The Art of Manliness - #189： The Classical Education You Never Had

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so do you know

00:00:19.040 what it means when someone is said to be facing a choice between charybdis and scylla or do you

00:00:23.720 feel like your ability to think deeply about issues is hamstring because you lack an intellectual

00:00:28.500 foundation or maybe do you want your intellectual life to be imbued with more texture and nuance

00:00:33.020 well if you answered yes to any of those questions then it's time you start obtaining the classical

00:00:37.640 education you never had and thanks to my guest today on the podcast we'll show you how to get

00:00:42.040 started her name is susan wise bauer and she's the author of the book the well-educated mind a guide

00:00:47.260 to the classical education you never had as well as the well-trained mind a classical education at

00:00:52.200 home she's also the founder of the well-trained mind academy where middle school and high school 0.99

00:00:56.680 students can receive a classical education online and on today's podcast susan and i discuss what

00:01:02.140 exactly a classical education is the benefits of it and how you can create your own classical

00:01:07.380 education curriculum that can fit the busiest of schedules we also discuss what parents of young

00:01:12.820 children can do to lay a foundation of lifelong learning using a classical education pattern

00:01:18.720 really informative podcast and when you're done listening be sure to check out the show notes for

00:01:23.640 links to resources mentioned in the show you can find those at aom.is slash bauer and that's spelled

00:01:30.200 b-a-u-e-r and if you haven't already we'd really appreciate it if you give us a review of our podcast

00:01:36.240 on itunes or stitcher

00:01:37.800 all right susan weisbauer welcome to the show

00:01:52.840 thank you glad to be here uh so you've uh written two books on classical education you're a big

00:01:59.880 advocate for classical education i think most people who are listening have heard of the phrase

00:02:06.080 heard of the term the idea might have a vague idea of what it entails but can you explain to us what

00:02:13.440 exactly a classical education is and how it differs from the education that most people have gotten if

00:02:20.560 they went through public schools sure sure so this has several steps to it so bear with me for just a

00:02:26.720 minute um i think uh you know particularly if you tend to be you know a watcher of pbs or or you read

00:02:33.400 you know british mystery novels or something um you sort of identify the phrase classical education with an

00:02:39.360 education that you know maybe you got at oxford and that had lots of latin and greek um particularly

00:02:45.480 latin attached to it that uh traditionally has been part of what a classical education is but there's

00:02:52.460 much more to classical education classical education was actually a pattern it was sort of a sequence of

00:03:00.080 training the mind of learning how to think and and there were traditionally three phases to this

00:03:06.880 education um and we call these three phases the trivium this is based by the way in in the development of

00:03:13.540 the medieval university this particular style of learning so the first part of the trivium the

00:03:19.380 grammar uh stage has to do with learning the basics of a subject so grammar means the basics the

00:03:26.820 foundational information in any one subject it doesn't just mean english that's sort of gotten

00:03:32.720 associated with with english in our minds but grammar is just you know the the basic terms and

00:03:39.040 principles of any subject then the second phase in a classical education is called the logic phase

00:03:46.300 and that's when you take all that information and you start to think critically about it you start to

00:03:52.640 think analytically about it you decide whether or not it's valid and why and whether or not you agree

00:03:58.740 with it and then the third stage or phase of classical education is called the rhetoric stage

00:04:05.940 and that's when you begin to speak back to what you're learning you begin to put it into your own

00:04:13.680 frame of reference you you decide how to incorporate it into your own way of thinking you talk about it

00:04:20.160 you develop this fluency in speech and in writing that allows you to take the information you accumulated

00:04:27.100 and your analysis of it and express it in your own way so that pattern of classical education

00:04:34.320 to me is much more definitive of what a classical education is than the inclusion of latin or greek

00:04:43.440 sometimes i like to call this actually neoclassical education because i think in our modern application

00:04:50.940 of a classical education we tend to put more emphasis on that sort of three-stage process of training the

00:04:58.680 mind rather than on specifically latin which was one of the fields in which students learned how to

00:05:07.120 practice this process you know first they absorbed all this latin grammar and then they learned all of

00:05:12.760 the principles and rules that govern how to put sentences together and they learned how to decode latin

00:05:17.880 how to read it and then finally they learned how to write and you know in the 19th century in

00:05:23.060 particular maybe 19th too they've learned actually how to speak latin so um today it's often more

00:05:29.680 useful for us to um think about how this is practiced in science or in history than in latin but the

00:05:36.840 principles are the same gotcha and that was a long speech no i loved it it's perfect perfect description

00:05:42.400 of uh encapsulating what you've written about um so how does that differ from the education that most

00:05:48.120 people have gotten through public schools you just mentioned there was a time uh even in american

00:05:53.040 history where a classical education was the pattern that schools used but then there was a shift uh why

00:06:00.320 did that shift occur and what does it look like now right well there's there's actually not one simple

00:06:06.260 answer to this because you have to understand that when we talk about american education we're talking

00:06:11.000 about a vast vast subject here because of the way that the u.s is structured um states have much more

