you know, it gets back to, you know, when we're saying, what did these educators
00:42:16.940
do, they will tell you, uh, there's not going to be any change that happens from within.
00:42:28.060
And if there is, it's going to be a very, very, very long tail game because there's so
00:42:34.800
There's so much control top down from the teachers unions.
00:42:37.700
Um, there's, there's just not going to be a lot of change that happens anytime soon.
00:42:42.280
So that's why we just focused on, you know what, let's just build something.
00:42:49.260
Uh, and then let's help parents understand that if they don't have access to whatever
00:42:54.840
Well, then let's show them how they can actually educate at a world-class level at home.
00:43:02.180
Men, let me, uh, take a step back from the podcast very quickly.
00:43:05.480
Now, look, we've talked a lot about alternative options for raising our young men, but I would
00:43:11.280
have you consider that as a father, one of the best things that you can do.
00:43:19.780
And frankly, there's no better experience to forge powerful bonds between you and your
00:43:24.800
And then also equip each of you with the tools required to usher him into manhood than our
00:43:32.120
Now, when you get registered, you and your son are going to join 19 other men in the
00:43:36.900
hills, the mountains, the woods of Maine on my property, in our barn, on our property,
00:43:41.900
experiencing and enjoying everything that this has to offer.
00:43:45.520
But really at the end of the day, we're going to help you develop the mindsets and skill
00:43:49.800
sets that will help you propel him into manhood.
00:43:52.440
And then also give you, of course, the necessary tools to make that a reality.
00:44:00.540
Uh, and that, that confidence is required for him to become a powerful sovereign man.
00:44:05.040
And the order of man legacy experience is designed to do just that.
00:44:08.580
So it's going to be held on September 22nd through the 25th, uh, 2022.
00:44:14.940
And to get registered, you can head to order of man.com slash legacy.
00:44:21.920
Do that very, very quickly because we will sell out our spots.
00:44:26.680
And I would love to see you out here in the hills of Maine, September 22nd through the
00:44:30.820
Again, order of man.com slash legacy, do that right away for now.
00:44:37.360
Well, that leads into one of the other frustrations or concerns, or one of the four or five things
00:44:43.700
I hear people say, you know, when, when, when they talk about homeschooling and, and, and
00:44:51.140
home-based education is this idea of they're going to get some sort of inferior education,
00:44:59.080
and it's not going to be as, or, or even here, I guess more broadly speaking, here's what I
00:45:07.280
You're not qualified to teach your children the way that other school teachers or school
00:45:14.180
And isn't that ironic that we go through a system of schooling as in, we go through it
00:45:21.780
as students and that system of schooling leaves us feeling inadequate and unqualified to then
00:45:35.100
We turn around and we put them back in that same exact system that left us feeling unqualified
00:45:48.340
Because we're attached to the ideology of, of what school is.
00:45:55.260
So even, even the term alternative education, right.
00:45:59.220
Is, is, uh, culturally been hijacked to mean anything that's not conveyor belt school.
00:46:10.800
Cause that's what we grew up thinking or the, or the, or the, or they're about to go
00:46:20.300
The reality is since the dawn of time, humans have always learned the same way.
00:46:36.360
We learn by watching our own parents and we copy their behaviors.
00:46:44.980
So then in the last 120 years, all of a sudden we make this compulsory conveyor belt schooling
00:46:51.240
that nobody wanted when it was implemented by the way.
00:46:54.260
And we made it to, to funnel this vast majority of the population.
00:46:58.820
And so now since we're a generation removed from when it got implemented, we all grew up
00:47:04.820
So it's a religion for us where we think that is what being educated means.
00:47:10.220
Explain, explain to me when you said nobody wanted it.
00:47:14.360
So my, my surface level understanding is that about the time of the industrial revolution,
00:47:20.740
we, we, we sent the men, we pulled them from the farms and we sent them into the factories,
00:47:31.560
And we're going to pull you out of the family system.
00:47:33.820
And I don't, I don't know that that was like a deliberate, like get the men out of the house.
00:47:37.920
I don't, I'm not going to say that I'm not going to go that far.
00:47:41.020
And then, and then we said through consumerism, we said, Hey, now ladies, let's get you in the
00:47:46.940
factories too, because the men are at war and we need you in the factories.
00:47:51.180
We need you to do the men's job because the men are out fighting and we'll go ahead and
00:47:57.340
That's a very surface level understanding of my, my knowledge of government education.
