Home-schooling, Connection & The Education Paradox

Dylan · 0:01
Hey, Dylan, what was your favorite part of today's episode? I like when Reggie forgot he got homeschooled. Well,

Reggie · 0:09
I like when they talk shit about billionaires.

Mary · 0:11
Oh yeah,

Tim · 0:14
Dylan took mine. No, no, I'll say when Dylan said she would be if she didn't go to homes, if she would have gone to homeschool, she would be a what's the word, degenerate, degenerate.

Reggie · 0:25
I like that thing Tim said about billionaires.

Mary · 0:28
Oh, mine was also finding out that Reggie was homeschooled. I think today had its highlight, I

Tim · 0:45
Maybe we need to get together,

Reggie · 0:48
man. He was saying, like, man, I was just thinking about so many solid, good people were like there. I was like, man, you're right, not even like, not even start game night again, but actually bring together the old game night, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Tim · 1:05
wherever you are, whatever you're doing, come back to game. Let's

Reggie · 1:09
do it, game night reboot, man. I would love that. I think that would be freaking amazing. All right,

Tim · 1:17
clack us in,

Reggie · 1:19
clack clack, let me

Speaker · 1:21
Wait,

Dylan · 1:39
how did you intro

Tim · 1:42
ice? say,

Mary · 1:43
just arriving. I watched the remote episode, and it was really good. Okay, just point at everybody and tell them what they are.

Speaker · 1:51
Okay,

Tim · 1:52
tell me what I am. There's a thing I have to tell you about the remote one. Anyway,

Dylan · 1:57
okay. Hi, welcome to Age. My name is Dylan. I'll be the host today. This is Mary Green, this is Tim Scroggs, and then this is Reggie Tidwell. And we work here at 40 Hearts, a creative company. And today we're going to be talking about these topics in the trash can. We're going to pull one, and we're going to talk about it. We're going to say what we like, what we don't like about it, and then we're gonna bring it back to business.

Tim · 2:23
Such a loaded, we're gonna talk about these topics out of a trash can.

Mary · 2:26
Make sure you go show it to the camera, because we figured out that's like the big compelling image than our selfie. Sadly, we'll use the selfie somewhere. Great, but I

Tim · 2:38
still take the selfie for,

Dylan · 2:39
yeah. Sorry, I wrote these in, and so I kind of wrote this one.

Reggie · 2:43
Oh, it's one of hers. I'm scared.

Dylan · 2:45
No, it's not one of mine.

Tim · 2:46
Oh, it's just I read the theater

Dylan · 2:49
homeschooling. Oh,

Tim · 2:51
I was homeschooled.

Mary · 2:53
Oh, I could realize. Oh, this

Reggie · 2:55
is gonna be Tim Show for only two years.

Tim · 3:01
No. really is a whole topic. We'll get into it. My mom pulled me out of elementary school for June from middle school, and then put me back in in high school. Wow, so I missed the whole crazy middle school experience, and I came back into high school, and people like, "Hey, where you been? The

Reggie · 3:26
worst part of school. No,

Mary · 3:28
no, I peaked in middle school. No, I was playing a French horn, like we were talking. I was like a total band geek, but like it was before everybody figured out what a band geek was, so anyway, middle school, very formative time, I would say,

Tim · 3:47
but I don't know, it's also a very violent time. Yeah, people get kids get really intense in middle school, what

Reggie · 3:54
that is, but you're right, kids get unweird, yeah. When

Mary · 3:58
I was, I substitute taught here in Book of County for just a brief period of time. Yeah, I'm still technically like certified, not certified like a teacher, but like whatever certificate I had to get. It was, it was early 2025 There was like a lot of trauma from the previous year, and like I wanted to be around kids, but the reason I'm bringing this up is because you'd have to do this training on the different, like, grade groups, and what behavior is like in middle school and late elementary school is the time where kids start to sort of prioritize their social relationships over their family relationships, because they've got to figure that out, like they figured out the family dynamic, and now they're figuring out where they fit in the world at large. So, what an interesting time

Tim · 4:41
to be pulled out, to be

Mary · 4:42
pulled up completely. That might all be bullshit. If this has taught me anything, it's that I don't remember things. So, I'm so sorry, but that's what I think I remember. I haven't taught in a while. I've got a pizza story about.. well, okay.

Tim · 4:56
So, what came to my mind immediately was not that I went, even though I said. It, it's that for me, having been homeschooled, I got to meet a lot of homeschool kids, because then they bring each other, the

Mary · 5:07
co-op kid,

Tim · 5:08
yeah, like co-ops, yeah, and

Reggie · 5:09
yeah,

Tim · 5:10
and so I got to see them really odd, oh

Mary · 5:12
yeah, in like the best way, like I think that's the beauty, right,

Tim · 5:17
best way, you know, when you're a kid and you think things are different and they're weird, I kind of thought they were weird, but

Mary · 5:21
the only homeschool kids I knew were from community theater programs, so that tells you something about the flavor. Yeah,

Tim · 5:28
I think if I was, if I were older and met homeschool kids, I'm like, they're unique, they're like the differentiator out of kids. At the time, they were weird. It was a very niche, I mean, it was in the late 80s, so it was a very niche thing. I think

Reggie · 5:44
one of the things that makes them unique is that they don't have the typical social cues, that cues that they're getting from their peers in a classroom setting with the masses, and so they get to actually be radically unique, radically authentic themselves, instead of trying to follow any kind of trends or anything like that. It also feels kind of fascinating. Yeah, it's definitely

Mary · 6:07
fascinating. It feels like they like adopt their family culture really strongly without maybe realizing it. I don't know, to have gone through elementary school and come out the other side. I think that's a

Tim · 6:17
very different experience. Yeah, the kids I was meeting had been homeschooled their entire elementary career, and the ones

Mary · 6:24
that I knew who had been through that track were like very niche interests, often that like aligned with their parents' interests, just because that was all you really knew. But once

Tim · 6:36
you learn

Dylan · 6:36
what came to your mind when you thought about homeschooling, I've got a lot of good friends that are homeschooled. Yeah, big deal

Tim · 6:43
in Franklin to home school.

Mary · 6:44
Yeah, big. It's

Dylan · 6:48
like if you're homeschooled in Franklin, it's almost like cult-like, or like kind of like, you know, like nobody talks to those people. Like, I don't know of anyone from Franklin that was homeschooled,

Mary · 7:00
you think it's like a political statement to homeschool their kids.

Dylan · 7:03
I think so, like a

Mary · 7:04
libertarian. Yeah, it's

Dylan · 7:06
like a, we believe in this, like, better, and like, I think homeschool is like really cool, especially if you like, if you have your like opinions on the world figured out, and everything like that, and you've got like the time to dedicate to your kids. I think it's a really great idea, but yeah, no, like, nobody was homeschooled in Franklin,

Tim · 7:23
but how did you feel about homeschooling kids, homeschooling, homeschooled kids when you were young?

Dylan · 7:28
I never saw any with their chatter in the back, no, like, there was even talked about, I didn't even know, like, homeschool was a thing until I was a freshman at Montreat,

Tim · 7:37
real, in college, that's

Reggie · 7:39
why,

Mary · 7:39
like, the only way I encountered them was in like clubs and stuff out in the world, because you were doing sports, presumably through school. Yeah, and like, like, where would you have met?

Dylan · 7:48
Yeah, public school, like everybody knew everyone.

