1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,240 awesome okay we're recording red welcome to the podcast thank you for having me jake good to be 2 00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:15,020 here it's my pleasure so to to tee this conversation up for anyone that's listening 3 00:00:15,020 --> 00:00:22,200 i came across red on nostr and i it's like a kind of top of funnel isn't it you see people like 4 00:00:22,200 --> 00:00:26,840 messaging about something small perhaps a comment here or something there they might reply to you 5 00:00:26,840 --> 00:00:30,860 like what is this person talking about and then you say oh maybe i should listen to a podcast of 6 00:00:30,860 --> 00:00:35,780 theirs and getting towards the end of three hours of listening to you and mr daniel prince chatting 7 00:00:35,780 --> 00:00:39,700 on your most recent episode with him and i have yet to go back to the ones before that but 8 00:00:39,700 --> 00:00:45,680 you talked in that episode about many things that resonated a lot i'm not going to dive into that 9 00:00:45,680 --> 00:00:53,320 but like the idea of um uh reincarnation like wow what a concept and something that just is so hidden 10 00:00:53,320 --> 00:00:57,800 from the average person, including myself, until now in many ways. 11 00:00:58,260 --> 00:01:00,340 But where I want to spend as much time as we can today 12 00:01:00,340 --> 00:01:02,820 is really around education and something that you reached out to me 13 00:01:02,820 --> 00:01:05,520 and said, actually, this is a place I love to spend time talking about. 14 00:01:06,200 --> 00:01:09,700 And I became a father almost six years ago. 15 00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:13,500 So my eldest is five, three and one, two boys and a girl. 16 00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:17,080 And we have been homeschooling them. 17 00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:21,200 And Red, not to talk too much, and I'll pass it over to you in just a second, 18 00:01:21,200 --> 00:01:28,440 But like all these things I found, it's a case of you're learning as you go and you get to places you never expected to be. 19 00:01:29,140 --> 00:01:35,140 And first off, we actually ended up having three home births and the COVID experience was an extraordinary one. 20 00:01:35,280 --> 00:01:39,600 But ultimately, you know, you're not allowed in the hospital with your partner for them to give birth. 21 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:41,440 What are you talking about? That's insane. 22 00:01:41,900 --> 00:01:45,780 This is an Australian regulation at one point. I'm originally from the UK, but they were in Australia. 23 00:01:46,240 --> 00:01:49,700 OK, well, that doesn't make sense. And so we figured out let's do home births. 24 00:01:49,700 --> 00:01:50,860 And then suddenly it's like, well, hang on. 25 00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:54,500 Then in Australia, there's a rule called no jab, no play. 26 00:01:54,880 --> 00:02:03,440 And if you do not give your child the infant vaccinations the government recommends, then you cannot access publicly funded childcare. 27 00:02:03,660 --> 00:02:06,740 Because the first thing they ask for is the child's vaccination history. 28 00:02:07,240 --> 00:02:12,420 And if you have any questions over those vaccines and don't give them to your child, you immediately don't qualify. 29 00:02:13,320 --> 00:02:16,100 And so quite quickly, we're like, well, that doesn't make sense to us. 30 00:02:16,140 --> 00:02:17,340 And we've had to do things differently. 31 00:02:17,340 --> 00:02:19,900 And before you know it, it's like, oh, my God, we're talking about homeschooling. 32 00:02:20,200 --> 00:02:26,400 And because I'm lucky to have got into Bitcoin and regained a lot of control of my time, I'm at home to help with my wife. 33 00:02:26,600 --> 00:02:27,260 And here we are. 34 00:02:28,160 --> 00:02:29,620 So, Red, over to you. 35 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:34,320 What is education and what does homeschooling mean to you? 36 00:02:36,460 --> 00:02:39,360 Education is making memories. 37 00:02:39,940 --> 00:02:41,820 I mean, it's all learning is. 38 00:02:41,820 --> 00:02:56,140 It's taking experiences and the sensory inputs that are associated with them from short-term memory into long-term memory for access and application later. 39 00:02:56,960 --> 00:03:04,200 It's something that we begin as children, but it's something that should not end when we graduate. 40 00:03:04,680 --> 00:03:08,060 It should become a lifelong process. 41 00:03:08,060 --> 00:03:11,460 Frankly, it's what we're here to do is learn. 42 00:03:11,820 --> 00:03:16,300 I mean, learning is technically a form of love, right? 43 00:03:16,360 --> 00:03:22,380 It's when you choose to learn about something that's an expression of passion, of interest, right? 44 00:03:22,780 --> 00:03:26,940 So it's technically a form of love. 45 00:03:26,940 --> 00:03:35,500 And, you know, we need to be applying love universally and unconditionally, which means that there's a target rich environment here of things for us to study. 46 00:03:35,500 --> 00:03:47,300 So as for homeschooling, I'll say that my expertise is primarily on education and less so on homeschooling. 47 00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:54,560 However, the background that I have would be applicable to homeschoolers in what they're doing. 48 00:03:54,560 --> 00:04:05,560 I don't have kids. I've never done homeschooling myself, but I have worked with hundreds of students at a learning center about, you know, 15 years ago. 49 00:04:05,560 --> 00:04:21,100 And, you know, we ran a booklet program that we would basically track student performance using Excel data. 50 00:04:21,100 --> 00:04:37,920 We would, you know, neurologically profile our students as individuals so that we could best plan for them in a way that, you know, will help ensure their success and help clear the way. 51 00:04:37,920 --> 00:04:56,340 So that process was, I guess we would start off with a diagnostic test and give the child, as they're being sort of brought into our learning center, we would give them an opportunity to show us what they've got, what they've learned so far. 52 00:04:56,340 --> 00:05:04,880 And even if that meant they were at the very beginning and they hadn't begun any sort of education process at home or in any sort of institution. 53 00:05:04,880 --> 00:05:11,000 and we would break students down into different sort of categories, 54 00:05:11,320 --> 00:05:17,320 always allowing for the unknown, and we would develop a profile, 55 00:05:17,780 --> 00:05:21,160 and then based on that profile, we would work with them 56 00:05:21,160 --> 00:05:28,580 and tailor the curriculum to them in ways to help them succeed. 57 00:05:28,580 --> 00:05:37,500 and and so the word success is an interesting one to to kind of dwell on for a moment because 58 00:05:37,500 --> 00:05:44,860 what is success and i think it really ties into this idea you just mentioned that like learning 59 00:05:44,860 --> 00:05:51,360 is love i hadn't heard that expression before actually and it it resonates very strongly um 60 00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:57,880 because we're so i don't know i really like talking about like us and them you know they 61 00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:03,380 you do this they do that you know what i mean but the the common or traditional process through 62 00:06:03,380 --> 00:06:11,700 government funded education in today's era is in some ways just a massive psyop you know it's like 63 00:06:11,700 --> 00:06:15,820 here are all the kings and queens and here are all the good guys and here are all the bad guys 64 00:06:15,820 --> 00:06:21,520 and here's all of the like government approved science that's correct and a lot of it as you 65 00:06:21,520 --> 00:06:25,740 get older first of all you realize that that education didn't necessarily tee you up to be 66 00:06:25,740 --> 00:06:33,460 a problem solver it teed you up to automatically