How A Steady Diet Of Standard Education Is Choking The Creativity, Health & Fitness Out Of Our Kids And What You Can Do About It.

In this episode of the Ben Griffin Fitness Show.

There are so many reasons we've chosen to avoid the institutionalized educational system. One of them is that it is very difficult to be a part of that system without sort of getting sucked in to what I sort of call like the culture of extracurricular. School is the advertising agency that teaches us that we need our society as it is. You know, we're taking kids at a very young age in the conventional school system and we are compelling them to be inside and basically set in for a huge part of their life.

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Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And as I've mentioned before before on a few podcasts, I was actually homeschooled my whole Life, K through 12. So I was pretty intrigued by a recent article that I read in Outside Online. I just want to read you a little bit of this article. It goes like this. In early September, in a clapboard house situated on 43 acres just outside a small town in northern Vermont, two boys awakened. They're brothers. The older is 12, the younger nine, and they rise to a day that has barely emerged from the clutches of dark. It's not yet autumn, but already the air has begun to change, the soft nights of late summer lengthening and chilling into the season to come. Outside the boys bedroom window, the leaves on the maples are just starting to turn. School is back in session and has been for two weeks or more. But the boys are unhurried. They dress slowly, quietly faded and frayed thrift store camo pants, flannel shirts, rubber barn boots around their waists, leather belt with knife sheaths. In each sheath, a fixed blade knife. By 6:30, with the first rays of sun burning through the ground level fog, the boys are outside. At some point in the next hour, a yellow school bus will rumble past the end of the driveway that connects the farm to the town road. The bus will be full of children. The boys age, their foreheads pressed against the glass, gazing at the unfurling landscape, the fields and hills and forests of the small working class community they call home. The boys will pay the bus no heed. This could be because they will be seated at the kitchen table eating breakfast with their parents. Or it might be because they're already deep in the woods below the house, where a prolific brook trout stream sluices through a stand of balsam fir, an old stone bridge abutment at the stream's edge, and the boys enjoy standing atop it, dangling fresh dug worms into the water. Perhaps they won't notice the bus because they're already immersed in some other project, tillering a long bow of black or starting a fire over which to cook the quartet of brookies they've caught. They heat a flat rock at the fire's edge, and the hot stone turns the fish's flesh milky white and flaky. Or maybe the boys will pay the bus no heed because its passing is meaningless to them. Maybe they've never ridden in a school bus, and maybe this is because they've never been to school. Perhaps they haven't passed even a single day of their short childhoods inside the four walls of a classroom, their gazes shifting between window and clock, window and clock, counting restless hours and interminable minutes until release. Maybe the boys are actually my sons, and maybe their names are Thin and Rye. And maybe if my wife, Penny and I get our way, they'll never go to school. Hey, a father can dream, can't he? Well, today I have that dreaming father on the podcast, and you're going to learn everything you need to know about this concept of unschooling alternative education models, sustainable homestead living, and a lot more. And even if you don't live in the sticks, you're going to get plenty of advice about how to raise your own children. Or perhaps help people around you raise their children to become more independent, free thinking, resilient kids who know how to thrive in unpredictable situations. My guest is Ben Hewitt, and Ben's the author of Adventures in Parenting off the Beaten Path, Unschooling and Reconnecting with the Natural World. I had a chance to meet Ben when he and I were both speaking at a food festival in Vermont last month. He's the real deal. His kids are the real deal, and I'm honored to have him on the show. Ben, how are you doing, man?

I'm great. Thanks so much for having me. And thanks for that great intro. I hadn't looked at that piece in so long, and it's kind of fun to hear you read it.

Yeah, it's always interesting to hear other people read Something that you've written?

Yeah. It's kind of surreal, actually.

Yeah, exactly.

I've always avoided it. My publishers generally send me the audiobook versions of my books, and I've never once listened to one because there's something that's just so surreal about thinking about someone else reading my work that I haven't been able to get my head around. But you did a great job. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah, it's strange. I'm actually writing a book of fiction right now that I originally started for my boys, but that I'm now publishing, and I'm recording the audio version. But it's very strange because my kids will open the phone and they'll sit there listening to the audiobook of me reading to them while I'm sitting beside them, not reading to them, letting the.

Phone do its job. One thing I've only just figured out as a writer. I know we're getting way off topic here, but at the same time, we're talking about writing. It's kind of interesting is that it actually is really beneficial to me. I found. I don't know what your experience is, but I found it's incredibly beneficial to me if I read my own work to myself out loud. And I've just started doing that in the last couple of years. And it's made a tremendous difference, I think, in the quality of my work and really allows me to catch a lot of repetitions that I might not otherwise catch or other just sort of awkward sentence structures. So if any of your listeners are actually writers, I really encourage them to try that. It actually makes a huge difference.

