Teaching Controversial Topics

Hi, I'm Cynna Jarrett and welcome to season three of the Welch Remind podcast. As a quick intro to this season, I want to let you know that our topic will be education hot takes. Education is a field of a lot of passionate people in it who have strong opinions because what we do matters so much. And this season, we're going to be taking on topics that might be controversial at times and some topics where there's not a clear cut black and white answer. The reason we want to do this is that right now our information flow is so often curated by social media algorithms and internet algorithms, that when we talk to people we disagree with about a particular topic, we sometimes find that we're working with different sets of facts, different information flows. And so we believe that it's more important now than ever to practice having conversations about hard topics with people that you may or may not agree with. So we're going to try to have really good show note season with links in each episode so that you can dive into these things on your own and we also love hearing your hot takes. So if you have a response to one of our episodes, you agree, you disagree, you can send your responses to [email protected]. We're hoping to have more opportunities to share listener responses on future episodes. With that said, let's dive in to episode one. Hi, I'm Susan Wisebauer, co-author of The Weltrain Mind and I'm Susanna Jarrett, editor at The Weltrain Mind Press. And we're talking about education for all parents and for all children in all sorts of settings. And it wouldn't be a hot take season if we didn't talk about teaching controversial topics. So that's what we're not going today. All right. So in this episode of the podcast, we're going to talk about how and when to expose your homeschool children to different ideas, including ideas that you personally disagree with. And how to homeschool with families who have different world views from your own. And you know, this is definitely a hot takes issue because not all homeschoolers, but many, many homeschoolers choose homeschooling precisely as a way to, I don't know, curate. I was going to say protect, but that's not quite the right word. Curate the ideas that their children are exposed to on a regular basis because of a conviction that to expose kids to certain ideas particularly when they're very young can be damaging. Right. And I think it's also natural even if that's not why you started homeschooling, but you just it's natural to with your own family within the confines of your own home to share your opinions about things. Whereas when you're homeschooling, you kind of have the mixed of you're parenting these children. And these are your views about how A, B and C work, but you're also their educator and as an educator, you have this responsibility to share with them. But here's how other people see things. Right. So there's two very different dynamics. If you've got a kid that's in school and it might even be, I mean, if you're a Christian, they might even be in a Christian school or they might be in a public school, but either way, they're going to come home having been taught something that you think to yourself. No, not exactly. That's not what I believe. So in that case, you know, you talk to your child about how you feel differently about whatever the issue is, but there's a pretty clear distinction between what they heard at school, what they heard at home. And for homeschoolers, those two things can really run together in a way that can be good, but also I think can be problematic. Right. So our first segment of the podcast, I'm going to call, I don't believe it, but I must teach it. So I like to go through a few subjects that are more hot button subjects, like politics, government, science, and talk about where you might have a specific opinion, but in order to give your child a well-rounded education, you need to teach different perspectives that aren't your own. That's actually how I feel about Fizzad. What do you mean by that? I don't believe in Fizzad is really an academic subject. I've always really struggled with that. I mean, look, you know, you got it, it's in the curriculum. We actually, the well-trained mine academy has a great course where you know, kids learn about nutrition and exercise and all that sort of things. I just, I don't know, I grew up on a farm. We never stopped moving. Right. My brother was a bicycle racer. My sister and I rode horses. We all ran. I don't know. He feels like an unnatural part of the school day. It feels like an unnatural part of the school day. But never mind, let's put Fizzad aside because we don't honestly believe that that's going to be a hot take. Right. So we're going to start with U.S. government and politics. Ah, much more of a hot take. Right. And we'll go through from grammar stage or elementary on through high school. So at the grammar stage, your student's political opinions will probably be your political opinions. I don't think I've ever met an eight-year-old who is a Democrat if their parents are Republican or vice versa. I've actually maybe met a couple. But they're, they're, their kids who sort of came out of the womb with that oppositional gene that said whatever you believe, I'm going to do something different. So even there, it's not a reasoned choice. It's a, um, it's an oppositional choice. I won't say it doesn't happen. But yeah, I agree with you for, for elementary students, if you believe it, they're going to believe it. Right. And that's very natural that's sort of still sort of the parody stage they're learning from you. They're modeling from you. I remember the very first election cycles where I was aware of the world. I was super into it in air quotes and that I didn't really know what was going on. But I loved rooting for the home team with my parents, right. Just being part of that experience. But there's a natural transition that happens as students get a little bit older moving into the logic and the rhetoric stage where students are going to start questioning. They're trying to figure out what do I believe that's different than mom and dad. And this can be a time that is tricky for homeschool parents. Yes. Yes, particularly and, you know, and different homeschool families put different weight on politics as their identity. And that's fine. That's, that's, that's natural and normal. There are families where your political persuasion is a really big deal because it's almost part of your cultural family social identity. There are families where it is not. I think the tricky thing is if you're in one of those families