{ "episodeId": "SLP494", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "hannah_frankman": { "name": "Hannah Frankman", "role": "guest", "tag": "HANNAH" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.51, "text": "Hi, you're listening to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Today my guest is Hannah Frankman of Rebel Educator. So we're doing something a little bit different, we're talking about homeschooling for this episode. I wanted to talk about some of the failures of the public schooling system and why homeschooling might be an interesting option. And so- Something better to consider for a lot of Bitcoin people, as many of you might know, I recently had a son myself and I'm thinking about these questions, and I thought it would be great to get an expert on from the field to talk a little bit about it and explain it from an intro perspective for Bitcoiners. Now, before we begin, a reminder, Pacific Bitcoin is coming back this year. It's going to be LA, October fifth and sixth. It was a phenomenal experience last year. We had people saying this was the best conference they had been to. There were people saying if they could only make Bitcoin event, this would be it. So Swan is putting this conference on, and you can believe me that the team is putting in a lot of effort to get you some awesome speakers and to make it an, a, an even better experience than it was last year. So some of the speakers that have already been announced, people like Jimmy Song, Lynn Alden, Greg Foss, Preston Pish, Corey Klipstein, Alex Gladstein, Jason Lez, and Pierre Rochard from Riot Platforms are coming along also. So don't miss this one, this is a fantastic experience, and you can even family member or friend so that they can meet Bitcoiners and soak up some of the Bitcoin vibes that are gonna be there. So go to pacificbitcoin dot com and get your tickets with the code livera for a discount. Those dates are October 5th and 6th, make sure you mark it in your calendars. And now onto the episode with Hannah. Hannah, I've, seen a lot of your interesting work with, what you're doing as the founder of Rebel Educator, and, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "01:54", "start": 114.18, "text": "Thank you so much for having me. I was so excited when I got your message. I'm happy to be here." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:58", "start": 118.13, "text": "Yeah, so I, I am obviously, I'm a libertarian, I'm also into the idea of homeschooling, and I had a son recently as well. So obviously I have some, I have some skin in the game here as well myself. And I was thinking about on this, and I believe part of your story is you were homeschooled yourself, correct?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "02:22", "start": 142.0, "text": "Yeah, I was. I was homeschooled first grade all the way through twelfth grade, so almost my whole childhood experience was at home doing very homeschoolery things." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:31", "start": 151.41, "text": "Fantastic. And so, look, let's start with, something explosive. I know I've seen you tweet this out. You said public school is the root of social or societal evils. Why?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "02:42", "start": 161.68, "text": "Well, first of all, when you think about just in very simple terms, most people in our culture go to public It is the foundation of most people's educations and most people's life stories. So just in like very simple terms, it's the, it's the root of a lot of things, both good and bad. It's the, the core foundation that we all have. But public school does a lot of damage to children. It does a lot of psychological damage to children, I would argue. It puts children in a position where they're in sort of a combative relationship with authority figures often to get what they want, they have to argue and break the rules. And they're in this sort of coercive environment where they're being pushed to do things that they don't necessarily want to do, and that can be really damaging to a child's self-esteem, a child's psychological development, their sense of independence. School is a very nasty social environment in a lot of ways. We have all these tropes about the, the high school bullies who are, or the, the elementary school bullies, like there are all these different movies, Mean Girls and, something, something A I'm, I'm blanking on the name, but like everybody's seen all these movies that are about people who are really mean to each other in high school, and then that carries over into adulthood too. That's how you learn how to socialize, that's how you're gonna socialize as an adult too, because it's all you know. And we, I get a lot of pushback when I talk about this on Twitter actually, it's kind of funny. I write threads about socialization sometimes, because the whole homeschoolers need to be socialized thing is ridiculous. it's such Going to school, but I'll get people in my comments who are saying things like, \"No, no, no, kids need to be bullied, because the real world's like that too.\" And it's like, \"I'm sorry, what? First of all, the kids are getting scarred in ways that they're gonna carry with them for the rest of their lives, like scars that are very hard to shed. But also, as an adult, you're not subjecting yourself to being bullied if someone's being nasty to you, you choose to not engage with them because they're not being kind to" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "04:47", "start": 287.08, "text": "You don't have that option 'cause you're stuck in the same coercive rooms for seven, eight hours a day. so there are lots of ways on a very, sort of like psychological development level that I think school does a lot of damage that then carries over into adulthood and, and leads to a lot of the ways that we, we, you know, hurt, hurt ourselves and each other. But also, you know, schools don't do a very good job educating people, and they, they actually do an, an abysmal job educating people, at least public schools in America Because that's primarily my area of expertise. And so, like for example, over half of American citizens cannot read at a sixth grade level, which is a shocking statistic when you first see it, you're like, \"I'm sorry, that, that can't be right,\" and then you go look and in fact, it is right. It says so right on the Department of Education's website, which is a weird thing for them to be advertising. but we have, we have terrible literacy rates in our country, in America specifically, and that carries over into- into all kinds of problems in the adult world where people aren't very literate and can't read very well and can't process information very well and therefore are making poor decisions both personally and economically and politically that then bleed over into everything else culturally. So there is, there's a lot of harm that public school is doing, and I would argue this is a very bold stance, but I would argue that it does more harm than good most of the time for most people. Most people would be better off without it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:14", "start": 373.94, "text": "Yeah. Yeah. And, I read the book Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto, and I'm sure you've, you've read that, and that's probably a classic in the, in the homeschooling and unschooling world. And this was coming from a man who was a leading, award-winning teacher in the New York system, and he was the one coming out and saying the same, these same kinds of arguments that unfortunately government schooling is failing a lot of the kids, and in some cases, they were, well, in many cases, they were literally better just not receiving any government schooling whatsoever. And I guess that's part of the whole homeschooling and argument. So, do you mind just defining some of the terms for us? What is homeschooling and what's unschooling?