work pay tax and not really ask any questions it's 67 00:06:33,460 --> 00:06:40,700 like well hang on a classic one being what is money i didn't ask that question until i was over 68 00:06:40,700 --> 00:06:46,580 30 years of age i was highly trained how to make money you know two very entrepreneurial families 69 00:06:46,580 --> 00:06:53,400 with businesses and um a business management degree and never once said well hang on what is 70 00:06:53,400 --> 00:06:57,980 money and you know i had this answer it was like well the central bank does this and they can 71 00:06:57,980 --> 00:07:02,700 control interest rates and inflation is this and you know and it's like hang on what even is that 72 00:07:02,700 --> 00:07:10,440 um so so why is learning love and what do you think success actually is in that sense 73 00:07:10,440 --> 00:07:23,300 well i mean when you want to learn i would say it's love that if you're stuck in a government 74 00:07:23,300 --> 00:07:31,480 school and you're being treated in a one-sized-fits-all NPC factory kind of way where they 75 00:07:31,480 --> 00:07:38,240 teach you not how to think rather but what to think you might hate that so that that experience 76 00:07:38,240 --> 00:07:44,340 might not be an experience of love but when you learn because you want to learn that's 77 00:07:44,340 --> 00:07:52,500 an expression of passion and interest so what was the follow-up question well red let me jump in 78 00:07:52,500 --> 00:07:58,700 there because that is that's so relevant to those of us that have got heavily into bitcoin 79 00:07:58,700 --> 00:08:07,180 but you can't be heavily into bitcoin without love if learning is love that they're both combined 80 00:08:07,180 --> 00:08:13,100 because there's no phd for bitcoin right it's been around for such a short period of time 81 00:08:13,100 --> 00:08:19,480 there's almost not even such thing as a bitcoin expert in some ways because it's just so new and 82 00:08:19,480 --> 00:08:25,740 that's a very interesting shared bond isn't it between all of these people that are hang on 83 00:08:25,740 --> 00:08:30,120 what is money and then boom sound money becomes more relevant and then it's cryptography and then 84 00:08:30,120 --> 00:08:33,820 it's like oh digital scarcity and all these different things that you're learning so 85 00:08:33,820 --> 00:08:39,040 so maybe this isn't really a conversation so much about homeschooling but actually more about 86 00:08:39,040 --> 00:08:46,940 continuing the process of evolution for learning as an adult and so how do you tee a child up to 87 00:08:46,940 --> 00:08:52,080 be like that and if i could give actually the use case of yourself red so when i listen to you 88 00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:58,660 talking to daniel on this podcast that i'm referencing and you are piecing together parts 89 00:08:58,660 --> 00:09:05,520 of a puzzle about the history of human beings that is completely unique i'd never heard that 90 00:09:05,520 --> 00:09:11,600 before a lot of that so so maybe you could teach me about how how did you learn those things 91 00:09:11,600 --> 00:09:12,880 Do you know what I mean? 92 00:09:12,960 --> 00:09:14,820 Like, how do we even go down rabbit holes? 93 00:09:16,020 --> 00:09:20,440 I think people talk about Bitcoin as being a test. 94 00:09:20,900 --> 00:09:25,920 And typically, I hear one of a few different, you know, modifiers to describe that test. 95 00:09:26,180 --> 00:09:27,200 It's an IQ test. 96 00:09:27,600 --> 00:09:28,540 It's an ego test. 97 00:09:28,600 --> 00:09:29,620 It's a humility test. 98 00:09:30,220 --> 00:09:34,400 And every act of learning is an act of humility. 99 00:09:34,400 --> 00:09:38,860 It's an admission of ignorance and an effort to rectify that ignorance. 100 00:09:38,860 --> 00:09:59,420 So I think that, you know, in mathematics, which is my, you know, that's the area I got my degree in. When I'm proving something, I have to be able to look over my shoulder and say, well, is there anything I missed? Because all I need is one counterexample to blow up my argument. 101 00:09:59,420 --> 00:10:13,380 And, you know, in the scientific method, the same thing sort of happens is there's this radical honesty, this constant checking over one's own shoulder to make sure that one has not missed anything. 102 00:10:13,380 --> 00:10:32,500 And so it's important to be receptive and to remain open and leave room for the unknown and be willing to receive new information and, where appropriate, reassess prior assumptions in the light of that new information. 103 00:10:33,980 --> 00:10:42,340 Cool. And so where does the scientific method then – is that something that can be reapplied, do you think? 104 00:10:42,340 --> 00:10:50,840 So, of course, you've got the primary set of three physical sciences of physics and chemistry and biology. 105 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:54,060 You're talking about a scientific method that can be applied to all three. 106 00:10:54,380 --> 00:10:59,840 Is that same method applicable elsewhere in life, like as an educational process, perhaps? 107 00:11:01,020 --> 00:11:08,860 I mean, and to frame that, Red, what I'm thinking about is what does the optimal 25-year-old actually look like? 108 00:11:08,860 --> 00:11:13,640 and therefore you know if you if you're setting goals or setting visions or setting 109 00:11:13,640 --> 00:11:17,640 whatever strategy it might be you need to like where are you trying to get to 110 00:11:17,640 --> 00:11:24,380 and what you've just mentioned actually strikes me as a very good almost core protocol for anyone 111 00:11:24,380 --> 00:11:32,760 to be able to use and reapply to different things yeah i would say that uh like the optimal 25 year 112 00:11:32,760 --> 00:11:42,200 old is someone who is probably generally capable in, you know, your typical subjects, your reading, 113 00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:55,400 writing, arithmetic, but mostly they are curious, diligent, inquisitive, humble, and 114 00:11:55,400 --> 00:12:03,820 And I think having a daily study habit is probably a really ideal thing to get into. 115 00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:15,740 And someone like a well-finished product in that regard has some important knowledge of the self, how they learn as an individual. 116 00:12:16,520 --> 00:12:23,000 Also, I mean, there's what Gardner had a theory of like seven different forms of intelligence. 117 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:26,240 I think people have expanded it out to nine different forms of intelligence. 118 00:12:26,700 --> 00:12:35,680 So we talk about being well-rounded and trying to develop in each of those areas would be appropriate. 119 00:12:37,440 --> 00:12:48,660 I think that, yeah, the idea of being an autodidact, someone who teaches themselves things, especially in the age of the Internet, 120 00:12:48,660 --> 00:12:52,900 Like we've got access to the world's information. 121 00:12:52,900 --> 00:12:59,020 People used to have to travel really far distances to get a hold of information. 122 00:12:59,020 --> 00:13:16,360 Even just when I was a kid we used to have to drive to a library in order to get books We didn have Internet in my house know I was probably in like third or fourth grade And I took pretty good advantage of it I think but like I sure I 123 00:13:16,360 --> 00:13:24,980 could have done better. And I think that's true of most people. I think also a well-developed 25 124 00:13:24,980 --> 00:13:31,560 year old would not just understand how they learn and how they process information. But when you 125 00:13:31,560 --> 00:13:39,920 think about it, education between people is really just about communication. So it would be ideal for, 126 00:13:40,060 --> 00:13:49,420 you know, a fully developed 25-year-old graduate to understand how other people learn and understand 127 00:13:49,420 --> 00:13:55,380 how to switch between different modes of operation in order to communicate most effectively 128 00:13:55,380 --> 00:14:00,960 with each individual with whom they are communicating. It's not always possible because 129 00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:08,060 you're going to be giving a presentation in a boardroom to, you know, a dozen people, or you're 130 00:14:08,060 --> 00:14:11,940 going to be giving a talk at a conference hall in front of a thousand people or something. It's not 131 00:14:11,940 --> 00:14:20,380 possible to tailor it to each individual, but you can still apply that same idea and just, you know, 132 00:14:20,420 --> 00:14:24,660 widen the circles. It's going to get somewhat diluted, but I mean, when in Rome, right, 133 00:14:25,260 --> 00:14:28,840 preach how the Romans would like for you to preach, right? It's basic golden rule stuff. 