00:48:05.760
I mean, the, you're, you're not, you're not entirely wrong.
00:48:09.460
And I will always, I will preface this too, with anybody listening to this, that wants
00:48:14.740
There's a man by the name of John Taylor Gatto, G A T T O was a brilliant human, just passed
00:48:22.020
And I had the pleasure of meeting him before he did.
00:48:25.300
And he was New York state teacher of the year, you know, in government schools for a couple
00:48:32.780
And he is the foremost educational historian this world has ever seen.
00:48:36.780
And so he, in many of his books, which you can find free as PDFs, he can lay this out
00:48:44.360
in more detail, but essentially, yes, this is a Prussian system of mass control.
00:48:50.340
John wrote a book called weapons of mass instruction.
00:48:57.200
So the men that were running the, you know, your, uh, your, uh, your Rockefellers and your
00:49:02.300
Carnegie's and these guys that are running this at the time, that was exactly it.
00:49:05.740
It's like, Hey man, we can, we can essentially make a, uh, a nation of workers that are smart
00:49:12.180
And what we need to have done, not so, you know, intelligent that they go, uh, get something
00:49:17.680
That's, that's a little better and start to question the status quo.
00:49:20.140
Um, and, and we can bring mass compulsory schooling.
00:49:34.420
Uh, secret history of underground American education or something like that.
00:49:39.120
Uh, and dumbing us down, um, three phenomenal books that anybody thinking about, uh, educating
00:49:48.820
What was, so I got dumbing us down weapons of mass instruction.
00:49:54.260
And, uh, secret, I think it's called the secret history or underground history of American
00:50:04.440
And he goes into the history, uh, much greater than I am.
00:50:07.360
And as soon as compulsory, you know, uh, education was, or I should say compulsory schooling was
00:50:13.360
It was met with a lot of backlash, the farmers that, you know, people, and it was first put
00:50:18.080
in, in like Massachusetts and they were like, Oh, hell no, we don't want to do this.
00:50:24.040
This was in Massachusetts you're saying, but when did this start?
00:50:31.960
And it was like, no, your kids have to go to school.
00:50:37.820
They need to be here with us on the farm and learning how to do things and becoming an
00:50:41.660
app, you know, I'm the neighborhood or the town blacksmith.
00:50:44.360
And, and, uh, and my boy's going to be the apprentice.
00:50:53.560
What, so what I've noticed is there seems to be a trend, not just within the country,
00:51:02.920
Cause I've talked to plenty of guys who are like, Oh, I would love to homeschool my kids,
00:51:19.740
What, like, why aren't we like, I don't know right offhand.
00:51:25.260
I'm not going to pretend I know, but like, I don't, is it, is it legal?
00:51:28.160
Is homeschooling home-based based education legal in Australia or the UK?
00:51:35.560
No, I think it's, I think it's legal in, I think it's legal in both of those.
00:51:47.380
I think he's still, I think he's still can France.
00:51:53.360
Um, there are a few countries that have, that have eradicated it.
00:51:57.600
Um, but I, I don't pretend to know what those are.
00:52:00.600
I know that that's, I know, obviously that's not the case here in this country.
00:52:03.840
Each state has different laws, um, around that that are pretty loosely monitored.
00:52:12.580
So, so in Maine, my children can participate in extracurricular activities through the school
00:52:22.220
Uh, and also I think if I understand correctly, we need to report, uh, do an annual report on,
00:52:29.880
you know, what they learned, the curriculum loosely.
00:52:32.800
It doesn't need to be detailed, but like what we taught or something like that.
00:52:36.480
And a lot of states are roughly about the same, right?
00:52:38.480
And they, some states want you to take, you know, certain standardized tests, but usually
00:52:42.800
with a caveat of just have the test results handy in case you're ever asked for it.
00:52:47.960
And most of the time you're never, I'm not, I'm not having my children take any government
00:52:53.200
So it's like each state has a little bit of, uh, of a different, you know, thing that
00:52:56.760
they're asking that they're asking for and want you to keep certain records, but at
00:53:01.800
Let's move into some solutions because a lot of people are like, they're nodding their head.
00:53:23.400
Um, yeah, I would, yeah, I'll tell you what, I've never done drugs.
00:53:27.020
Never, uh, never even had a sip of alcohol, believe it or not.
00:53:39.080
So obviously I've been a big, a big champion and proponent of home-based education.
