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Why Bastiat Deserves to Be in the Pantheon of Great Economic Theorists

By Guest Post March 8, 2019

By Donald J. Boudreaux

Frédéric Bastiat (1801-50) is known today among economists—if he is known at all—as at best a brilliant polemicist. An economic theorist he most certainly was not—such is the common opinion.

I believe this common opinion to be mistaken. To explain why first requires a discussion of the nature of a theory.

A Theory Is a Story

As I tell students in my Principles of Microeconomics courses, a theory is a story that assists us in making better sense of reality. And a theorist is a storyteller who offers this assistance.

A story that explains the price only of bread is not a proper theory of prices, even if it is highly believable.

Stories, of course, differ in their believability. A story that explains, say, the Industrial Revolution as being the result of new knowledge imparted to us by aliens from another galaxy is completely unbelievable. Some other, more believable story is called for—one, say, that features a change in people’s attitudes toward commerce and innovation.

But for a story to deserve to be called a theory requires that it also be generalizable.

In economics, supply-and-demand analysis is a general account of how prices are formed and change. It’s not a story about the formation of the price of only one item, such as bread. It’s an outline for telling believable stories about the formation of all prices—from the prices of toy planes to those of jumbo jetliners, from the wages earned by motel maids to those earned by Tom Hanks. A story that explains the price only of bread is not a proper theory of prices, even if it is highly believable.

To be generalizable, a story whose creator wishes it to be regarded as a serious theory must make that story abstract. Being abstract, however, makes the story—standing alone—barren. As such, it engenders no understanding of the physical or social world. But it proves itself to be a good theory if, when relevant details of reality are added to it, those of us who encounter this story go, “Aha! Now I understand reality better than I did before!”

The core purpose of all theories is the creation of improved understanding. A theory that does not cause those who hear or read it to go, “Aha!” is worthless.

Bastiat the Theorist

And so we return to Bastiat. He’s one of history’s most brilliant tellers of economic stories. This fact, I’m convinced, justifies calling Bastiat a great economic theorist.

Who can read Bastiat’s satirical portrayal of sunlight as an unfairly low-priced import and not go, “Aha!”

Consider Bastiat’s famous 1843 “Petition of the Manufacturers of Candles.” In this short essay, Bastiat radiantly conveyed economists’ understanding that artificially contrived scarcities make the general population worse off even if they increase the wealth of a small handful of individuals. Who other than the most benighted protectionist can read Bastiat’s satirical portrayal of sunlight as an unfairly low-priced import and not go, “Aha! Of course, inexpensive imports that ‘flood’ into a country no more impoverish that country than does the light sent to us free by the sun!”

Another example is Bastiat’s even-shorter essay “A Negative Railway.” Here Bastiat revealed the flaw in the argument of a gentleman who insisted that if a railroad connecting Paris to Bayonne were forced to have a stop at Bordeaux, the wealth of the French people would be enhanced. The hapless target of Bastiat’s brilliance based his conclusion on the correct observation that forcing trains to stop at Bordeaux would increase the incomes of porters, restaurateurs, and some other people in Bordeaux.

Yet Bastiat didn’t settle for drily noting that, after paying these higher incomes, railways and their passengers would have less money to spend on goods and services offered by suppliers in locations other than Bordeaux. Instead, Bastiat followed the proposal’s logic in a way uniquely revealing: If forcing trains to stop at Bordeaux will increase the total wealth of the people of France, so too will the total wealth of the people of France be increased if trains are obliged to stop also at Angoulême. And if also at Angoulême, then the French will be enriched even further if a third stop is required at Poitiers. And if at Poitiers, then at each and every location between Paris and Bayonne.

Bastiat revealed the proposal to be flawed by showing that, if its logic were sound, the railway that would do the most good for the French people is one that is nothing but a series of stops—a negative railway!

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Children

Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child from Public School Before It’s Too Late

By Terence Gillespie January 11, 2019

Why don’t all parents send their kids to a private school?

Money.

“You know those two Mercedes we have parked in the driveway?”, I say to parents at church (a rhetorical question since we have no luxury cars.)

“Right, that’s because we send our kids to private school.”

The cost of the monthly lease payments for two luxury cars is about the same as sending our two boys to private school. Of course, we also pay for the public school they’re not attending in the form of property taxes.