134 00:14:28,840 --> 00:14:34,820 and it's very interesting that you bring up the romans actually because something that i really 135 00:14:34,820 --> 00:14:40,860 stopped and stopped me in my tracks maybe think twice about it was like i touched the very start 136 00:14:40,860 --> 00:14:50,560 this idea of reincarnation that you were speaking of and the the romans and their quest for for power 137 00:14:50,560 --> 00:14:55,840 and control this very centralized system that they were building across the roman empire 138 00:14:55,840 --> 00:15:03,260 did a very good job of squashing the concept of reincarnation, 139 00:15:03,460 --> 00:15:06,980 specifically because what's easy to control? 140 00:15:07,160 --> 00:15:09,900 Someone that knows that they're going to reappear in another life 141 00:15:09,900 --> 00:15:13,260 with another body or someone that's scared of death. 142 00:15:14,160 --> 00:15:18,720 And I was like, oh my God, that wasn't obvious to me. 143 00:15:19,020 --> 00:15:21,640 And I was someone who was, I suppose, scared of death. 144 00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:22,880 You know, you're like, hang on a second, 145 00:15:22,980 --> 00:15:25,460 what would it look like or feel like if you were to shift that? 146 00:15:25,840 --> 00:15:51,260 And the same can be true for education. So where did I suddenly get that idea from? Well, I got that idea from listening to a podcast. Okay, well, AI is moving so fast. You know, the idea of a web search is almost obsolete. Like, isn't that extraordinary to think that Google search got into such a massive business because people couldn't find anything online, it's all hidden on websites. And now it's like, nah, you just have an AI, thanks very much. 147 00:15:51,260 --> 00:15:56,980 so from from your perspective i'd love to know red so do you have a daily learning habit 148 00:15:56,980 --> 00:16:02,280 and and like how have you got to this position you're in today in terms of your study 149 00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:08,060 and your curiosity um because obviously everyone's going to be different but what works for you 150 00:16:08,060 --> 00:16:16,540 i mean my i've generally been curious my whole life i've always loved learning i was reading 151 00:16:16,540 --> 00:16:23,500 when I was four. I was doing multiplication problems when I was seven. Certainly, there are 152 00:16:23,500 --> 00:16:29,920 kids out there way more advanced than me, but just to demonstrate my interest in these things, 153 00:16:29,920 --> 00:16:40,120 at this point, my current research vendor is three plus years old. It started off when I was 154 00:16:40,120 --> 00:16:45,000 given my name by a Native American medicine man who unfortunately is no longer with us as of 155 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:55,180 September 2025. But boy, did he impact my life. As far as daily study habit goes, I try to do 156 00:16:55,180 --> 00:17:05,600 something that is related to my life goals every day. And I developed these goals when I was 157 00:17:05,600 --> 00:17:12,400 working at this learning center, you know, 15, 20 years ago. And they are in order to understand, 158 00:17:12,400 --> 00:17:16,440 to be understood and to have a positive impact on the world. 159 00:17:17,260 --> 00:17:24,740 So if I'm not learning myself, it's because I'm, you know, trying to be understood that day. 160 00:17:24,820 --> 00:17:26,640 It's, you know, one of those days as opposed. 161 00:17:26,640 --> 00:17:33,200 And just because I'm being understood on a given day, just because I'm doing a study group episode or something 162 00:17:33,200 --> 00:17:40,940 where I'm talking about stuff and offering people insights from my research related to whatever it was that we were reading through, 163 00:17:40,940 --> 00:17:45,480 that doesn't mean that I'm also not going to do some of my own research that day, I guess. It's 164 00:17:45,480 --> 00:17:55,160 just, I try to at least do something towards those goals every day. One of my favorite ways to learn 165 00:17:55,160 --> 00:18:04,700 is to leverage the existence of multiple forms of books. Also, like other people's sort of book 166 00:18:04,700 --> 00:18:10,160 reports, right, on YouTube or Rumble or whatever. So like, if I want to learn about Giordano Bruno, 167 00:18:10,160 --> 00:18:16,700 I'm going to queue up half a dozen videos about him and his life and his philosophy and his teachings on YouTube. 168 00:18:16,700 --> 00:18:24,200 And I'm going to listen through that. And it's going to be a lot like, you know, pinging cell phone towers, trying to triangulate the location. 169 00:18:24,580 --> 00:18:29,780 And I can get a good sense of who Bruno was, what he was about. 170 00:18:30,500 --> 00:18:35,580 You know, this video picks up what these didn't and these all pick up things that the other ones didn't. 171 00:18:35,580 --> 00:18:37,860 So I get a good mixing of that. 172 00:18:38,540 --> 00:18:42,100 And then oftentimes what I'll do is I'll buy the physical book. 173 00:18:42,180 --> 00:18:44,560 So I have something to mark and underline. 174 00:18:44,980 --> 00:18:51,080 I will look for a searchable e-book, like a PDF or something. 175 00:18:51,620 --> 00:18:57,600 And then I'll listen to the audio book because that allows me to get other things done. 176 00:18:58,160 --> 00:19:00,180 Just like listening to the radio, right? 177 00:19:00,740 --> 00:19:04,100 In the old time mechanic shops or whatever, you got the radio playing. 178 00:19:04,100 --> 00:19:10,640 And people are able to function stack through their ears while they're getting other stuff done more often than not. 179 00:19:10,640 --> 00:19:19,500 And that's a good way to at least put that sensory input mechanism to work when it might otherwise not be at work. 180 00:19:19,840 --> 00:19:21,680 So I'll listen to the audio book. 181 00:19:21,860 --> 00:19:25,680 When I hear something notable, I will pause it. 182 00:19:26,060 --> 00:19:32,300 I will go to the e-book and search for what it was that I heard, that exact quote. 183 00:19:32,300 --> 00:19:39,540 and that'll help anchor me. Where am I in the book? Am I in chapter 13, you know, four, 184 00:19:39,640 --> 00:19:44,200 four paragraphs deep into it or something. All right, now let me go to chapter 14, 185 00:19:44,340 --> 00:19:48,720 four paragraphs deep in my physical book and mark it for future ease of reference. 186 00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:56,900 So that's a good way to work my way through material without necessarily costing myself 187 00:19:56,900 --> 00:20:00,740 much in the way of time. Because when I'm sitting there reading something, 188 00:20:01,340 --> 00:20:09,440 I'm locked in place. There's nothing else I'm going to be doing for that period of time. And 189 00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:16,720 it's a necessary thing. There's some stuff out there that I can't find audiobooks for or ebooks 190 00:20:16,720 --> 00:20:26,060 for, and I really need to read through it because based on my initial previewing, my initial 191 00:20:26,060 --> 00:20:31,600 canvassing, I guess is the right word. This is a book of interest and I just, I need to look through 192 00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:39,400 it. Well, so be it. But I try to streamline the process and make it as efficient as possible. 