00:53:43.140
We've been homeschooling our children for the past three plus years.
00:53:49.920
Uh, and you know, admittedly, I know not everybody's in the position to do it.
00:53:55.200
I understood I was in that position, not now, but I was, what are some alternative methods
00:54:00.520
to government schooling outside of home-based education?
00:54:05.600
I mean, you've got a number of different, um, private, you know, schools that are set up
00:54:12.680
as either private schools or co-ops or educational resource centers.
00:54:17.120
Um, and there are more and more coming up all the time.
00:54:19.500
Now, obviously, um, if anybody knows anything about me, I'm, I'm partial to what Acton Academy
00:54:25.780
That's why I left the schools that I was running to open these specifically, you know, and that
00:54:32.120
is a global network, uh, of, uh, of entrepreneurs and parentpreneurs who are going, Hey, we know
00:54:40.200
we're not going to fix school as it is in the government.
00:54:44.100
So we're going to, we're going to band together to do something we think is vastly better.
00:54:49.320
Um, and so, and we're going to help each other in the process, you know, so we've got, um,
00:54:54.060
you know, I've got three Acton academies that I opened in particular, I've helped a number
00:54:58.300
of entrepreneurs open these all over the world.
00:55:00.200
And as a network, we're in 41 States and 26 countries.
00:55:04.760
So, you know, I always tell parents, if you want to break out and actually create something
00:55:10.960
that's a legacy for your kids and for the kids in your communities, for the young heroes
00:55:18.260
Cause it's also an option that if you run it as a business and maybe you go in and guide,
00:55:27.120
You can go over here, still educate kids, or you can, uh, replace an income of leave this
00:55:32.360
job over here and become the guide and the business owner over here.
00:55:35.740
Uh, and you can build a nice, you know, a nice life and replace it that way and do something
00:55:41.700
So I'm, I'm a fan of the Acton network, but let me hold on before you move on, before
00:55:47.580
Um, my kids like a T a movie called it's with Eddie Murphy.
00:55:56.140
Uh, I don't think I've seen, I'm very familiar with it, but it's actually a pretty good, it's
00:56:01.240
Like, you know, it's a kid's show or whatever, but it's, it's pretty good.
00:56:04.300
And essentially these two guys who've like lost their jobs or whatever, just through
00:56:09.240
necessity, start a daycare and they're completely lost.
00:56:14.100
They're completely ridiculous, but then they actually build a pretty good little daycare
00:56:23.620
And so I made a post the other day that was probably a couple of months ago now.
00:56:27.820
And I said, Hey, look, if I was, if I was a school teacher, like a government school
00:56:32.040
teacher, what I would do is I would leave the school district and I would start a school
00:56:42.380
And I would pick up 10 to 20 kids and I would make 10 to 20 grand a month.
00:56:54.880
I'd be able to create a curriculum that I knew worked.
00:56:57.940
I'd be able to have a little bit more flexibility on what I taught them.
00:57:03.680
Is there, are there laws in place that would keep me from doing something like that?
00:57:10.420
So each state's going to be a little different, but you can absolutely do that.
00:57:13.960
You just got to know the game in your state, right?
00:57:16.260
So if you're in California, let's say I was a teacher in California and I wanted to do that.
00:57:23.660
I can come out and I can start my own private school.
00:57:27.460
So I could do Matt, you know, Matt Baudreau's, Matt Baudreau's school.
00:57:31.700
And then I can enroll those kids and do exactly what you were saying, charge whatever I want
00:57:41.560
The caveats in California would be things like, you know, every year I would have to
00:57:50.700
And I would have to submit those to the state and I would have to enforce anything that
00:57:56.900
If they, if the state says, Hey, COVID vaccine mandated for any kids to go to public and private
00:58:04.120
My license would be on the hook for imparting that upon everybody.
00:58:07.740
So you got to figure out, do I want to play that game?
00:58:10.480
So every state has its own game that you just have to figure out the rules of how to play.
00:58:15.840
When we launched in California and Acton, we didn't do it as an official private school.
00:58:21.400
Partially to avoid some of that, some of that nonsense.
00:58:26.840
So it was an educational resource center, whatever you want to call it, a homeschool co-op.
00:58:33.500
I just said, whatever is essential for the call, whatever you need to call.
00:58:38.400
Like whatever you want to call it sounds good to me.