What Should Be an Easy Decision for Christian Parents

For Christian parents, public school is now a dire compromise for which there’s no spiritual or philosophical defense. Anyone can understand not having enough money. What’s less understandable, or even comprehensible, is the extent to which parents will compromise out of fear or ignorance of homeschooling.

… and for Teachers

As for teachers, I’ve talked with three who recently fled public school teaching positions due to classroom turmoil (that school policies left them powerless to prevent), physical endangerment, and the frustrations of having no control over what or how they teach ( a defining feature of common core rebranded as “Next Step”).

But Really, How Bad is it ‘Out There?’

The question has now been meticulously answered by Mary Rice Hasson, J.D. and Theresa Farnan, Ph.D.:

Should we stay or should we go? Millions of parents with children in public schools can’t believe they’re asking this question. But they are. And you should be asking it too. Almost overnight, America’s public schools have become morally toxic. And they are especially poisonous for the hearts and minds of children from religious families of every faith—ordinary families who value traditional morality and plain old common sense. Parents’ first duty is to their children—to their intellect, their character, their souls. The facts on the ground point to one conclusion: Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child from Public School Before It’s Too Late.

The negative consequences of sending your children to public school need no longer remain in doubt. The final section of “Get Out Now” ends with 100 pages of endnotes and hard documentation supporting author accounts and claims.

Children

16 Things Parents of Expensive Boarding Schools Want for their Children’s Education

By Terence Gillespie March 27, 2018

Take careful notice that none of the principles these wealthy parents seek costs a single penny to develop. I don’t think they know that. That everybody could do one or all of these things with their own kids just as well as Exeter or St. Paul’s could. — John Taylor Gatto

This article is a summary of the Boarding School part of J.T. Gatto’s speech: “What Does ‘Educated’ Mean?” If you’ve got 90-minutes to spare, I highly recommend downloading the transcript and listening to the entire speech.

(Note: Rather than put everything in quotes, I’d prefer to make this article more readable by keeping John’s words in normal text. I have shortened and condensed John’s speech for quick reading but these are his ideas and words. I’m the beneficiary of John’s wisdom and experience while making them more accessible to other homeschooling parents who may be on the same path.)

16 Things Parents of Expensive Boarding Schools Want for their Children’s Education

Now let’s take a look at what the parents at the finest and most expensive private boarding schools in America want from schooling. I’m talking about the twenty ritziest private boarding schools in America. Schools like Groton, and St. Paul’s, and Deerfield, and Kent.

The schools have had an enormous effect on 20th century Society through the efforts of their graduates. Because of that importance, I’ve reduced the practices in these places to a formula so that you can see clearly that there’s nothing they do that isn’t easily within your reach. The formula looks like this in an elite boarding school.

But, I’m going to warn you in advance to take careful notice that none of the principles these wealthy parents seek costs the single penny to develop. I don’t think they know that. That everybody could do one or all of these things with their own kids just as well as Exeter or St. Paul’s could.

Elite private schools want their children to learn good manners and to display those manners to everybody, even the humblest person, without thinking about it. So the manors would be reflexive. That’s because they know that manners will make their children welcome everywhere, even in strange settings where they’re not known, someone will recognize that this is a well-bred person.
The second thing elite private school parents want is hard intellectual knowledge taught to their children, undiluted; they don’t want it watered down.
Elite private school parents want their children to be advised only by people that they personally respect and Trust.
The next thing elite private school parents want is that their children be taught love and appreciation for the land, for the natural world of plants and animals, not for the scientific knowledge but because they recognize that unless you have a relation with nature, that’s easy your life becomes lonely and barren and abstract. That’s why these rich kids ride horses and sailboats. Not for the competitive sports aspect of it, because it puts them in touch with nature.
Next, they want their children to develop a public sense of decorum so that they can adapt naturally to every setting they find themselves in without provoking anger or opposition.
They want a common core of Western culture taught, not so they can pass tests, but so that all the generations the grandparents the parents and the children are certain to be comfortable with a shared set of ideas and tastes and values.
Elite boarding school parents want leadership exercises taught to their children. That’s an important ongoing theme of curriculum. They are not interested in their children being part of a managed herd.
A major concern of boarding school parents is that their children get individual attention.Their children are in small classes. By small, I mean nine or less.
They want continuous pressure put on their children to stretch their individual limits. That is, if you find four or five talents emerging, you don’t allow the kid to be satisfied with minimal performance.
There’s an emphasis in elite schools on hands-on, face-to-face experience. You never go to a book if you can go to the person who wrote the book or someone close to that person. You get as close to the origin and the idea as possible.
There’s an emphasis on writing. Homeschoolers read well but they don’t necessarily write so well. 300 words is good enough for a lot of uses. But if you can write a thousand words you can hold your own in any sort of debate, you can write op-ed pieces for the newspaper …it isn’t very hard to do.
They want kids at elite schools to develop the power of accurate observation. They don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt. They have to accurately transcribe what they’re able to see. The reason Charles Darwin’s book made such an enormous impact was Darwin drew; there are thousands of drawings in the book. And they’re not Rembrandt, but they’re accurate enough that you can see what the thing is.
Have experience with the master creations of music, of painting, of sculptor, of architecture, dance, poetry, the other arts. And have a familiarity with folk art as well.
Scientific knowledge of the sky above and the earth below.
Practice in learning how to handle pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, and intellectual pain. If you wonder where the tremendous American interest in sports came from, it comes from the aristocratic boarding schools of England.
The development of a determination to demand the highest quality performance from yourself. Even if other people say hey that was wonderful, and you know that it’s a lot less than you could have done I think you’re better off.