193 00:20:41,360 --> 00:20:50,900 And so Red, I mentioned already the kind of rise of AI. Do you use AI in any way to assist with this 194 00:20:50,900 --> 00:21:00,980 kind of intellectual quest? Almost inescapably because it's become attached to the search engines, 195 00:21:00,980 --> 00:21:09,620 but I actually don't have any AI subscriptions and I have never used any free AIs with very few 196 00:21:09,620 --> 00:21:17,660 exceptions. I tried my hand at throwing together some AI images, I don't know, a year, two years 197 00:21:17,660 --> 00:21:19,940 to go whenever it was. 198 00:21:19,940 --> 00:21:23,680 But no, I haven't really used it much at all. 199 00:21:23,680 --> 00:21:26,460 I've got probably 200 plus pages 200 00:21:26,460 --> 00:21:29,840 in my sort of research presentation notes 201 00:21:29,840 --> 00:21:31,940 that will be feeding my book. 202 00:21:31,940 --> 00:21:36,620 And almost none of that is AI generated content. 203 00:21:36,620 --> 00:21:38,760 I mean, occasionally I'll look something up 204 00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:41,080 because I know that there's information out there 205 00:21:41,080 --> 00:21:42,080 and it's a search engine. 206 00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:44,720 So that's where you go to look for stuff, I guess. 207 00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:50,900 And it gives me good enough information where it's like, well, actually, I don't know that I could phrase that much better. 208 00:21:50,900 --> 00:21:53,180 So I'm going to copy and paste that in. 209 00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:58,780 But like, I would say that's well less than 1% of any content I've generated so far. 210 00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:07,040 Because one of the things that concerns me is essentially truth. 211 00:22:07,780 --> 00:22:09,080 Like, what's real? 212 00:22:09,080 --> 00:22:16,700 and you know in some ways that the experience of let's say like a grok or something you type in 213 00:22:16,700 --> 00:22:21,200 your question and it gives you an answer claude will give you a different answer chat gpt gives 214 00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:24,540 you a different answer venice gives you a different answer maple gives you a different answer 215 00:22:24,540 --> 00:22:32,700 they're all pumping out a different response to the same prompt which is in itself interesting and 216 00:22:32,700 --> 00:22:41,320 like all tools it's up to the user to decipher what the tool is telling them or how to use the 217 00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:49,740 tool um but from this perspective of education um what would it mean if if people were so 218 00:22:49,740 --> 00:22:54,940 intellectually lazy that they would just type something into one thing and just like accept 219 00:22:54,940 --> 00:23:01,960 that as the answer like how do you know that's real so you're getting into the study called 220 00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:07,060 epistemology, which is like the study of knowledge and how do we know that something is knowledge. 221 00:23:07,940 --> 00:23:15,900 It's a good area of study. In fact, that epistemological solipsism was one of the 222 00:23:15,900 --> 00:23:22,300 first philosophies that I encountered in philosophy 101 in college that like really shook me and shook 223 00:23:22,300 --> 00:23:31,820 the foundations of my sort of understanding of reality because I had been raised in one specific 224 00:23:31,820 --> 00:23:37,440 religious tradition, all the way up until that point, all the schools that I'd gone to were 225 00:23:37,440 --> 00:23:43,240 from that religious tradition. And so all of a sudden here I was being exposed to epistemological 226 00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:50,780 solipsism and I'm like, I got nothing. I don't know how to refute this as an idea. I got to 227 00:23:50,780 --> 00:23:55,280 sort of step back and be honest and be like, all right, I guess I don't know what I thought I knew. 228 00:23:55,280 --> 00:24:03,280 And there's all these other ideas out here. Yeah, I think that that's an important thought. 229 00:24:04,220 --> 00:24:10,420 I think this gets back to the homeschooling versus institutional or state schooling issue. 230 00:24:11,260 --> 00:24:17,380 They're teaching us what to learn, not how to learn. 231 00:24:17,380 --> 00:24:30,520 I know that in the U.S., the Prussian schooling model, Prussia with a P, was brought back over to the U.S. by a guy named Horace Mann. 232 00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:46,980 And the Prussian model was designed to create products, graduates, that were ideal candidates for military service, government clerkship, or factory work. 233 00:24:47,380 --> 00:24:51,740 And furthermore, this gets right into the NPC factory part. 234 00:24:52,620 --> 00:24:59,200 All graduates were meant to have similar opinions on all major subjects of import of that day and age. 235 00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:03,900 It would be debated or discussed in parlors, etc. 236 00:25:05,140 --> 00:25:10,380 So it reminds me of a book that I've read called Free to Learn by someone called Peter Gray. 237 00:25:11,100 --> 00:25:13,880 I believe that's the right title and author's name. 238 00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:23,720 and it's it's probably the best book i've read that gives a uh he himself is an academic so he 239 00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:31,260 brings a tough research lens to like what the hell is this thing and one of the one of the 240 00:25:31,260 --> 00:25:37,600 rabbit holes i hadn't been down before was the the use of education in combination with religion 241 00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:45,460 to basically condition people to a way that a certain subset of a society wanted. 242 00:25:46,140 --> 00:25:48,780 It's like, who's in charge and what do they want? 243 00:25:48,900 --> 00:25:52,540 And, oh, look, maybe we can use this whole, like, oh, let's give them free schools. 244 00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:55,260 And it seems so stupid in hindsight. 245 00:25:55,260 --> 00:25:58,060 But that was very interesting, in particular, 246 00:25:58,220 --> 00:26:02,740 how different religious groups in Europe have then moved to different parts of the world 247 00:26:02,740 --> 00:26:05,820 and it's affected the educations in colonies, so to speak. 248 00:26:05,820 --> 00:26:10,820 And the other was the concept of a hunter gatherer tribe. 249 00:26:10,820 --> 00:26:26,700 And when you think about this very simple first principles process you got a tribe that largely mobile and the children from what this guy studied in what is as close a representation of that in modern life 250 00:26:26,820 --> 00:26:29,180 you know, an African tribe that he went to go and see, 251 00:26:29,980 --> 00:26:32,620 the 10-year-olds helping the five-year-olds 252 00:26:32,620 --> 00:26:33,640 that's helping the one-year-old. 253 00:26:34,180 --> 00:26:35,820 And they're all hanging out with each other. 254 00:26:35,820 --> 00:26:37,960 They're completely left to their own devices 255 00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:39,820 with no rules whatsoever. 