Reggie · 7:51
I probably had a similar experience. I bet you, I was probably in college when I became aware of home school, because you'd meet people when you'd ask them about like their school experience of where they went, like I was homeschooled. Yeah, but when you're younger, it's rare that you will come in contact because you're meeting

Mary · 8:08
friends at school. Yeah, you're

Reggie · 8:11
meeting your friends, all your friends are at school, and that's where you and all the

Tim · 8:14
homeschoolers are hanging out together. Yeah, it's kind of cool, like, yeah. My

Reggie · 8:17
kids weren't homeschooled, but when we started this Montessori journey, the first, their first introduction to it, besides quick little stint when the girls were younger, was the Montessori Homeschool Collective Asheville. What was it? Asheville Montessori Homeschool Collective was actually, and so it was in the name, but it was in a building, so we would basically, it's in the same building their school is now, so we would drive our kids to school, even though it was the homeschool collective, and it was basically, it was a regular curriculum, you know, but it still had the, I think, the one of the things I miss about it now that they're in an actual charter and they have to do all the state regulated things, was that they had a little more freedom within their day to like choose their path and a journey, and then school didn't start right at 8o'clock like it does now, they could get there and they have a little time to hang out in the in the play area, and like, the, you know, and so now it's like everything is so like regulated and structured, and so I missed that. But it was a cool experience for them. How

Tim · 9:30
many years were they in the.. they were just there for

Reggie · 9:32
one year, and then the whole school became a charter. See, that name

Tim · 9:35
actually sounds like a bunch of homeschoolers

Reggie · 9:37
coming together,

Tim · 9:37
needed a community, yeah, created a collective, yeah. And then it started to become a school,

Reggie · 9:41
like 100%

Tim · 9:42
but that's probably literally how every school started.

Mary · 9:44
Yeah, well, a lot of them, a lot of them started. I read this book, I'm not going to tell you the name of it, because I can't remember. I got it for free from the Friends of Buncombe County Library, a wonderful nonprofit, but picked it up off the thing, but it was. It's the history of the United States told through the lens of politics and religion, and so a lot of the early schools were religiously, yeah, and that actually was one of the issues when you talk about state regulation. A lot of the reason that stuff came in is because you started getting this division of church and state, and people wanted an education, but maybe they didn't want to send their kid to Catholic school. What other options were there? Kind of, that's

Tim · 10:23
true. Because Hartford and Yale, and all these old schools, were church. Oh yeah, the

Mary · 10:28
Masons are still down there, man. Those Freemasons, the Freemasons, they're doing that. Needs to be a topic in the trash can. I don't know

Tim · 10:35
what we would

Mary · 10:36
say. My dad's a Freemason. His dad

Tim · 10:39
blows secrets to us,

Speaker · 10:41
I'm not won't

Mary · 10:43
work now, but he wanted me to join. There's a women's one, oh, the something of the Eastern Star or something. Anyway, tell us about homeschooling. What was that like? You said it

Tim · 10:57
was like free play, so when you're a kid,

Mary · 11:01
context, two years were your brothers also homeschooled? Did you get homeschooled with anybody else, or just the three? Just

Tim · 11:07
the three of us, but my, you know, I grew up in church, so my, we had some like other kids that we would get together with homeschooling kids, yeah.

Tim · 11:16
And so I guess for me it was exactly my middle school years, for my little older brother, it was, I think, last of his elementary and maybe one of his middle school years. First year of high school. Oh, I don't know who got the

Mary · 11:30
short straw. I feel like I

Tim · 11:33
got the perfect scenario, because you want to miss the HVAC made a crazy sound, so you want to miss for me. I, we traveled around a lot, so I went to every elementary school in my dish in the area, like Etowah and Hendersonville and Fletcher, and there was all these schools. So, when I left for middle school, it was like I disappeared, and when I reappeared in high school, I knew everyone, because everyone came together in high school out of their elementary schools. Yes, and so every initials formed. I don't know, clicks formed in middle school. That's where all the like the tight knit groups form.

Reggie · 12:12
Yeah,

Tim · 12:13
and so I had no cliques, so I was a friend with all of the clicks.

Reggie · 12:17
Yeah, it was, are you mean?

Dylan · 12:19
Are you me? Am I seeing myself in you? Because I'm like, yes, because that was Franklin did this thing like each year in my elementary years, like I went to a different elementary school each year. Wow,

Tim · 12:32
that was similar to me. Yeah, and it was like this,

Dylan · 12:34
they were like reclassing, they were like doing the districts or whatever.

Reggie · 12:38
Yeah,

Dylan · 12:38
and it was wild, because I was like, I always had this like irrational fear, like I was getting kicked out of school each year, because my mom was like, "You're going to a new school, and I was like,

Tim · 12:49
"Yeah, I was like, why, yeah, because you have to reform a friend group elementary school. Can I

Mary · 12:54
tell you, I've always had a chip on my shoulder about this, but now I need to just let the chip go, because obviously it could have been worse, but I had this experience in the first, like, four years of school. I would make a best friend, and then they would leave, they would, like, move away or something. And I've always felt like that changed a little bit of my trajectory, but this sounds like five times worse. At least, it

Tim · 13:17
was crazy feeling. Yeah, because you make good friends, and I only sold it against my parents, because I would - I would have friends that knew their friends, since they remember not knowing them, and so they were really tight. And so the double-edged part of the sword that I was holding in this experience is that I also didn't have that really, really close, like really tight connection, everyone knew me, and I was pretty popular because of it, but not - I didn't feel close to anyone. This is

Mary · 13:46
why you don't like to join groups now,

Tim · 13:48
possibly. Maybe it's like maybe you're like

Dylan · 13:52
healing the trauma that's like it'd be because you're like saying everything, and I'm like, "Oh, that's like cold

Reggie · 13:58
plunge group. This is

Tim · 14:01
only a recent pain in my life. It is like to form into, like, a that type of closeness. Yeah, and my, I think my parents also talked about that being something that keeps others out, and you know, in church you're always like trying to include people. Yeah, you can't create a tight-knit group of people, because that leaves others out, right? So, I was always having to be friends with people I didn't know or didn't necessarily vibe with in ways, just because that was expected when you're in religion. Yeah, it's people you wouldn't normally hang out with. You could find a relationship with them, but I was always, and it's only recently that I've started creating these really close, like guy relationships, it is

Mary · 14:43
sort of like a weird juxtaposition of like you are expected to build and find community with the people who are around you, whether you like them or not, whether you share interests or not, or whatever, and yet we're going to extract you and put you in a new community repeatedly, so it's like you're. Kind of like a sleeper agent, but like it's all right, we're building community, engage, then you've got to like never get to stay around and reap the benefit, right? Really, I didn't

Reggie · 15:09
have that experience where I went from like K through five was all in one like school and school system, and then for sixth grade I went to like a magnet school, then for seventh grade I went to another school, and then I tested so high in that school that I got like the on the comprehensive test I got like the highest in math and language in the whole school, and they're like, you need to be somewhere, so then I went to, like, more advanced school, so I had these three separate, like, you know, middle school experiences, and then when I got to high school, same thing, somebody there were people from each one of those three places that were there, we all came back together, it was like a big reunion, and it was pretty exciting, like high school was where I really found several clans, because I was a jock, because I was a varsity basketball starter, I was a computer nerd, I was a just a nerd in general, and so I was friends with all these jack nerds, everybody, and then I had friends that were there, was there was like a Latino community, there was there were friends that were from Vietnam, so I had just friends with everybody, and I think

Dylan · 16:31
what a niche,

Reggie · 16:32
that's kind of like

Tim · 16:33
see the extrovert, it made me life through more, that's totally,

Reggie · 16:36
that's how I like, and it's I feel like I'm still the same way, it's like, well,

Tim · 16:40
see, I had the feeling that everyone was looking at me and knew me, but I didn't actually connect to any of them. Yeah, like mrs. I grew up in only child, so I

Reggie · 16:48
was constantly trying to connect, because I was - it was just me most of the time. Yeah, so it's like all my friends became like siblings to me. Hey,

Tim · 16:56
people, I love - I love seeing that. I had a best friend who had friends like that, all of his friends, they used to party together, and they, and so I always had an awkwardness when I would hang out with people, because I didn't feel like I could be myself, and they were literally themselves with each other all

Reggie · 17:11
the time, would

Tim · 17:12
call each other, and I had phone, you know, if you have phone anxiety, like you don't want to call people, that's

Mary · 17:16
such a, like, I feel so strange that this side of me is saying it, so that sounds like a younger people thing.