Conclusion

Nothing I thought was an education, and nothing that the wealthiest people in the country think is an education costs anything at all. Fifty million public school children in the United States could be reared this way. It wouldn’t cost anything.

Children

The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto

By Terence Gillespie March 12, 2018

In 2012, Richard Grove conducted and produced a 6-hour video interview with John Taylor Gatto. For those who don’t have the time to read and digest J.T. Gatto’s excellent work in book form, this interview provides an alternative. I’ve found it to be ideally listened to at double-speed! That makes it an ideal use of the next 2.5 hours of your time as John is a game-changer in the area of education.

The transcript of the interview is 41,500 words. All the material (and excerpts, below) is owned and copyrighted by Tragedy and Hope and please consider supporting their work in creating, presenting, and posting such presentations on Youtube.

The excerpts, below, are 1/20th of the entire transcript. They are not a summary of the presentation.

RG: is Richard Grove
JTG: is John Taylor Gatto

RG: Is there any connection between frustration and aggression? And what effect does schooling have on that?

JTG: Well, you answer your own question by asking it. The connection is intimate. School removes your volition in all important ways, even who you speak to. Are not they arts of association as valuable or more valuable than anything else you learn when you’re young?

Getting Into Harvard

I read how executive hiring is done and it almost never has to do with your training in whatever you’re been hired for. I’m thinking of Apple now, I believe. Is this the person we’d like to have around three years from now, bend an elbow with, or play golf with or just talk with? And that’s why you’re passed from set of executives, to set of executives. So they can sign off, yeah he’s ok, you know… We don’t tell kids that. It’s people who have the highest grade point average in the highest SAT scores. Well I spent an hour, not so long ago, within 10 years, with the admissions officer of Harvard College and, about 30 years ago an hour with the admissions director at Princeton. And let me tell you their polite dismissal of grades and SAT scores was intimidating to listen to. As if you’d have to be crazy to let somebody in.

Let me see if I can condense how you get into Harvard or Princeton. Of course, you can get into both by donating a building but how do other people get in? They are being analyzed on the basis of their ability to either become wealthy or famous. Either one will work. Fame is like wearing a billboard saying I went to Princeton. There’s that actress Jodie Foster, “I went to Princeton”. Look at where the rest of the actors and directors went, they didn’t go anywhere (laughter). But Jodie did so that’s one we hear about. The Harvard lady said, “we look for a record of excellence and what this excellence consists of.” It’s sometime in the first 18 years of your life, figuring out how to add value to the people around you. She didn’t say this in a way that catches public attention, so you might walk across the United States or bicycle the perimeter of the country or row across the Atlantic Ocean, as a physical way. You might start a little charity or set up some weather service or some pollution monitoring around Hartford. There are a substantial number, a small fraction but a substantial number, of kids doing this as we sit here. They’re writing a record of being able to add value to the community around them.

Hobbies

And then the other fellow, the Princeton guy said the same thing in different words. I asked him in 1968 roughly, asked him what part of a resume submitted to you do you look at first. The answer metaphorically caused my jaw to open. “Hobbies,” he said. I said, “I’ve been taught all my life to leave that off because it’s not germane.” He said, “on the contrary, it’s the only honest information you’re likely to get.” How did someone spend their time when it’s their free choice to spend? He said “it’s a window into their mind and their heart”.