00:06:21.720 say over how subjects are taught than than the federal government and even within states local areas do school

00:06:30.760 very differently and then private schools have a whole different set of of you know things that they're

00:06:36.260 trying to do so i try not to use that phrase american education um but i will say that that many public

00:06:43.840 education systems were highly influenced by progressive learning early in the 20th century and progressive

00:06:53.520 learning tended to be very process centered rather than um knowledge centered so the entire focus was on

00:07:03.880 understanding how a child's mind works and then giving information to the child in a way that's sort of you

00:07:12.360 know dovetailed into those particular mental processes and the emphasis on actually learning information on

00:07:22.720 facts on knowledge on this being the foundation and the basis of all learning really began to fall out of

00:07:32.120 uh many public education curricula and you know i think the flaws to this kind of of learning began to be apparent

00:07:40.600 in the 60s and in the 70s and when it became clear that kids just weren't getting the basics they weren't

00:07:46.520 learning how to read they didn't know how to do math they didn't know anything about history

00:07:49.800 and so a sort of a reform movement began and really kind of hit its hit its stride actually maybe i don't

00:07:58.120 know 25 years ago so where the emphasis shifted on teaching children how to think critically how to

00:08:04.340 think analytically as a way to try to um fix this problem that we had you know all these kids who'd

00:08:11.060 gone through public school and didn't seem to know anything that they were supposed to there were two

00:08:17.040 problems with that shift in emphasis the first was that it didn't actually make up for the fact that

00:08:22.220 there still wasn't a focus on what needs to be learned on actual knowledge and the second was

00:08:29.160 that this critical and analytical thinking was often pushed all the way back in the curricula into

00:08:34.320 the elementary grades which is a time when most students are not ready to think critically and

00:08:39.660 analytically they really need to focus on learning the basics so the critical thinking movement

00:08:46.540 in my opinion didn't really go towards um solving this this problem of i don't know sort of basic

00:08:54.420 illiteracy in the basics of of the english language in the basics of history in the basics of science

00:09:02.920 you know in the in the core skills of of mathematical thinking so i think a lot of people who've been

00:09:10.880 through the public school system realize that there's sort of this um they have this gap in their

00:09:16.340 basic knowledge that there's some foundational um well just foundation that foundation of basic

00:09:24.640 training in the essential principles and facts of a field that they're still kind of missing that

00:09:30.760 right and i think you referenced in the book that one of the the consequences of this in the broader

00:09:35.780 culture is that uh we have a tendency in our population for people to make opinions about things even when

00:09:43.040 they might not know all the facts because they were taught as a child or asked as a child in school

00:09:48.260 like what do you think about this even though they didn't really know much about the thing they were

00:09:53.860 supposed to have an opinion about yes that's very true we tend to leap directly to what is my opinion

00:10:00.920 without taking the time to gather the facts and then to think critically about them and you know this is

00:10:08.140 this is always so painfully apparent in an election year um when you read uh you know you don't even

00:10:16.460 have to go to to online forums which you know showed the worst argumentation of anything anywhere you

00:10:23.480 look at newspaper opinion columns look at you know speeches made by political leaders and you can see this

00:10:30.460 this leaping to form an opinion and to hold it very strongly without actually going back to find the facts

00:10:37.820 and critically analyze them can be very depressing to watch right and so this this foundational knowledge

00:10:44.660 uh i guess you could call it the great conversation right uh this sort of cultural literacy that we need

00:10:51.940 to have in order to engage in a conversation about big ideas whether it's uh in politics or philosophy or

00:10:59.100 science uh public policy that's actually that's a really interesting point too the use of that phrase

00:11:06.520 the great conversation this is a phrase that was originated in i think the 1940s by mortimer adler

00:11:13.840 who was an advocate of returning to what he called the great books returning to the classics

00:11:20.100 and reading the classic works of history and literature and philosophy and the reason why he called this the

00:11:27.900 great conversation was because he believed first of all that when you read those books you were

00:11:33.540 having a conversation with these great minds of the past but also it had to do with establishing this

00:11:39.840 sort of um this shared body of knowledge this shared set of terms this uh these shared ideas and once two

00:11:50.040 people have common knowledge of an important concept or idea and once two people are using the same terms

00:11:57.180 to mean the same things then they can have a conversation with each other until they otherwise

00:12:03.080 they you know they're just talking past each other which we see a lot of so i wouldn't say that the

00:12:08.720 great conversation is um equivalent to i mean they're not they're not exactly the same thing they're

00:12:14.180 not exactly parallel terms but they're definitely related to each other right i mean i that's one thing

00:12:19.900 i've noticed with my own writing uh with the the website that i have is that sometimes i'll throw in just

00:12:25.380 these like references sort of cultural touchstones that you know that mean something beyond like you

00:12:30.100 know crossing the rubicon for example and i've had people like what does that mean and i have to go

00:12:37.040 and i have to sort of i have to explain you know you know the history behind it then explain the the you

00:12:41.920 know the illusion that i'm trying to make by using that term uh but when people understand those type

00:12:47.720 of phrases or those references like you said it makes the conversation a lot easier and more fluent