I completely agree. One of the best things, slash, most annoying things that I've ever done is to record book chapter by chapter as I write it, because I go through and do extensive editing afterwards when I realize I'm either A, not writing the way I talk, or B, you know, I'll use the word the two times in a row and never notice that until I actually read it.

Yeah, it's amazing the stuff that your. Your eye just does not pick up because you're assuming that there's something else there. You have in your mind, this idea of what's on the page. And so your eye does not pick up what's actually there sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. So you were just telling me before we started recording that you just kind of arrived back home to your Vermont homestead. And just to give us an idea about your life, tell me a little bit about your place and what a typical day looks like for you and Your family?

Sure, yeah. So our place is as you described in that little intro you read. We have about 43 acres. And after years of really struggling to define, I guess, or describe our place to other people, I finally sort of came up with a response. When people would ask me about our place, I'd say, well, it's like a turn of the century Vermont Hill Farm, just not the most recent turn of the century. So we live on a hillside. We have about 10 acres and pasture. I'm sort of looking out right now through the dormer. My desk is in a dormer in my office, and I can see out over a field, and I can see, you know, we have six cows grazing. I can see our blueberry patch. It's a really diverse place. We have a lot of different fruits and vegetables, a lot of different animals. We do a lot of work with the land, both in terms of animal husbandry, raising food, also producing our fuel in the form of firewood and saw logs. I have a sawmill and I. And I harvest saw logs. And so, as you might expect, I guess, from that description, our days are really what. Our days look like, are really dependent on. Are very seasonal. It's very dependent on season and what's happening in a given season. So. And actually, it's sort of ironic that we're talking about this because right now we're in the process of transitioning to a piece of land a few miles north of here. So a lot of my days are taken up by the actual act of building a barn and a house that we're working on right now.

Oh, so you're moving?

We are, yeah.

Yeah.

It's. It's. Yeah, it's quite. It's quite a process. It's a huge event in our life and one that we actually probably never expected would happen, but that also feels really, really healthy and really good. And we're transitioning almost all of our animals up there. It's going to be. We're going to do a lot of the same things, but on a different piece of land.

Cool. So as far as, like, how you make a living, is it all on this farm? I mean, obviously you're making some money off of the books that you've written. And incidentally, I know that this unschooling book, this book, Homegrown, that you wrote, that was one of your first titles, but you've since written another book, and that was the book that you were speaking about on the food festival about soil, correct?

Well, yeah, it's a book. It's actually it's called the Nourishing Homestead and it's a homesteading book with a focus. So one of the things that we really focus on here is producing what we term and what is relatively commonly termed nutrient dense food. And to us, that means a couple of different things. One, it means that we place a great emphasis on foods that are calorically nutrient dense in the form of high quality pastured animal products. But it also means that we do a lot of work with the soil to create the most biologically active and vibrant soils possible. With the idea being that creating biologically active and vibrant soils will create biologically active and vibrant fruits and vegetables, which theoretically will create vibrant human beings. So a lot of what we do is work with the soil. And I do. You heard me talk a little bit about some of that at the, at the Shelburne Farms event, but it's a broader book than that. It talks a lot about our work with livestock. We really, really value our work with animals. It's a huge part of our life and our work in other aspects of sort of providing for ourselves and for others in our community. We're not really. The notion of sort of the independent, self sufficient homestead is not one that resonates that much with us. We, I really believe in what we call interdependence with other people in our immediate community. So we rely on a lot of other people and I'd like to think that a lot of other people rely on us and that's a big part of what we're trying to do also.

Cool. What are your kids up to right now? If you had to hazard a guess while you're here recording, what are they up to?

Yeah. Our older son right now is at a week long wilderness camp, sleep away camp. So he's gone this week. And our younger son and my wife I know right now are up exploring an 11,000 acre wildlife management area that's right next to the land that we're building on. So they're scouting that for places for hunting and trapping and camping opportunities.

Gotcha. And your primary mode of living now is selling these foods and these things.

That you're farming, because I sort of glossed right over that. So I would say, you know, the bulk. So one thing that we really, that we, we endeavor to do always is to make money by not spending money. So that's a big part of what we do. So we pay ourselves to do a lot of the things that many people in contemporary American society pay others to do for them. So we produce about 90% of our own food. We produce most of our building materials, like I said, all our firewood. And we're doing the bulk of our building projects ourselves, although we do have a little bit of hired help, but, you know, so we're definitely do it yourselfers. And this enables us to subsist on, I think, what most people would consider almost an impoverishment level income. And that income I earned primarily through writing and speaking. Books are a part of it. Although I don't know what your experience has been as an author. My experience, it's really interesting. For years I wrote for magazines full time, writing my first book about seven years ago. And it's an interesting dichotomy, writing for magazines. I actually made better money. Writing for books has a little bit more cache and you get a little bit more attention. No one ever wanted to interview me when I was writing magazine articles, but the money is, at least for myself, is not good at all. It's very much subsistence level wages.