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "06:53", "start": 413.0, "text": "Totally. So, to the uninitiated, they kinda look like the same thing, but they're not. So, homeschooling is, I'd kinda say like the one point o version of pulling your kids out of public school and not putting them in some other institution. So, a lot of people pull their kids out of public school, they send them to like a private school or a micro school or an online school or something, but homeschooling is when mom's the teacher And you're educating your kids at home, and there are a lot of different ways that this can look because it's highly individualized to the family. So some people buy curricula that they walk their kids through and they have pre-made lesson plans that they're purchasing and working with their kids on. Some people pull together resources off of the internet and pull those together into a curriculum. Some people are designing the curriculum themselves and like truly playing teacher on a daily- Daily basis, homeschooling, there's, there's a really broad spectrum. I kind of think of it on a continuum from like sort of authoritarian to super libertarian, where the, like, the more auth-authoritarian side is we have a very set schedule. It's very much like replicating school but at home, where it's like, okay, at nine o'clock we do math, at ten thirty we do English. I'm less of a fan of that kind of homeschooling because I think the whole point of homeschooling is to not subject your kids to the things that the system," }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "08:16", "start": 495.53, "text": "Seeing kids into, so if you're just replicating that at home, like, what's, what's the point? and then all the way on the libertarian side, it's much more of a, like, yeah, we maybe do school for a couple hours a day, and it's a lot less structured, and it's more organic, and we're kind of following the kids' interests. And when you get to that side of homeschooling, you're starting to air more towards the unschooling side. So basically the philosophy of unschooling, this is like pulling your kids out of And so most unschooling families don't have a curriculum at all, they don't have structured school time, the kid is in charge, and it's often a very cooperative relationship between parent and child where the parent is playing an encouraging role, they're sort of a facilitator, they're helping their kids figure out what they wanna learn about and what's useful and what questions to be asking and what resources to be looking at, but it's very child led. And so in unschooling family, we'll often like the kid'll get up in the morning and they're There's no set schedule for what they're doing that day, unless they're, you know, have a, a class that they've already committed to taking that they're going to go to or some activity or some plans. It's not like they sit up and they have, you know, a curriculum that they're working through for the year and so they need to sit down and work on it. It's very child-centric. So this doesn't necessarily mean that it's a chaotic free-for-all where kids are just playing video games all day. I think a lot of people think that's what it is," }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "09:46", "start": 585.55, "text": "Skills and all different types of things depending on what they're doing. but, you know, some unschooled kids are running businesses, some unschooled kids are writing novels, some unschooled kids are going down YouTube rabbit holes where they're watching every YouTube video by, say, Warren Buffett. There was an unschooler that I knew who, when he was six, he started watching every Warren Buffett video he could find on YouTube 'cause he wanted to understand how money worked. And when you set your kids up with an environment where they can- And pursue what they're interested in. Sometimes kids will really surprise you with what they're interested in and what they're capable of consuming, so, a-and processing and understanding and, and utilizing, not just learning about, but then putting into practice. So that's the difference between homeschooling and unschooling. I grew up kind of somewhere between the two, like I was on the more libertarian side of the homeschooling spectrum. I wasn't full-on unschooled, but there definitely were some unschooling elements in my education. But I'm a really big fan of both. I'm a big fan of pretty much everything except full-on authoritarian homeschooling. Again, because I think it's just like too much replication of the public school environment and it's kind of getting some of the same things wrong that we're trying to exit the system to avoid. But generally speaking, I'm a huge fan of all of it, and there are a ridiculous amount of success stories of kids who've gone through homeschooling and unschooling and absolutely thrived, and, you know, the, the mainstream media really likes to, to bash it. One of the alphabet ages I always forget which one, it might have been the Department of Homeland Security, said that people who liked homeschooling a couple years ago, you might remember this, they said people who, who homeschool are domestic terrorists. People like, have really, really come after the homeschooling movement for a really long time, but it's still gaining momentum, it's still gaining traction, the kids coming out of it are thriving, and honestly, I think a lot of the pushback is just sort of panic that's like, oh no, this is working, we might, we might lose our foothold of the," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:43", "start": 702.81, "text": "the A lot of public schooling, they wanna retain the control because they wanna retain the ability to indoctrinate the kids at an age when they're very impressionable, and so that's definitely a big part of it. I, I think another big argument is this idea that public school conditioning and some of the downsides of it are that it kind of beats the creativity out of the kids. I'm curious if that's something you have seen, in terms of your work in this area." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "12:11", "start": 731.05, "text": "Oh, absolutely. So I had always heard people say this when I was growing up And I was very homeschooled, so I, I kind of missed a lot of what happens in public schools, and I sort of thought it was hyperbole or an exaggeration to say that public school was ruining kids' creativity. And then the year after I graduated from high school, one of my first entrepreneurial gigs was I started teaching writing classes to my old homeschool group. And then one of the moms in that homeschool group loved my class so much that she asked me if I would be interested in teaching Writing classes at the after school program that she worked at. And so I went and started teaching writing classes to this after school program in this small town close to where I'd grown up. And basically what she wanted me to do was teach creative writing to-- We set it up as like kind of age bracket classes, so I was doing, I think, three of them there. I was working with kids one through, first through third grade, fourth through sixth, and then the middle schoolers and high schoolers. And basically the woman who contracted me There was this writing competition that she really wanted these kids to enter because she wanted them to experience like taking the agency and ownership of choosing a thing that they're gonna sign up for and then following through on it, creating the collateral to submit, and then if one of them happened to one or like win or place somewhere in, in the, the rankings, that would just be like an experience that would build a lot of self-confidence and self-efficacy for them, and she really wanted to encourage them to, to have that experience. So she contracted me to teach writing class Classes to these kids. So I started with the first through third graders, and they were awesome. It was so easy to get them to like come sit down and say, like, \"Hey, we're gonna write a story,\" and everybody's like, \"Oh, that sounds great!\" And I kind of would like outline the prompt, and I'd get them all excited about thinking through maybe some character ideas or different situational stories that might be fun to explore. And very quickly they're just like, heads down, have the paper in front of them, are writing crazy stories. Most of them weren't weren't practiced writers, so they were, you know, like kind of figuring it out as they went on the page how to, how to construct a narrative. But they were so on board with having this experience, they were so excited about it. And then I started working with the fourth through sixth graders, and they were a little more-- They weren't apathetic, but they were a lot less excited about the experience. So they were more-- They were quieter, they were less enthusiastic. They- They were, it kind of felt like they were doing this thing because I had told them to do it, not because they felt any innate excitement about the experience that they were prepped to have. And that was tough for me because I really like my goal, I didn't care if they won anything or not, I didn't care if they wrote a good story or not, like my objective coming in was to make this fun. I wanted them to know that writing could be a fun experience. And so it was a lot harder to work with these, 'cause I still got 'em all to write stories," }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "15:16", "start": 915.71, "text": "And I had a really hard time bringing that out of them, 'cause they had a really hard time breaking out of the mindset that, \"Oh, teacher authority figure is telling me to do this, therefore that's why I'm supposed to do it.\" Not like, \"Hey, this could be innately a fun experience for me as an individual. I'm gonna have fun with this.