What Kind of Hobbies?

I said what kind of hobbies? He said, “well ideally someone would have a physical hobby, an intellectual hobby and a social hobby”. That would show they are exploring these large… well, physical hobbies you mean football, baseball? Well, he said “it’s better than nothing but we would prefer not to see team sports”. I said I’d been told all my life that team sports identify your ability to work in a team. He said what happens in a team sport is if you decide to dog it, it’s very hard to tell which guy on the line has dogged it or not, or which running back has gone down quicker than he should have gone down. He said we prefer solo hobbies that involve physical danger. You mean you want kids to put their necks at risk? For example, what? He said well horseback riding is a dead giveaway. The horse weighs a half ton or more. If you do trail riding and you don’t know what you’re doing, your head gets caught on the branch and you’re the headless horseman. If the horse doesn’t like you it’ll roll over on top of you. I know immediately because the last time I rode a horse was down in Veracruz, Mexico and the horse didn’t like me and took me out on the main highway with crazed Mexican drivers going a hundred miles an hour in 18 wheelers. And it laid down on top of me. I was terrified! I could see these trucks coming. I didn’t like it and it’s the last time I rode. So he said you have to actually know what you’re doing. You can’t say is this an A job, or a B job . If you live in are intact, it is.

Then he said, “sailing a small boat”. These little 12 footers outside of land. If you don’t know what you’re doing you wind up in the middle of the Atlantic, you know. Or if wind comes up you can’t see landmarks because of the waves. I said, but those things are associated with the prosperous classes. What can somebody in ordinary circumstances do? He says well, we just let somebody in and this is probably one of the nicest factoids in my mind, in my life. We just let someone in who invented his own sport and kept records competing against himself, his past performance, his present performance. It was–get ready for this, visualize this—seat-less unicycle riding over broken terrain. If I had 10 lifetimes the plot of doing that wouldn’t occur to me. Aside from getting on a unicycle, let alone without a seat, let alone riding it over broken terrain. So they let him in because they knew he was on the fast track.

So we tell these lies and, of course, many of the people who tell the lie, believe the lie. Well surely they’re going to take valedictorians. Well, last year Harvard turned down eight out of every ten valedictorians who applied. And the two they took in, they didn’t take in because they were valedictorians. So by removing this component from the student imaginations y, u can control to some extent who even applies to Harvard and then who gets in. Because they don’t know what they’re doing. What’s the IT… “garbage in garbage out”.

Standardized Tests Don’t Matter

The evidence that all of us know standardized tests don’t measure what they claim they measure is that nobody, I mean nobody, that you encounter on the upper reaches of society would dream of hiring somebody on the basis of those tests or grade point averages. You’d be playing Russian roulette because they measure nothing. The grades largely measure that you memorize what you are told to memorize. I mean, there are a few other things but that’s the heart of it. So now you know you have somebody who’s obedient, and probably for a clerk that is a good measure. Not for someone who has to adapt to changing circumstances, you know, by the natural selection process of reality.

Schooled to the Point of Extinction

It’s fairly easy without being a wise guy or very learned as long as you retained the ability to think independently from the data in front of you, to penetrate the masks, the contentions that don’t conform to everyday reality. So no one will hire you as a CEO and ask you what your… but if you examine the data that’s available about big-time politicians. Now we have, and I don’t think it would surprise anybody, that George Bush, the most recent one was a C average high school/prep school and a C average at Yale. What does surprise people is that the candidate he ran against was a C average in prep school, in the C average at Yale, and the lower C average than George Bush. Kerry of Massachusetts. The best evidence that the nation has been schooled to the point of extinction is that they were fraternity brothers at Yale and I’ll skip its interesting reputation; it only has 15 members. And they were fraternity brothers at Yale. There’s 308 million of us! I mean, mathematically I wouldn’t know how to set the odds but they would be stupendous. No one mentioned it, or if they did it was to quickly get over that. That should have been headlines of the New York Times and the Washington Post. “Fraternity Brothers at Yale Run for President!”

Amish

What “Educated” Means to the Amish

By Terence Gillespie March 2, 2018

That the Amish have done so well puts a realistic base of possibility under the ideal of an independent citizenry as the proper goal of schooling. — John Taylor Gatto

This article is a summary of the Amish part of J.T. Gatto’s speech: “What Does ‘Educated’ Mean?” If you’ve got 90-minutes to spare, I highly recommend downloading the transcript and listening to the entire speech.