Tim · 17:23
Oh yeah, like you didn't have

Mary · 17:24
a choice in the 80s

Tim · 17:27
phone calls to this day. I know you all the time, and it's actually helping me, yeah, because when I get, when I find, and if there's anyone out there, else out there who feels like this disconnect, yeah, if you, if you find, if you make a point to be with people consistently, that's when you start to feel that closeness. Yeah, you know, so like, if we're together every day, yeah, calling each other consistently, it doesn't get weird anymore. Well, and

Mary · 17:52
like, when I call you, you're not like it's gonna.. at least I hope not. Maybe I'm like breathing, maybe for now. Oh no, here it goes. Okay, what would happen? people, when they call me, though, I'm like, all right, get ready. All right, so

Reggie · 18:08
why you're always hyperventilating? Yeah, like crazy,

Mary · 18:12
dude. A Facetime is a different level, though. No,

Tim · 18:17
but Reggie and I were friends years ago. Yeah, like we met when I was first graduating college, and only recently, when we started working out together, did we become really close friends, really

Reggie · 18:27
close friends, and

Tim · 18:27
I think that's partially my fault, because I don't let people in. I was

Reggie · 18:31
always trying to get in, like, dude, we should crap

Tim · 18:35
on some homeschool

Reggie · 18:36
kids, home school kids,

Tim · 18:37
no, but when we started to see each other three times a week, it was like friendship started to happen, and so I had someone recently tell me, I don't know if I brought this up last time, because, because it's sounding familiar, but tell me if I did

Mary · 18:49
on a previous episode where you were like, somebody told me this, maybe I told those people can't stop,

Reggie · 18:58
they can't stop you, right?

Tim · 19:00
He told me that that transparency is not connection, and I was, I was in all of this. There's no

Mary · 19:08
hope for me, he said.

Tim · 19:10
Transparency is like, you, you draw the, you pull the blinds up, and people can see you through the window, but it's more of, like, a like someone looking at you, the

Reggie · 19:19
windows still there, right? The window is still there, and we always thought

Tim · 19:22
transparency, because I have a transparency to me. I really shared part of myself, but he said, and then I said to him, I said, I feel like connection is being able to open the window and let people into your life as a college, or maybe the

Mary · 19:35
door, even

Reggie · 19:38
don't just look at him through the window,

Tim · 19:41
yeah. opening

Mary · 19:52
that's if you hadn't asked me, I could tell you Messiah. Etheridge. Yes, there's a TikTok. I have just.. if I can find it, I'll show you, Melissa. That is an

Reggie · 20:07
older..

Mary · 20:07
how do you think she

Reggie · 20:09
played Leaf?

Mary · 20:10
She's.. she played Leaf.

Reggie · 20:12
She played Leaf Festival. Yeah, they love

Mary · 20:15
what year. Give us the date. 12

Reggie · 20:18
to 12 to 13 years ago, she

Tim · 20:22
was on surprise. Don't say that. She might still.. Melissa

Mary · 20:28
Etheridge is out and like outside, and probably, yeah, out all the ways. posting things on social media, she's making a comeback. I mean, did she ever?

Reggie · 20:50
She's gonna do her in and out tour. You don't know who she is. Let me

Dylan · 20:55
tell you a thing or two. I feel like I'll know a lot more about Melissa after this. I do feel like I know her personally now, like

Mary · 21:03
Sonos rock, and yeah, I was gonna ask, clearly the homeschooling changed something, clearly something

Tim · 21:10
clearly something's wrong

Mary · 21:11
by this homeschooling thing. Do you feel like that's affected like your work life and how you go about conducting, or you know, you founded several businesses. I

Tim · 21:21
wonder, I've never thought about it this deeply. Actually, you know, when I brought up the Baylor thing last episode about going to a private high school. Oh

Mary · 21:28
yeah,

Tim · 21:29
I think I wanted to, because I saw those, or that was actually a middle school Baylor. Oh, really? And high school.

Dylan · 21:35
Sorry, I was on this. It was here.

Tim · 21:40
Anyway, I wanted to go to this private school, podcasting

Mary · 21:43
with someone else.

Tim · 21:45
No, no. So I wanted to go to this private school. Now that I'm thinking about it, I think it was because my homeschooling had disconnected me, and I saw these. It was a private school where they slept on campus. Whoa, it was in Chattanooga, right where my grandparents lived, and I wanted to sleep away at the school. I think, because of that disconnect, they felt now that I'm making the connection. Well, but

Mary · 22:06
also the family thing, and I'm not saying you're trying to get distance from your family, but I'm saying when you're homeschooled, there's no alternative. And I wonder if there was a part of you that was like, let me just isolate some variables, let me take the part that is me and put it in a special place.

Reggie · 22:23
Homeschool obviously takes a certain amount of family makeup, like not every family can afford for one parent to stay home and not work to be able to teach the other. But when we were younger,

Tim · 22:35
that was more common. Yeah, that doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't happen because things are cheaper, dude.

Reggie · 22:40
Things were a lot cheaper. Inflation

Tim · 22:41
is going crazy since, yeah, you

Reggie · 22:42
can get, you choose to be able to get gas for $1 a gallon. Oh, when I was a kid, that's

Tim · 22:51
crazy. That was kind of during our own conversation,

Dylan · 22:54
so I know during Covid, yeah, that's like the last breaking some

Reggie · 23:00
age rules over here.

Mary · 23:04
I was wondering what gas costs when she started driving, because you were like, yeah, gas was like $2

Dylan · 23:11
when I started driving. Yeah, prime COVID, when I was like really putting pedals on that list, 169

Reggie · 23:17
that's like almost back to my like high school days, I

Mary · 23:22
feel like I

Reggie · 23:23
remember gas being like 90 cents a gallon at one point when I was like a teenager, and I was first, should have

Mary · 23:29
bought a house. Then

Reggie · 23:30
can you imagine? No, yeah, that's the

Tim · 23:35
thing, is that my dad works and my mom never worked, okay? Because we have three kids,

Reggie · 23:40
yeah, so to stay home, yeah,

Tim · 23:43
so someone had to stay home, but now you can't do that, three kids are in daycare, or whatever it is, and it costs daycare is

Reggie · 23:48
really expensive, but school, if you're in a public school or charter school, that doesn't cost like that seems to be like best case scenario,

Dylan · 23:55
I do think like homeschool is like one of those quiet luxuries that people really don't talk about a lot, because I think, for like having like someone in your family, whether it's like your husband or wife, or etc, like being able to like dedicate their work to like the betterment of the kids, I think it's like really crazy that we can't really, it's not, it's not to me, unless someone like you have multiple people that are like dedicated to doing homeschooling. It's really, it's really hard, and like not feasible, and I think that's like kind of ridiculous. Never mind, like teaching a bunch of subjects that you don't know nothing about. Yeah, right.

Reggie · 24:36
Preferred homes, home playing, and home eating, just because I know how to do those, like public playing and public master. We went

Tim · 24:47
traveling, we homeschooled the kids for a year, and it's more just glue them to a screen school, yeah, glue them

Reggie · 24:55
to a screen, yeah, like Khan

Tim · 24:56
Academy,

Reggie · 24:57
yeah, Khan Academy. So what's interesting, because the reason.