\" Then the last group of kids I worked with, the middle school into high school age kids, I could barely get them to write anything. They just- Sat there and listened to me, and then they'd sit there with their head in their hands at the table, and I would have to go and talk to each one individually and say, \"Hey, you know, here's the prompt, like, are you, are you gonna write something?\" And they'd just sit there like they were having this, this battle of wills with the page of who could stand off longer. Like, \"I'm just gonna sit here and stare at it, and eventually this'll all go away.\" Was kind of the, the feeling. And I could barely get them to write Talking to the woman who contracted me and saying, \"You know, like this, this is going terribly,\" and she's like, \"It's really not. Like, you don't have a lot of context for this, but you're actually doing great. You're getting them to listen to you. Like, that's, that's a win in and of itself.\" I was like, \"There's, that's, there's no way that's a win. They're not writing anything.\" But it was really shocking to me, 'cause I felt like I was seeing in real time the process of" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "16:37", "start": 997.48, "text": "kids Realize it's just sort of this endless monotony of coercion and have to-dos and things that are unpleasant. They hadn't lost the spark yet of childhood wonder, and so I could tap back into that and draw out their curiosity. But as they got older, their, their desire to be creative just absolutely went away because they just associated creativity with, okay, here's your coloring page for the day, and you have to do it this way, and you have to color inside the lines, and these are the colors you're supposed to use. To use. And we're gonna write an essay today, but here's the prompt you have to use, and here's the structure it has to be in. Like creating things was work to them, because they'd only ever experienced it for years in that context, and that made me incredibly sad. I was actually rather offended by it. I was like, I can't believe the school system's doing this to kids. This is terrible. This should be criminal. This is like, you're, you're destroying an integral part of what makes a child wonderful and what, what creates their potential to do great things" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "17:40", "start": 1060.5, "text": "Only crushing it as just part of our process of turning them into, you know, competent adults or whatever the school system's trying to create automat- automatons, I don't know. Yeah. And that was kind of the place where I first started to have some really strong feelings about this whole education thing. I was like, this isn't right. We, we have to stop doing this to kids." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:02", "start": 1082.15, "text": "Yeah, it seems, very much like a, a prison mindset, right? That you, you go there for this amount of time and you, you clock in your time and then you go Even then, I mean, the teachers are giving them homework and things like this, so the job isn't even really done once they go home. And so I think it, it functions, and maybe there was no like deep dark people trying to engineer it this way or evil people in the boardroom, but maybe the result ended up being this kind of outcome where it ends up being kind of like a prison or a sort of social engineering experiment." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "18:33", "start": 1113.1, "text": "Well, it's kind of both, actually. I think I'm, I'm gonna read you a, a quote that I was, I was shocked when I read This is from Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was a German philosopher, who was one of the influences of the American education system, which was built off of, for those who don't know, it was built off of the Prussian education system, which was a, an education system that had been developed to subdue populations that the Prussian army had recently invaded. It was designed to make everyone in these new Newly conquered territories into good, loyal Prussians who would be fit for military service when they grew up. It was kind of like a conquered to military service pipeline basically. and the Americans were very impressed by that because they had this highly non-homogenized continent full of immigrants that weren't getting along, and they're like, \"Well, we have to turn everybody into Americans. We have to figure out how to do this.\" So Fichte was a German philosopher who was very influential in the thought process of the people who were We're building this education system, and he wrote, \"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled, they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.\"" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:11", "start": 1210.74, "text": "Yeah, pretty, incredible to hear, right? Yeah. and I think there's another element where, I mean, at least for me going through the, at least the Australian schooling system, it seemed that, you know, it-- there was six periods a day and it's sixty minutes and each, you know, each one you've got to stop, and it's sort of by the time the teacher has settled the class and got them into something and got them working on something, and it's almost time to break the focus and, oh, off to the next class now. And then It and so I think that element of it also the fact that you don't choose it, you know, like another example I've heard is people talk about at university, right? People always joke about how the mature age students are so hardcore about coming because they're so prepared for it, wh- versus the, the young, cool eighteen to twenty one year olds are kind of blasé and don't care as much about it, and part of that is because one of those people chose to be there and the other one felt that they were there because they had to be there." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "21:08", "start": 1268.12, "text": "Yeah, I think there's, there's a huge inefficiency to the way the school model runs too, and you see people trying to work around this where they'll do, like the traditional school day is like six or seven periods, and it's each one is a different subject, a different class. Like you said, you kind of, you get into it, and then as almost as soon as you're settled in, it's, the bell rings and it's time to go on to the next thing. Incredibly inefficient. And so people will innovate on that model, and they'll say, \" Only doing four classes or three classes, so you're like really more, you're more focused throughout the day, you have more space. Like people try to do these different incremental innovations on the model, but I really think it's just sort of like, you know, changing the, it's like, it's, it's like changing the color of the thing that you're making, not, not creating a whole new model. Like it's not really changing anything about how it works, it's just changing the trappings a little bit. I think it needs to address these issues that the school system is, Go much deeper than just readjusting the small sort of cosmetic problems of the thing, because all of the coercion is still there, all of the unpleasantness of the, the nature of the exercises and the activities is still there. I think there are a lot of sort of emergent symptoms that, that sort of arise that don't, it's like, you know, someone has, like some, some physiological symptom, like they have a headache or something, and you just treat the headache instead of saying, \"Well, Well, like you're actually like kind of malnourished today, which is why you're having a headache, and we have to address this like deeper issue in order to, to get to the root of the symptoms. I think we have to think about education the same way, and I think most people only see the surface level problems, not the deeper roots of" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:53", "start": 1372.97, "text": "it. Yeah. And actually, one other question on this area. Yeah. As a libertarian and many-- obviously, this is a bit primarily a Bitcoin podcast, but a lot of listeners are kind of also into liberty and probably open-minded to the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:08", "start": 1387.68, "text": "What, what's wrong with just private schooling? Is it that, you know, the state sort of gets its tentacles even into even the so-called, quote unquote, private schools, and then it kind of has this regulation and impacts on the curriculum and the way schooling is done, such that the, quote unquote, private schools still aren't really as good as homeschooling and unschooling? Is that how you would see it, or what do you think?