Yeah. It's kind of funny. People assume that if you're on Amazon and if you can find your book at the bookstore, you must drive a Ferrari. And I've definitely found that not to be the case. As a matter of fact, I think I made the least amount of money off a New York Times bestseller that I wrote just because once you account for the time and the fact that the publisher kind of gets most of the money anyways. Yeah, writing a book is more an exercise in spreading a message around the world, not getting a paycheck.

Yeah, totally true. And so I really like it. People seem to really understand it. Best if I draw some parallels to the music industry, where everyone seems to understand that there are a handful of really breakout stars and there are a lot of people who basically pay to play and there is a group in the middle. I sort of liken myself to the local rock band or the regional rock band struggling to sort of make ends meet playing like three gigs a week. You know, that's. That's kind of what my writing career looks like. That's not a lament. I think it's great. I'm super, super fortunate. It's just the reality. I did an interview on All Things Considered, which is sort of the holy grail, you know, for authors to get on All Things. All Things Considered.

Well, yeah, assuming we're not talking about the Ben Greenfield fitness show. Yes, right, right.

Sorry, yeah, present company. And our friend ran into my wife and said, oh, I heard Ben on All Things Considered. She goes, it must be at Least you'll be able to buy a new car now. And you know, it just doesn't work that way. It just. And I have to say, even I was sort of like, wow, this is going to be great. You know, this book's going to really take off. And yeah, there was like a week or two where the sales sort of surged and then it's just sort of, you know, leveled right out. And again, this is not a lament. It's just sort of that people understand what the realities of being a working. I call myself sort of a working class writer. That's essentially what I am. Most writers in this day and age, you know, they got a teaching gig or they've got some other side gig. I have one good friend who is also a full time working class writer. But for most of us sort of in that middle, that middle ground where we haven't really had a breakout book, but we are fortunate enough to be at least getting paid something. You know, there aren't many people sort of doing that writing solely for their.

So.

And I have to say I don't. I mean, I do do some speaking. I'm working on an online workshop right now that I'm co hosting with a friend. And like I said, you know, our food bill is minimal and a lot of other bills that people have. We don't have a mortgage. We were really fortunate to buy land at a time when land was inexpensive and we built our own place out of pocket. So a lot of the expenses that most people just sort of assume are part of contemporary American life, we don't have. And that's hugely liberating for us.

Yeah, our stories, or at least our current lives are a little bit parallel in that respect, in that we grow almost all of our own food here with the goats and the chickens and many, many raised garden beds along with land that we're fortunate to have plenty of wild edibles on. And when you get to that point, A, most of your food comes from the land and B, you spend very little time driving around, spending money on gas, spending time, spending time, which is money hunting down foods. And frankly, it's kind of a chore now for me to even get in the car and leave just because I can live up here.

Well, you bring up such a great point and actually I'll bring that right around to education for just a minute because. Because it is something I address, I talk about in the book in Homegrown and something that, that we sort of watch in amazement as. And really. Well, I mean, there are so many reasons we've chosen to avoid the institutionalized educational system. But one of them is that it is very difficult to be a part of that system without sort of getting sucked in to what I sort of call like the culture of extracurricular. And though I've seen how many families that just get totally pulled off their axis in really, really unhealthy ways and, you know, and maybe it's great for some families, I don't, I can't say that I, you know, that I, I don't know everyone's individual situation, circumstances, but I have seen how it. One thing it does is really pull people in a direction of just incredible busyness and hurriedness. No time to cook. They end up eating really poorly. They end up eating out a lot and eating low quality foods that are really, really expensive. And then all of a sudden wondering, you know, why on say, a $60,000 middle class income, they're struggling to make ends meet.

Yep.

You know, I mean, our income last year was $22,000 for a family of four. And we live really high on the hog on that kind of money. Yeah. You know, so these things, you know, one thing I find is like as soon as you start, you start talking about food and pretty soon you end up talking about economy and pretty soon you end up talking about education. And these things are all incredibly interconnected.