00:58:41.180
Um, but we were also able to articulate to the state that we, California has a very specific
00:58:49.240
They say, you know, that if you are doing things, A, B, C, D, and E, you are likely a
00:58:56.020
We could very clearly articulate that we didn't fit that as an Acton Academy.
00:59:05.440
So we're just kind of a club and you can't really do anything about it.
00:59:08.720
Um, so like when they came to shut us down and, you know, March of 2020, where it's
00:59:13.540
Um, so, but teachers can do that in each state.
00:59:18.240
Just play the rules of the, you know, whatever the rules of the game are in your state and
00:59:25.420
Um, and by the way, I met with, when I said that I would do it, parents could do that and
00:59:39.640
Cause when I said that I was met with, well, nobody can afford a thousand dollars a month.
00:59:50.380
I guarantee there's 2000 people that listen to this podcast.
00:59:57.420
And I'll tell you what, if you would want to do that and you feel like you can't maybe
01:00:01.840
take the example of a guy who dropped, you know, his hundred thousand dollar a year
01:00:05.580
job and went down to 31,000 and you start cutting back because your kids matter that
01:00:10.020
much where you're going to cut back and prioritize that.
01:00:12.960
You know, I know that's a harsh reality too, but maybe you don't need the extra vehicle.
01:00:18.580
Maybe you don't need that vehicle that costs, you know, $800 a month.
01:00:22.580
And maybe you can go lease a Honda, you know, frigging civic do without like, I have, we
01:00:46.980
And the problem is we have in this religion of schooling, we've been culturally trained
01:00:55.800
I should be able to hand my kids off to somebody else for free.
01:00:59.260
And so the thought of having to spend money rubs a lot of people the wrong way, rather
01:01:04.840
than looking at it differently and just going, man, how do I prioritize to make sure my, you
01:01:08.520
know, my young hero gets the best that he or she needs.
01:01:11.060
The thing that rubs me the wrong way is not that I have to spend money because we do, we
01:01:20.000
It's the fact that I'm paying money, but I'm not utilizing the services.
01:01:26.760
And there's some, what are your thoughts about school vouchers or, or choice for schooling?
01:01:30.920
I mean, I think that would be a, I think that would be a phenomenal thing everywhere.
01:01:34.960
And I get, you know, some of the arguments against, against that.
01:01:41.020
Uh, you know, a lot of it just has to do with the, uh, you know, the theoretical equity of
01:01:46.500
opportunity and saying, well, people in, um, you know, lower income areas, so what, so what
01:01:58.240
People have been listening to this podcast enough to know that I'm about becoming a better man.
01:02:03.420
And I believe that as a member of society, that I have a moral, legal, not even legal,
01:02:12.320
just a moral and ethical responsibility to help those underprivileged.
01:02:19.360
But at the same time, why would I deny my own children opportunities because somebody else
01:02:28.240
I mean, that would make me like, I'd be derelict of duty for sure.
01:02:33.760
Father, if I did that, it would make you a piece of garbage a hundred percent.
01:02:45.020
Um, so no school choice would be phenomenal, um, across the board, uh, having those, having
01:02:52.580
the vouchers, you know, in some of those States that are doing, I think, uh, Nevada, um, if
01:02:57.240
you, you know, pull, I think Arizona too, you can, you can have a certain amount of, or
01:03:02.100
a certain percentage of your, uh, uh, of your taxes as a homeowner can go towards a private
01:03:11.060
I think there are some States that are doing that and doing it right.
01:03:15.440
And I think Nevada and Arizona are the two that come to mind, but I think it's a phenomenal
01:03:20.180
I know for a fact, Acton as well, um, is working very hard as a network to drive the cost per
01:03:27.180
student, not saying the, how much tuition costs, but the cost per student to actually own and
01:03:34.460
operate and run one, you know, trying to drive it down to somewhere between a thousand and
01:03:38.520
$1,500 per student, because per year, per month, per year, per year, as far as the cost to educate.
01:03:47.800
So then if you have a tuition, that's 10 grand, right?
01:03:52.380
You're paying overhead, but you're still profiting enough to where we can start to set up scholarship
01:03:56.620
funds and be able to go into, you know, our inner cities and help young people.
01:04:02.060
And so what you're saying, when you, you talk about tuition versus cost per educating one
01:04:08.620
student, you're talking about, let's say I wanted to have my kid go to Acton.
01:04:13.600
So I might pay hypothetically 15 grand, for example, 10, 15 grand, but the cost per educating
01:04:21.860
So 90% of my tuition would go towards paying it forward.