00:12:53.000 yes and and you know this is not a this is not a simple thing to sort of make up for um if you

00:12:59.920 haven't gotten it so with your example crossing the rubicon okay it means making a decision that you

00:13:05.640 can't turn back on but if you know the original story there's all of these implications that not only

00:13:12.240 have you made a decision that you can't unmake but that you're doing it with reluctance and you're

00:13:17.620 doing it in a way that you're aware you're actually violating some of your own principles but you feel

00:13:22.800 not to do it would be more of a violation there's sort of all these shades of meaning that enter into

00:13:28.580 the use of these terms and if you had gotten a classical education where you spent the early

00:13:33.980 part of your life just learning these stories learning the history learning the facts you would

00:13:38.920 have been able to suss that out later on in life yes yes i think so i mean it's like learning it's like

00:13:44.940 learning a language learning a language takes a long time you know to do it well and to use it well

00:13:50.260 and that's really what classical education is about it's about um learning learning learning the

00:13:57.500 language of i was gonna say discourse that sounds so college professor doesn't it um learning a language

00:14:03.640 that that makes meaningful conversation possible right but it just sounds so impossibly

00:14:10.040 idealistic in in in the present political climate too but i i know there's a lot of people out there

00:14:18.180 who they feel like they've missed out on that yeah and now they're in their 30s their 40s and they're

00:14:24.420 thinking i want to catch up so how do you do that um i mean what's the best approach of uh playing

00:14:31.920 catch up to this great conversation uh while using the the pattern of a classical education to do that

00:14:38.740 right and that's such a great question because i think there's so many people in this in this boat

00:14:43.600 as it were um so the first book i did on classical education was called the well-trained mind and it

00:14:49.720 was for parents to help train their kids and i had so many parents out that book came out 16 years ago

00:14:56.920 now it's not going into its fourth edition now i've had so many parents come up to me and say i am

00:15:02.980 enjoying training my kids so much if only i'd had this education what can i do so i did a second book

00:15:09.660 called the well-educated mind which was basically sort of a guide for grown-ups to retrain themselves

00:15:16.700 in these foundational skills and the the central way that you do it is to read but to read in a very

00:15:24.800 particular way where whereas you read you are practicing first of all gathering information

00:15:31.460 and then secondly thinking critically about it and then third expressing your opinion so you're

00:15:38.320 you're practicing these steps of grammar and logic and rhetoric and one of the things i point out

00:15:44.840 in the well-educated mind is that you don't have to think about giving yourself a classical education

00:15:51.380 in terms of now i have to go read the iliad and the odyssey because although these are great texts

00:15:58.680 um you know epic poetry is not everyone's jam that's not necessarily the way you're going to think

00:16:05.720 a lot of people do better with non-fiction with reading great works of history or great works of

00:16:11.860 science what's important is that you be very conscious of the mental steps you're going through

00:16:18.660 as you approach and absorb this information and it begins to change the way you uh you receive not

00:16:26.160 just information but other people's opinions it begins to change the way you read news stories it

00:16:32.520 begins to change the way that you understand uh broadcasts it really does begin to retrain your

00:16:39.140 mind in the classical tradition and i think that's interesting uh about reading because

00:16:44.200 when we talk about our culture that we are we say that we're a literate society people can read

00:16:49.440 right um but literacy the way you're sounds like you're defining it is more than just being able to

00:16:55.980 read uh words it's actually understanding and doing something with or being more active with your

00:17:02.880 reading i guess yeah i like that phrase active reading that's really good um our schools not

00:17:08.620 everyone knows this but our schools are designed to turn out students who read on what's called the

00:17:14.220 10th grade literacy level which essentially means you can read and you don't have a problem with reading

00:17:21.200 um what the 10th grade literacy level doesn't really teach us is how to read actively how to engage with

00:17:30.140 and think critically about text so yeah i mean as a as a as a nation we have a very high 10th grade

00:17:37.660 literacy level i think we have a relatively low um we'll call it the classical literacy level um you know

00:17:46.560 we we have we have a much lower number of people who are able to really grab onto information through

00:17:54.160 reading and and have that make a difference in the way they think right and i mean i imagine it's gotten

00:17:59.900 harder uh with the internet you know i feel like the internet has fostered this too long didn't read

00:18:06.280 mentality right um where people just want the summary and then make their opinion based off of that

00:18:14.460 uh so you have to be uh very proactive about this and like i mean like i like how you you call your

00:18:21.400 first book a well-trained mind because you are training your mind and it is a it is a mental workout

00:18:26.920 when you read like this yeah yes and and i do think you have to be very deliberate about it you have to be

00:18:32.460 very intentional but you know what the internet hasn't changed that that's always been true if you go back

00:18:38.580 and you look at um the journals of people who were self-educating themselves in the 18th and the 19th

00:18:45.500 century you see them consciously deciding to learn how to think and to read in a certain way and sort of

00:18:53.500 going out and getting that for themselves because it hasn't just been given to them so i think there's

00:19:00.840 always been this intentionality in learning how to read and to think properly and although the internet