(Note: Rather than put everything in quotes, I’d prefer to make this article more readable by keeping John’s words in standard text. I have shortened and condensed John’s speech for quick reading but these are his ideas and words. I’m the beneficiary of John’s wisdom and experience while making them more accessible to other homeschooling parents who may be on the same path.)

The Lancaster Amish

The old order Amish are a group of 320,000+ well-mannered, prosperous, law-abiding people who came to America in the early 18th century with little more than the clothes on their back. Everybody’s heard about the Amish, but very few people know the astonishing details, and here they are.

Virtually every adult Amisher has an independent livelihood as the owner of a farm or a business.
There’s almost no crime in the community, no violence in the community, no alcoholism in the community, no divorce in the community, no drug taking. There’s a little bit of each of those things, but it’s so microscopic that when it happens, it makes the front page of newspapers because it just doesn’t happen.
They accept no government help with health care, with old-age assistance, or with schooling after the eighth grade, and for most of the century not even that. They were compelled by the government to accept 1 through 8 schooling.
The success rate of Amish in small business is 95% (the rate for non-Amish business is 15%.)
All Amish children have a chance to take an expense-paid sabbatical year away from Amish life when they arrive at the verge of adulthood. The Amish don’t want someone in the community who doesn’t want to be there… and that is a principal reason that this group has grown 3,000 percent in the 20th century.
Almost every group member, when interviewed by outside investigators, reports total satisfaction with their lives, whether they’re children or adults.

They don’t have high school educations, they don’t have specialized training, they don’t use computers, they don’t use electricity, they don’t use automobiles, and they don’t have training in how to create a marketing plan.

And yet, the resources that have transferred over from the farm are these: an entrepreneurial spirit, a willingness to take risks, innovativeness, a strong work ethic, a cheap family labor pool, and high standards of craftsmanship.

The Amish Fought the Law and the Amish Won

You can figure out a lot of what an Amish believes in education is from the things they fought the government about and won.

When the Supreme Court ruled they had to go to school from 1st to 8th grade, they were prepared, in mass, to go to prison unless concessions were made, and they won these concessions.

They demanded that any school be within walking distance of home, they would not allow their children to be carried on buses.
They refused large schools where pupils are sorted into different compartments and assigned different teachers every year.
They demanded that all school decisions had to be signed off by the parents.
They demanded a maximum eight-month school year.
They demanded the teachers who taught their children to be knowledgeable in, and sympathetic to, Amish values in rural ways. They refused to hand their children over to professional educators.
They insisted their children be taught that wisdom and academic knowledge are two different things.
They insisted that their kids have practical internships and apprenticeships supervised by the parents. They were prepared to go to jail and lose everything before they would surrender their children to any form of state indoctrination, called schooling, which would break up their families, their traditions, and their communities, and leave their children restless, trained to leap and jump but without purpose or direction not knowing where they would land.

An education to an Amish-er is being independent, living in a closed community, as a valuable neighbor, and living a godly life.

On the cusp of the 21st century where you and I are perched, it hardly seems possible for a definition of education like this to have survived and even thrived. Yet how can we explain the baffling Amish who do it their own way, in spite of expert advice, and have abundant prosperity and abundant happiness?

That the Amish have done so well puts a realistic base of possibility under the ideal of an independent citizenry as the proper goal of schooling. It’s something I hope you’ll think about.

Children

Transcript: What Does ‘Educated’ Mean? — John Taylor Gatto

By Terence Gillespie February 21, 2018

This transcript is of an outstanding speech given by John Taylor Gatto on what it means to be truly educated.

John gives his ideas on how education should be framed and what he thinks makes for an educated person. He also details the characteristics of both an Amish education and that of the best boarding schools in the country.

I’ve read most of John’s books and this speech is the best framing of what it means to be truly educated. For parents who want to get started homeschooling their children, this is the perfect place to start.

The transcript is ~11,000 words with the video running 1 hour, 17 minutes. The excerpts, below, are 1/10 of the whole transcript.

(Note: All text, below, is John Taylor Gatto speaking)

Challenge Assumptions

One of the universal marks of an educated man or woman is that they know how to challenge assumptions. They don’t believe everything strangers tell them.