01:04:28.740
So you need to go to it and some of it would go towards overhead, right?
01:04:31.020
And so you got, you got to pay the people and you've got to pay, um, you know, a building
01:04:34.620
space, but the beauty of the model, the learner led model is that you've got 50 students and
01:04:42.620
Once you have it dialed in, you really only need one, maybe two adults.
01:04:49.280
I mean, you told me that in the past and I'm like, wait a second, hold up.
01:04:53.820
Well, again, cause we've been trained like you're good schools.
01:04:56.960
You're going to have these small ratios, right?
01:05:03.740
I argue that the more young people you could have per, you know, one adult, the better off
01:05:10.340
you're doing, because what you're saying then is you've got systems in place and you've got
01:05:14.900
a culture in place where these young people are wildly responsible for themselves.
01:05:21.860
They have learned early a lesson that you and I both know many people don't ever learn.
01:05:27.020
And that's sovereignty and personal responsibility.
01:05:29.480
And they get it early and they're able to operate at a crazy high level without adult
01:05:48.720
That's, that would be, yeah, I get it for sure.
01:05:57.340
Part of the reason we pulled our children, our four children out of schooling, let's just
01:06:02.000
take one of them is that he would be in a classroom of 25 plus students.
01:06:11.460
And now we have a ratio of four students to two adults.
01:06:22.300
And now you're talking about however many students to one adult.
01:06:26.740
And so I have concerns about real life, Lord of the flies scenarios here.
01:06:32.320
And this is where you get into the difference around the systems between an acting academy
01:06:38.560
So that's not a day one scenario, one adult, 50 kids, all different ages.
01:06:48.260
This is something that you work up to over time.
01:06:51.180
You build a tribe, you build a tribe around character and values.
01:07:03.760
All the students have contracts that they help develop and that they sign.
01:07:08.940
And they understand that with those contracts, that means they can be, they're held accountable
01:07:14.340
to that and they're held accountable by their peers.
01:07:16.620
So if Ryan is acting like a jerk and he's going over and he's smacking Matt while Matt's
01:07:22.500
trying to get his work done, he's going over and he's, he's smacking, you know, he's
01:07:28.920
He's going, the other students can go, Hey man, contract says this, you're going to need
01:07:34.660
And there's systems in place where they can actually, uh, like a judicial system.
01:07:39.360
They can hold that guy accountable up to going, Hey man, you got to go.
01:07:44.140
If they show proof of, you know, he's, he's killing the tribe kind of deal.
01:07:49.080
And you've got mixing of ages going on as well.
01:07:53.240
So you're talking 50 kids and those 50 kids might range from five years old to 17, you
01:07:58.180
know, 16, 17, and those 15, 16, 17 year olds have a massive amount of responsibility there
01:08:03.960
too, including helping teaching and mentoring some of the young students, including maybe
01:08:11.480
they're the chef on site too, and they're cooking the meals and they're getting the meals
01:08:15.080
out every day, um, including maybe they're helping budget.
01:08:21.980
Like they're taking on a massive amount of responsibility.
01:08:24.440
What you're essentially creating is a small little community where everybody knows I'm
01:08:29.520
responsible for some jobs here, including my own education.
01:08:34.560
So you build this microcosm of actually, uh, uh, you know, kind of how the world works, man.
01:08:45.400
So, all right, like, let's, let's scale that for a second.
01:08:49.460
When we're talking about alternative education, we have, we have home-based education, which
01:08:55.980
Uh, we have co-ops, which would be like, and I think this is co-ops is actually a good
01:09:00.580
alternative for those who might have two parent, two income households where maybe you can't
01:09:07.260
go from two to one, but you can go from two to one and a half.
01:09:11.500
And so you enlist other people in the community.
01:09:14.120
Or what you do, what I've helped a lot of, uh, families and communities do, right.
01:09:17.960
Is they've got, um, you know, five or six families that are relatively close and all
01:09:25.160
They all are, are, you know, everybody works, right.
01:09:28.020
Mom and dad works in all five or six of these homes, but their schedules, uh, don't necessarily
01:09:37.860
And they're able to rotate homes, um, and each kind of take a responsibility for overseeing.
01:09:44.980
The hardest part on, on a co-op like that, cause I think that's a brilliant idea.
01:09:51.080
Um, the hardest part or the, the things that I've seen tear co-ops apart is that, well,
01:09:56.460
the Baudreau's want to do it this specific way.