Mary · 25:00
Sources exist, you just have to access them through this. Khan Academy

Reggie · 25:03
is a great resource. I don't know that these are great. I used to work in here that work for Khan Academy. I almost

Tim · 25:08
disagree, because I think that my son disassociated with school at that point. I think there's

Reggie · 25:14
balance that with the actual hands-on teaching, but

Tim · 25:18
I don't even think that's there are the wealthy people in the world send their kids to Waldorf schools where there's no technology? Yeah, because it gets in the way of teaching. Teaching the word education comes out of like a Greek word that means to pull, to draw out,

Reggie · 25:33
or to think about someone like with Spanish, the teacher is maestro, maestro, so like someone who's actually

Tim · 25:41
that is the point, the

Reggie · 25:42
teaching, it's not

Tim · 25:43
to stuff information into someone's face and have them regurgitate, digital, which is literally what digital school is. It's just like, learn this, take this test, get the numbers, and my son, I think disassociated with everything he was learning, because he was, he's smart, so he made the grades, but it was like he had no heart in

Reggie · 26:01
it, older scared,

Tim · 26:02
yes, yeah, he's he's gonna turn 17, but so when, so I think he was desperate to get out of it, so

Mary · 26:11
I mean,

Reggie · 26:11
but he also keep in mind was coming from an experience where he wasn't homeschooled and he had friends around him all the time in his learning journey, but how

Mary · 26:19
does this line up with Covid? Yeah,

Tim · 26:21
I mean,

Reggie · 26:22
Covid did shift things back. I think that's why a lot of kids had so much struggle during Covid, because they were so used to being with their cohort, and then all of a sudden

Tim · 26:31
they're on digital, they're on

Reggie · 26:32
digital, and doing the digital classroom thing, which was, I mean, I think a lot of kids are still feeling from that trouble. You

Mary · 26:39
missed when we, we had an episode on remote with Adrian, episode three, I think, and Dylan was sharing. She was in, like, the late high school years, her

Reggie · 26:51
senior year. She missed out, like, she was doing the on-screen learning. I remember her being in her bedroom, because she was living with us at the time, and she would just have her laptop there, and she's just like,

Speaker · 27:04
yeah,

Reggie · 27:04
you know, the teachers talking to them, and you can only

Dylan · 27:07
bring, like, work home,

Reggie · 27:08
oh yeah, like it was weird, this

Mary · 27:10
uncanny, well, and like all the all the bad stuff that has to do with school, and none of the good stuff, senior friends, yeah,

Reggie · 27:18
exactly, it's like all the work, so

Tim · 27:20
every kid during Covid experienced homeschool, totally, but it wasn't like the so, so here's an interesting distinction, because when you brought in the digital, or when my kids were doing it on digital devices, there is a disconnect between what homeschool was when I went, yeah, where my mom was watching over our schooling, and then now you're like, you just put in a room, and you have to watch this guy go through all that.

Mary · 27:44
There are some courses. I'm not saying that all of school is like this now. There are definitely some courses where that's what the educator in the classroom is doing too, where it's like there's modules, they're just overseeing a computer lab.

Tim · 27:57
Makes me so upset, they go to physical school, and then they put them on a laptop. That's crazy.

Reggie · 28:04
I think if you know, it would be really sad if the homeschool revolution turned into this whole digital revolution, where homeschooling just meant that the parent can be doing chores and everything while the kids are in front of some TV with some digital maestro. Like that to me is very sad. However, I don't think that the tablets are complete, should be completely typed. I agree. I think there's ways where it could be a supplemental learning tool, where maybe you have this one module that you do, and it's mostly self-guided, but then 80% of the day the parent is actually working directly with the kid. I feel like that would be a good balance, because I think if you remove technology, yeah, then you put the disadvantage, that's what

Tim · 28:51
everyone says. But notoriously, the really wealthy restrict the devices until late,

Reggie · 28:57
they have Nemo babies or Nepo babies, no,

Tim · 29:01
because I don't think you can learn anything from a device that is more valuable than what you can learn from human contact.

Reggie · 29:08
Depends on human,

Speaker · 29:09
I think they're

Tim · 29:10
all like they're

Reggie · 29:11
wealthy, crappy teachers. Have

Mary · 29:14
you all seen me type, or like, write emails? Yeah, I type well, because I was taught to type in the third grade, and I was taught in computer lab by a computer program how to do it, so like my comfort, I mean, there was a computer lab instructor, and she actually knew quite a bit about, compared to everybody else at the elementary school, she knew a lot about computers, but like, the just the fluency with the interface alone, I think is important, because I needed to like grab that technology, and that's a skill that, if I hadn't had it, going to college would have been more difficult, doing my job would have been more difficult. So, this is when I think about homeschooling, and when I think about how that does or doesn't impact my life at work, I think, well, there's something really cool about being able to pursue your like niche. Interests, that was one of my favorite things about the homeschoolers that I met, is like they developed these hobbies, and they seem to have a sense of what they liked and didn't like that maybe I didn't have because I was trying to figure out what other people liked, because that was just the world I was in, but I do think that you miss out on a lot of the social stuff and on the like cultural norms that are being established through school and like it is at the end of the day kind of a pipeline for labor in this country it's like oh you go to school to go to another school to go to another school to go into certain jobs so that we can have doctors and so I feel like there is some thing it's

Tim · 30:37
a pipeline though if you watch kids getting out of college now they don't have jobs

Mary · 30:40
right and that's why I think entrepreneurship is spiking, because they've learned they don't have to learn the material for the SATs, they just hack the.. so I would

Tim · 30:48
say, what is the most important skill in entrepreneurship? Relationship, resourceful relationship, not like nobody has to know how to use an iPad to be an entrepreneur, you have to know how to have connections, and I think what we're being, I think we're being taught by these big digital companies is that you need it in your life, because they need you to need it, because that is their income, that is their, that's what, how they make money.

Mary · 31:12
There is also this, have you seen it's a joke, but it's also not a joke about how, like, the higher up in the lad, on the ladder you get, the smaller your screen gets, so like the highest levels of business, they're just doing it like on their phone, they're not having to enter, they don't have to be

Tim · 31:26
the drones actually, you

Mary · 31:29
think that's an older people's thing, because I do think the people sitting at the very top of these pyramids, for the most part, are older people who maybe didn't come up through a world that had all this technology, but I look at the people who are heading up startups, like we just had a phone call with a client last week, this week that he's like worked with AI to build his own dashboard to like update his whole company about the money and operations, and I won't go into detail, but that's a very modern high-tech approach. He's an engineer. I wonder if more people are going to be getting their hands dirty because they have a level of comfort with these tools,

Tim · 32:08
right? I mean, obviously people are gonna get their hands dirty. What other direction do they have? But once everything is forced down one channel, that's your option. It's like if you have to be a tech startup or if you have to have a YouTube podcast to even be successful, you're in the attention economy right now, and they will say you have to have. If you ask any marketing person, what's the best form of marketing? Create content,

Mary · 32:30
yeah, right now

Tim · 32:31
across the board. So, when you're forced to do something, what option do you have, unless you create a cohort of people that are willing to push against it?

Mary · 32:40
You sound very conservative,

Reggie · 32:41
but I will say, I mean,

Tim · 32:43
I don't know if that's concerned, that sounds rebel right now. I will say

Reggie · 32:45
that technology in the homeschool environment, to some degree, at least, does keep them on the same playing field as the kids in school, because the kids in school do have,

Tim · 32:57
yeah, but what happens on technology in school is bullying, cyber bullying, no. So I think that talking

Reggie · 33:02
about you're just

Tim · 33:03
saying that using it.