00:19:08.140 you know is a wonderful distraction the world has always been full of things that could pull you

00:19:13.900 away from that process of reading and thinking now it's the internet you know 100 years ago it was the

00:19:20.300 pub there's always something else to do that seems more fun but you have to have that determination that

00:19:26.860 there's something here that i want to get for myself and i'm going to do it so what should we be

00:19:33.280 reading for you know to to if we're taking this classical if we want to catch ourselves up on

00:19:38.540 this classical education uh suggested books just a few i know you you get in very detailed about in

00:19:44.560 your book uh well-educated mind but some suggestions or genres that people should look to to uh peruse and

00:19:51.360 start reading deliberately with you know well i always suggest that if people are super super um uncertain

00:19:56.940 about their reading abilities that they start with novels because stories have this sort of um

00:20:02.140 intrinsic forward motion that pulls you along and so it's it's just a good starting place so if you

00:20:09.160 were to read great novels um sort of chronologically which is what i always suggest because then you

00:20:15.140 start to see the development of the genre over time you might want to start with don quixote which is

00:20:20.220 generally thought to be it's considered to be the first novel in the modern sense um and i always tell

00:20:27.720 people you really don't have to read the 800 page unabridged version there's some really great

00:20:33.620 abridged versions out there that's one of those books that you can read it in an abridged form and

00:20:38.500 you'll still get what you need out of it um but then you can then move forward through uh the 18th and

00:20:46.120 19th century novelists through dickens and jane austen for example um nathaniel hawthorne on into the

00:20:53.260 20th century masters so we think about sort of bridging the 19th and 20th centuries maybe

00:20:58.400 stephen crane and then on into the 20th century you know we're talking about henningway and dostoevsky

00:21:04.520 and then all the way up to the present when i did this chronological list of great novels in the well

00:21:10.140 educated mind they started with don quixote and i ended with cormac mccarthy's the road and what you

00:21:17.100 see there is this whole like three century four centuries really of writers using the image of a

00:21:24.500 journey along a road to an unknown destination in order to say something very profound about how

00:21:31.700 human beings function so that's the sort of thing you want to do the truth is it it doesn't matter so

00:21:40.200 much which novels you choose to read and let me quickly qualify that i'm not saying that reading

00:21:46.500 stephen king um is going to do the trick for you but there are so many great lists online of great

00:21:55.120 books of both um both ancient medieval renaissance 19th century 20th century 21st century classics

00:22:03.280 if you take those lists and select titles off them and read chronologically through them you will begin

00:22:10.960 to retrain your mind right and again you're you're applying that uh three that three part pattern

00:22:17.080 the first time so the first time you might just read through the entire novel without stopping getting

00:22:22.620 a gist of the story uh and then you might that's like the grammar level and then the next level would

00:22:27.940 be starting to analyze it a bit more yes exactly and you know actually that first step just reading

00:22:33.440 through without stopping can be really hard for people because i think many people learned in school

00:22:39.000 to sort of read a bit and then stop and decide what you think and then read a bit and stop decide

00:22:43.620 what you think and that makes it very very difficult first of all to get all the way through a book

00:22:48.500 because it's it's really you know halts your momentum um and it's also a bad mental habit to start

00:22:54.460 making conclusions about something before you finish it um but but also uh that habit sort of um

00:23:02.240 it keeps you from getting absorbed in the book from really experiencing it from really entering

00:23:07.380 into the author's vision so on your first read through you almost suspend that critical faculty

00:23:13.120 you just try to immerse yourself in the book and then once you have the whole picture you know the

00:23:18.260 book from beginning to end then you go back and you start to ask some critical questions about it

00:23:24.040 um you know if you're working with a novel you might just begin with the very basic all right who's

00:23:29.700 who's the main character who's the protagonist what does the protagonist want and how does he set out

00:23:36.220 to get it and this seems like a really simple question um but it it's it's not that simple

00:23:43.700 a question if you're thinking about something like cormac mccarthy's the road and you know the

00:23:48.780 protagonist is this unnamed character and i'm going to do this without trying to give away too much about

00:23:53.120 the book because it's a really great read um what does the protagonist want well the protagonist wants

00:23:59.420 to stay alive you know that's really basic but then you always ask yourself what does the protagonist

00:24:05.080 really want what are the motivations behind staying alive what is what is the protagonist trying to

00:24:13.500 accomplish by staying alive and there are a set of much more interesting and deeper answers to that

00:24:20.100 you know this is a world where a lot of people have actually just given up and died so you need to say

00:24:24.980 why is it so important for this character to stay alive then you start to really understand

00:24:31.700 what cormac mccarthy is saying about the human and then i always tell people that the third step

00:24:38.220 after you've gone back and asked a bunch of critical questions and i've suggested a number

00:24:42.300 actually in the book um and you can also parentheses go to something like um uh cliff's notes online

00:24:49.240 and use some of the critical questions that they offer for various classics if you need

00:24:53.500 help thinking about what questions to ask then it's really good if you can talk to someone else