10 Kinds of Awareness to Build On

In the beginning of planning a curriculum, I think you need to consider ten separate kinds of awareness around which self-knowledge and self-awareness are built. The first is a personal reality.

We all need to know as much as we can about our relatives and our ancestors. What were their cultures? What are their cultures? What’re their situations, their goals, their struggles? Then, you need to inventory, by carefully testing your own talents and weaknesses, your own limits that come from your biological and cultural heritage. You just need to get a kind of profile yourself. it doesn’t happen in a week or a month; it’s an ongoing thing. I probably spend a little bit of time every day, at an advanced age thinking, about every single one of my relatives and wondering what part of me I can feel in harmony with that particular person.

Then, you need to have an intimate knowledge of history. I think you need to know local history, regional history, national history, and global history. Starting about 1917, the teaching of history in the United States was systematically and deliberately destroyed so that you wouldn’t be able to step back from your own life and figure out what on earth is going on.

On the other hand, I have some good news for you. It’s a fairly easy and greatly satisfying thing to self-correct that. So, an intimate knowledge of history that would include political history, and cultural history, maybe the history of labor, the history of science and technology, and other relevant forms, that’s the second thing.

The Amish Example

The Amish are a group of 150,000 well-mannered, prosperous, law-abiding people who came to America with little more than the clothes on their back. So they didn’t have any contacts to make the way easy for them and they have been persecuted by the state of Pennsylvania, the state of Wisconsin, the state of Ohio for the whole century.

So everybody’s heard about the Amish, but very few people know the astonishing details, and here they are. Virtually every adult Amish-er has an independent livelihood as the owner of a farm or a business.

The Amish realized that new government schools were social separators built on the principle of mechanical milk separators. They whirl a young mind about until both the social structure of the parents and their coherent consciousness are fragmented. Schools separate children from their personal past and from the past of the culture.

Education, as the government called it, separated people from the daily content of life dividing the world into disciplines, courses, classes, grades and teachers who remain strangers to their children in all but name. Even religion in a government school, if it was mentioned, would be studied analyzed and separated from the family and from daily life. It would become just another subject for critical analysis. Specialists armed with books, separated from the Amish and culture and training, would be entrusted with rearing their children and would encourage their children to liberate themselves from the shackles of home. For what purpose? To jump where? In what direction? of course the school, after it breaks your kids away from you, has no idea.

Boarding School Model

Now let’s take a look at what the parents of the finest and most expensive private boarding schools in America want from schooling.

I’ve been studying their expectations for 20 years, now, in order to compare them with my own goals. And I think you’ll find this interesting even if you don’t agree with all of it. I’m talking about the twenty ritziest private boarding schools in America. Schools like Groton, and St. Paul’s, and Deerfield, and Kent. There are only 20 of them, and some of them say there aren’t 20, there are only 18.

But, I’m going to warn you in advance to take careful notice that none of the principles these wealthy parents seek costs the single penny to develop. I don’t think they know that. That everybody could do one or all of these things with their own kids just as well as Exeter or st. Paul’s could. And I’m going to give you these ideas in no particular order of importance. You decide which of these are important.

Elite private schools want their children to learn good manners and to display those manners to everybody, even the humblest person, without thinking about it. So their manners would be reflexive.

That’s because they know that manners will make their children welcome everywhere, even in strange settings where they’re not known, someone will recognize that this is a well-bred person. Now tell me, does it cost anything at all to teach people good manners? I run into ghetto kids who are as mannerly as anybody on earth.

Undiluted Hard Knowledge

The second thing elite private school parents want is hard intellectual knowledge taught to their children, undiluted; they don’t want it watered down. I never taught any kids younger than 8th graders. But I will tell you that we started in eighth grade with Moby Dick, and as soon as I found out that the school edition had all the hard words and ideas taken out, I just threw it away and went out and bought enough copies for my kids and myself with a real thing. I mean Moby Dick’s is as hard a book to read as I think exists. This is your tough book to read. And what I found was after an initial struggle, maybe it lasted two weeks, the truth is that the dumbest kid and the brightest kid were thrilled with all these ideas interacting with each other and they could see the difference between the plotline of hunting a whale and all the ideas that spun out of the interaction of the crew and the officers and the captain with each other. I mean, it was a thrilling thing to do and I the truth is by that time I had lived in New York for a while, I was tremendously bored with what they handed me to teach.