Reggie · 33:04
No, no, I'm talking about using, I'm talking about in the context of the classroom. I'm not talking about like social media and stuff. I'm talking about like what Mary experienced, learning a type on computer. I know

Mary · 33:13
how to use Microsoft Word, doing

Reggie · 33:15
these things, and they're learning computer skills in the context of the classroom. So it makes sense that if you're doing homeschooling, that you should at least have some percentage of their

Tim · 33:24
right, but when I went to college, I was so mad at my professors for not teaching me the software, the computer technology, and they looked at me and they said, I'm teaching you something at a higher level, because the technology will change. Kids that learn how to type, they don't need to type now, they just speak it into, yeah, my son doesn't know how to type, he literally hunts and pecks and does speak stuff into his device, so I'm saying that the technology will change, so if you spend your time trying to learn the technology, they will only evolve it to a point, you learn flash, and then they took flash away, but and then you had to relearn, I know you had to relearn it and animate, but I'm just saying

Reggie · 34:02
that was the cool thing, was that all the stuff that I learned before in Flash all stayed, I had all that, but most people that learned

Tim · 34:09
Flash were out of a job,

Reggie · 34:10
totally. They just changed the system. Oh, absolutely.

Tim · 34:14
And now AI is changing the system too. People that learned technology, yeah, AI is doing it for them. Anything you can do on a device right now can be done by AI. So, you want to say that teaching kids in school how to use a device that now AI can do for them is a good learning experience. It's not true.

Mary · 34:30
Maybe it's that you need to learn how to learn.

Reggie · 34:32
Yeah, you

Mary · 34:35
can't do that in absence of a hands-on. Totally,

Mary · 34:38
you can't learn how to encounter and engage with new technology without encountering and engaging with new technology. I

Reggie · 34:44
think it's the same experience that you had in college, that you're not teaching them how to use the iPad, you're giving them an experience through the iPad, but that

Tim · 34:54
is to say, right, that is to say that your teacher is not just outsourcing their mentorship. Their presence, their teaching to the iPad, which is what's happening. We're not having teachers that are caring and guiding people through this. Is the iPad I care about you? It's like, no, everyone load this page while I go and see this.

Mary · 35:13
Can I also say, though, and I've observed this through buying courses from continuing ed as an adult. I've experienced this through being a substitute teacher in a public school setting. I've experienced this through watching nieces and nephews go through online school and seeing what that curriculum is like, and I'll say 50% of it is not just a teacher like tuning out and saying I'm not going to do my job, watch this video, but it's also like the connection between students and teachers is much more like it's high stakes, but it's also tenuous, like teachers. I'm gonna go on a tangent, but I promise I'll bring it back. Teachers, right now, are basically like bodyguards for kids, like we're not protecting kids in schools, and everybody knows that, and the teachers have 15 other jobs aside from actually teaching kids, and half the time the kids are in, like, the kids were the greatest thing about substitute teaching, but you could see the toll that the last decade of life has taken on young people, and they are burnt out, teachers are burnt out, nobody believes in the system, so I think at the end of the day, when I think about the discrepancy and the things that you're describing, people just like putting kids on iPads, I get really sad because I'm like, I don't think anybody wants that, and I also think that I imagine this ideal state where teachers, like, attracted students, you know, like, oh, I want to go study with fill in the blank, Socrates, that was like the thing that drew you to college, is you wanted to go study under somebody who had this subject matter expertise, but these days it's been denigrated to such like a low tier, like unpaid, basically like volunteer jobs, we don't value it anymore, so of course we're outsourcing it to technology because we don't think that it's important

Tim · 37:02
and my son was just talking to the dinner table last night about his teachers and what he considers to be a good teacher and my daughter too she was talking about this one specific teacher and the way that they engage and the way that they make sense of the subject and then my son brought up his chemistry teacher, he loves his chemistry teacher, and he said the reason he loves it, because he sees that he loves what he's doing, and he describes this other teacher as someone who is just kind of rattling off things and is not really into

Speaker · 37:35
it, yeah,

Tim · 37:35
and I thought that was so interesting that he's seeing this, yeah, and it's so obvious that when someone is loves what they do, and I can hear you. Like, I feel like teachers are paid some of the most horrible rates, and North Carolina work, and have a ton of responsibility. Yeah, so I think it's the bullshit billionaires who should give some money to the fucking teachers.

Dylan · 37:58
I, yeah, understand

Tim · 38:01
what the damage is. Why does someone have to have $100 billion Because, and while these teachers are trying to teach with 40 guys, because clearly

Mary · 38:07
we don't care about kids on the level that we pretend to care about kids, and we're going to figure that out. But I think when you talk to me about your son's chemistry teacher, it just makes me remember teachers that I've had who got really excited about the subject, or like actually engaged with the subject matter, and then also with me as a student, and those became my favorite subjects, whether I was good at them or not, kind of like didn't factor in, because energy, and they lifted me. Yeah, they sort of like helped me get there instead of like abandoning me to

Tim · 38:37
listen. My son, he's like, 'You're good at this, I'm gonna push you harder. Yeah, literally said that during point blank, yeah,

Mary · 38:42
that

Tim · 38:44
connection, yeah.

Tim · 38:45
And they did a study on school, because there's so many different types of school now. Anyone has kids out there, it's a nightmare to try and figure out where your kids are gonna go, whether it's home school, charter school, Waldorf school, there's just so many different types of school you can go to. My day, you just went to whatever published space in your district. Yeah, it was so easy, but now, so they did a study on what schools are actually working, even in charter schools, because charter schools are like, "We're gonna do it different, and they just end up becoming the same thing when I get big enough.

Mary · 39:14
Just this, I'm this person all the time, but what does it mean to say a school is working

Tim · 39:18
well? That's because child thrives, the student thrives, and guess what? Yeah, like I think socially, psychologically, and

Reggie · 39:27
it

Tim · 39:28
was tutors, just like the old school

Mary · 39:31
way to go, ancient

Tim · 39:32
times, tutoring, yeah, even in ancient times, tutoring is the best form of education,

Dylan · 39:37
that like, because

Tim · 39:39
someone is mentoring you, they're connecting to you. That's why I think devices are a bullshit scheme to keep us all in our heads, because someone needs to draw you out, even if you have a device around you, and you can have.. I know they say about Bill Gates, if had he not have access to his computer at the place he was living, yeah. You're at that Malcolm Gladwell

Speaker · 40:01
book. Yeah,

Tim · 40:02
so I know that there is a point of power in the level of access you have to these tools, and I want kids to have access to tools, but we're now on an overdose of dopamine, and there's

Reggie · 40:12
overaction, right? We

Tim · 40:13
have so many tools now, they're making AI, so we don't even have to use the tools anymore.

Mary · 40:18
I had a client one time that.. oh, go

Reggie · 40:21
ahead. I just wanted to go back to something you were saying about billionaires. Did you hear Warren Buffett's thing recently?

Mary · 40:26
This feels like it's about to be set up for a joke.

Reggie · 40:28
No, no, no, no. Recently,

Tim · 40:32
Warren Buffett walks into a bar. No,

Reggie · 40:33
he was recently saying how he thinks the billionaire should be doing their share, but you know what he's doing with his money. I would rather, true,

Tim · 40:41
because he's giving away his money, because he sees the pitch box

Mary · 40:44
coming out and the torches. No, no,

Tim · 40:46
he was doing this way, no way, way before

Reggie · 40:48
that. He told

Tim · 40:48
his son he's not getting anything.

Reggie · 40:49
Yeah, I didn't

Dylan · 40:51
hear that. Yeah, and

Reggie · 40:52
it's pretty brilliant. He was like he was calling them out. He basically did a public speaking thing where he called out the billionaires. He's like, we could collectively make it so no one has to pay taxes, and that health care is covered.

Tim · 41:07
Was this recently?