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "23:29", "start": 1408.88, "text": "Kind of, yeah. I think a lot of private schools, so take like Christian schools, for example, or Catholic schools, which are Like that they're very prevalent, they're one of the more common types of private schools. Basically what they're saying, and this is an oversimplification, but for the, for the sake of example, basically they're saying, \"We don't like the way that you teach science, because you're teaching evolution instead of creationism, and we don't like that you don't pray before lunch, and we don't like that you're, you know, teaching secular works in English class instead of more religious texts.\" So we're gonna go make our own school where we can teach these specific things that we like instead of the things that you're teaching, but in most other respects, it's the same thing. The model is the same. It's still, we have this class and then this class and then this class. We have periods, we have coercive learning styles, we have the same types of, of assignments where you're writing essays and you're memorizing for tests and for quizzes, and it's not in any way, shape, or form a rethinking of the model. It's just a rethinking of the content that's been infused into the model. So I see those as sometimes the quality is better of the education, sometimes the student to teacher ratio is lower, there's more room for, you know, personalized attention and maybe customization 'cause it's a smaller school and it's a private school, so they have to care more about the happiness of their customers because it's a little bit more of a pure capitalist relationship. So there are, you know, there, there may be incremental improvements as well on the model, but it's not, it's not something that is, you know, it's, it's not different enough to address some of these more fundamental issues. So for some people, it's a great choice. I don't see these schools going anywhere, and I don't want them to. I think for people that they're a good fit for, I think that's great, but I think for a lot of students, it's not the best option because again, it's not addressing These deeper fundamental problems around we're not teaching kids how to have agency and self-direction, we're not teaching kids how to identify their passions and then build an education around that, which is a very fundamental skill that you need as an adult, especially in the twenty-first century. You have to be able to say, \"I'm really curious about this thing, I wanna learn how to do it, and I now, I now know how to go find the resources that I need and have the, the discipline that I need to learn all the pe- uses to be able to accomplish this skill that I wanna go out in the world and try my hand at. they're not putting kids in a position where they're having like real world cause and effect consequences, they're just having these sort of contrived authority figure consequences where if you don't do what we say, then you're in trouble, not, hey, I'm gonna go try building this thing and if my customer doesn't like it, that's a real world consequence that I have to adapt against, but it's not any authority figure telling me, \"You've been...\" bad. It's a real world situation that I have to learn how to navigate, which again is how the real world as an adult ought to work. It's, it's much less, \"You're very bad because you didn't do your homework last night.\" It's like, \"Hey, why isn't this presentation done?\" If you don't finish the presentation, again, you're not gonna have a job here anymore. Like it's a much more give and take type of environment than kids learn about in school. And so there's this huge disconnect too between these sort of preparation environments we put kids in and then the, the real world that we're preparing them for. And I don't think most, the average private school does a very good job addressing any of that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:15", "start": 1635.49, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. I use mempool dot space to target my fee based on the priority of that transaction, whether it's low, medium, or high, and, and if I need that into the next block. So at mempool dot space, you can see and target your fee. They've also announced mempool v3 is coming. They've got a range of new features. So they've got the block template algorithm being re-implemented. They are visualizing full RBF equals zero and full RBF equals one for those of you interested to see that. They are forking Elect Mempool accelerator integration coming, so keep an eye out for this new feature. Wiz announced it at the recent Bitcoin Miami conference, and I'm looking forward to that. And for those of you browsing on mobile, mempool blocks are now scrollable, so make sure you check out all the features over at mempool.space and use it to target your Bitcoin transaction fees. With Bitcoin, it's not your keys, not your coins, and CoinKite dot com are making it easy for you to secure your keys and use cold storage for your bitcoins. So don't leave your coins with an exchange or with a Stodian, use your own coldcard. The coldcard is an ultra secure device. It comes with so many features that some people actually say it's hard to use for beginners, but I disagree. It's actually not that hard. Really, if you're a beginner, all you need to do is buy the coldcard and get a USB-C cable to plug it into your computer, and then you can use it easily with wallets such as Specter Desktop or Sparrow. And if you're intermediate or advanced, of course, you will appreciate that the coldcard has a range of advanced features that you can use Extra BrickMe pins or Duress pins that can apply and automatically wipe the wallet if the wrong pin is inserted. You can use multi-signature with this device. It's such a fantastic device. It's really an ultra-secure hardware signing device. So go and get yours at CoinKite dot com and use code Livera for a discount on your cold cards. And now back to the show. Yeah. Okay. And so as you were addressing that, I was curious if you had any thoughts on, homeschooling maximalism, right? Is it for everybody or is-- Are there certain people who it's not for? Like, can you explain a little bit on who is homeschooling a good fit for and who isn't a good fit for?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "29:23", "start": 1762.52, "text": "Totally. I'm very biased towards homeschooling 'cause I had a great experience with it, and I do think that for a lot of people it can be fantastic, but it's definitely not for everyone. it's not for people who have Motivated. some kids just really love being around their peers and really don't like the isolation of being homeschooled. And I will say, as a caveat to everything that I'm about to say, that homeschooling is incredibly dynamic, and so you can make adjustments for every one of these issues that I'm mentioning. So for example, if your kid's very socially motivated, they might not want to be in a, you know, traditional, homeschooling environment where they're just sitting at home all day, but they might thrive In like a homeschooling pod where it's three or four families who are all working together to build up a, like a communal homeschooling environment where you're still being homeschooled, you're not in a school, but you get to hang out with your friends all day. so there, there may be workarounds for this, but in general, kids who are really socially motivated tend to do better in some type of classroom. there are some families where the parents and the kids just butt heads a lot and they just, it's like hard to, like they might get along in other" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "30:37", "start": 1836.67, "text": "Trying to get your kid to do schoolwork is very challenging for both of you, and sometimes that's not a great environment for a kid. sometimes there are families where the parents just like can't afford to be at home all day with their kids, or they're just like not interested in being home all day with their kids, or maybe they can afford it, but they have a career that they're really invested in, and again, they can't, they don't wanna take the time away to be home with their kids. again, there are workarounds to this if you're Working from home and you have maybe an older child who doesn't require as much one-on-one attention and they can be working on the internet, they can find a lot of the resources they need, they don't need a full-time teacher. Sometimes that, that's the thing that can be worked around, but generally speaking, that can be a little bit tougher. So those can all be scenarios where homeschooling isn't a great fit. again, it's- There are a lot of different ways to homeschool, it's not a one size fits all thing, so there may be workarounds to all of these, but in general, sometimes those types of families are better served in a private school or a micro school or something. And some families just flat out aren't interested in homeschooling, and that's also totally fine. There are tons of different types of schools that are way better than public school is, that are also on the table. And I'm very much like, I'm not really, an advocate for any one type of education. I'm, types of education that are distinctly different from public school, but there's like a really broad spectrum, and I'm, I'm a fan of all of it. I just want people to find the thing that's the best fit for" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:10", "start": 1930.04, "text": "them. And one other thing that may be coming to some parents in their mind is that, is there a trust factor here? Do I have to sort of trust that my kid is actually gonna go and learn instead of playing computer games or video games all day or that they're gonna just do useless things instead of actually learning English and maths and actually marketable- skills that are gonna help them or, or maybe not even marketable, but useful life skills." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "32:37", "start": 1957.12, "text": "Yeah. For parents who are asking that question, I have a couple book recommendations. First of all, I have, I have three. So the first one is called Don't Tell Me I Can't by Cole Summers, who was a real life unschooler who wrote an autobiography when he was fourteen about his unschooling experience. It's an amazing book. It's a quick read, but it's extremely- Ordinarily enlightening on what an unschooling experience can look like, and I think, I, I recommend this all the time, I give copies away all the time, I think it's a book that every parent should read, and it pretty radically will shift your perception of what's possible when a child's given the right inputs. The second book I would recommend is called Unschool'd by my friend Carrie McDonald, who's also a great education commentator, she's got a podcast, she's doing amazing work, she's promoting more micro schools now, which is like Kind of think like a, a one room schoolhouse for the twenty first century. But her original area of expertise was unschooling. She wrote a great book about it, would highly recommend. And then the third book I would recommend is called Free to Learn by Peter Gray, who's a child psychologist who specializes in the role of play in childhood development, and he wrote this book about the importance of, of play for kids and why that's such an important thing for them to be doing and why, in a lot of ways, it's, it's vast More important than like formal academic time, especially for younger kids. So the way I would think about it, unschooling, yes, you absolutely can have your kids playing games all day and not doing any schoolwork. One, in a lot of contexts, that's not really a bad thing. like when I think back to my own homeschooling experience, obviously learning how to read was super important to me. I spent a lot of time reading when I was a kid. I really loved fiction, so I read lots and lots and lots of novels. I learned, you know, Math skills and stuff, I learned English and science and history, I learned all kinds of cool things. But the things that were most fundamentally important to the person I became was the time that I spent playing, because my play would often lead to projects that then led to integrating things that turned out to be really fundamental life skills into my play. Like I wanted to learn how to knit so I could learn how to make things that I could play with in my own games, and then that turned- Turned into making things that I could sell to other people, and I realized I could be entrepreneurial and make some money, and what kid doesn't like discovering that they can make some money? So all of a sudden I had to learn math skills so I could learn how to run a little business, and that was, first of all, I remembered the math skills I learned doing that far more than I remembered the math skills I learned on a worksheet because it was interesting to me, it was useful, it was relevant, but I also learned how to think about mathematics in a business This context, which like I run a business now, that's, that's a super helpful thing for me to have learned. I learned a lot of soft skills around self-efficacy and confidence and problem-solving and the, the art of becoming interested in ide-- in an idea and following it to its logical completion through play, not through schoolwork. So I think we sometimes over, overestimate the importance of formal schoolwork, especially for younger kids, really until like It hits like sixth grade. I don't think you have to worry that much about academics at all. I do think, you know, you want to be exposing your kid to ideas, you wanna be reading lots of books to them, you want to be teaching them to read and instilling a love of reading, you wanna be teaching them basic math in the context of the real world things that they're running into. But I also think that, you know, when you start looking at studies of how kids who are sort of early adopters of, say, reading or mathematics perform over time, it really It kind of balances out over time, like a kid who is really quick to learn how to read in, I mean, they're like four, and a kid who doesn't really take an interest in reading until they're eight or nine, by the time they exit elementary school, those kids can catch up to each other very quickly because as you get older, the things you learn in elementary school really aren't that complicated anymore. So anything that gets missed in elementary school is very easy to catch up on if your child ever needs to catch up on it later. So I don't think that there's necessarily a bad thing about kids not doing a ton of formal academic work. I also think a lot of being a good unschooler or homeschooler, but especially unschooler, is really about environment construction. So if you're putting your kid in a room that has two Xboxes and tons of video games and like- Pop tarts on every shelf, like of course they're gonna develop terrible habits and they're gonna do things that aren't terribly useful to their own development. But if you put your child in a space that has lots of books and maybe no TV at all and outside access for them to go play in the woods and it has toys that are designed to help them think about interacting with the real world, so like a toy cash register or a toy, like, like the, the prompts to like play store or school School or whatever when the children are smaller, and then as they get older, maybe crafting supplies or like lots of paper and pens for them to draw with or write with, things that are encouraging the types of behaviors that you want them to adopt, and then at the same time, you're modeling those things for them. So like you're reading a lot, you're reading to them, you're showing them, like, \"I have this idea to make this thing, and then I'm gonna follow through on making it, and I'm gonna let you see me go through this process.\" And so that just kind Construct an environment that encourages the types of behaviors that you want your child to have. You're, like, you really don't have to control how they engage with that environment. You can let them follow their natural curiosities and allow them to develop in a way that's very organic to them, but is happening within the guardrails that you've set up around like what you think is virtuous behavior for your child. So like, show them how to like look up questions on YouTube or something. Show them how to find, like, Fill your space with cool old, like guidebooks or resource books about like birds or mammals or rocks or like whatever you think is cool, and just let them learn how to explore their world and find answers to their questions. And if that's the, the environment that they're being allowed to run free in, they're probably gonna get up to really cool things." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:15", "start": 2354.67, "text": "Yeah, interesting. And I mean, I'm, I'm with you. I think it's just maybe that's like a common thing where maybe there's a quote-unquote leap of faith that, a first-time homeschooler or Homeschooling parent has to take that leap, and maybe another question people might have is they might say, \"Look, maybe this works if, you know, your very high IQ or your kid is very-- has a self-driver, self-starter mindset. What about the kids who aren't like that? Maybe you, you don't, you don't really know, what kind of capacity your child has, and maybe it's not suitable for them.