where, you know, what party you vote for, it's just a big part of your family culture is you've got to figure out how to give your kids some space to disagree without feeling like your family culture is being threatened. That's interesting. And that can, that could be very difficult. Right. And I think a big part of that is encouraging conversations. I felt like my dad was really good at this when I was growing up in that, you know, he had his own opinions about things. But whenever I brought up an issue or wanted to talk through something, there was never a attitude of like, I'm older, you're just young and stupid and don't know yet. It was like, he would talk through things with me in ways that I really enjoyed. And so, I think encouraging those conversations with your kid and encouraging them to explore will allow them to create their own space and create their own identity without either just following you blindly A or just doing the opposite and being a rebel because there's no other option. Like, well, my parents are Christians, so I'm an atheist. My parents are liberals, so I'm conservative or whatever the case may be. No, that that's very well put. And it sort of makes me think of a bigger issue, which maybe we could briefly discuss, which is that in a healthy family, there is space for kids to ask questions that you find absolutely terrifying. So there's a real tendency on the part of a parent when a child asks a question, which is very weighted, and it's weighted because you as the parent feel that this is incredibly important to get right. And if your kid gets it wrong, they're going to put themselves in danger of some sort, whether that's spiritual danger, academic danger, cultural danger, whatever it is. So when a kid comes out with that question, and I mean, I would say this is certainly with oldest children, oldest children get the brunt of this because they ask these questions first. There's a real parental reflex that comes in, which makes us want to say, no, you know, shut it down. We're not going to talk about that. Or in some way to make it clear to the child that this is not something we're going to question. Right. And it's it's it's a it's almost to read on on an emotional or spiritual or cultural level. It's kind of the same as like yanking a child out of the street when they step in without looking both ways. It's got that same sort of visceral sense to it. The problem is that when you do that, you shut off conversation. You no longer give the child space to talk to you about those things. You are a look. A lot of parents do this when it comes to issues of sex. Whether it's gender identity, whether it's sexual activity, whatever it is, as soon as the child starts asking, you're like, right. And kids sense that reaction, you know, they think to themselves, oh my gosh, I've stepped into something that can't even be discussed. And and if your child loves you, which most children naturally love their parents, they don't want to upset you and they don't want you to be upset with them. So that reaction can produce in them a self-protective response of no, I could talk about that. So I mean, I just it's just something for parents to be aware of. Yeah, in themselves. Yeah, I mean, I think about I have a five-month-old baby girl. So it's going to be a little while, but I already have this like she's so little and I don't want her exposed to anything that would hurt her or harm her. And I know that as her mom, I have to allow her to engage with ideas and gauge with learning things about how the world works that are going to hurt and not be great because the world we live in, the reality of it is it's not all rainbows and sunshine and she's going to have to learn all that someday. And so I think I think these types of tricky things that are scary for parents, just recognizing that the safety of your own home, the space with you and your child is the safest place for them to start questioning these things, to start learning about things that are different than what you believe. And so creating that space in your own home is the safest place to allow them to explore before they're on their own. Yeah. I 100% agree with that. And then I think we're getting away from our outline a little bit, Susanna. But we'll get back to it in a minute, an even deeper thing to be aware of. And this is something I've said in different contexts in different ways, but it's important so I'm going to repeat it again. As parents, as our children grow and investigate the world and form their own opinions, we have to, little by little, more and more as they get older, let go of the idea that successful parenting means producing a kid that acts in a certain way, thinks in a certain way, believes in a certain way. And the reason why we have to let go of that is that as kids get older and older, we have less and less control over it. You know, you can, you can get a elementary student to believe almost anything. You can browbeat a middle grade student into agreeing with you. But as they get older, you have to acknowledge that your control over them grows less and less and less and less and less. And unless you are able to, first of all, accept that reality and look, I have four grown kids. It's a tough reality to accept. Not only accept that reality, but also let go of the idea that the, I don't know, the stamp of effectiveness, the your A+ grade as a parent and as an educator is producing a kid that believes and thinks and votes in a certain way, then you are hanging your worth as a parent and as an educator on the wrong thing. And even though I think we, though we stepped away from the outline a little bit, I think that it's a really good outline is the heart of what we're talking about today. I think this is a great pre discussion for the actual subject by subject that we're going to get into because that's the heart of it is giving space as the kids get older to have questions to talk to you about it, to be their own people. And so this is a great way to start. Well, I mean, it's just, it's something that we have to keep reminding ourselves of when you've got younger children that it can, that, that reality can be sort of obscured because they do pretty much, you know, do what you want them to do. You can make them do it. They want to do. But look, I'm 56 years old. All of my children are over 21, you know, my oldest son is in his 30s. And just looking back, I can see how my efforts to make any of them believe, think or act in a certain way. If those efforts were about me and a lot of them were about me being a good parent, about me being a good educator, about me being respected by other people when they looked at my kids and said, oh, what a great job you did, that nothing good was going to happen. So I think that as a parent educator, you have to be really in tune with your own heart and your own soul and very aware of whether you are teaching a certain point of view for your sake. Mm hmm. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very hard thing. It's a very hard thing to be aware of, but so, so important. Right. Absolutely. Oh, I lost my microphone. Okay. She's and it was so moved by my words that she lost my microphone. She knocked it over. She knocked it over. Okay. So, let's, let's, let's go into our subject by subject, keeping that in mind. To the first one is politics and in the logic or rhetoric stage, you will probably have to have a civics class at some point for your, for your high schoolers to learn the ins and outs of how the government works. And so I would personally recommend a course that strives to be neutral and to just be aware that there are free resources for teaching about the US government online, but some of those come with a stated political slant. And if you are using resources that are free, you may want to do some research and make sure you're not handing your kid a course that is very much trying to teach a particular point of view versus explaining how the US government works. And we're going to talk about this a little bit more when we get to, we get to economics because it really comes to the front in economics. But you want to look out for words like libertarian, conservative, traditional. Those are all sort of keywords, oh, federalist, look out for the word federalist also. Those are keywords that tell you that as opposed to a course which is explaining how US government works, this is a course which is giving you a very particular interpretation, not of how government works, but how it's supposed to work. Right. And then two of my personal favorite resources for teaching government and civics is a website called iCivics. This would be more appropriate for grammar and logic stage students, but there's a ton of free resources from lesson plans to actual games that you can play online that teach different parts of how the US government works. It's a nonprofit organization that was actually started by Sandra Day O'Connor. But I think they do a really good job of staying very neutral in the way that they teach things and there's a lot of really fun interactive activities for younger students. Okay. And then my second favorite resource in this sort of vein would be more for adults or maybe for rhetoric stage students, but it's a book by Jonathan Height called the Righteous Mind. And it's a book that I read that really influenced me because there was a time in my life where I did not understand how someone could be a good person and have different political opinions in me. Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of rhetoric where one side will call the other side evil people who want to destroy our country, which just goes straight to motivation and has nothing to do with particular policies. Right. Right. This book really opened my mind to see how different people have different values and how they might come at things from different perspectives. Anyway, it's a fascinating read for you, especially if you're you and your adult children are not saying eye to eye, but also even for an advanced high school reader who was interested in politics to kind of see some of the value systems behind what becomes political opinions. So that's the righteous mind and he just built H-A-I-D-T and you'll put a link in the show notes. Absolutely. So that people can find that. So there are a couple of things, these are great course resources. There's a couple of things I want to say about then discussing politics with your kids. The first is that particularly for elementary and early middle grade students, I think it's important to be very careful what you expose them to in terms of political rhetoric. Because, you know, if you are, so I hope we don't lose half of our listeners over this, but I lean more democratic in the way that I vote. And so the podcasts that I listen to, I'm kind of a political junkie, so I listen to all kinds of podcasts and a lot of them are run by democratic strategists who say really unkind things about Republicans. And you know, on the Republican side all you've got to do is turn on any speech by Republican politician and you will hear them saying horrible things about democratic candidates. Some of them very personal, sexist, misogynistic, racist, it's true on both sides. Now, as adults, we listen to this, okay? And we run it through our filter after a lifetime of hearing people say mean things. And to some degree we disregard it, but it's not the same for a young child. A young child who hears a podcast or hears a political speech from somebody on TV doesn't have that same filter that says, maybe I shouldn't trust everything that I hear. So I think there is a case to be made for protecting young children from the things that you like to listen to. So it's something to be aware of if you're in the car and you know, you've got your favorite radio commentator on and he or she is going off on the other side. And you've got a six year old sitting there next to you. Maybe you just turn that off because that is not teaching that child to think about politics in a healthy manner. Absolutely. And part of what a classical education is is to learn how to analyze arguments and disagree with the ideas versus just ad hominin attacks, which is so common in American politics today unfortunately. It is omnipresent. It is everywhere. You cannot get away from it. Yeah. Absolutely. And so I think modeling that as much as we can, like by turning off the radio or whatever the case may be, is going to be so important because we're trying to help train our students to learn how to disagree fairly and that is not very common on the internet. It's not very common even on the news unfortunately. And so we have to be really aware of trying to model that fair disagreement and the focus on ideas and policies versus just people and meanness. Absolutely. Absolutely. So on that topic, and I hope you guys will all bear with me because I'm going to read you something that might take me a few minutes. And I recently reposted on my personal, my, my, it's I say personal, my business Facebook page. An opinion written by Gretchen Ronovic and we will post a link to her social media presences in our show notes so that you can check out her work. She really does sort of do more work on the spiritual discipline side, but