00:24:59.200 about the book that's sort of the rhetoric stage you find a reading buddy or a friend or you know

00:25:04.060 or even an online discussion group as long as people are expressing themselves um well and coherently

00:25:11.060 and not in fragments and you explain what you learn from the book in your own words uh one of the

00:25:18.160 things you learn in a graduate education is that um you don't really know what you think about a book

00:25:24.120 until you have told someone else in actual words either in writing or or in a discussion until you

00:25:32.560 actually put your ideas into words they still remain um unformed or partially formed you may think you know

00:25:40.540 what you think about a book but until you have said it you haven't finished formulating those thoughts

00:25:46.260 so that sort of leads you through those grammar logic and uh and rhetoric stages of thinking

00:25:52.180 i love it and i love that suggestion of finding a reading buddy even online because you talk about

00:25:57.380 in your book as well is that this is very common for people back in the 18th 19th centuries they would

00:26:03.160 you know the founding fathers would have letters amongst each other where they just discussed uh you

00:26:08.160 know a piece of like a cicero or some other roman you know livy or something like that 0.97

00:26:13.540 exactly this was a huge part of their own intellectual development was to talk to other

00:26:20.280 people who were developing the same um the same background you know the same basic information

00:26:25.360 and to express ideas to each other yeah and i love the suggestion too of starting with something you

00:26:31.680 enjoy um and because i one like a few years ago i decided you know i'm going to get through the

00:26:36.480 the entire great book series i started plowing through it from starting at the iliad and i was doing

00:26:42.880 great and then i got to uh i think it was aristotle's like you know his discourse on syllogisms and i was

00:26:50.580 just like yeah i lost steam i just abandoned ship on the project well you know not everyone not everyone

00:26:57.540 thinks philosophically in a way that's going to make that a useful book i think a lot of us came out

00:27:03.940 of school with the sense that if you're really doing something intellectually worthwhile it's going to be

00:27:09.780 really unpleasant you know it's going to be so hard you're going to have to make yourself do it

00:27:15.980 you got to put a hair shirt on right yes exactly well i think it is sort of you know it is sort of a

00:27:20.780 calvinistic leftover uh in a lot a lot of americans particularly protestants um although you know

00:27:26.600 catholics have their own their own tradition of doing things you don't want to do so but we really do

00:27:31.380 a lot of us have this sense of if it's good for me i can't possibly like it you know sort of the

00:27:36.600 broccoli mentality and that's not true one especially once you get to be an adult things

00:27:42.260 that fascinate you are things that you should cultivate and you can use those topics those

00:27:49.740 subjects those genres in order to develop your thought if poetry isn't your thing read science

00:27:57.120 you know read the great books of science um and think critically about those don't feel like you've

00:28:03.340 got to plow through um you know homer or or aristotle for that matter right yeah i enjoyed homer and i

00:28:12.020 enjoyed the the greek tragedies it's just yeah i remember just getting to the syllogism as far as like

00:28:16.580 okay no i can't do this um so what do you tell the person who's like yeah i want to do this

00:28:23.380 but then they look at everything they've missed and like what they have to do to get caught up even if

00:28:28.660 they just you know pick a genre they enjoy say science and they're like i want to start way you

00:28:33.580 know go back to um the greeks and see what they thought it can be kind of overwhelming and they're

00:28:39.580 thinking man i don't have very much life to live how am i going to get this all done before i die

00:28:44.020 um so any suggestions or advice on not feeling overwhelmed about the prospect of acquiring a

00:28:51.620 classical education yeah well that is that is a really great point and and it sort of leads us

00:28:57.200 to understand something about our culture um you know every every society has its own sort of

00:29:04.940 internal ethic those things which it finds to be good and worthwhile and those things which it finds

00:29:11.600 to be you know not so good and worthwhile and a lot of times you can you can get a clue as to what

00:29:17.580 this ethic is through the language that we use and one of the things that has always struck me

00:29:22.040 particularly in talking to people about educating themselves is the extent to which we use um fast

00:29:29.860 to mean good and slow to mean bad so you know if we if we talk about computers or fast food places

00:29:38.220 the one that is really really fast is is the good computer or the good fast food place and the one that

00:29:44.320 takes longer to process or to get you your burger is the bad one and you know we should think seriously

00:29:51.540 about that it's not really normative to use these value words good and bad about fast and slow but

00:29:59.380 because we live in a capitalistic economy in which doing more and faster um is more profitable we have come

00:30:08.240 to identify quantity and speed with virtue and that would have been totally foreign to the ancients

00:30:17.420 actually it would have been totally foreign to most thinkers prior to the industrial revolution so when

00:30:23.620 we're thinking about educating ourselves i think we have to start to let go of this i'm you know this

00:30:30.160 this i'm not going to be able to do this well you see i'm going to do it badly because i'm not going to

00:30:35.580 be able to read that many books and i'm not going to be able to do them quickly um quantity and speed

00:30:41.760 should not be our measure of how well we are doing something like reading the great books the truth is

00:30:49.700 that what whichever of the great books you read and however many of them you get through you're