Yeah, I agree. I went through, through a period of time in my life from the time my kids were probably about four or five until the, until seven years old or the beginnings of seven years old, in which I felt compelled to go out and get the local sports camp magazine when it would come out and figure out which camp each week, how I could finagle the schedule to have my children in each camp and ensure that I could somehow almost like a UPS driver, planning their route, getting from the piano to the tennis to the gymnastics back to the sports camp, and ensure that my children were not falling behind in terms of the number of lessons and life skills that they were picking up. This, this summer in particular has changed dramatically for me in that my kids have been home for eight to 10 hours during the day almost to like an annoying extent. Right to where, you know, and, and what I've done. I'm. I recently posted this to Instagram. Now in the morning, I actually fill up an entire note card full of activities from the checkoff during the day. Everything from making paintball targets and practicing their target shooting to collecting three different plants that they've never seen before that we can identify in Wikipedia, to learning how to cook one new bug, to just everything that I can find for them to do simply because they are staying home and we're not chauffeuring. And to bring this full circle to how we got onto this. It's also very, very cheap. We haven't spent a great deal of money this summer, I can tell you that. Yeah.

Yeah, well, okay. There's so much there to sort of talk about and dig into, but I'll take the last one first because it's, it's sort of pertinent to our conversation about economics, which is that, I mean that in and of itself, in some ways is a contributing factor to our decision to keep our kids out of. Out of school. It really. I think it was Ivan, I never know if I should say Illich or Illick, but he wrote the book called Deschooling Society and he wrote, one of his quotes was. I might be paraphrasing here, but school is the advertising agency that teaches us that we need our society as it is. And I think that there's a lot of ways to unpack that. But in the context of economics, it is definitely, I think through this, particularly through the socialization aspect, the way in which our children are often first really exposed to sort of rampant consumerism. I mean, perhaps it comes even before that if they're born into a family where material consumption is the status quo or excessive material consumption. But, but you're right about it being really cheap. I mean, our kids are totally unselfconscious about the clothing they wear. I mean, in that intro I mentioned for this piece I wrote for Outside, I mentioned about the faded thrift store camo. I mean all those, with the exception of maybe like socks and the occasional piece of footwear, they pretty much. Or something that they've made or my wife has made them, they all come from the thrift store and they are completely unselfconscious. They would wear. My 13 year old son might be getting to a point where he might not be too keen to wear pink. He might have enough awareness at this point in his life, but that would have been very recent that he would have not worn a pink shirt. And he may still actually do it. So they just don't have this awareness because they're not just inundated and their desire. I'm not saying they never want things. I mean, they have very passionate interest in being on the land, in hunting and trapping and other wilderness skills and most. And our older son is an avid guitar player, so he does have some material desires around that, but they have zero desire for the contemporary electronic technological devices. And they really are not also in part because of that and because that's not part of their sphere, part of their world. They're not pulled into the mass media and the popular, the pop culture icons of the day. And so all of these things make them actually really cheap keepers. That's a great point.

I agree. The most expensive piece of technology in our homes that our children use are ipod shuffles, which I upload. I upload podcasts, Adventures in Odyssey, Sparkle stories, all sorts of little things for them to listen to. And that's about as techy as we get. And I will readily admit, because I know people are jumping through the airwaves right now screaming, oh, your children are going to be incompetent with the iPhone. They're never going to become app developers, and they're probably not going to know their way around itunes or Google all that well. And I will admit that that probably is the case. They're a little less handy with Google than the average child. But I'm thinking that they're going to be able to pick that up when they need to pick it up, because it's not rocket science.

Right. I agree with you on that. And I will also say that, you know, I hear this from people sometime, and if you, if you read through any of the comments pertaining to that outside story, you know, there are more than one or two people sort of leveling the accusation that we are not preparing our kids for the quote, unquote, real world. And my response to that is that, you know, what is this so called real world? Are there not innumerable versions of what the real world can be? I mean, I'm looking out my window right now, you know, across our sort of bucolic landscape here. And is there something unreal about that? It looks actually very real to me. And I would make, I'm prepared to argue that actually most of what happens in institutionalized educational setting is actually really very abstract and in some ways almost a parody of true meaningful learning. So much of it is based on memorization. So much of it is quickly forgotten. So much of it is simply utilized to get the student to advance to the next level. And then it becomes essentially meaningless. Most of it is taught outside the context of any kind of real world experience. And therefore there's no really sort of anchor point. This may not be true for every kid. So I want to make be really clear when I start talking about my issues with the contemporary mainstream school system. I don't necessarily think that every child struggles with these things. I think, though I do believe a majority of them do. And I also want to make the point, as we, before we get too much further into this, that in general, my experience has been that the people working in contemporary public school system are really, really good people who are extremely frustrated by the constraints under which they're working. In other words, the issue generally is not with the teachers and the people themselves, but it's a systemic failing of the system itself.

Yeah. And I do want to talk to you in a little bit about that educational model and about what some would argue is appropriate about that educational model. But before we get into that, I'm curious. I mentioned in the introduction I was homeschooled K through 12. And so for me, and we'll talk about this perhaps a little bit later, I no longer homeschool my children. I did for three years. But I'm very open to alternative educational models, probably because of my upbringing. Now for you, what was your upbringing like, particularly with regards to schooling?