Reggie · 41:08
Yeah, this is recent. Everybody in the room just, why he's old

Tim · 41:13
enough not to care when anyone.. I know,

Reggie · 41:15
I know, probably

Mary · 41:16
true. And he knows that he's never gonna like, what's he gonna do with this money before he dies, but with the darkness

Reggie · 41:21
of his reasoning, no, it's incredible. Freaking point, yeah. Because I don't, some people come to, you know, his call

Tim · 41:27
because he's getting to a point where he has to let go of everything. We all will get to this point, we're all gonna

Reggie · 41:32
die. Can't die with it,

Tim · 41:33
you can't, you can't take it anywhere.

Reggie · 41:35
Yeah,

Tim · 41:35
and there's a point at which you start to realize that you are holding something that isn't actually valuable,

Reggie · 41:41
right?

Tim · 41:41
And we do it for our kids,

Reggie · 41:43
right? Except his kids, right? What were you gonna say, Mary?

Mary · 41:51
Wasn't important. I just didn't want to.. I.. I'm curious, like, do you feel like if you'd had a homeschooling situation, how do you think things would have changed for you?

Reggie · 42:06
She wouldn't be here for your hearts. I'm joking. You

Dylan · 42:12
wouldn't have had access to things like Canva and Adobe, so who knows? Or would she? Low key, I don't. Maybe I, maybe

Reggie · 42:22
George's brother,

Dylan · 42:23
I maybe would just be a degenerate in Florida,

Mary · 42:28
teenage dirt bag. Yeah, yeah,

Tim · 42:32
probably.

Dylan · 42:34
No, my parents

Mary · 42:35
were so late.

Reggie · 42:38
There's no way. I

Tim · 42:39
feel like your parents already homeschooled you because they trained you for, like, being independent, yeah, making your own mind,

Reggie · 42:44
yeah. There was a fair amount of homeschooling happening,

Dylan · 42:48
yeah. I think let them tell you your home life, from what we've heard about you. I think

Mary · 42:58
they just like your mom. In our conversations with your mom and your dad.

Dylan · 43:02
Oh, I think they, I think they homeschooled me in a way that wasn't like education. Yeah, the school of life,

Reggie · 43:12
school of hard knocks,

Dylan · 43:13
school of life. I was learning with my mom, like how to make soap at, like, there you go, you know. So it was like I think, like, that was like the quiet luxury I was mentioning earlier, like being able to like just do stuff, yeah, and like being there with my parents

Mary · 43:30
thing, it was a hands-on experience.

Dylan · 43:34
The only reason I say I would be a degenerate is just to like follow that niche that wasn't like the pipeline of school, like you think

Mary · 43:42
if you'd been outside of it, you would have really rebelled against. Yes,

Dylan · 43:45
I do. And I like feel that, like, internally, because she was the

Mary · 43:49
prom queen.

Dylan · 43:49
Yeah, but she wanted that.

Tim · 43:52
She didn't want to be, though. She was trash talking prom. I was

Mary · 43:56
construct.. did you.. were

Reggie · 43:59
you a rebel? Did you like wear a crazy like fight back dress? Well,

Dylan · 44:04
I made my dress with my grandmother. Yeah, so that was pretty. Yes, yeah,

Tim · 44:10
I will.

Dylan · 44:13
Will manual upload a picture, but yeah, no, like right before they were like announcing I had went, and I like broke this record that, like, stood at Franklin for like 35 years, and the next day I came and went to prom, like I was like, "Man, fuck this, I don't want to be here, like, I was like exhausted, and I was like talking to my friends, and like, you know, all the music died down, and I was like, "Well, like, all right, let's see who gets this, and I mean, I was just like flaming, but no, I think, like, if I would have done the homeschool thing, I think I would have been like a totally different person, because the pipeline of school was like, hey, if you do all these things, you're going to be really, really successful, yeah, like, and now I'm looking at it, and like, my really cool friends didn't. Do all those things that I did, and I'm like, I feel like I wasted like a lot of like good energy and like personality trying to like fit in that like pipeline, and so like I feel like if home school was an option it would have been very different, because I don't think my parents would have taught me educational, it had been more like trade school kind of home school, but yeah, I mean to niche each their own, but

Mary · 45:25
yeah, there is something about like not having exposure to or expectations from the pipeline, yeah, of like, and I always, in another chip I wear on my shoulder, I always felt angry, I guess after I got out of high school, I was like, oh, we put so much trust in the system. Yeah, I'm still carrying student debt, and I remember I think it really scared my brother off of college. My brother went directly into the military, and it just, the idea of like, oh, we put all this faith in these institutions, and I'm like, actually, I don't remember that much that I learned in high school. I was like studying for the test, and then immediately ejecting. Yeah, you don't

Tim · 46:04
remember anything we learned. No, the only point, some pretty beneficial thing that comes out of.. no, it's only in practice. You don't remember it from high school or from college. You remember if you practice it consistently, everything else is gone. Do you remember Spanish? You took Spanish. I remember someone.. some of it. like, probably.

Reggie · 46:21
No, no, I remember, like, how to pronounce the word. The thing is, if you don't use, and

Tim · 46:30
the only reason the pipeline works for certain people, and I will say this again, I don't want to be this to be a rant, but when you have access to people, that is where school works. It's who you know when you meet people through your pipeline, it's a social club. It is, if you can make it yourself, make your way through the pipeline and meet the right people and go to the right school and get the right connection to get the right job, then you've made it. It doesn't matter what you're learning.

Mary · 46:53
Yeah,

Tim · 46:54
you can literally learn anything as long as you know the right people. It's a social ladder. Yeah, and so I think we are, get, we get hold back to what you're saying, we get told if you go, yeah, exactly, if you do this, you do this, you'll be successful, but the thing is, you end up at the end of it with a lot of school debt, and there's no options,

Mary · 47:09
yeah. Well, I also, I mean, this is just proof to your point. I remember I went to UNC Chapel Hill, go Tar Heels, and it, it's public school, they make a big deal about, like, it's the first public university, and we're proud of that, but also it is like pretty waspy and preppy, and like a lot of old families that have had money for a long time go there and donate to the school and all this stuff, but I remember getting to about my junior year, I didn't catch on very quickly, I was very naive, and I was like, oh, other people came into this either because their parents went to Chapel Hill or because they're well connected some other way. They came into this experience knowing that they had to, like, jump into a couple places, like they needed to be planning in high school, so they could get a Morehead scholarship, so they could do these internships to pursue their ultimate dream of fill in the blank, and I remember thinking, oh, they told me I was just gonna like show up and take some classes, and then find a really great job, and be able to pay off my loans, but I didn't realize you were supposed to be like going to office hours wasn't about learning the material, it was about networking with your professor, and like I just wasn't down for any of that, I was so tired of being known. I was so excited to be anonymous, and I went into it. Well, I just was from a small town. It's like being the preacher's kid, sheriff's kid, everyone's watching you. Yeah, or I felt that way anyway. Probably not true.

Reggie · 48:36
I did just have a thought, though. I was actually partially homes. You blocked it out, so my I was raised. It's okay, Reggie.

Mary · 48:55
You're special too, Reggie.

Reggie · 49:01
No, I remember that Steve Martin, when he said I was raised as a poor black child, what was a jerk? The jerk, no, I, my grandmother was an educator, and she's who raised me, and so in the summer, right before I could go out and like play and hang out with my kid, my friends. In the summer, I had to do homework, I had to do like, oh yeah, I had to do like I had like actual workbooks with math problems and language skills and all of it. She put you

Dylan · 49:40
to work,

Reggie · 49:40
which is why I freaking crush those tests, which is why

Dylan · 49:44
he is so smart, and why grandmother has

Reggie · 49:47
a lot to do. Grandmother, so she was my like, as an educator, she frights why I went to college, like she was firmly rooted in the importance of education, and so just imagine I hated it as. Yeah, kid, having to like do homework in the summer, knowing my friends were already out playing, and I had to finish this up. She said,

Tim · 50:08
'Dang,

Reggie · 50:08
yeah,

Tim · 50:08
that's incredible.