00:30:54.260 studying the human condition um many times you're studying the same conclusions about the human condition

00:31:01.560 expressed in a different way or from a different angle but what you have to realize is that

00:31:07.700 understanding the human condition is not something that um you know it's not like making a widget it's

00:31:14.460 not like something that you finish and oh look i achieved it i'm done um it's it's a lifelong process

00:31:22.040 and everyone goes through that process in a different way and hits different milestones of understanding

00:31:30.780 at a different time how many of the great books you read should not even be a question the question is

00:31:39.200 are you spending time thinking deeply about these great ideas and what they say about humanity you've

00:31:49.000 got to let go of speed and quantity and that actually it's me is a big part of the self-education

00:31:55.260 process it's letting go of the need to reach milestones at any particular time and listen if

00:32:03.300 you've been through k-12 and particularly then if you've been through college and certainly if you've

00:32:07.180 been through graduate school that's so hard to let go of because learning has always been associated

00:32:13.100 in your mind with deadlines and with um earning quote-unquote degrees you have to get a certain amount of

00:32:21.400 stuff done by a certain time and then you are more educated that you gotta let go of yeah and as you were

00:32:28.640 saying that it made me think about the the analogy to the great conversation uh you know in my own life

00:32:34.360 like actual conversations i've had with people really good ones you never finish it yeah exactly like

00:32:39.760 you might you might you might have this great talk and then they have to leave and you're not done

00:32:44.540 and i don't feel bad like that was really good i enjoyed that and we pick it up you know maybe a

00:32:49.840 month later exactly and i think instead many of us have learned to think of conversation um as if you

00:32:56.100 know you're you're you're going to the doctor and you have 15 minutes to tell them everything you need

00:33:01.300 to and then your time's up um but but that's not how learning is um so we we've talked about uh you

00:33:09.900 educating ourselves if we're an adult um and i highly recommend people to go check out her book

00:33:15.240 well-educated mind uh she gives some really great suggestions on books that you should check out and

00:33:21.020 suggestions on how to approach them but let's talk about uh your first book a well-trained mind

00:33:25.620 um where it's geared towards parents who want to provide their children with a classical

00:33:31.040 education at home uh you know it's kind of geared towards homeschoolers i'm curious um is it possible

00:33:38.580 for parents who can't homeschool maybe both parents work there's a single family home uh and so they

00:33:45.480 had to send their kids to either a private school or a public school uh to apply these principles and

00:33:50.980 maybe supplement their public education with the principles in a well-trained mind to give their

00:33:55.200 child a classical education yeah absolutely it is um you know when we when we did the first edition of

00:34:01.380 that book in in 1999 we were thinking primarily of educators but what we found in the last you

00:34:08.480 know 15 16 years is that there are so many parents out there who are doing what they call after

00:34:13.180 schooling which is they're you know picking one or more subject in which they feel that that you know

00:34:19.000 the school's just not quite doing it for them or the child has a real gift and they want to move on

00:34:23.880 do more and they use the principles um in our book to just do supplemental education you know in one or

00:34:32.480 two subjects and it's really a matter of um feeling like you have the ability and the authority

00:34:40.260 to take control of your child's education to not just say all right whatever the school gives us that's

00:34:47.680 what we're going to take but okay what the school gives us we're going to take but as good as the school

00:34:53.660 may be my child has these very individual gifts and talents and needs and i have these ambitions for

00:35:01.200 my child and so we're going to do a little extra work sometimes people work over the summer a little

00:35:06.200 bit sometimes they do a little bit of after school work a lot of school districts will work with you

00:35:11.320 if you want to sort of take over one subject and teach it yourself as long as you know you're willing

00:35:16.260 to provide them with documentation that you're doing it well there are any number of sort of innovative

00:35:22.520 um innovative approaches that you can take to really putting your hands on your child's education

00:35:28.520 and saying i'm going to give it a little twist a little push in this direction because i think

00:35:33.440 that's what will really benefit my child so uh you get really specific um in the book and you divide a

00:35:40.580 child's learning life right his grade school life into the the three parts the grammar logic and rhetoric

00:35:47.140 part let's just focus on the grammar part because um you know i'm kind of there with my kids they're

00:35:52.220 three and five years old um what could what should parents be doing now uh with their children if

00:35:59.580 they have young kids to lay a foundation for them so they can have a great learning life not only

00:36:06.640 in their school years but in their adult life as well well i think with with um with young children

00:36:14.260 you're thinking to yourself literacy literacy literacy literacy literacy and here are the i i like to think of

00:36:21.240 this as having sort of three separate three separate aspects the first is making sure that they read

00:36:28.820 well they read as early as they're able to they read often that reading becomes a habit for them

00:36:36.760 and often that means um yourself taking on the task of teaching them basic phonics so that they can begin

00:36:43.520 to sound out words and begin to crack that code and you know have the world of books open to them

00:36:49.660 many classrooms do a good job with phonetic instruction um many do not do a good job with phonetic instruction

00:36:57.720 and also what classrooms tend to do is they tend to tie reading and handwriting together for kids so