\"" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "39:47", "start": 2387.02, "text": "Yeah. So again, it's to your question earlier about whether or not homeschooling is a fit for everyone. Some kids are, you know, they're not self-starters and they're, they have a harder time with this, and, and sometimes those kids do better in a more formal environment or a group environment. Sometimes they just respond better to someone who's not mom or dad, too. again, like this, that's a very real dynamic and that's totally okay. But generally speaking, so a lot of kids, not every kid, but a lot of kids do have the capacity to be self-starters, and I talk about this a lot online, when kids exit this, this system, they often have to go through a deschooling process. Think of it just kind of like a detox, where they just kind of like have to get all of the bad habits and bad paradigms of school out of their system before they can tap back into their innate curiosity again. And, I mean, there are, there are private schools that have this built into the model that when they take on a new student who is coming out of the public school model, sometimes they'll give that kid as much as a semester to just- Detox from schools, like you can do whatever you want until you're, you become curious and ready to start engaging with the things that we have the rest of our students doing, and because these kids are in an environment where they see other kids doing these things and they look pretty cool, at once they start to lose the, the sort of apathy and resistance to doing work that school can instill in you, then they start to get curious and they start to work on projects because it looks like fun what everybody else is doing. So I think for kids Kids that are exiting traditional school, there can be our institutional school, there can be a, a bit of a process for them to be ready to take on some of these things. but for younger kids, I think it's easier because younger kids already are pretty innately curious, and if you, if you start them at an early age having some agency and some self-direction, like you give them the space to answer their own questions or figure things out for themselves, they're like, \"Hey, can you help me, make this paper?\" Paper airplane, and it's like, instead of just doing it for them, if you say, \"Well, like, I'll show you where the folds need to be, but like, you can fold it. You can, you can fold paper. You're, you're totally capable of that. \" If you encourage in them a sense of self-agency and self-direction from an early age, it makes it a lot easier for them to be more self-directed as they get older too. Again, obviously, it's, it varies. There's, there's a nature component to this too, and it Kids, there's definitely a heavy nurture component too, where if you can put them in environments and, and construct environments for them, where they're able to take ownership and feel a sense of responsibility and feel a sense of curiosity about the world and a sense of freedom to go pursue those curiosities, I think that helps really facilitate a habit of being self-directed and self-starting from an early age. And" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:45", "start": 2565.41, "text": "I think that's a really important point, like something I've noticed, as, as you said, around encouraging- People to be a self-starter, to have a bit of creativity. I think this is one of my critiques of the modern world today, is that everyone's so infantilized. People just never grow up, and they, they feel like even at, in their mid twenties, they're still growing up and haven't really learned how to be an adult yet, and that's why we see these memes, as, as I'm sure you and listeners have seen, this kind of meme of, quote unquote, adulting, right? Like it's a big deal to somehow be an adult and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:20", "start": 2599.61, "text": "And statism and this kind of mindset that's infantilizing people unnecessarily, it's just keeping them artificially unready for the real world, and that's a big shame." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "43:30", "start": 2609.78, "text": "Yeah, now you're really speaking my language. We wouldn't have this adulting meme if we didn't have the system making adulting feel so hard. And obviously, like, the government system has a lot of things that makes being an adult complicated, like figuring out your taxes and figuring out how to- We live in a very complex world. There are a lot of different pieces that one has to navigate as an adult. It is complicated. I, I get why people don't love it, but we also spend the first eighteen years of our lives having very few responsibilities, and the responsibilities, responsibilities that we do have are highly coercive, and we're sort of, we're, we're in this very artificially constructed environment that's highly divorced from the real world. Like we're in classrooms with People only born the same year as us, and with the only adult we're interacting with as in, in a very authoritative context, like they're the authority figure, they can get us in trouble if we don't do what they want us to do, and then we get dumped out at the end of that, we turn eighteen, and it's like, okay, congratulations, like we opened the door on the cage, you're free now, go figure it out and have fun. A lot of kids haven't even worked a real job yet, like they've never had to engage with adults as peers, they Tell them what to do, and all of a sudden they're out in the real world and they're like, \"Oh my goodness, I have to learn how to deal with the IRS and pay my taxes and pay my bills on time, and I have to figure out how to like apply for a lease or how to apply for a loan or how to, you know, manage a budget or save money so I can invest that money, but I have to figure out where to invest. Like, it's all incredibly complicated. And nothing they did in school, it's like, okay, well, I know" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "45:18", "start": 2717.73, "text": "the I, I don't know anything about how taxes work. Like, of course we think adulting is hard, but if you grow up where you're, you know, start your first business when you're a kid or you start working when you're younger, you do an apprenticeship in high school or something, the real world doesn't really feel like that scary of a place, and the whole adulting meme just kind of feels funny because you're like, \"Yeah, I'm, I'm an adult, but it's not that hard.\" So I think to go back to your question earlier about things that The public school system is the, the root of, I definitely think it's the root of the adulting name." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:54", "start": 2754.14, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And I think what happens as well is some of this plays into university as well and how much I think university is overpriced and kind of scam-ish, depending on what you're doing, because what a lot of these people, and I'm sure people do this, is they come out of this environment, schooling environment, and they think, \"Well, I'm not ready to go in the real world yet, let me just go into another artificial environment.\" And so Delaying it even further and in the American context, I know it's a very high debt that they come out of the university system with that. And so it's, it's kind of at the worst time where they have the least skills to understand whether I should be taking on this very large debt at the age of seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, they're having to make that decision and then they end up getting put on the, the treadmill of life and, you know, whether university was the right call for them or not, they end up getting put into that. So I think it's, it's a" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "46:50", "start": 2809.93, "text": "Yeah, I agree completely. And what you're, you're kind of describing the thought process that I went through when I was in high school, 'cause I never went to college, and a big reason why I didn't is because it was very expensive, and I couldn't think of a good reason why I needed to spend that much money in order to prepare myself for adulthood. There was nothing that I wanted to do that legally required having a degree, so I didn't really see the point, and I thought it seemed like a very dumb thing to do to start my adult life by spending a ton of money On a thing I don't need. And I think to me that felt very intuitive because I was divorced enough from the system that I could see it for what it was, which was, you know, I'm being, everyone's trying to talk me into doing this thing 'cause it's what I'm supposed to do, but I'm not so enmeshed in the conveyor belt that it's just like the logical next step, it's a thing I have to make a choice about, it's not a given that I'm going to go do this. And when it's not a given, it really didn" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "47:50", "start": 2869.77, "text": "That's a really hard thing to see, I think, because it's just, \"Well, I've always been preparing for this my whole life, and this is what you're supposed to do, and this is what everyone's telling me, so it's just like the next stage in the process, right? It doesn't even necessarily feel entirely, voluntary. It's not like a decision you're making, it's just what you do.