Yeah, so I went to. I was conventionally schooled. I went to elementary school and junior high, and things did not become anomalous for me, I guess, until I turned 16, at which point I did actually drop out of high school. And I think some people assume that because I'm now a writer and maybe living in a way, or at least making my living in a way that seems to. I guess what I'm saying is people are often really surprised after they hear me speak or they read something I've written that I didn't finish high school. And sometimes I think that leads them to assume that I was an incredibly precocious, super brilliant kid who was just on to bigger and better things. It actually couldn't be further from the truth. You know, I dropped out of school primarily because it was getting in the way of my dope smoking and heavy metal listening. And so I spent a few years sort of kicking around doing carpentry. I was really into riding bicycles and skiing. I did a lot of that. I did eventually get my GED and go back and do a couple of semesters at the state college level. And but about the same time that that was happening, I was actually starting at that point to freelance write as an income stream and sort of realized that rather than go to school to learn how to freelance, to learn how to write for what I hoped would be income, I would just write for income. I would sort of send myself to school. And that's Kind of what I did. So I spent a lot of years kind of paying my dues in the freelance magazine writing world and eventually sort of worked myself to a place where I was writing full time.

Do you, do you think that you wound up. And I know this, this might be like kind of a little bit of a personal digging question, but do you think that part of your decision, and we'll get into that decision and how it's manifested itself, your decision to unschool your kids was influenced in any way by like bitterness or resentment towards the modern education system based on your experience there? Like, were you. Did. Did you experience issues with like peer pressure or abuse or things of that nature? Or was it really just basically you had your own, as you said, you know, dope and rock and roll going on and, and schooling just simply wasn't convenient for you?

Yeah, no, I mean, I did not feel like I experienced a lot of peer pressure or abuse beyond the abuse that I think in some ways inherent to the system. I mean, look, you know, we're taking kids at a very young age in the conventional school system and we are compelling them to be inside and basically sedentary for a huge part of their life and a tremendous amount of their waking hours. And then of course, if you start adding in things like commuting to and from school, that depending on your circumstances, we live in a rural area, so that's an issue. And you add in the extracurricular and the homework, pretty soon there's not a lot of time left in the day for anything but school related activities. So again, some kids love that and thrive in those circumstances. I was not one of them. And I know that there are a lot more that don't thrive than do thrive. At least my experience tells me that. So I have no doubt then that, you know, my experience, I mean, it would be, you know, I think, almost ridiculous for me to suggest that my experience in school did not and my relatively negative experience in school did not somehow inform my decision. Our decision. No question. No question. So, but, but I, you know, it's not a decision that we arrived at out of sort of spite or through angst or anger, I can tell you that. And I will say also I was going to say earlier in relation to talking a little bit about higher education, I think that there's a really important role that higher education has to play. I'm not sure that we as a society are utilizing higher education very well at this point, but I think for those children and young adults who have come to A place in their life where they are really, really passionate about learning something and have a really strong desire to learn something, I think. And specific skills. I mean, I think higher education can be incredibly, incredibly important and play a really important role in their lives and in their learning. So my indictment of school is not across the board. I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

Gotcha. Now, how would you describe unschooling? What is unschooling? For those unfamiliar with the concept? Yeah.

So there's a lot of ways to describe it. And I do talk a lot about in the book how I actually don't even like the term unschooling very much because I feel like it describes what we're not doing, but not what we are doing. So there's two things I like to say to help sort of describe what it is that we're doing, or at least trying to do, because Lord knows we're not doing everything perfectly. So I often talk about self directed, adult facilitated life learning. So that's sort of the wonky description of what we're doing. And usually by the time your eyes are glazing over. So that's, I guess, why the term unschooling has become popularized. The other thing that I like to point out is that I feel as if strongly, very strongly, as if compulsory institutionalized education does its best to make learning happen, whereas what we're trying to do is make room for learning to happen. And I think that that is a really, really important distinction. I also would like to point out before I forget, that I think that what we're doing, unschooling, taken as a sort of broad, sort of sweeping definition of self directed learning, could be done really, and is, I think, sometimes done really, really poorly. So there are a million different versions of how to homeschool or unschool your children. I mean, that's one of the things that's so great about it. The contemporary public educational experience is sort of to sort of relate this back to food and agriculture is kind of a monocrop educational experience. Whereas, you know, what we're doing is more of a sort of diverse permaculture educational experience, I guess. So that's one of the things really great about it. But that also does leave a lot of latitude, I think, for people to make really poor decisions about their children's education. And I think sometimes people hear a term like unschooling or they hear self directed and they assume that our kids have just like total autonomy to do whatever they want any Hour of the day, any day of the week, any week of the year. And in our family, at least, and I do know some unschooling families that do follow that protocol. If the kids want to stay up to midnight watching tv, they could stay up to midnight watching tv. If they want to eat ice cream for breakfast, they can eat ice cream for breakfast. That's not our style. Our style of. And I'll continue to use the term unschooling, even though I'm not super fond of it, but our style of unschooling is incredibly immersive. We are. We facilitate our children's learning all the time. We work with numerous mentors to facilitate their learning. It would be for us far, far simpler and easier to just put them on a bus in the morning.