256 00:26:39,820 --> 00:26:47,440 and it's what he ultimately describes as kind of self-directed learning and you're like oh my gosh 257 00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:53,720 that's nature right there you know you you get it wrong you hurt yourself well you don't do it again 258 00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:59,520 you get it really wrong well you can't repeat the same mistakes you're you're dead you know that's it 259 00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:06,840 um and so just just really interesting thinking about the the the way that things evolved to bring 260 00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:15,380 us to the present day like how did that even come about you know yeah um i mean the the idea of 261 00:27:15,380 --> 00:27:25,180 if you can teach it then you know it rings true and that's uh something that we used to do 262 00:27:25,180 --> 00:27:33,300 at our learning center when our classroom was perhaps experiencing peak student flows 263 00:27:33,300 --> 00:27:41,080 we would be open after school or on weekends for some number of hours and students would sign up 264 00:27:41,080 --> 00:27:46,660 for hour-long time slots. So it was never really a perfect distribution and we had times of high 265 00:27:46,660 --> 00:27:53,120 volume and times of low volume. And in times of high volume, if my section was a little bit 266 00:27:53,120 --> 00:27:58,940 over flooded with students, I would do that. I would sort of kill two birds with one stone, 267 00:27:58,940 --> 00:28:07,540 so to speak, and have a higher level student who I knew had already mastered a certain discipline or subject or what have you, 268 00:28:08,060 --> 00:28:19,840 work with a student who needed help with that, that gave the older student the opportunity to sort of more precisely formalize their understanding. 269 00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:24,820 Because, you know, there's there's passive learning and there's active learning. Right. 270 00:28:24,820 --> 00:28:39,880 And when you are working with your youngest kids on left versus right, because, you know, that's a necessary thing for writing letters and it's a necessary thing for understanding place value in numbers. 271 00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:48,740 And you're driving down the road and, you know, a yellow car is passing you on the left and you say, oh, the yellow car is passing on the left. 272 00:28:48,780 --> 00:28:53,160 That allows them to look both directions and be like, oh, oh, that way is left. 273 00:28:53,160 --> 00:29:00,860 right that that would be a passive execution if you had said which side of the car is the yellow 274 00:29:00,860 --> 00:29:07,620 car on then they have to first identify where the yellow car is and then remember and apply 275 00:29:07,620 --> 00:29:14,080 their knowledge of left versus right so passive versus active execution i think is at play there 276 00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:23,660 um yeah yeah interesting red and it's yeah a game we've been playing recently is rhyming words 277 00:29:23,660 --> 00:29:30,420 together so you know what sounds like box or what sounds like dad or whatever might be the case and 278 00:29:30,420 --> 00:29:36,900 you can play it in the car and it doesn't take long as a game you know in a few minutes everyone's 279 00:29:36,900 --> 00:29:43,180 bored and we're doing something else but it's amazing how the the what they get so good at it 280 00:29:43,180 --> 00:29:46,480 right boom all these words you're not even thinking of are coming back at you like wow 281 00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:52,880 okay cool and and that in some ways i think is what we're learning we're capable of as parents 282 00:29:52,880 --> 00:30:00,100 like taking them and and not it's basically not outsourcing the education of our child 283 00:30:00,100 --> 00:30:05,600 it's like we reckon we can do it and we think that the decision to do that is the optimal thing for 284 00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:10,940 that child in their life and that's ultimately a decision that a parent has to make and many 285 00:30:10,940 --> 00:30:14,920 parents will say well i think actually they better socialize in a school and they're better off going 286 00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:21,360 to do that and that's you know that's totally fair enough um the there's so much i still need 287 00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:24,700 to learn but i think one of the key points that we've come across that would resonate with you 288 00:30:24,700 --> 00:30:31,080 probably read is that it's about as much primary caregiver exposure as possible before the age of 289 00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:37,860 seven and that comes up in different areas whether you're looking back in kind of ancient 290 00:30:37,860 --> 00:30:44,880 tribes and how they would manage their children like seven seems to be a very important period 291 00:30:44,880 --> 00:30:49,800 in a child's life essentially and that's really our aim is if we can keep them at home as much 292 00:30:49,800 --> 00:30:55,820 as possible in and around us for the first seven years then we'll see what the next step looks like 293 00:30:55,820 --> 00:31:00,320 after that but it's it's yeah that made me think of sitting in the car and playing the the word 294 00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:05,900 rhyming game so i can do that next time it's like the the yellow car is passing us now what side is 295 00:31:05,900 --> 00:31:12,800 on would be active um whereas if i said the yellow car is passing along the left now they 296 00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:18,220 would have to look and say oh that's left yeah okay i can play that what other games can you 297 00:31:18,220 --> 00:31:27,120 think of that would be useful uh so for example with your when you want to try to establish a 298 00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:34,600 daily study habit you want the when you get the study habit established there's going to be a 299 00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:42,760 governing factor in terms of what limits the length of the session. Because, you know, you don't cook 300 00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:46,940 food for three hours just because you can. You cook it for the right amount of time every time, 301 00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:55,080 right, as ideally as you can. So there's two ways that a session can be sort of limited by the 302 00:31:55,080 --> 00:32:00,340 child's feedback, and that can be physical exhaustion or mental exhaustion with the topic. 303 00:32:00,340 --> 00:32:07,660 And so when we're talking about physical exhaustion with something like paperwork, that's going to mean handwriting muscles. 304 00:32:07,980 --> 00:32:20,980 So as a sort of preparatory game to get the child's handwriting muscles up to speed, you could use like graph paper and do circle races where you're just drawing circles inside of the squares. 305 00:32:20,980 --> 00:32:29,020 And that's going to you think about especially the English lowercase letters, how many curved lines there are. 306 00:32:29,020 --> 00:32:38,260 That's going to begin to develop the handwriting muscles before, you know, written work is part of sort of the daily task. 307 00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:51,980 So that's a fun game to play, especially for like younger kids who you're trying to develop towards the point where it's not that physical exhaustion that's governing the end of the study session. 308 00:32:51,980 --> 00:32:56,120 It's the mental exhaustion. And that's a key component as well. 309 00:32:56,120 --> 00:33:02,220 You mentioned that your family gets bored after so many minutes of playing that game. 310 00:33:02,740 --> 00:33:09,080 That's a sign of exhaustion with the subject or what we would call saturation. 311 00:33:09,740 --> 00:33:13,740 We called it the window of absorption at the learning center I worked at. 312 00:33:14,340 --> 00:33:25,900 And in general, the neurological average amount of time that a person can focus on, say, an average task is 19 minutes before they desire a switch task. 313 00:33:25,900 --> 00:33:30,880 or at least it was before TikTok culture became a thing and everybody got the attention span of a 314 00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:39,300 hummingbird drunk on Mountain Dew. But the 19 minute window is a good sort of starting target. 