01:10:02.200
And not everybody fully agrees on the way everybody wants to do it.
01:10:08.900
Um, but that's a great way to do it is a co-op like that.
01:10:11.680
There's also the concern there's the risk, you know, and, and I'm just going to use you
01:10:17.300
I don't believe this for a second, but if I send my children to you, there is a risk of
01:10:21.700
abuse, of course, mental, emotional, physical, sexual, again, I'm not putting that on you
01:10:29.880
And so people will be like, well, what about that?
01:10:31.460
Well, you have the same risk at government schooling.
01:10:38.020
You're choosing who to collaborate with in this scenario, right?
01:10:42.520
I'm not advocating for, you know, just going down the phone book and picking every John
01:10:46.700
Dick and Sally, just going, man, let's throw our kids together.
01:10:49.640
We're abso-freaking-lutely not, that wouldn't happen, but I'll tell you what, you get all
01:10:53.620
those guys, um, you know, all those guys we went down to, to Mexico with and had all
01:11:00.920
You're not concerned about that in a heartbeat piece of cake, right?
01:11:07.160
So you have co-ops, you have private, you have monastery.
01:11:12.140
Like, I'm not totally familiar with that system.
01:11:15.840
Yeah, Montessori is very similar to, very similar to Acton Academy, as long as it is
01:11:21.660
not, and Acton can be too, as long as it's not bastardized.
01:11:25.360
A lot of people use the Montessori name and don't necessarily-
01:11:34.360
So that's based on Maria Montessori was, uh, was the lady's name.
01:11:37.740
And so that's very much a learner led methodology too.
01:11:41.220
So the, the basic premise there, and it's phenomenal, especially on the younger ages.
01:11:47.600
Um, the, the whole idea is that children have very, very important work to do.
01:11:53.960
They're going to learn through doing this work, which a lot of times is just play, but they'll
01:12:00.820
And they're very big on setting up the environment for learning.
01:12:10.120
You'll have all of these opportunities to, you know, have animals on site.
01:12:13.860
You'll have all of these opportunities, but nothing is going to be forced.
01:12:18.180
Um, you might have some station rotations and things like that, but you will have the
01:12:21.840
choice, um, to engage in this community and take on your, as many jobs as you want to
01:12:28.520
Um, and then there's all the social, emotional, and character, um, kind of development there.
01:12:35.420
Acton is very much that way too, just as they get older, they take on, I would say, arguably
01:12:42.820
even more responsibility as well as starting businesses.
01:12:51.020
Internships, apprenticeships, um, all that kind of stuff too, but Montessori is great.
01:12:55.020
What are your thoughts on pure apprenticeships?
01:12:58.760
Like, for example, if I have, um, you know, one of my children, for example, is very interested
01:13:03.780
in, you know, blacksmithing is of course the ancient apprenticeship we think of, but whether
01:13:08.560
it's dentistry, which actually dentistry, even though you do have to go through, uh, dental
01:13:14.220
school, there is a lot of apprenticeship components to the dental, even medical community.
01:13:23.940
And kind of touching on something we, we kind of hit earlier.
01:13:26.280
I don't know the ins and outs of how this works, but I was told by a friend of mine,
01:13:32.120
um, who is a lawyer in California that you can become a lawyer going through it more of
01:13:37.760
an apprenticeship route and then taking the bar and not actually going to law school, which
01:13:44.480
And I don't know if that's the case for all different types of law.
01:14:07.280
So you can, apparently you can do that in apprenticeship kind of model.
01:14:12.780
Um, if, if you're able to do something like that as early as humanly possible, that's exactly
01:14:21.600
Um, I was just talking to one of our, our mentees from the Apogee strong program earlier
01:14:32.620
They're in Pennsylvania right now, moving to Florida.
01:14:34.800
Um, and that's his whole, that's his whole goal is he's seeking out.
01:14:38.520
We, we're working with him on a very specific way to, um, try to contact and meet and go
01:14:45.080
provide value to a number of people who are in his chosen field so that he can get a foot
01:14:51.080
in the door with an apprenticeship and then just provide enough value to work his way into,
01:15:01.420
Uh, and by the way, there's an organization called Praxis, P-R-A-X-I-S.
01:15:09.580
And I don't have anything to do with them other than they're, uh, have become friends.
01:15:13.820
Um, but, uh, their entire post high school model is based on that.