she's been involved in classical education for a long time. And she just had this. She put up on her Facebook page this lovely post about how classical education treats differences. And these are her words, not mine. So again, wretch and run of it, not my words, but here's what she said. When I taught classical writing to teens, there's an element to formal rhetoric called refutation where you address the arguments opposed to your thesis. In refutation, it's important to present the arguments of your opponents in a way that they would feel well represented, so that you can talk about where they are wrong in their argument, point by point, instead of resorting to add hominem attacks or misrepresentation. And then she points out that in classical rhetoric to attack someone's personality or to misrepresent their views, it's also called a straw man, where you restate your opponents views in a way that you can easily knock down, but that they wouldn't agree with. That is, and this is Gretchen's words again, the weakest way to refute their arguments. It shows that you don't have a good case against their issues, so you resort to theatrics and distractions instead. The reason why, and again, this is the main point, so Gretchen says, the reason why you want your opponents to agree with your representation of them is that you are seeking to win them over and persuade them. If they feel they have been misrepresented, they will never be persuaded. They will just continue to clarify again and again until they realize that you have no intention of actually hearing them. All right. End of long quote. Now, I love this so much because I think that the discipline of stating a view that you strongly disagree with in a way that the person you're disagreeing with would say, well, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying, is the greatest exercise ever. And then and only that, can you talk about difference and ideas? Right. The only time you can do it. This is so important because this is really what a classical education is all about learning how to state an argument in a way that your opponent would agree with and then refute it is so powerful. And right now with the internet, it's so easy to only see a particular side of the internet that your algorithm is giving you the information that confirms your biases. And so this right here could have such a massive impact if it was practiced more widely. I absolutely agree with you. So let's move on then from politics to something which you may not realize is a huge hot button issue. And that's economics. And I should say at the top that this is not one of my fields of expertise. Neither is it mine, but it is an important school subject that we have to teach and that has a sort of a layer of maybe hidden bias and slant that can be built into curricula that makes it important to talk about. Yes. Okay. So your child's going to have to take an economics course at some point. There are slants behind these programs. So for example, Hillsdale College offers economics courses and those courses have a free market slant and I'm not making that up. It is in the description of their course where they say this course has a free market slant. So free market, what free market means and again, I'm going to use Hillsdale's own words to describe this because then I know they'll agree with it. Natural competition and the cooperation of human beings should occur in an efficient manner without central planning. So government gets your fingers out of the markets. No regulation, no restriction because markets respond to consumer demand. So economics is all about what some people can produce and what other people want and the government needs to butt out of that. This is from the Hillsdale course. Fundamentally, the best economic system should consist of private property under certain rules, a market system that is allowed to operate freely and reliable money. So that's free market. Now, I mean, I have some questions about free market economies. I mean, I would actually maybe start with reliable money. Like how do you get reliable money if you have a, if the government is budding out? But we don't have to discuss that because I don't really know anything about economics. That's just my initial reaction. The important thing for parents to know is that that is a slant. So if you do this course from Hillsdale, you're not just getting an explanation of how the American economy works. Once again, like we said with politics, you're going to get, a argument for how it should work. Right. And because the government is involved, that will then feed into certain political positions. Right. And I think it's, it's just important in general, backing out just a little bit that economics has a subject unlike math where everyone pretty much agrees that two plus two equals four, where people disagree about fundamentally kind of how it works. So there's different theories. And so almost inevitably you're going to have some slant. But it's good to be aware of what that slant is. There's another, so there's this sort of free market theory. And then there's another theory known as Keynesian economics that centers more around the idea that government should have an active role in their country's economies. And so a program may be more Keynesian, it may be more free market or it may try to actually explain that there are different ways of understanding economics, which I think would be an ideal course that kind of is a bit more generalized and recognizes that people disagree in their different theories. Right. Oh, I was just going to say that because, because all of these economic theories have to do with what role is government supposed to play, that's how they get so political so quickly. And I've also, I've also seen them get very theological very quickly. So I have seen a number of free market, and we haven't talked about libertarians yet, but we will in a second, of I have seen both free market and libertarian economics courses, which use the Bible to say government should not be involved in any market transactions, whatsoever. Interesting. And that, to me, would be something that would have set up red flags if, you know, I am a Christian. I believe that the Bible is the word of God. I don't think it has anything to say about the free market in the 21st century. I just, I just don't. So I'm sure someone's going to disagree with me about that. Right. And you can send your, your hot takes to [email protected]. Oh, yes. We've been very interested to hear all of the disagreement that this is going to produce. And there are, so we talked about Hillsdale. They have some