Yeah, I agree. It does introduce a great deal of complexity and involvement. For example, when my children are not at summer camp from eight to five, and I have to either keep them entertained or educated and come up with creative ways to do so that cater to their specific interests during the day. And there is a great deal of work involved. I'm curious if you can give some concrete examples. You use the term. I don't remember exactly how you phrase this, but that you don't. You create an environment for them to learn rather than forcing them to learn. You said something like that.

Make room for learning to happen.

Yeah, make room for learning to happen. Can you give a couple examples of how you've successfully implemented that with your kids?

Absolutely. So one example, I guess, and this is going to involve their relationship with a mentor that's become a huge part of their life. So, for instance, when our boys first started getting in, I mean, this involves a lot of different aspects of educating our children in this style. So forgive me if I sort of get off on a tangent here, but I think it's all pertinent and all relates back when our boys first started becoming really interested in trapping, we were sort of dead set against it. So Penny and I, my wife and I had a presumption that. And just felt like this was not something we wanted them involved in. And we really put our foot down for actually numerous years until it became clear that this was not something that was passing. So this is another aspect, I think, of parenting and education and this style of education that can be really challenging for people, for parents, which is the ways in which it can sometimes force us to examine some of our own assumptions and to sort of, you know, venture into really uncomfortable territory. But so anyway, when we finally realized that this was something that like, you know, trying to squash this was, was just going to create a lot of conflict and a lot of sort of unfulfilled desire on their part to explore this more. We spent a lot of time seeking out a mentor who we felt could assist them and show them and teach them how to do this in a way that was as ethical and responsible and non commercial as possible. It was really important to us that they didn't enter into something like taking animals lives just to harvest a commodity product that they were going to sell for the greatest profit. And so we made room in our lives and again, part of this has to do. You know, all these things are so interconnected. Like we were able to do that Ben, and make room to find this person and then to bring him into our lives. And he eventually actually ended up coming and staying with us for a period of time. We were able to do that because we had structured our lives in a way that we could make room to allow that to happen. You know, we're not waking up in the morning and rushing out the door to two jobs and getting the kids off to school. You know, we're not rushing home from work to get the kids from one activity to another so they can get home and do homework. We're creating an environment day in, day out where our first priority in many ways is working and being able to facilitate not only their interests, but our interests. And one thing that's been really fascinating to me is the extent to which giving the kids and ourselves latitude to pursue their passions, making room for this learning to happen has provided opportunities, created opportunities for our own learning to happen. You know, so, and I mean that both from like in like a really sort of hands on way, like the kids have taught me so much about foraging. They know more about, I'm a halfway decent forager and I do a lot of mushrooming. But the kids are like they're in a whole nother frigging league.

You know, it's happening to me too. I'm amazed at their mental capacity for remembering flowers and stems and leaves and roots. Because now just the other day we were, we were walking through the canyon to plant a trail cam because we want to, we think there's a bear on a, on a certain section of our land. And as we walked back they began harvesting plants. And some of these plants I kind of sort of remembered having learned about them at some point in the past. But the boys were, you know, just, just right off the top of their head whipping out the Names, what they were going to use for later that day. You know, they're now making salads with all, you know, they'll take a salad and use eight different wild edibles in the salad that I've personally just kind of forgotten how to identify. And it really is amazing. I agree. And you, you touched on an interesting point, Ben, about mentorship. Mentorship and internships are not new when it comes to educating children, are they?