01:15:21.220
You do six months of a bootcamp where you're learning transferable skills, blogging and
01:15:26.960
copywriting and, um, you know, creating a website and app development and just some things that
01:15:32.020
are just general skills that can help a lot of people.
01:15:34.440
And then you interview and you go work for somebody for six months, full-time you get
01:15:42.760
paid at least, you know, minimum wage or whatever.
01:15:46.320
It's like, I think it's like a $14 cause they want it to be to where you come out of the
01:15:54.060
You have to make at least that much, but it's like 14 bucks an hour minimum.
01:15:57.160
Um, and you work for them for six months doing whatever it is they want them to do.
01:16:01.640
And like 94% of those guys are rolling right into a full-time career.
01:16:05.460
And I think average starting salary is like 52 grand.
01:16:08.620
So are they, I got to ask, are they looking for employers to hire?
01:16:17.880
They'll, they'll partner with employers all the time.
01:16:20.100
And that's part of kind of like, we're going to build out something semi-similar with Apogee
01:16:31.500
I mean, I know I've hired two, I've hired two people from Braxis.
01:16:36.680
You know what I'm waiting for is I'm, I'm just waiting for like real life Hogwarts.
01:16:40.620
You know, I'm not a, I'm not a nerd by any stretch of the imagination, but like if
01:16:51.360
I don't even, I don't even know if I've read all the, I don't think I've read it.
01:17:00.040
Cause I want to see what the hype was about through like first chapter.
01:17:02.200
And I was like, dude, I just can't not my, not my style, but, um, I love the concept
01:17:08.280
And that's, you know, that's kind of what we take when we're building out, um, experiences
01:17:14.460
and projects and things like that to give to either Acton Academy owners who are, or
01:17:19.540
launching something for the students or homeschool families, you know, cause I get it all the
01:17:25.260
time, which I'm sure you do too, is man, I'm going to homeschool.
01:17:30.760
Um, and so we teach families how to build out projects like that, where you're recreating,
01:17:39.560
you know, part of your houses becomes Hogwarts and your kids become Harry Potter for that
01:17:46.880
And in the process of them taking on these adventures, they learn and they learn to a
01:17:51.800
high degree and we can build a world-class education around things like that.
01:17:57.120
I think parents often overlook it because we, we place some government educate, the educational
01:18:07.620
And when I, so a little anecdote, when my wife and I started home-based education with
01:18:19.500
It was probably, I don't know, one, two o'clock in the afternoon.
01:18:25.060
You're going to take like a lunch break or whatever, a recess.
01:18:28.640
She's like, she's like, no, no, no, we're done.
01:18:36.920
And I said, well, show me like, what did you guys do?
01:18:46.980
And I think this happened either on day one, it was between day one and day five.
01:18:52.000
So they went outside and we've got some property out here and I'm up here doing my work and
01:18:58.040
they come back and I hear them cause I can hear them downstairs and I go downstairs and
01:19:01.460
I'm like, Hey, what, you know, what are you, you guys are excited.
01:19:04.020
And they had caught this frog and they had it like they had put it in a jar.
01:19:08.400
It was out in the field or in the Creek or whatever.
01:19:10.040
And they, they caught this frog and they put it in a jar and I'm like, Oh, sweet.
01:19:19.180
And they all started laughing amongst each other.
01:19:31.840
And I was like, say, what's the difference between a frog and a toad?
01:19:38.800
And they had printed three or four pages on the distinct differences between toads and frogs.
01:19:55.200
We like to add layers and it's a human, it's a, it's a default in the human condition where we think
01:20:03.980
And world-class things have to be overly complex.
01:20:12.780
Simplicity is the mark of a, of a true genius, right?
01:20:17.040
You can take something and you can simplify it down.
01:20:21.620
And so John Taylor Gatto, again, I remember speaking with him and he said, you know,
01:20:25.780
most young people could go from, once they're ready for it, once their minds were ready for it,
01:20:35.380
they could go from never having really done anything with numbers other than just whatever
01:20:40.500
they're exposed to, you know, just in day-to-day life to wildly proficient in at least algebra.
01:20:47.880
And they could do so in 50 to a hundred hours total.
01:20:54.580
So a week, a week to two weeks, three weeks, maybe tops.
01:20:59.920
If you're doing, you know, however many hours a day.
01:21:03.480
So why are we spending theoretically years, right?