really beautiful looking courses in their website that are free, they have a free market slant, very professionally done. There's a couple of other really popular in the home school community economics programs. One that I see all the time on my YouTube ads is Tuttle Twins. And they are libertarian. I think they would agree with the fact that they're libertarian. They put that on their website, which is, do you want to maybe, you can explain better than me what libertarian means? Well, I think libertarian is, and this is a quick and dirty take. So, you know, but, but just for you to start your own research, libertarian is the most extreme expression of free market, which is not only should government not regulate the markets, intervene when there's a downturn, you know, so, so in our current system, for example, when interest rates change, that is the government stepping in and reacting to certain inflation rates, libertarians say, not only should the government not be involved in market economics, the government should but out completely. So libertarians would abolish the IRS. Libertarians would allow people to opt out of social security, paying social security and receiving it. Libertarians would abolish all government-sponsored welfare and utilized private charities instead. So libertarians, to me anyway, is free market to the extreme. Right. And it's actually more of a political term than an economic one. Technically, it's a small government, less minimal government intervention if none. There's another series that it was very popular, at least when I was being homeschooled to call the Uncle Eric series, there was books like, whatever happened to Penny Candy, and are you liberal, conservative or confused? Those are books that we grew up with. Yep. Those are definitely still around. Those have a libertarian slant as well. And there's study guides that you can purchase that go with them that talk about authors POV or authors point of view, because they're good argument for libertarianism, so I would use them as that, use them as an introduction to what libertarians believe versus as your sole economics course, because it's a cartoon easy to read sort of introduction to libertarianism and their ideas. And let me just repeat that we're not saying you shouldn't use these courses. We just think that you should go into them real life, think that there's a slant and make that slant known. Right. And make sure that your child understands that there are other ways to approach these subjects. And again, that's part of that whole classical ethos of, let's understand our prejudices and biases and not assume that this way is inevitably the right way to approach this subject. Absolutely. Like, I really think teaching authors POV with the Uncle Eric Book would be a fun exercise and students may come away with agreeing or disagreeing, but it would be a good way for them to learn about a different way of seeing government. But as far as choosing your overall course, if you can find something that talks about different economic theories, that's probably the best. There are some that I'm going to list here that I haven't taken. I've only looked at the syllabus for each of these. So if you guys have other ideas, you can send them to podcast at well-trained mind and I can update the show notes. But I was looking at great courses. they have a few different economics courses. edX has free courses kind of academy has a free course crash course may not be a full year of economics but good introductory videos and then the well-trained men academy our own well-trained men academy has an economics course as well we do and I should just add that great courses in particulars definitely gonna be more of a senior high school yes or even early college I would say edX as well those are college courses free online college courses that you can take as a high scholar we'll be back after this grammar for the well-trained mind is a complete grammar curriculum for middle grades through high school this program's unique instructional design has students cycle through material four consecutive times to fully master the mechanics of proper English usage if teaching grammar intimidates you have no fear each lesson is short and scripted so there is no prep work for the teacher you can open up the core instructor text and go students follow along in their matching workbook and can review detailed explanations for their work and the corresponding key grammar for the well-trained mind the efficient and effective grammar program can be paired with any writing curriculum including well-trained mind presses writing with skill series check out samples on our website well-trained mind dot com and use the code podcast at checkout for 15 percent off your purchase well Susanna we spent a lot of time talking about politics and economics I would think that with these controversial topics what most people would think of first would be science science the homeschool science show so after what are literally decades of reviewing homeschool science curricula I can say that they they tend to fall into three categories what we would call conservative evangelical maybe but what typically teaches creationism and a young earth so when I say creationism I mean a literal six day creation and the sort of corollary to that is that the earth is 6,000 years old so that's represented by the institution for creation research there are what we will call secular science curricula which don't pay any attention to the biblical stories of creation whatsoever and so you're going to get an earth an earth that is billions of years old and a much longer time frame this based on taking what we know about current natural processes and extrapolating that back into the past and then there's this sort of tricky third category which we're calling neutral neutral means we're not going to take a position on the age of the earth the difficulty with that is that at some point you actually going to have to take a position on the age of the earth it's just because if you if you don't take a position on the age of the earth then you are basically saying that secular curricula are all wrong because secular curricula are pretty universal in saying radio carbon dating and other scientific methods which are accepted by the majority of scientists x and if you're a neutral curriculum and you say well there are different ideas then you're basically rejecting what secular curricula see as a scientific consensus so I'm not sure that this neutral category really works it works probably for elementary and middle grade science where you can just study natural processes