Mary · 50:09
I do think some is better than none when it comes to education, and even if it has to happen on an iPad, I feel like right now we get by how we get by until we figure out what the new curriculum has to be, because I do think it's changing, like the way we deal with information and the nature of knowledge work, if you can call what we do that, like that is about to shift tremendously, and so our schooling will also shift, but we are in a very awkward growth stage right now, right, like

Tim · 50:36
the, and the jobs that are getting eaten up very fast now, our entry level jobs,

Mary · 50:40
yeah, so How do you

Tim · 50:42
get the experience to have the job that's coming? What they're saying is that AI is pushing the workload onto the higher up,

Reggie · 50:48
yeah,

Tim · 50:49
higher ranking,

Mary · 50:50
yeah,

Tim · 50:50
people in the business. So, they're having to do more work with AI, while the other level,

Mary · 50:57
and we've all.. I'm gonna say the old people, I don't know. I don't actually know what all workplaces are like, but I do think we've lost a lot of patience. I think, like, the expectation.. like, I can imagine a world where you came into a new job and they trained you in the new job. Yeah, I've never had one of those in my adult life. You don't.. I had a student job where I got trained because I was at Chapel Hill, and they knew that it was a new craft that I'd never studied before, but every job I've ever had has been like, well, you'll learn on the job, and you're maybe you get a week to shadow, they throw you in, and then you're getting negative feedback as the way to fix, right? Don't do it this way, adapt this one, I got very like, okay, I'll fix, and I'll pretzel myself, really traumatic from childhood too.

Reggie · 51:44
I mean, you are so whip smarter, and you're so good at what you do, and I can't say that that's not an effective way to go. I certainly, she's always breaking the fourth. Maybe I should break what fourth wall? There is

Tim · 51:58
no fourth wall.

Mary · 52:00
I have a really hard time taking that compliment, but it is, I think, that it's true that it's like I just, because I was able to adapt really quickly, people like, oh, she's so good at this, I'm like, that's what it taught, internal panic, and like really fast thinking, yeah, which actually kind of,

Tim · 52:15
okay, so the deficiency of homeschooling is that you will not make connections you are with, unless someone's able to bring in a tutor that's well connected,

Mary · 52:24
right? You're

Tim · 52:24
like isolated,

Mary · 52:25
if you have enough money, anything can work, right? Yeah, exactly. Solve

Tim · 52:29
it a lot of things with money, yeah. But if you're just a normal person homeschooling, I would say that it's probably not going to benefit you, because you're not being able to make connections, you know? Like, there's no.. you have your parents, which I think is great, and I think family is a strong community to be a part of, but I think it is the one

Mary · 52:48
that you don't get to choose the other part,

Tim · 52:50
right. And so I always wanted, no, this is later in my life, I thought that it would be easier if my family didn't live so close to me, so that I could develop relationships that aren't my family, because I like to hang out with my brothers. I like to eat dinner with my parents. My wife's parents are in town, so I like to eat with their them, and

Reggie · 53:07
siblings are really close, and

Tim · 53:09
so there's a lot of time being invested in family, and so I don't get time to make investments into other friends who are outside the family. So, sometimes even while traveling, I was like, I wonder what it'll feel like not to be around your family all the time, immediate vicinity. So, I think that the disadvantage now, hearing this conversation, the disadvantage of being isolated, and this is going to be so earth-shattering when this comes around to what I'm getting to. When you're isolated in old school days of homeschooling, you miss the advantage, you miss the advantage of connection. Now you're isolated in digital technology, and you miss the advantage of what school's about. You're not meeting the teachers, you're not hearing about them, connecting with them, being motivated to move on to another. Like, I love my chemistry teacher in high school, too. No one liked him. I don't know why I liked it, but I thought it was so incredible, I wanted to be a doctor, and that helped motivate me. But if you isolate a bunch of kids on their devices and they're not working with each other or with the teacher, it minimizes them.

Reggie · 54:12
Yeah,

Tim · 54:13
and that maybe that's a plan, maybe there's a plan not to have the rise up of the people because they're all thinking that this is where it's at. This is where all the stuff. Well,

Mary · 54:23
you know that, like, the, the some people like in this jump in technology to when people first started, like, reading and written word, and the printing press became a thing. People were afraid that humans would just have their noses in books the whole time, because it was the source of entertainment, but also of education, and so, like, what you're describing for isolationism. Also, like, just a textbook alone will do that to you. Like, I've had so many classes where I didn't connect with anybody, I was just sitting there listening to a teacher talk at me, and like, referencing problems in a book,

Tim · 54:56
right?

Mary · 54:57
So, it's been happening,

Tim · 54:58
and even before the printing press, they had to. Teach from a one book, yeah, whatever the manuscript whiteboard, what's there? They would pass their wisdom on, and then there are old, more native cultures that would pass it on through song and through dance, and their whole even I was just listening to a podcast where they were talking about how the stories in the Bible, because people, a lot of times, people will say overwritten hundreds years later, and there's no way they can remember that. Do I remember what I did last year?

Mary · 55:26
Hair, what

Tim · 55:27
they said

Mary · 55:28
in a transatlantic accent.

Tim · 55:31
Well, the guy lost

Dylan · 55:35
my thought. The guy says that

Tim · 55:37
we don't understand that there were cultures that set told their stories over and over again, so it wasn't a matter of losing your memory on the story. You literally grew up singing and telling and hearing stories, so we don't know. That's

Reggie · 55:52
exactly that's one of the things that leaf there was the cultural preservation, because what happens is the elders are dying off and kids are becoming more westernized. These stories and fables, and things that were part of their learning mechanism, fade away their heritage, yeah. And so they're helping people, they're providing resources to help people continue that in different First Nation tribes. Didn't you say in

Tim · 56:16
Spain you wanted, that was

Mary · 56:19
Adrian? Yeah, but we were talking about how the digital age has like blanded everything out and it's becoming hot right now,

Tim · 56:25
you don't get that, you don't get that environmental immersion where you're somewhere that's unique and different, yeah, everything starts to feel like the

Dylan · 56:33
same,

Tim · 56:33
yeah, the same, but we're all isolated at the same time, so how can everything feel it's the same

Mary · 56:38
thing you were talking about with jumping from school to school, and like we were talking about you to like being there to form community, and then leave again. I feel like that sort of the experience of moving between cultures now is like you were meant to feel a little bit isolated for a minute, and people didn't like that feeling, especially when there's this overwhelming majority keeping people out, but there is that tension of like I can be near it and and love it, but not be of it, kind of thing. I don't have to own it and assimilate it and make it mine. But I do think you know that there's a beauty to diversity, and we definitely need to hold that up. But also, like, it can't - you don't - you're not allowed to have everything, I guess, is like the moral of that. You have to see yourself as outside of that culture, and you can't just adopt all of it,

Reggie · 57:27
right? What if everybody, every kid had some form of homeschooling, like I did? Like, like, what if there was someone,

Tim · 57:37
yeah, like, yeah,

Reggie · 57:40
everyone could be like Like, no, but seriously, what did.. what if that was the trend? Like, what if even if your kids went to public school or Waldorf or Montessori, or whatever, that there was still some percentage of it that was homeschooled, so they get that, because I think there's benefits to each type of.. okay, so

Tim · 58:00
here's another thing. So, if we paid teachers right, yes, more people will want to be teachers.

Reggie · 58:05
Oh, absolutely.