No, they're not. In fact, they have way more historical precedence than our contemporary understanding of what school looks like. I mean, these were children out in their communities, often alongside their parents, but sometimes not. I mean, that was how kids learned for hundreds of years before the advent of compulsory schooling. I mean, I think we sometimes forget that compulsory public school is a pretty new thing. I mean, we're a pretty new country, so there's that too. But. But it's really only since the early 1900s that we've had widespread compulsory public education in this nation. And there were people around for a lot longer than that prior to that, and children were learning alongside their parents and in their community. And I think one thing that's really interesting I've seen happen over the last, at least as long as I've been paying attention, it's probably been happening a lot longer than that, which is that the whole idea of sort of mentors and mentorship has really started to become something about children who have a particularly acute need. In other words, you can make a difference, mentor a child in need in your area. And I think that's. First of all, that's great in some ways, because any mentorship that these kids are getting is wonderful. But every child has, I think, a need to be, to have those experiences and relationships in their community. And you know that old saying, it takes a village. And I really think that's true. I wanted to make one point sort of back hearkening back to our conversation a little bit about, you know, making room for learning and how we as adults and parents end up learning alongside our children. You know, the real truth is I often feel like this is. This is actually not even often. I really feel like this is the truth. It's not that my kids, it's not my kids who need to be unschooled. I'm the one who needs to be unschooled in the sense that, like, I grew up inside that sort of institutionalized system. I was, I feel, I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten out of it when I did. But I think, I think we as parents are the ones who really need to be unschooled. And I say that because, in no small part because I hear all the time from parents who want to do similar things with their kids but simply don't have the confidence. They feel like, you know, oh, I don't know enough. I can't, you know, I can't teach my children. I'm just not capable. And it was Penny, actually my wife, who sort of pointed out, you know, where. And I was sort of saying, like, where does that come from? Why do we feel so insecure and, you know, incapable? And her point was, well, of course we do, because most of us as adults, we're sort of hustled through this system that ultimately takes learning out of our hands to a great extent. And so it's not really any wonder that we feel, you know, incapable and lacking confidence in this department. So I often, you know, I really feel like, you know, the term unschooling, when we use it to talk about children, particularly those children who've never been to school, is a little bit of a misnomer, and we should be thinking more along the lines of, okay, well, what do those of us who have gone through that system? What is it that we can be doing to expand our understanding of what education can look like and can be and feel?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And regarding the. The whole internships thing, that's. That's actually originally the path that I set out upon my. My parents, Similar to how. How you brought a mentor, an intern, into the home. My parents had a computer programmer come to our house four times a week and teach me computer programming and sit with me. And then by the time I was 16 and I'd graduated and I had passed through 12th grade and taken the required standardized testing for our state, which at that time was Idaho, they had set me up with a complete internship with a guy who. Who had retired from Microsoft at the time and was simply writing software and running a software programming business, and perhaps some would call it, rebelled at that point and requested that I accept the invitation of the local college tennis coaches invitation to go play tennis at the college. And so I wound up going to college and studying sports science and exercise science. And it all kind of turned out for me. But initially that was my path, was I was. I was going down the internship path in an internship of computer programming. You know, I know some people think of internships as things like whatever, horseshoeing or carpentry, but the fact is that. That you can do, you know, and this. And this was, you Know What? You know, 15 years ago that, that, that was something that, that was available and certainly there's even more opportunities now and, and with the advent of Internet and technology and things like the Khan Academy and iTunes University, many, many ways to do this. But I want to ask you, Ben, about a very simple question. Reading with no, quote unquote, formal education. Well, do your children know how to read? And if so, how did they learn to read?

Yeah, great question. Thank you so much for asking it. And it's actually kind of an important one because it was, their learning to read with no formal instruction was really a watershed moment for me. And we were just talking about confidence, you know, and I have to admit there was, there have been times throughout the history of our, this experience with our children when I have certainly lacked some confidence and question what we were doing. And the fact that they were not learning to read and reading at an age that would be deemed sort of appropriate were they in public school was definitely one of those times. And so our older son learned to read at about eight and a half. Our younger son learned to read shortly after he turned nine. Our experience with both them was that they went from basically not knowing how to read or at least claiming we're sort of suspicious because we've always read aloud to them a lot and they really like to be read aloud to. So we're a little suspicious that they maybe knew how to read before prior to actually admitting it because they just, they were afraid we were going to stop reading aloud. And in fact we still nightly have a family read aloud session. So even at ages 13 and 10. But anyway, so they went from basically not learning how to read or at least claiming they didn't know how to read to reading adult level books in each in the span of, I don't know, I don't want to exaggerate here, so I'm going to say a couple months. And I think, I think the reason for that is that they were just developmentally ready. I think the kids in the school system are often pushed very, very hard and beyond what they're developmentally ready for. And you know, not related to that is I think that's why we see such an increase in learning, quote, unquote disabilities and also in conditions such as ADD and adhd. But that's maybe a conversation for another day. And so how did we teach them how to read? Well, we did not do any formal instruction and we never sat down with them and said, you know, this is a vowel, this is a consonant, this is what this sounds like, et cetera, et cetera. All we did was surround them with books and with reading, and we read for. And really tremendous credit to my wife, who had way more patience for reading aloud than I do. And she would read literally for hours when they were young with them on her lap. And the closest we got to formal instruction was anytime when they got to an age where it seemed like they were maybe starting to follow with their eyes along the page, she would just take her forefinger and just trace the words that she was reading across the page so that they could sort of match up the sounds that were coming out of her mouth was what they were seeing on the page. And that was it. It's interesting.