If you pick up a bestseller from 1818, that would be James Fenimore Cooper’s last of the Mohicans, and you make sure that it’s unexpurgated, you will find yourself struggling to read a book that’s casting off political and scientific and philosophical ideas. I mean you got to read about three pages before the arrow gets out of the quiver. That was a best-seller in 1818. It sold the equivalent of five million copies a book today. It would be an outrageous best seller. It was bought by dirt farmers, and it was read by their kids.

Learn to Draw

Not one of my favorite human beings but the reason Charles Darwin’s book made such an enormous impact was Darwin drew; there are thousands of drawings in the book. And they’re not Rembrandt, but they’re accurate enough that you can see what the thing is. So, developing the powers of accurate observation, it’s not a natural thing to do. We don’t naturally see what’s in front of us or hear what other people say, either. So, some emphasis on that.

Learn How to Handle Pain

This one is a big one: practice in learning how to handle pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, and intellectual pain. If you wonder where the tremendous American interest in sports came from it comes from the aristocratic boarding schools of England that it was translated over here it was done not to win a game but to get people familiar with the idea that pain isn’t very painful, unless you think it is. Otherwise, it just goes away.

What you learn from these things is that you do have, I’ll say the God-given internal resources, but these people knew that you had the internal resources to overcome these things, that it was only to the common people that they seemed impossible to do. Once you tried to do them, they were easy to do, or fairly easy as long as you were disciplined. As long as you understood there was danger, as long as you are confident in yourself. Well, you want those things for your children, anyway.

Homeschooling Hope

I’d say, just to swell your heads here, I think that the homeschoolers are the most exciting contradiction of the direction of the 20th century that I’ve ever heard, seen, or read about. That without the slightest bit of assistance you just grab your bootstraps and lifted yourself up and now that you’re you’re substantial enough all over that you can’t be pushed around so easily.

Children

The Adventures of a Homeschooling Dad Part 1: Reconnaissance

By Terence Gillespie January 20, 2018

Though satisfied with our children’s private school, three factors are motivating my wife and me to start looking into homeschooling, again. The Christian school our boys attend is having financial problems, their high-school is aiming towards the new common core SATs for college admissions, and SB-277 will soon involve our non-vaccinated boys.

None of these factors affect us, right now, making it the perfect time to do some reconnaissance. Even if the financial problems get resolved, and we find a way around SB-277, the intrusion of common core into the high-school is enough motivation, by itself, to start vetting alternatives.

What Most Traditional School Options Have in Common

What most traditional school options (public, private, and charter) have in common is common core. As of August 2nd, 2010, most states have adopted the common core standards (though12 states later introduced legislation to repeal their adoption.) In common core states, 100% of their public and charter schools are affected. Though optional for private schools, 50-60% of them have gone common core and, even those who haven’t, are aiming their high-school curriculum towards the new common core SATs in place as of 2016.

Whether your state is affected, or not, most parents must understand what the common core standards are to make an informed choice at the traditional school level.

The Case Against Common Core

Common core sets the standards so high; anyone can walk right under them. — Mary Galamia, Testimony to NY State Assembly

If you have your kids in public school you’re going to lose them. There is no safe place. It’s a hard lesson, but, there’s no safe place. If you want your kids to grow up with your values, if you want your kids to become good at stuff, not full of ideology, you can’t keep them there, anymore. There are no safe schools.” — Duke Pesta

Common Core — Six Years Later

You’ve heard the phrase, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging?” Common core digs you down three more levels. The ESSA act digs you down five more and then throws concrete over your head. — Duke Pesta

Standards, Assessments, & Curriculum Align

The principal sponsor and author of common core tell us that when we see the word “standards,” we should read “curriculum.”