00:37:05.860 even if they're learning phonics they'll learn how to sound out you know a combination of letters

00:37:10.900 but then they learn how to write it at the same time and the problem with this is that most young children

00:37:16.980 are ready to read long before they're ready to do a lot of handwriting the fine motor muscles just take

00:37:22.740 longer to develop and a lot of kids start to associate reading which they could do easily and

00:37:29.160 enjoyably if they were allowed to with this struggle that they have getting words down on paper and it's

00:37:35.280 one of the reasons why boys tend to struggle with the language arts curriculum in elementary school more

00:37:41.820 than girls because it is just a biological fact that those fine motor muscles develop more slowly in 1.00

00:37:47.860 boys um so we can really help particularly our little boys um develop a love for reading by teaching

00:37:55.340 them how to read phonetically outside of the classroom and without demanding that they learn how to write

00:38:00.200 all the sounds at the same time does does that make sense that makes perfect i mean when should you

00:38:05.960 introduce writing because like my son uh you know he started reading really young i don't know why it was

00:38:10.900 bizarre like it freaked my wife and i out um but like his writing's atrocious um so at what point

00:38:18.280 should you start like incorporating writing practice with your kids or boys and by the way what you

00:38:24.300 describe is just the most typical it's that is the most typical developmental um arc ever i see it all

00:38:31.080 the time and you know it's really important with your little boy that you you praise what they do well

00:38:36.380 and don't think oh but look at all this catching up you have to do over here um which is so easy to do

00:38:42.140 but you know that to the side you should start doing doing just phonics with them as soon as they show

00:38:48.040 interest in the printed page with writing really they should be practicing just handwriting not composition

00:38:56.060 just handwriting practicing the letters for five or ten minutes a day starting when they're maybe five

00:39:02.240 years old but in terms of actual um original composition that is actually more of an eight

00:39:09.420 nine and ten year old um enterprise in the in the traditional classical curriculum students pretty

00:39:17.560 much just copied up until they were nine or ten years old and what that did was it filled their minds

00:39:23.900 with great language because they were copying the words of other writers it filled their minds with

00:39:28.640 vocabulary it exposed them to all these different written styles and it gave their little hands a

00:39:34.300 chance to develop and in in many classrooms uh composition exercises even long ones even like

00:39:41.860 five paragraph essays are pushed all the way back into the elementary grades and are introduced to

00:39:48.240 students at a time that is just completely developmentally inappropriate and that can really

00:39:54.100 sour kids on writing um again a lot of little girls can do it because they're just their muscles are a 1.00

00:40:00.060 little better developed but it just has the potential to discourage students who just you know physically

00:40:05.980 aren't quite there yet in a way that's so unnecessary so one of the ways in which you can protect

00:40:12.560 your child's literacy is to be kind of hard-nosed with the teacher about it um you know if the teacher

00:40:18.520 is hard-nosed in the nicest possible way if the teacher is sending home and i've seen this often

00:40:24.720 five paragraph essays for third graders and research papers for fourth graders i think it's our role as

00:40:31.680 parents to say uh no wait hold the phone you know this is discouraging my child my child is going to give

00:40:38.300 up on language because they're so overwhelmed so being very sensitive to frustration and when you're

00:40:46.020 dealing with an elementary student if the student cries or gets angry that always means that they're

00:40:53.760 well almost always means that they're struggling with something that's developmentally inappropriate

00:40:59.000 they don't even know how to express to you why they can't do it because they haven't yet developed that

00:41:05.160 kind of vocabulary what you get is non-verbal response so always look out for tears and always look

00:41:12.720 out for anger and be willing as the parent to say to the teacher my child needs a little more time to

00:41:18.640 mature before we do this it's it's a very difficult mindset to develop but i think it's so important

00:41:25.380 if we want our kids to go through their k-12 education and come out the other end still excited

00:41:31.860 about reading and writing we have to really step up and be their advocates when they're being asked to

00:41:37.640 do something that isn't actually going to move them towards that goal with with the reading do we

00:41:44.280 encourage our kids to read things they want to read or should we maybe subtly introduce some of those

00:41:51.520 great books that are based on like on a child's level like maybe throw in some odyssey or you know

00:41:57.000 a child's version of it or something like that yeah well we do both we don't have to we don't have to

00:42:02.280 do an either or approach to this um i when i when i said there were three ways in which you could

00:42:07.440 develop your child's literacy we just talked about the first the second i was going to say is to help

00:42:13.460 them develop a much more advanced vocabulary and one of the best ways to do this is to make a habit of

00:42:21.000 of for your kid and for both of you together of listening to unabridged audiobooks on tape or on

00:42:27.900 whatever mp3s because what that allows students to do is to immerse themselves in a story which is

00:42:35.680 still above their reading level but which isn't beyond their comprehension level and that pulls

00:42:42.500 them towards a more mature level of reading they're not yet technically able to read this work for

00:42:48.320 themselves but in listening to it they gain greater vocabulary you know building their vocabularies is huge

00:42:56.040 and they start to develop um a knowledge of complex sentence structure so the listening