and you don't necessarily have to get deep into the mechanics of why scientists believe what they believe about the dating of the earth by the time you get into high school you're not going to be able to avoid this question anymore right it just one thing to add on top of the age of the earth something that kind of goes with that but just to to call it out specifically is also evolution and human evolution so a neutral program will just totally avoid that topic but just like with the age of the earth by the time you get to a high school student a college bound student that they're going to need to understand the theory of evolution that is you know the predominant theory that they're going to be encountering at the college level and in their adult life even if they choose not to go to college and so whether you agree or disagree with it it's one of those things that you're going to have to teach or your kids going to go into the world or go into college feeling like they're missing something that everybody else learned and this has been one of the efforts by Biologos which is an effort to explain the scientific consensus and also say this doesn't have to torpedo faith or belief in the Bible and here is how but you know that's not neutrality either so which is why if you if you go look at the Biologos website or if you just Google Biologos you will find them getting attacked from both sides right by this by six day creationists who believe in a young earth and by secular scientists who and this is not all secular scientists but there's a pretty healthy subset of secular scientists who believe that any faith position makes your your scientific understanding weaker so you know this is where we are this is the point that we're at but I 100 percent agree with you Susanna that sending a kid into a college situation with no understanding of evolutionary biology is just a minefield it's telling them it's kind of reproducing that attitude that we were discussing at the beginning of this podcast which now seems like a really long time ago which is oh these are things we can't even talk about we can't even talk about this is too dangerous you know and and as a Christian myself I think okay if God is not big enough to guide my child through investigating evolutionary biology then he's not a very big God we've got to be able to talk about these things we've got to be able to study them right and I think one specifically classical approach to this is to help your rhetoric stage students engage with the actual source materials my dad developed science classes for us where we had to read he he kind of says subscribe to the intelligent design theory so we had to read the best arguments for evolution by the top scientists of the day by you know Richard Dawkins but we also had to read the best counter arguments by intelligence design scientists and that was a really you know in in the classical education we talk about being able to disagree with a book or or be part of the intellectual conversation this theory of evolution stuff was so it was so easy to see the differences in people's arguments as a high schooler and read one thing and then read another and kind of compare them that it was to me it was a really good place to just to start doing that and I really enjoyed that as a high schooler was just being allowed to and it also made me feel like my parents weren't putting a gate in front of ideas that weren't were untouchable it was letting me you know learn about them for myself and come to my own conclusions but obviously with their with their reading lesson they're also guiding me towards what they felt were the best counter arguments. That's so interesting as my dad who who just died recently was also a big fan of intelligent design because he grew up as a very devout Baptist and a very conservative Baptist family but he was a scientist you know he was a physician and he just he couldn't disregard what he saw as the scientific proofs that the earth was not six thousand years old and so in intelligent design he found a way to bring those two things together I have been less convinced by intelligent design but you know again we're not telling you you should teach one thing or another I will say that in terms of curricula that teach six day creation and a young earth that there are two really big things to look out for and I would never tell you what to teach your children but I will tell you attitudes in curricula that are not helpful and the first is and look I grew up as a young earth six day creationist which I no longer am and I cannot tell you how many times I saw explicitly stated that people who don't believe in six day creation are in rebellion against God not helpful people not a good way to start a discussion that actually you know what that is that's a spiritualized version of the ad hominem attack rather than dealing with the and there are real problems with the literal six day creation you know and I don't have to list them all but starting with the fact that we don't have it six days until the sun and moon get created which is later on so anybody wants to talk about this further we can do that but there are real problems with six day creationism and to not talk about those and instead to throw out your in rebellion against God and you're rejecting the word of God which so many young earth curricula do is an ad hominem attack that is not honoring to God because you know it's making assumptions about motivations and people's spiritual states instead of talking about the actual issues so that's the first thing is I would really beg parents not to choose curricula that teach kids that people who disagree with them are evil because that's what that argument is and that is really opposite to a classical perspective and the second is and I'm just going to put this out here so maybe I don't know we want to do a whole podcast on this at some future point but do your own research people there are really strong links between organizations that are heavily invested in six day creationism and young earth and really overt Christian nationalism by which I mean this country should be run by the word of God non-Christians should not hold office and yay even women shouldn't have the vote these things are all linked together Susanne you don't believe me but it's true this is the first I'm hearing it so I'm going to have to I know is - That's true. So yeah, so there are very strong links between these positions that you at least should be aware of if this is a curricula that you're gonna pick. And we'll put some links in our show notes if you wanna go down that rabbit hole. - Yeah, Susan