Tim · 58:06
If we paid caregivers correctly, more people would want to take care of their kids. And by the

Mary · 58:13
way, every job is becoming a care job. Yeah, totally. Even if you think that you're doing like knowledge work or engineering, you're having a caregiver that's

Tim · 58:21
relationship, precisely, but there's a, there's a Kate Raworth wrote a book called The Donut Economics, and she talks about the value of a caregiver, a mother or a grandmother, or someone who raises a child to enter the workforce, we don't see that as being part of the economy, they're like outside the economy, good luck, have fun, like whatever you have to do, just survive and get them through. We don't see it as we're raising kids to bring them into the economy, that's part of the work, and so she makes an argument to pay them, yeah, and she actually adds up all that they're doing and puts a number on it $60,000 a year.

Mary · 59:05
I mean, it feels like a really great argument for universal basic income,

Tim · 59:09
right? I don't know that that gets added, because what you're there's a

Mary · 59:13
percentage that's missing,

Tim · 59:14
right? But yeah, because it's kind of like it's kind of like lunch money, universal income, like lunch money, you get like, here's a token, if we were

Mary · 59:22
better resourced, I like to imagine that more people would do that willingly and without the extra incentive. I do think we naturally want to take care of our children, we want good things for them, but my parents, even if they wanted to do that, I don't think they could really like conceive of the economic situation they were trying to throw me into,

Tim · 59:40
right,

Mary · 59:40
because I mean it's a white collar, blue collar, or like my parents worked for the state my whole life, so like I don't know, I do think it's a social climbing thing at the end of the day, and people use that term in a derogatory way, like social climber, but I think that there's an element of we don't feel like there's enough money to go around, and so you got to go get your, there's scarcity, yeah.

Tim · 1:00:00
Also says in the book that when you add money to the to the thing you take away the intrinsic value, so be careful what you add money to, because it is a fire that will burn the market. Yeah,

Mary · 1:00:10
so

Tim · 1:00:10
if you were to pay caregivers for the work they're doing, it would take the intrinsic value of raising someone, but it needs to get to them in some way, whether it's paying the one who's working more, so that it can provide an environment that's not scarce and driven by that level of emergency feeling. Yeah, there, and teachers, so like no one wants to be a teacher right now. Their numbers are so low on how many hundreds you want to be, right? It's paid well, yeah,

Reggie · 1:00:38
they're constantly under attack,

Tim · 1:00:40
yeah.

Reggie · 1:00:41
Certainly, by the current, so what does that do? What

Tim · 1:00:43
does that lead kids to?

Reggie · 1:00:45
Yeah, Khan

Tim · 1:00:46
Academy.

Reggie · 1:00:46
Yeah,

Tim · 1:00:47
I'm telling you that this is all a scam. That when you lead, when you take away the people and you push them toward technology, which is incentivized to do this, because they make more money the more the people are signed up. Yeah, and people think it's great, they can learn anywhere they are, they can travel and learn, but Who's going to be the teachers at the end? And then who controls the education, Khan Academy, Academy, or whatever, and even YouTubers? My kids learn as much from them as they love, so

Reggie · 1:01:17
many of the kids are learning from YouTube, like that's like the I'd say it's really high up there, so it

Tim · 1:01:23
takes our voyeuristic tendencies as humans. We've had this since time began, and we turn into the person watching you, like kids watching other kids play games.

Reggie · 1:01:34
Your screen is a little window to the world, right? That's the craziest thing, watching kids watch other kids play games, watch other kids play, meanwhile young

Mary · 1:01:42
people are watching this, like, what's so hard to get? It's streaming at my kids, and I'm like,

Reggie · 1:01:47
my kids are watching people play Minecraft. I'm like, guys, you have Minecraft, you can actually play. No, we just..

Tim · 1:01:55
it's like this, it's like a weird isolation happening that we're not even aware of, because we think we're being empowered with tools. Oh, you have AI now. They don't tell you that if everyone has AI, it doesn't fucking matter,

Reggie · 1:02:07
right?

Tim · 1:02:07
Because everyone has AI, so knowledge actually becomes the least valuable thing.

Reggie · 1:02:13
Yeah,

Tim · 1:02:13
as on the course of this getting better, you know, because they - a friend of mine told me they took us from the field, and they put us in the city. Then they put us in buildings. Then they gave us devices, and now they have AI that just says we don't need you anymore. So, when you follow that pipeline,

Mary · 1:02:31
yeah, you circle back and you go live in the wilderness and try not to be bothered. I will say

Tim · 1:02:37
wilderness school.

Mary · 1:02:38
I know a kid who's in that ass. I have had this thought several times, that it does start to sound like matriarchy, but I don't know the technical definition of matriarchy versus patriarchy. But I have asked myself sometimes if we need a party, a political party in the United States, and the whole platform is built on this thesis, protect our children, and like, and if you start there, and you're like, okay, let's make sure everybody has food to eat, let's make sure that nobody's getting shot in the street or in a safe building, then you start to think, okay, if I'm going to care for these children, I need to care for the people who care for the children, and the ripple effect starts out that way, and it does just so happen that a lot of those people are women, and I do think that, like, the original caretaker is probably a mom, as the archetypal figure of that, but I feel like, without trying to make it a gendered thing at all, care for the people who are caring for the kids, and then the like goodness flows out because, yeah, well-resourced kids create well-resourced adults create a well-resourced world, is sort of how I feel, without trying to make it all the kids' problems, like, solve it for us, yeah. But I do think it's that sense of, like, I want better for you than I had, but I don't think that can any longer be like, go find, make your way in this competitive world, is totally how I was raised, I think it's like, no, find the caregivers and care for them. Yeah, take care of the children. It seems like really basic, like every species has that figured.

Tim · 1:04:10
And who's our friend working in the other space who is connecting high schoolers with mentors?

Reggie · 1:04:16
Yeah, like

Tim · 1:04:17
to have access. Yeah,

Mary · 1:04:19
it's.. I think it's the name of this company is called Backers, and it's the idea that, like, not only learning, but, like, social capital is also a key part of what especially rich people are getting from schooling. Yeah, and so he's trying to close that gap by pairing people up with mentors to, like, support them through that journey. In tutors, I think it's a great, yeah, he has a TEDx talk, you should go look it up, TEDx Asheville. Andy will put his name on the description. That was the year that I stage managed, so I definitely should.

Reggie · 1:04:49
He's a good guy. Is

Dylan · 1:04:50
that our resolve and our what if, if we take care of people?

Tim · 1:04:53
I don't know how to resolve this. Okay, I feel all like

Mary · 1:04:55
Tim's risky. How. At this

Dylan · 1:05:00
loose thread before he was

Mary · 1:05:01
homeschooled, you have to forgive. Happens when

Reggie · 1:05:06
you're homeschooled, I could tell homeschool

Tim · 1:05:10
change. These things, like, how do we keep, how do we become successful? And then people that be people that change things, instead of just becoming that one that wants to hoard your success, because it's, it is scarce, you

Mary · 1:05:24
can't be ill-gotten. I think that's the, that's the story in all the stories, is like you got to get it through positive means, and that's the hardest thing in the

Reggie · 1:05:32
world. I love

Tim · 1:05:34
it, sounds like

Dylan · 1:05:43
I'm gonna close this off. That was our podcast on homeschooling. Hope you enjoyed it. This is Age. Wow, you homeschool

Mary · 1:05:56
kids. That was

Tim · 1:05:57
funny, man.

Mary · 1:05:58
Thanks for listening. This podcast was created and developed by our hosts Reggie Tidwell, Tim Scroggs, Mary Green, and Dylan Garcia. Produced by me, Mary Green. Live production and editing by Will Canady. Graphic design by Dylan Garcia and set design by Megan Scroggs. Today's episode is presented lovingly by 40 hearts creators of enduring value.