00:43:03.500 moves them towards greater achievement in reading so we let them read what they want we encourage them

00:43:10.800 to read children's versions of classics that they might not otherwise pick up on themselves and we

00:43:16.780 encourage them to listen to actual unabridged audiobooks that are on a slightly more difficult level

00:43:22.360 than what they feel comfortable with and all of those things move kids towards maturity

00:43:26.960 yeah my son and i have been listening to the trumpet of the swan on his on the way to school

00:43:32.720 and it's great because it's actually narrated by eb white yes and his his charlotte's web which

00:43:37.880 she also narrates is just the most beautiful book yeah yeah he's got such a soothing calm voice

00:43:44.000 yeah it's wonderful yes he does um let's uh let's can you tell us about the well-trained mind academy

00:43:49.620 because that seems to pick up you know after this uh first you know couple of years of of education

00:43:55.880 uh you actually have an online curriculum correct at the well-trained mind yes yes we do we do i'd

00:44:01.420 love to tell you about that it just occurs to me that i didn't tell you about the third thing we

00:44:04.700 can do to develop literacy i tell you that let's go back to it yeah and then we'll go back to it yeah

00:44:08.260 sure we just we just don't want to forget this the third really important thing to do is to develop

00:44:13.140 kids um numeracy which is you know mathematical literacy i think it's easy particularly if you're

00:44:20.060 not a maths oriented person to forget that a big part of what you want to be doing with your

00:44:25.120 elementary student is not just working with them with their arithmetic assignments but doing your best

00:44:32.520 to make mathematical thinking part of everyday life and what that means is with really little kids

00:44:39.200 counting with them doing number pairing you know um i'm gonna get i'm gonna get pieces of chicken for

00:44:45.400 dinner there are five of us how many pieces of chicken should i get i should get five that sort

00:44:49.960 of thing and then also making uh mathematical picture books and and just math books generally

00:44:56.640 part of what we expose the child to and part of what the child does for entertainment don't forget

00:45:03.580 that numbers are another language and students need to be just as literate in numbers as as in

00:45:10.120 you know the alphabet as and and words so i just want to you know put that out there or it's something

00:45:16.100 for parents to think about perfect um so let's go back uh talking about the well-trained mind academy

00:45:22.060 i mean what's their what kind of resources can parents find there to help uh provide their children

00:45:26.420 a classical based education right well this is one of the ways in which again i love the term

00:45:31.120 neoclassical because it means that you take what is best from the past but you you know you can also

00:45:36.160 combine it with the best of the present um online education can be a really wonderful delivery tool

00:45:44.060 meaning that it gives students the chance to um to access expert teaching um without having to be

00:45:52.980 you know geographically near the teacher so what we're attempting to do um with with the well-trained

00:45:59.780 mind academy and you know so far we've just been so pleased with the response and how it's going

00:46:03.920 is to offer live online instruction where in in in all of the core areas of the curriculum

00:46:11.800 where teachers who have a commitment to classical education who have training in it um teach students

00:46:19.760 in a very traditional manner it's just that the computer is the delivery system so there are live

00:46:25.160 lectures there's conversations we actually have a great socratic dialogue class um online which has

00:46:30.980 been super super popular there are written assignments traditional written assignments

00:46:35.660 which are uploaded you know to the blackboard site that the student is using and then that gets

00:46:40.500 feedback from the teacher so it's really the best of traditional classical instruction um what the

00:46:46.700 computer does is it allows us to you know um take the distance out of the process so we have classes

00:46:53.080 for um middle school and high school in the core areas of the curriculum um we don't offer classes for

00:46:59.820 elementary students because i believe very strongly that elementary students who are still

00:47:05.520 at a very basic level of learning what social interaction is about learning how to read people

00:47:10.900 learning how to interpret tone of voice etc should receive the majority of their instruction face to face

00:47:16.940 but for the middle grades on we do offer uh classes that incorporate these principles that i've been

00:47:23.620 talking about fantastic well susan weisbauer thank you so much for your time this has been an absolute

00:47:28.960 pleasure thank you it's been so nice to talk to you my guest today was susan weisbauer you can find

00:47:34.500 her books uh the well-educated mind and the well-trained mind on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere

00:47:39.600 and you can find more information about her work at susanweisbauer.com and if you are a parent and would like

00:47:46.560 more information about online classical education check out the well-trained mind academy at wtmacademy.com

00:47:54.040 and also like i said earlier in the show be sure to check out the show notes for this podcast for

00:47:59.500 links to all the resources we mentioned in the show at aom.is slash bauer again that's spelled b-a-u-e-r

00:48:07.600 so aom.is slash bauer well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more

00:48:16.180 manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com

00:48:20.380 and if you enjoy this podcast i'd really appreciate it if you give us review on itunes

00:48:24.660 or stitcher helps get the word out about the show as always i appreciate your continuing

00:48:29.040 support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:48:33.340 you

00:48:33.900 you

00:48:34.240 you

00:48:38.720 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - April 04, 2016

#189： The Classical Education You Never Had

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