has a link for a podcast that I'm gonna listen to as well because we were just discussing this before we started recording and I was like, oh, I didn't know there was this link before. So I'm gonna go listen to that podcast. I'll link it in the show notes if anyone wants to join me on that rabbit hole dive. This might be a little bit of a hotter take than we want for this hot take. So let's talk about something really non-controversial like whether you should be on books in your family. (laughing) - I think books who listen to the podcast probably already know our thoughts on books. But this is our last subject which is just reading in general. - Yeah, you know, this is something that I don't care once again. - The joys of having been in the homeschool world for almost my entire life. So at this point, right? So I started being homeschooled as a six year old. So 50 years, half a century in the homeschool world people, I cannot tell you the number of books that I have been told are dangerous and I shouldn't even have them in the house including the chronicles of Narnia 'cause there's a witch in them, right? And when I was younger and those of you who have listened to me talk about my past will know that at one point we were involved with the Bill Gothard Institute Basic Youth Complex which has gotten so much really good sort of revelatory reporting done on its cult like aspects. We were never in it to that degree but I remember very clearly going through the house and taking out certain books and burning them because the fact that they were in the house would open up these channels for demonic oppression. - Oh wow. - Because the books were not, that because the books were that bad, right? And that is actually, fortunately I think that way of dealing with books is not as popular as it used to be. I mean, there was a whole wave of book burning in the 70s people, it's just gonna come around again. But what strikes me about that now looking back on it is that there's this sort of pre literate approach to a book that a book is like a magical object is like an incantation or a spell. So that just opening it, well, I mean, and the most extreme circumstances just having it in your house. But that opening it and reading it is somehow going to like exert this magical, powerful influence over your child's brain, child will not be able to resist. - And that's just not true. That's not how books work. - Right and particularly, I mean, obviously there's a range of young children you do kind of wanna take care of what they're being exposed to at a young, young age, but as they get older, there's really no safer way for children to begin to learn the reality of the world they live in than through a book. I felt like for me, reading about, you know, reading classic literature was how I learned how human nature really is. So I didn't, you know, graduate from my homeschool and go into the world thinking that everyone was just chummy with each other and life was great. You know, it exposes children thing that are really, really important and it is a safe place to do it if you can open that conversation with your kids rather than being a poisonous thing that is unsafe. It's a way for your children to engage with different ideas and to learn about different things within the comfort of your own home, within the comfort of being able to talk to you about it. We have another podcast about books specifically in season two where we talked about ideas for reading more controversial classics. I would definitely recommend that. But it kind of comes back to this idea about in a classical education, children have to learn that they can disagree with a book. So a book isn't this magical thing that just is a truth teller and they ingest it and it becomes part of who they are. Like they can read something and learn to disagree with it. They can read something and learn how to explain the argument and what the author would agree with and then give their counter argument and that's so central to classical education. So being open to allowing your children to read things that you would disagree with at the right time at the right age is so important. - Yeah, and I would offer my own experience on this topic. I learned how to read when I was two and I've always read incredibly freakishly fast. It's just, I didn't, this is not a virtue on my part. It's just a thing. And my mother gave up when I was probably five on trying to keep up with what I was reading. And she was like, okay, go read that. But if there's something in it that bothers you, turn the corner of the page down and we'll talk about it. So I went through tons of books turning down corners of pages. They were mostly library books now that I think about it. So maybe that wasn't that great, but you could use post it. The point is is that she gave me permission to read the book and disagree with it and to not feel like the sky was gonna fall. - Yeah. - If there was something in the book that I thought, oh, this is weird or you know, this is uncomfortable. - Absolutely. - Yeah. - And now I will also say I probably found out more about sex at a younger age than I should have. - Yeah. - I don't know, but you survived. - I survived, I've been married for 30 some years. I'm great, so yeah, sometimes we're gonna have to, sometimes we're gonna have to let go of our fears to let our kids fly a little bit. - Right, absolutely. All right, so before we close out, there's one other thing that we wanna talk about, which is a little different than the subject-by-subject review that we've been doing, which is how do you handle teaching with families who have different world views, political stances, religious views, scientific views than you do, because in the homeschool community, we're homeschooling with others all the time. And the homeschool community itself is becoming much more diverse, which I think is a wonderful thing. So it means that you're much more likely to be homeschooling with a neighbor or a friend or in a co-op where people think differently than you and you're learning and teaching together. How do we handle that? - Yeah, well, Susanna, you go first. - Okay, I'll start with my thoughts. I, the first thing that comes to mind is when I was teaching a geography class as a homeschool graduate, I started this geography class for my siblings, grew into my siblings and two other families, and then I grew into three or four more families, and it just kind of grew and grew and grew. And the bigger this geography class got, the more families with different world views were part of the class. And for me, I felt like it was actually a real positive because