315 00:33:39,300 --> 00:33:46,040 And then you can adjust it from there based on observations or, you know, known information, 316 00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:51,400 like smaller kids are going to have perhaps less of an attention span, but that's not necessarily 317 00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:57,480 the case. I've seen, you know, four-year-olds, five-year-olds that have 45-minute long absorb 318 00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:03,520 windows on things. And, you know, they're happy to sit there the whole time. They don't have any 319 00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:08,160 silly mistakes that start to creep in after a half hour. They don't start to get antsy, 320 00:34:08,260 --> 00:34:13,100 you know, where they want to move around and get up and go look out the window and what's going on 321 00:34:13,100 --> 00:34:21,440 over there. And so that's something that has to be individually gauged and not only per person, 322 00:34:21,620 --> 00:34:28,920 but per person, per task. Like I said, for me, I despise maintenance and cleaning, but I love 323 00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:34,860 building. So, you know, I can sit there all day with my power tools and go try and build something 324 00:34:34,860 --> 00:34:41,960 in the backyard. But like when it comes to cleaning up, I don't enjoy that. And so in order to 325 00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:48,520 prevent it from becoming an issue, I try to just force myself to do at least five minutes of 326 00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:54,200 cleaning every day kind of a thing. And that limits the, you know, it splits it up and spreads 327 00:34:54,200 --> 00:35:00,560 it out and makes it tolerable, which is also a way of dealing with various, you know, education 328 00:35:00,560 --> 00:35:07,960 subjects. Some certain things need to be learned. For example, long division is pretty dry. And, 329 00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:11,600 And, you know, like three digit by two digit multiplication is pretty dry. 330 00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:14,140 So but it needs to be done. 331 00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:18,720 It doesn't mean it needs to be the only thing that's done during a given work session. 332 00:35:18,720 --> 00:35:28,860 We would oftentimes take a booklet of long division and assign one page of that to the student per day, along with something else to occupy most of the time. 333 00:35:28,860 --> 00:35:35,240 or we would mix it up with something that was more critical thinking oriented, 334 00:35:35,240 --> 00:35:39,260 like pattern recognition or, you know, some form of problem solving. 335 00:35:40,020 --> 00:35:46,680 So it's, do you remember that P90X workout series from like 10, 15 years ago? 336 00:35:47,160 --> 00:35:47,280 No. 337 00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:54,740 They would preach working out a muscle group until that particular group reaches muscle fatigue. 338 00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:58,360 But then they would say, you don't need to end your workout then. 339 00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:02,120 because you have other muscle groups that you can work out. 340 00:36:02,540 --> 00:36:04,980 So we would have students come to our center for an hour 341 00:36:04,980 --> 00:36:08,300 and we would break it up into three 20-minute sections. 342 00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:13,100 The first 20 minutes was spent on corrections of previous work 343 00:36:13,100 --> 00:36:15,900 because it's important that we learn from our mistakes 344 00:36:15,900 --> 00:36:18,820 and nobody likes to be confronted with their mistakes. 345 00:36:19,260 --> 00:36:21,140 So let's get that out of the way first, right? 346 00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,400 Then after they'd reached sort of a saturation point 347 00:36:24,400 --> 00:36:25,640 with their corrections work, 348 00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:31,900 They would do something like a puzzle or a game, something that they would encode as play. 349 00:36:32,520 --> 00:36:37,560 But, you know, you've probably played with a Rubik's Cube or some logic puzzles, some manipulatives. 350 00:36:38,380 --> 00:36:46,740 These things very much cause us to think and cause us to sort of calibrate our visual spatial intelligence, 351 00:36:46,740 --> 00:36:49,500 which is good for IQ test type stuff. 352 00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:52,360 You know, Legos, Kinex, all those types of things are good. 353 00:36:52,360 --> 00:37:03,540 And then the third 20 minutes would be whatever we deemed each student required during their classwork time. 354 00:37:03,540 --> 00:37:10,340 And that could be anything from a presentation of a new topic that they've never seen before. 355 00:37:10,340 --> 00:37:22,960 It could be like doing exercises, doing repetitions of something that they've already acquired, but are still working through the consolidation process. 356 00:37:23,380 --> 00:37:37,200 Or it could be a decay check, checking to see, you know, a subject that they mastered, according to our assessments, maybe three, six months ago. 357 00:37:37,460 --> 00:37:39,820 But as you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. 358 00:37:40,340 --> 00:37:50,720 And so the concept might decay some, and we want to check and see if they've retained, you know, the mastery that they displayed three or six months ago. 359 00:37:51,260 --> 00:37:57,000 Speaking of decay, this is one of the reasons why daily study is so important. 360 00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:09,460 If you search for a guy named Ebbinghaus, E-B-B-I-N-G-H-A-U-S, you'll find in the images of the search engine a forgetting curve. 361 00:38:09,460 --> 00:38:17,080 what happens is you start up here at 100% concept retention, and then you just start decaying. 362 00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:24,740 And by the time 20 minutes have gone by, you're down to like 70% or 60% concept retention. 363 00:38:25,260 --> 00:38:29,660 After just 24 hours, you're down to like 30% concept retention. 364 00:38:30,060 --> 00:38:34,480 So you really want to get that refresh spike back up to 100%. 365 00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:38,800 And then what happens is the decay slope becomes less steep. 366 00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:46,540 And so the next 24-hour period, you see maybe only a 50% loss of concept. 367 00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:48,300 And then you hit it the next day. 368 00:38:48,460 --> 00:38:53,300 And the next day, you only see a 25% concept loss type of thing. 369 00:38:53,640 --> 00:39:01,040 And eventually, you get it to the point where you're in the high 90s, and you're probably not going to decay too far out of that range. 370 00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:18,640 You might wind up with a little bit of rust, but you'll, for the most part, have that concept locked in your long-term memory storage, which gets to one other timing aspect that's probably important is time of day and daily review at the end of the day. 371 00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:21,080 So some people are night owls. 372 00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:32,900 Some people are morning larks So that a way to profile your kids and try and work with them at times that are going to be best for them when they going to be at their sharpest at their freshest their most capable 373 00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:35,740 because that's going to reduce frustration. 