\" We" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:07", "start": 2887.16, "text": "get put on this fiat-statist treadmill, and, you know, I think a lot of parents today probably think, and this seems to be changing at" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:20", "start": 2899.57, "text": "It's still the quote-unquote safe play for my child, you know, and I, I think that by the time my kid becomes, you know, eighteen, I think it'll be, that will have changed so much." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "48:28", "start": 2908.18, "text": "I do too. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:29", "start": 2909.08, "text": "But, maybe, maybe historically you sort of had to, or, you know, but nowadays in the internet age, the e-commerce age, people can do things online and make money online, and, you know, that they don't need that. one other area I wanted to get into with you is the cost question, because I Home parent, often a stay-at-home mom, and are there any thoughts you have on the reduced income, the trade-offs around this, or would you make an argument that it's, it's worth it in, in terms of having to live on a single income so that that child or children, if you have multiple children, can get, you know, a homeschooling or unschooling experience instead of their typical double income, one kid is at school or daycare or, you know, all the time?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "49:14", "start": 2954.33, "text": "Yeah, I have, I have strong thoughts on this one, and they're not always popular Head on. the first one is, and, and this annoys me too when people ta- have this conversation even around having children in the first place, where they're like, \"I don't know if I can afford to have kids.\" It's like, you guys drive two cars and live in a four-bedroom house, like, you can afford to have children. People who make almost no money have children. It's not about the cost of the kids themselves, it's about the quality of life that you're willing to give up in order to raise a human. and so I think Well, we have all of these comforts that we don't necessarily want to give up 'cause we've gotten used to them, but I think it's really important to think about the significance of the, the human that you're raising over everything else. Like in, in twenty, in twenty years, do you wanna look back and say, \"I drove a really nice BMW while my kid went to government school,\" or do you want to say, \"I raised a happy, healthy, competent, self-directed cre- creative human who is equipped to take on the world and become whatever they want to be, and they're not carrying all this psychological baggage and damage that the school system could have inflicted on them. Like, are you really saying that your nice car or your fancy vacation is more important than the education of your child? Because I find that to be a very hard thing to compare. Like, they're not even the same category to me. Like, we're talking about a whole person here. Like that's, that's way more important. But I also think, you know, we, I think we live in a, in a world that's not very conducive to long term thinking. Like we're not really encouraged to do it. So I think the problem starts far before, far before people are actually, they have a child who's old enough to enroll in school and they're trying to decide what to do with them. Like I, when I was in high school, I was a very academic kid, so even though I was homeschooled, I was still kind of being shuffled by the world The college track, and there was a lot of pressure around, \"Well, what are you gonna major in? And what career do you think you wanna have? And what school do you wanna go to?\" And no one ever said to me, \"You know, you're gonna take on a lot of debt here, and how is that going to relate to the lifestyle that you wanna be living in five years and ten years? What type of career do you wanna have? And how does that maybe, that answer maybe change if you wanna have children someday?\" Like nobody was talking to me about long-term planning like that While I think it's unfair to ask kids in high school and fresh out of high school what they want to do with their whole lives, like there's no way you're gonna know. I think it's unfair to even try to foist them into a, a major track if they're not very clearly interested in something. 'Cause if you don't know yet what you wanna do, don't make a kid pick a major. Like, that's not-- it's ridiculous to say, \"Well, just like, you know, figure it out, \"and then you have all this debt and sunk You know, you're, you can, if you think that you wanna have kids someday, if you think you might wanna, you know, educate them in a certain way, you should probably be thinking about the life choices you're making in the context of that, so you can kind of like plan to be in a position where you can, you can raise them the way that you want to. But for people who already have kids, I think a lot of the homeschooling families that I grew up with and that I know made choices that allowed them to homeschool, it was never like, you know, we're At the same time, like one parent wasn't working or one parent was working part time or a couple families would band together so that the moms could arrange their schedule so they were working at opposite times so that one mom could be home with both families' kids while the other mom was at work. Like sometimes families would have grandma help a couple days a week so that mom could be working. Like there are lots of different ways that people make it work to homeschool their kids, but I don't ever remember hearing any of those families saying like, \"Oh, man, I would- Wish I had a nicer car, I wish, like, of course they'd be like, \"Yeah, like, my car's falling apart, and it kind of sucks, \" but there was never like, you know, if I just put my kids in school, I could have all these nice things. Like, it was never a question of, \"Well, if we just give up the homeschooling thing, then we'll be okay, \" 'cause everyone had this conviction that raising their kids on their terms, in a way that was setting their kids up for success, was way more important" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "53:50", "start": 3229.57, "text": "Homeschooling is like really, well, can you afford to send your kid to public school and can you afford all of the things that come along with that? Like, do you really wanna be paying that price? It's like non-monetary, but it's expensive, and I think that's important to weigh." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:03", "start": 3242.82, "text": "Yeah, that's fantastic. And so, yeah, look, a-at the end of the day, I think it's worth it. one other, I guess one big question people are going to have is results, right? And maybe some of that, you know, maybe for Individual, are they a good person? I'm curious if you have anything you can share for people in terms of, obviously you're promoting homeschooling, do you have anything you can compare or show people, like homeschooling kids' outcomes versus non-homeschooling kids?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "54:32", "start": 3271.9, "text": "Yeah, so the data on this is a bit patchy, it's not something that's been deeply studied. I'm hoping that changes over the next few years because the volume of homeschoolers has increased quite a bit. You know, in like the '70s or the '80s or even the '90s, And now there are, in the United States alone, there are millions of homeschoolers, and I know I have friends in other countries who have relocated countries so they can homeschool their children. it's a thing that is, you know, it's a movement that's growing, and it's a thing that I think as more people are being homeschooled, more people are gonna start studying the difference in outcomes, and I, I fully expect the results to be quite stark. I do have some anecdotal things to share though to answer this question. So first of all My story, like I grew up homeschooled, I never went to college, very unorthodox education. by the age of like twenty-one, I was working my dream job at a startup that I thought was super cool, helping other people figure out how to skip college, like I was doing just fine without a degree. now I'm running a business, I have people working for me, I have, you know, I'm, I'm building, building a brand on the internet, didn't require a ho- a college degree for it. Any of that fully, fully self functioning adult, and I know many, many, many homeschool graduates who are in s-similar positions. I'm also, I've been very pleasantly surprised as I've engaged in the real world to discover that a lot of people see the fact that I was homeschooled as an asset, not a detriment. Like I've landed jobs because I was homeschooled, and I've, I've landed opportunities be- Because I was homeschooled, I've talked to so many people who've been like, \"Oh, you were homeschooled? We love homeschoolers.