when you're just talking to your siblings or just talking to your kids, I think it's easy to just share your opinions as the facts, right? But if you know there's somebody in the room, a parent who has a different view within you, for me, it felt like it made me more precise. Like as a public school teacher, I had to be very careful when talking about controversial topics because I know kids were coming from different backgrounds. And so it encouraged me to be very careful in how it was explaining things and precise and how it was explaining things. And so I think that can be a really, really positive thing. I know it was for me in teaching that geography class. At the same time, I've also had experiences in a co-op where everybody agrees on something that I don't agree with. And that wasn't a good experience. I've mentioned the podcast before that we got kicked out because I didn't believe the Earth was successful. And they figured that out. And we weren't allowed to be part of that co-op anymore. And it probably wouldn't have been a very happy situation even if we had been allowed to be there because all the families were in agreement about things. And my family was the odd one out. That's a little bit of a different situation. So I guess what I'm saying is don't force it if it feels kind of stressful and toxic, but do seek out and allow yourself to amend how you would explain things to reach students and families who think differently than you. - Yeah, and I would add to that, here again, this is one of those things that I think tends to change as your kids start to get older, right? When kids are very young, you know, in their, you know, say, let's say, let's say under 10. It's a lot simpler to be schooling with, working with, and socializing with families that essentially have your same values and your same beliefs and even your same nap times or your same approach to nap time or your same approach to eating snacks. You know, it just, it makes life simpler. But the older kids get, the more they need to be aware that different families have different strengths and weaknesses and that includes your own. So if you are always looking for the family that believes the same things that you do so that you can be in the co-op with those families. - You run the risk of conveying a message to your kids that I think is damaging, and that message is, this is the right way to do family. - Mm-hmm. - Now, look, there are wrong ways to do family, okay? There are situations where there's unfaithfulness, there's abuse, of course, there are wrong ways to do family. But the truth is, there are a lot of different right ways to do family. And I think as parents, it's very easy for us to convey to our kids a sense of our family is the best family. The way that we do things is the best way to do things. And that includes, you know, how we talk to each other, how, you know, whether or not we have separate rooms, what our daily schedules are like and what we believe about science and politics and economics and all of these things. Our family is the best family. Well, of course, we convey that. to kids because we are doing our best to pick the right things to do. You know, and we, if we didn't believe that we were doing things in the best way possible, we wouldn't be doing them this way, right? But, you know, I have seen in kids who grow up in families where the message was very clearly, we are the right kind of family. A real struggle as they get older, and I'm talking about moving into their thirties and forties and fifties. A real struggle to come to terms with those things in their family that were not great. And I have to tell you guys, every family has things in it that aren't great. Every family has things in it that kids, as they get to be adults, are going to have to turn around and look at and say, eh, no, that wasn't good for me. And that's something I'm going to try not to reproduce in my own family. And to continually convey to kids this sense of we are, we are the best family out there. Really short circuits that very necessary reckoning that all of us have to do as we grow up. And as we have our own children and try to decide what to reproduce and what to discard. So I just think there's a real sting in the tail of this idea that let's mostly work with like-minded families. It exalts the way that your family works to an unnaturally and unhealthily high degree. I have that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I think what it makes me think of is that with my own, I think about my own family and how I look back and I see that there are things I agree with and I don't agree with. When, if we hadn't been exposed to other families, I think it would have been harder for me to not throw the baby out with a bath water as it would be like, okay, some things are bad. And they said our family was perfect or that was implied somehow. And so I just have to go the complete opposite way. But I feel like the more you create this space where you can see different ways of looking at things, you can see different ways of living. It makes it easier for your children to create their own life based on a lot of what you did, pulling in some things that are uniquely their own, and not having to go in the extreme one in one way or the other, just a complete remake of what you did or a complete rebuttal of it. Like, they can kind of create their own life comfortably, not feeling trapped in their past, I guess. Yeah, no, I think that's very well put. What we want to avoid is presenting any aspect of our family as you got to take it or leave it, you know, because we can really create this intolerable conflict in kids who really need to leave some part of how they grew up. Yeah. Well, with that, we're approaching an hour. So we're going to close out, but I would love to hear some of your stories about homeschooling with families that think differently than you, whether it's a positive story or a negative story, you could send those to [email protected]. We want to find more ways to share you all stories with our listeners and future episodes of the podcast. Thank you for listening to the Welltrain Mind podcast. You can find Susan at facebook.com/susan.wise.hour and Suzanne on Instagram at hop into homeschool. Our engineering and mixing is done by A.G. Filarie at ajfilarie.online and our supervising producer is Chris Bauer. If you enjoy the show, help us out by reading and reviewing on Apple podcast and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. And a few questions, responses, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected]. We'll be back next week, so stay tuned.