Sponsor

When the tests are aligned with the common standards the curriculum will line-up, as well. — Bill Gates, 2009 (Before Common core standards were supposedly written)

Author

“Teachers will teach towards the tests. There is no force strong enough on this earth to prevent that. There’s no amount of hand-waving, there’s no amount of saying ‘they teach the standards, not the tests, we don’t do that here.’ Whatever. — David Coleman, Primary author of common core standards

How Christian Schools are Infiltrated

Figure out a way to put them in safe, private schools — because 50-60% of the private schools have gone common core — or homeschool them. — Duke Pesta

Prior to writing this article, I thought Christian schools were non-common-core “safe”. However, as of 2016, the SATs are now common core compliant. Private schools now claim they have no choice but to teach common core to prepare students for college admissions testing. Here’s the carefully worded way that’s presented to concerned (outraged?) parents:

“…private schools have flexibility when considering the Common Core (CCSS), and they are under no obligation to implement any piece that they do not feel best serves their educational goals … However, CCSS will have an impact on home and private education in expectations for higher learning. The CCSS emphasize college readiness, and agencies that administer national standardized tests used to determine a student’s readiness are rewriting those tests to align to the Common Core. One of the architects of the English language arts standards is David Coleman, the current president of the College Board. He is overseeing the renovation of the PSAT and SAT in both format and content to fully align with the CCSS. The redesigned PSAT will debut in 2015; the new SAT will be used beginning in 2016. These realities mean it is important for private schools to meet CCSS at a minimum to ensure their graduates will be successful in post-secondary school endeavors.

Translation: we had to go common core to help your child get into college.

If by “post-secondary school endeavors” they mean the usual commoditized degrees of sinking quality, then maybe not. Why enter into debt-slavery when ivy league schools are publishing their curriculums online, for free? Here are 24 free ivy league online courses you can take, today, for free.

Even for the usual university treadmills, the SATs are no longer the only game in town for admissions. Thanks to outraged parents, non-common-core alternatives for college admission testing are getting fast-tracked.

Goodbye SATs

When ACT and SAT chose to hitch its horse to the Common Core wagon, they may have doomed their futures in numerous states across the country. Without a significant reversal in policy, now-unknown alternative college entrance exams could rise to prominence faster than any test has previously been able to do in the history of U.S. education.

Hello Non-Common Core Alternatives

Vector ARC markets itself as a cheaper, better alternative to the SAT and ACT, and its creators claim it will only test students on the information they actually need to be successful in college and later in life, focusing heavily on the classical Western educational standards of the past. In another words, students won’t need to be in a classroom that teaches to a novel, highly technical test in order to successful. If students have the skills that have been considered essential for centuries in Western nations, they will do well on the Vector ARC test.

“At Vector A.R.C. we believe every student should be afforded a fair opportunity at college acceptance,” says Vector ARC on its website. “We don’t think students should be disadvantaged for not having studied in alignment with the Common Core State Standards. By offering an alternative assessment to both SAT and ACT, students who have selected an education not based on Common Core, will no longer be penalized in their college applications by being forced to take a test that aligns with [the Common Core State Standards].”

Charter School Myth

Parents often say, “Charter school” when the subject of common core comes up. It has a nice ring to it and the parents who say it probably think they “don’t have to deal” with common core.

Wrong.

For all the promised flexibility of charter schools, these public asset privatizations “must align with the Common Core State Standards..”

In short, the murky promise of privatization and the pleasantly sounding ring of “charter school” has given rise to the myth that they’re a non-common core option. They aren’t. Charter schools offer parents the illusion of flexibility while imposing the same mandatory common core standards.

How will Common Core affect Charter Schools?

Beware of Rebranding

Parental uproar has caused the peddlers of common core to rebrand it as “next generation” or just “standards.”

For a more honest rebrand, I would just tell parents to think of common core as, “Every Child Left Behind.”

Adventure Debrief, Part 1

My first reconnaissance adventure into homeschooling hit a roadblock right out of the starting gate in the form of common core (next generation, whatever.) I had no idea how bad it was. I also had no idea that it had already infected the private non-common-core Christian “safe” school our boys attend.

If our school doesn’t wake up and get off the common core track by realizing there are non-SAT alternatives for college admissions, we’ll have no choice but to pull the trigger on whatever alternative schooling options I can find.

For parents in non-common-core states, traditional school options are still on the table. Otherwise, the 40-50% of private schools that haven’t yet adopted common core are the best option at the traditional school level, in my opinion.

Underground History of American Education

For all the unexpected focus on common core in this adventure, this top-down, one-size-fits-all nonsense is nothing new when it comes to state involvement in education. I’m fortunate to have been prepared, in advance, for these challenges by the great teacher, John Taylor Gatto.

I read three of John’s books before our children were born. Given what I’ve just discovered, this homeschooling dad will be re-reading Gatto’s wonderful “Underground History of American Education”, “Weapons of Mass Instruction”, and “Dumbing Us Down” before embarking on the next adventure!