\" like it's, it's sort of this poorly kept secret that homeschoolers tend to be really great to work with, actually. I've talked to numerous college professors who have told me that they love homeschooled students because they tend to be better in a college environment that requires things like self-direction and, some self-efficacy and personal responsibility. Ability and ability to, you know, do work on your own and follow rabbit trails on your own without having somebody holding your hand, and lo and behold, the homeschoolers are actually better prepared to do that than the public schoolers are because the public schoolers have always been spoon fed, whereas the homeschoolers know how to do things on their own 'cause they've been doing it for years, so they tend to actually do better in a college environment. So there are a number of college that colleges that actually prefer homeschooled applicants if your child wants to go in that direction. I have had so many people People tell me, \"Oh, you were homeschooled, that explains it.\" In a positive way, not a negative way over the years, because homeschoolers tend to have a really good reputation, and that reputation is only growing as they, as, you know, just more, more homeschooled kids enter the workforce and enter different, different environments. But I think, inter-- I think, I think the outcomes thing is, the traditional path is a, is a low bar to, to beat, because most kids go through school, they-- I mean, again Over half of the population can't even read at a sixth grade level, so like the bar is very low academically, but also most kids are going through public school and they're often don't work at all when they're in high school. And then, like, we wanna think, talk purely financially, they don't work at all in high school, then they go to college and they go into debt. So a lot of these kids have a negative net worth through all of their twenties and maybe even beyond because of the, the debt they're carrying from college, and then like they get a car Or something, and then that debt increases even further, whereas the average homeschooler, like most homeschoolers work in high school because they can, and so they're, they're getting a head start on career skills because they have resume experience that makes them more employable, and they're graduating from high school with a positive net worth, like they actually have some money because they've been working, and like that alone, like how is that not a better outcome? You know, people argue, well, you know, college students have higher earning potential over the course of their careers, like well- There's a lot of other factors that play there too, like the types of people inclined to go to college in the first place versus the people who aren't inclined to work at all. You know, like the data's a little, it's, it's not a, a very clean dataset. But also, you know, like I think the world we live in is really changing, and it's a world that more and more is, is a world that's designed for people with the skills homeschoolers have to thrive. Like, you know, the, the career landscape is changing at an ever-increasing pace A lot of things like what we're doing right now, you couldn't have twenty years ago been like, \"Yeah, I wanna be a podcaster when I grow up. It didn't exist. Like, I couldn't have gone to school for that. \" And yet, here we are doing this really cool thing on the internet, like halfway around the world. There're gonna be all types of careers ten years from now, five years from now, with the explosion of AI that we can't predict and we can't prepare our kids for. But if kids are learning skills around, again, self-direction," }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "59:50", "start": 3589.65, "text": "to the world that they're, they're living in, and homeschooling caters to that. So I think we're gonna see even more positive outcomes from homeschoolers versus public, public schoolers over the next decade or so because of that. Like, I think, I think we're living in a world that's very well suited to homeschoolers, and I think they're gonna thrive because of it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:09", "start": 3609.07, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I'm totally with you. I've, obviously, long been thinking about the idea of homeschooling, but it became more real once I had my own kid." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:19", "start": 3619.57, "text": "Encourage listeners and bitcoiners out there, don't send your kids to the, to the state to be educated. Educate them yourself. And so let's finally, let's chat a little bit about what you're doing with Rebel Educator. What is it? What, you know, what should people know about Rebel Educator?" }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "01:00:34", "start": 3634.7, "text": "Yeah, we're, we're, we exist to help parents find alternatives to public school. So we're pro everything that's not what I call institutional school. So public school and private school models that are being- Basically replicating the, the public school format. So we're very pro, like micro schools, which again, it's like think one room schoolhouse for the twenty first century. we're very pro, there are a lot of really cool online schools that are being built. We're very pro things like Montessori schools and Waldorf schools, things like, you know, different types of in person alternative schooling models like Acton Academy, for example. There are so many cool things that are being built and we're huge fans of all of it. And we want to help parents find, first of all, feel empowered to take their children's education into their own hands and to trust their intuitions that something is wrong with the education system and, and we're, we're going to do something about that with our own children, and then helping them feel empowered to, to actually choose a school that's a good fit for their kid, whether it's homeschooling or sending them somewhere else. And so we have a publication where we've published a bunch of resources on, on how to take- Action with this, how to think about everything from the history of the education system and like where it comes from in the first place, to how to choose a school for your kid, like, you know, what, what metrics actually matter in the education of your kid. We spend a ton of time on Twitter, so you can find a lot of resources there. I'm super active there all the time, so you can ask me any questions that you have. And then I personally also have a podcast called The Hannah Frankman Podcast where I have a lot of conversations about these types of things." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "01:02:19", "start": 3739.59, "text": "Development in an entrepreneurial way, like entrepreneurship, freedom, a lot of conversations with different educational experts coming in with, you know, talking about different elements of education, people coming in who aren't education experts but talking about education in the context of the thing that they're interested in, like finance or Bitcoin or something, for example. And then we have a newsletter as well that people can sign up for at Rebel Educator if you want, depending on like what format you find most useful, but and we'll be building out more. More resources over the next like twelve to eighteen months to make it less content centric exclusively and more, like an actual resource hub parents can use to find, to find options for their kids." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:00", "start": 3780.2, "text": "Great. Well, yeah, that all sounds great. and, yeah, like I said, I'm, I'm a fan of what you're doing, and I hope you, keep, keep going strong out there promoting it. so listeners, make sure you check out Hannah Online, RebelEducator dot co. the Twitter accounts are Rebel Educator or at Rebel It's been great to chat with you, and thanks for joining me." }, { "speaker": "hannah_frankman", "time": "01:03:21", "start": 3801.53, "text": "Thank you so much for, for having me. Good luck on your homeschooling journey. Let me know what I can do to help." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:27", "start": 3807.04, "text": "Thank you. I hope you found the show interesting, especially for those of you coming from a more libertarian mindset, you might be more open-minded to the idea of homeschooling. I'm certainly exploring it more myself, and I'm interested to hear any feedback you have, so please leave a comment or email me, and of course, you can find the show notes at stephanlivera dot com" } ] }