01:21:07.580
It's a massive, there's a massive inefficiency that is taking place and it's taking, you know,
01:21:13.700
again, it's, it's, uh, it's to the detriment of our kids and another, you know, it brings
01:21:19.240
me back to another one of my mentors, uh, Seth, are you Seth Godin?
01:21:22.920
You know, Seth, I know, I don't know him personally, but I know of Seth.
01:21:25.940
So one of my favorite humans on the planet and, um, and really reading his, he's got a
01:21:31.620
manifesto called stop stealing dreams, um, that he wrote.
01:21:36.820
And I read it in the part, I was a school administrator at a private school.
01:21:41.100
I was, I had started to do all the keynotes I had learned about acting and I was like,
01:21:44.960
man, I think I'm going to go start my own thing, but I'm not really sure.
01:21:47.740
And I sat and read his manifesto in the parking lot of the school.
01:21:51.860
And, uh, the very next day I came in and I was like, Hey guys, I'm going to finish out
01:21:55.440
this year, but then I'm going to go build my own school.
01:21:58.320
I was like, all right, man, I'm, I'm out that day.
01:22:02.220
And, uh, and I've, I got to tell, you know, I've gotten to tell Seth that story, which
01:22:06.540
was, um, something that was, you know, one of my only bucket list things.
01:22:12.940
He did so in the manifesto and he did so in a number of our conversations, he says, you
01:22:22.720
And the reality is it's like raising kids, right?
01:22:26.680
We should be raising sovereign, free, independent, character driven, resilient human beings.
01:22:36.300
And if we're putting them in a system that is not building that we are doing them a disservice.
01:22:46.800
And there's no better place to do it than, you know, I always tell people like, okay,
01:22:51.820
I'm like, it's either act in our homes or home educate.
01:22:54.480
And I don't necessarily put one before the other.
01:22:57.280
Um, but in my mind, those are your two best options, period.
01:23:03.920
Um, I think we're going to have to run this back.
01:23:10.860
I'm like, man, I don't, I don't come with any notes and I've got notes.
01:23:19.920
So I think we're going to have to run this back and do this again.
01:23:24.160
This is very, very crucial for, for me and the mission of what we're doing here.
01:23:29.520
Like you said, you know, if we, if we're on this mission to build better men, then why
01:23:38.460
Start with the young among us, make sure the foundation is strong.
01:23:41.800
It's like, we want to skip over the foundation and just, you know, no, man, that's, that's
01:23:49.300
Learn more about acting or you personally, what you're doing.
01:23:54.660
Yeah, I'm probably most active on, on IG, you know, I met my name, but, you know, check
01:24:02.520
You can go to apogeestrong.com, go to actonacademy.org or somebody wants to get ahold of me directly.
01:24:13.280
I appreciate our friendship and I know our kids are friends and to see the joke between
01:24:17.860
us is, you know, your, your daughter, I think didn't want anything to do with playing
01:24:23.460
And then she meets my son and she's like, I'm playing catch, you know, and I'm like,
01:24:29.000
And you're like, yeah, I don't know if that's cool.
01:24:33.380
But I'll tell you what, if it's, uh, if she's going to have to start going, boys are interesting.
01:24:38.440
Um, I at least want it to be a solid young man.
01:24:40.580
And then you definitely have a couple of them in.
01:24:49.320
Appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about it.
01:24:54.020
My conversation with the one and only Matt Boudreau.
01:24:59.440
I hope you learned something new and I hope you're considering that maybe there's some
01:25:05.000
Well, what we would say is the traditional schooling model that most of us think of,
01:25:09.040
because there are alternatives and we ought to start exploring those alternatives.
01:25:19.420
And I don't want any more of our young men and women to be indoctrinated into dangerous
01:25:33.820
Um, connect with Matt on the socials, connect with me on the socials, take a screenshot, tag both
01:25:38.180
of us and let us know what you thought about the show.
01:25:44.240
You don't have to agree with everything, but we're going to keep the conversations coming.
01:25:47.060
And hopefully it causes us to think about some things that maybe we have not previously
01:25:52.240
So again, leave that rating and review, uh, share this with somebody, take that screenshot,
01:25:56.660
look at the legacy experience, September 22nd through the 25th, 2022 order of man.com
01:26:05.000
And if not, we will plan on seeing you tomorrow for our ask me anything until then guys go out
01:26:11.160
there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.
01:26:14.920
Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast.
01:26:17.720
You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
01:26:21.520
We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.