374 00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:42,620 That's going to reduce committing silly mistakes because they're tired and it's not a good time of day for them. 375 00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:50,020 As for end-of-day review, or honestly, if they're young enough and they're taking naps, 376 00:39:50,020 --> 00:39:57,680 trying to schedule things such that there's not too much time between when they're going to have 377 00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:04,360 a sleep cycle and when they're learning. That's ideal because the way it works is when you learn 378 00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:09,680 something, it's like putting it into this short-term memory scoop. And then when you go 379 00:40:09,680 --> 00:40:15,400 through a sleep cycle at night, that scoop turns around and dumps what you've learned into long-term 380 00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:22,240 memory storage. So thinking about that Ebbinghaus curve, after just 20 minutes, you've lost 30 to 40 381 00:40:22,240 --> 00:40:29,360 percent of the concept. Ideally, you want the concepts that you're dumping from your short-term 382 00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:34,760 memory into your long-term memory storage to have the highest level of fidelity possible. 383 00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:42,820 So by refreshing your day, by walking through your day before you go to sleep or walking through 384 00:40:42,820 --> 00:40:48,060 the first five hours of your day before you're taking your nap or something is a good habit to 385 00:40:48,060 --> 00:40:54,520 get into because it refreshes the fidelity level of the memories, including what you learned, 386 00:40:55,040 --> 00:41:02,380 right before you dump it into long-term storage. And Red, so in an environment where, 387 00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:09,740 and often I look at this statement I'm about to make from a kind of entrepreneurial perspective, 388 00:41:09,740 --> 00:41:14,180 such that entrepreneur has idea. 389 00:41:14,660 --> 00:41:16,600 It's a digital product of some form. 390 00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:19,680 They give half the idea to a technical co-founder. 391 00:41:19,860 --> 00:41:24,040 So you have a CEO and a CTO with 50% each of the idea. 392 00:41:24,240 --> 00:41:25,480 Then they need some money. 393 00:41:25,660 --> 00:41:28,880 So they sell 30% of the idea to a venture capital business. 394 00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:30,180 Now they have some money. 395 00:41:30,280 --> 00:41:33,320 They can hire a team, build out idea, iterate, 396 00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:35,240 hopefully hit product market fit, 397 00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:37,440 and boom, you're off to the races with the business. 398 00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:47,740 that process is under extraordinary threat and essentially an evolving process where now the 399 00:41:47,740 --> 00:41:54,640 person with the idea can go to ai and vibe code some kind of product such that they don't need to 400 00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:58,880 give half the idea to a cto and they actually don't need to sell any of it to a venture capital 401 00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:03,880 business and it's about the speed of iteration of an entrepreneur and now they can have 10 hits 402 00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:10,620 with 10 different ideas in literally a tenth of the amount of time rather than the VC having 10 403 00:42:10,620 --> 00:42:15,140 hits with 10 different pots of money and one of them wins they don't care what happens to the other 404 00:42:15,140 --> 00:42:24,180 nine when it comes to ideas and learning and retention of of knowledge like how important 405 00:42:24,180 --> 00:42:31,020 is that in an environment which we can just click a button so for example you touched on mathematics 406 00:42:31,020 --> 00:42:37,840 and the laws of mathematics and certain types of division multiplication tables. 407 00:42:38,240 --> 00:42:40,940 I remember them well, you know, from my days at schools. 408 00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:46,160 And there was always one of my friends who was just unbelievably good at the memorization of them. 409 00:42:46,860 --> 00:42:48,860 You know, what's this number times this number? Boom. 410 00:42:49,260 --> 00:42:50,660 What's this number times this number? Boom. 411 00:42:50,660 --> 00:42:55,280 Okay, but that now you can type that into a computer and you get the same answer. 412 00:42:55,280 --> 00:43:02,940 so is is is that going to evolve like how we educate ourselves specifically like surely it 413 00:43:02,940 --> 00:43:07,460 must right you don't need to retain all this stuff any longer um and maybe that's not what 414 00:43:07,460 --> 00:43:12,980 the brain is best at it's best at more creative things so what do you think that might have as an 415 00:43:12,980 --> 00:43:20,140 impact yeah i mean um i know that in my classroom calculators were only allowed if you were going 416 00:43:20,140 --> 00:43:31,200 to juggle them. We would require mental calculations or pencil and paper. And the reason for that 417 00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:41,640 is because problem solving is something that the machines can not really replace. I mean, 418 00:43:41,640 --> 00:44:00,640 We can, I guess, work with AI systems and try and train them, but I don't think that AI is ever going to solve the big mysteries of life because AI does not have the human experience. 419 00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:06,580 So it's not contending necessarily with what we are contending with. 420 00:44:07,220 --> 00:44:14,340 So ultimately, it's still a good thing to try and develop the self as much as possible. 421 00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:22,920 I agree with you that, like, you know, relating to the calculator thing, I'm sure AI is now a fight in many classrooms. 422 00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:28,900 People are disallowing AI usage for this or that reason. 423 00:44:29,180 --> 00:44:34,920 I think that it's good to understand how to use the tools that are available. 424 00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:38,280 but it's also important not to misuse the tools. 425 00:44:39,180 --> 00:44:44,020 And, you know, it's like the social safety net is oftentimes used as a hammock 426 00:44:44,020 --> 00:44:46,200 instead of a safety net, right? 427 00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:52,680 And when that happens, we're making ourselves weaker in certain ways. 428 00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:58,840 To your point, it might free us up to, you know, 429 00:44:58,900 --> 00:45:02,340 do the things that the AI cannot do, like be more creative 430 00:45:02,340 --> 00:45:08,920 and solve things that an AI that doesn't have the human experience is not going to be able to solve. 431 00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:15,740 I think that would be perhaps more of an instance of understanding how to use the tool appropriately 432 00:45:15,740 --> 00:45:26,260 to free yourself from burdensome overhead tasks and give you more discretionary time to use as you see fit. 433 00:45:26,260 --> 00:45:40,660 I think it's important for us to develop ourselves still simply because, you know, that's what's going to make us either, if not employable, it's going to make us valuable in the markets. 434 00:45:40,660 --> 00:45:57,020 I mean, the fact is that I doing my job engineering, if I need to do certain calculations, I do them faster in my head than I can do them with the calculator that's on my phone. 435 00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:03,580 So it and you know, that's the type of thing that could make or break someone's career. 436 00:46:03,580 --> 00:46:18,640 You know, imagine the scenario where one of your kids has just totally aced out their mental calculation skills and they were able to land some sort of entry level position. 437 00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:26,520 And they're in the break room grabbing a cup of coffee at 1030 in the morning when the executive vice president of whatever comes in. 438 00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:32,080 And he's talking with his assistant about the most recent quarters sales numbers. 439 00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:37,780 and your child happens to overhear the conversation 440 00:46:37,780 --> 00:46:45,000 and extracts a math problem from what the executive VP was just saying 441 00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,820 and then spits out the answer like it's nothing. 442 00:46:48,740 --> 00:46:53,680 And the VP goes, hold on, let me get my calculator out and types it in. 443 00:46:54,200 --> 00:46:54,980 What's your name? 444 00:46:56,460 --> 00:46:58,540 Where do you work? You're in the mailroom. 445 00:46:58,720 --> 00:47:00,440 I think we need to have a conversation. 446 00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:04,600 come see me in my office after lunch i think there's probably more constructive ways for us 447 00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:10,600 to put your abilities to work at this place that's how quantum leaps might be made and that value 448 00:47:10,600 --> 00:47:16,740 yeah that's yeah it's different it's not about employability it's about value 449 00:47:16,740 --> 00:47:22,580 um red where i'd like to steer things is first just to to highlight something that we touched 450 00:47:22,580 --> 00:47:29,780 on before that really resonated my my eldest daughter ruby and one of the one of the cool 451 00:47:29,780 --> 00:47:34,500 things of homeschooling is like we're not on a schedule right so you know if they wake up at 452 00:47:34,500 --> 00:47:37,940 half past five in the morning that's when the day starts if they wake up at half past seven in the 453 00:47:37,940 --> 00:47:45,580 morning that's when the day starts there's no like alarm uniform breakfast car drop off done 454 00:47:45,580 --> 00:47:51,340 um you know look after yourself from age two and a half or whatever people start sending their kids 455 00:47:51,340 --> 00:47:58,080 to child care these days um it it enables them to focus on what they're interested in at whatever 456 00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:03,600 time of day that might be so sometimes literally quarter past seven in the morning she'll already 457 00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:10,360 be sat the little art and craft table that she's got with a um like a felt tip different colors 458 00:48:10,360 --> 00:48:15,680 and she's already filling in colors on these different notepads she's got and i've kept all 459 00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:20,960 of them i've got them just over here actually and and some of it i don't even know what advanced is 460 00:48:20,960 --> 00:48:26,880 for a five-year-old but you're like that's absolutely epic and it's not like oh five minutes 461 00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:32,920 she can be sat there for ages and ages and ages just completely in the zone loving it and you just 462 00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:38,860 don't hear from her now should you try and squeeze that into like a fixed time of day 463 00:48:38,860 --> 00:48:45,600 for a fixed period of time it it wouldn't it wouldn't work as well whereas like a more more 464 00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:50,500 of a like oh she's interested in that thing right now you just let her go and that to me is just one 465 00:48:50,500 --> 00:48:54,820 of the beauties of being in the position that we are and i i really look forward to seeing where 466 00:48:54,820 --> 00:48:58,740 that takes her like if that's what you're interested in let's do more of that and that's 467 00:48:58,740 --> 00:49:03,960 the kind of self-directed almost like a it's like a momentum thing right they just keep doing what 468 00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:09,180 they're good at and by the time they're 16 they'll be extraordinarily good at whatever field it is 469 00:49:09,180 --> 00:49:14,200 they're interested in and that will be the value that gives them what they need to get through 470 00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:20,880 their life at least that's what my bet is um does anything resonate there and then i've got a 471 00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:30,700 question for you. I'm in favor of that. I'm in favor of trying to establish a consistent time of 472 00:49:30,700 --> 00:49:37,540 day into like the circadian rhythm where, you know, a study habit is, it may be free study, 473 00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:43,260 whatever you want to do. It may be drawing, it may be, you know, reading, it may be building Legos, 474 00:49:43,260 --> 00:49:49,520 whatever it is, some type of study on a daily basis. And I think establishing a habit helps 475 00:49:49,520 --> 00:49:54,460 make that something that has some sticking power to it. 476 00:49:55,640 --> 00:50:03,980 And like I said, it's ideal to try and find the time of day that is most conducive to the child. 477 00:50:03,980 --> 00:50:14,380 So if you notice the pattern that your kid is doing things every day at like 1030 in the morning, 478 00:50:14,380 --> 00:50:27,320 then that would seem to be a reasonable time to sort of just slot that in and try to try to maybe direct things in that way to the point where, oh, well, right now it's daddy's study time and I'm going to read a book. 479 00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:38,420 It's 1030 and leading by example, showing them that this is what you do is a way to, you know, foster a similar habit in them. 480 00:50:38,420 --> 00:50:47,620 in general though I think that if you get someone who wants to do something at any given point in 481 00:50:47,620 --> 00:50:54,520 time if it's a constructive thing I'm all for it I mean self-directed learning is the most powerful 482 00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:58,980 form of learning that was one of the reasons why at the learning center where I worked powerful 483 00:50:58,980 --> 00:51:04,760 forms of love therefore red yes yes just to tie it together whoa that's pretty powerful I just 484 00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:09,540 thought about that? Yeah, sorry, at the learning center, you? We would use the Socratic method, 485 00:51:09,540 --> 00:51:16,560 and we would use leading questions to ask them, you know, and lead them through the problem 486 00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:26,160 solution process. And it's a way of preparing them to be independent, because when they, you know, 487 00:51:26,200 --> 00:51:32,260 fly away from the nest, and when they graduate, and they're going off into the world on their own, 488 00:51:32,260 --> 00:51:37,060 you're not going to be there with them in every moment and they're going to need to 489 00:51:37,060 --> 00:51:43,760 have developed some kind of critical thinking skills to contend with the challenges that life 490 00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:48,900 hits them with in any given moment so the way i like to think about it is the old looney tunes 491 00:51:48,900 --> 00:51:53,880 cartoons where they have the devil and the angel on the shoulders it's like except it's not a devil 492 00:51:53,880 --> 00:52:00,560 or an angel it's just like a friend a mentor a guide who asks them interesting questions like 493 00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:06,280 well, you know, you ever seen those toothpick problems or those matchstick problems where you 494 00:52:06,280 --> 00:52:11,540 have to move two sticks in order to make three squares or whatever, like simple questions, 495 00:52:11,540 --> 00:52:16,440 like how many sticks are there? Okay. What, what are you being asked to make? How many sticks 496 00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:22,040 would you need to make that, that, uh, shape, right? And just start asking yourself questions 497 00:52:22,040 --> 00:52:27,820 that give you pieces to play with that you, you can then work through the problem with. 498 00:52:27,820 --> 00:52:32,660 It's important for, I guess, that reason.