I actually. Sorry to interrupt. I've been doing the same thing with my children with music. When I'm playing my guitar, singing to them, I point out the notes. And even though they're taking piano lessons now, it helps for them to be able to associate sounds and movements with the symbols that are on paper that are associated with those. And it's amazing how quickly they pick up on. On the difference between a quarter and a half note and the difference between an A and a G just based off of where it lies on a page and the sound that's coming out of your mouth or your guitar or the piano.

Right. You know, and I like to say, I think. And I really feel like this is true. I mean, you know, clearly there are exceptions to this rule. There are children out there who do have very specific challenges with certain facets of their learning who this may not work for. Although I. I think also very clearly that that's a very much a minority of children. I think. I think the overwhelming majority of children, you essentially can't stop them from learning how to read so long as you are providing reading material to them. So, you know, we talked a little. I was talking a little bit earlier about, you know, the ways in which this could conceivably be done really poorly and to the great detriment of the child. And I think one of those ways would be if you were doing this in a home where books and exposure to, you know, other forms of art and just things of objects of beauty which just wasn't available, that would be a way that this could potentially be done really poorly. So there's that. But, yeah, so I think that learning how to read is as natural to the overwhelming majority of children as learning how to walk. And I actually think. And some people. You know, I've had people say to me well, but, you know, you're cheating them out of all those years. They could be learning to read a 5 or 6 if they were pushed. And you're cheating them out of all those years.

What?

I believe it's actually exactly the opposite, Ben, because I think what happens when children are pushed like that is that it just turns them off so much and they don't develop that lifelong love of reading. My children are voracious readers. They read, on average, not so much this time of year because it's high summer and there's lots to do outside, but in the winter, they read literally hours per day each, and we couldn't stop them if we tried, you know. And so I think, you know, every parent knows what's the quickest way to get your child to hate a particular food? Well, it's to force them to eat it. And I really believe that the same is true of learning.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, obviously you are well aware of many of the. The disagreements that people have and the arguments that people have against the concept of unschooling. For example, some people will say, well, I don't live on a farm like Ben Hewitt, or I don't live out on the acreage in the boondocks like Ben Greenfield. And so I can't just put my kids outside and have them learn a great deal about the world around them. And if I tried to unschool them, they'd be running up and down the apartment stairwells in Brooklyn where we live, or something like that. So what do you say to folks who may not have these wide open expanses and things like farms and homesteads? What can they do?

Well, I will say, the first thing I'll say is, oh, people who live in urban environments who are following a similar educational protocol. And so I think, as I said earlier, I think there's a different. There's a million different ways. There's more than a million, because there's more than a million families in the world. But there's, you know, there's a million, at least a million different ways to do this form of, this style of education, to practice this style of education it does. Living on a farm or in the boondocks is not a prerequisite. And so I know families in urban environments, and in some ways, actually, I see the ways in which these families are advantaged because they have much more exposure to greater diversity of culture, race, ethnicity, etc. Etc. They have exposure to resources like museums and huge libraries. There are a lot of actually advantages to being in a more urban environment, there are generally larger communities of families doing similar things educationally. So they have potentially more opportunities to connect with other people on a similar journey, which is, I think, great and really important. You know, I think there are circumstances, again, where it wouldn't work that well. I had a really interesting conversation on an airplane with a gentleman I was sitting next to and he was just really chatty, and I'm really chatty. So we just got to talking and pretty soon we were talking about education and I was telling about what our kids do, and he had grown up in the projects in Chicago. And he said, you know, he's like, what? That sounds great. He goes, but where I came from, school was our only way out, right? And that was really sobering for me to hear because I do live in this sort of like bucolic, self imposed exile, you know, where like, we have this amazing spread, we have all these choices at our fingertips. We can do all this great stuff. We're not, monetarily speaking, we're not particularly privileged, but we're privileged in so many other ways. And so it's really important and was really great for me to sort of get that reality check that that is really true for some people. And what that really makes me think about is not so much about our education specifically, but now you have to start talking about a much larger conversation about why we have created and how we have created society, a society in which for a certain subset of the population, that's their only option.

What do you think are acceptable options that, like, for example, in that outside online article that you wrote, you mentioned Waldorf as an educational model? I know some people are into Montessori schooling. Do you have any forms of alternative education models that you particularly respect or admire or think are good solutions?

I can't say that I'm gonna. I'm prepared to. I don't. I can't say first of all that I know enough about any of them to really sit here and endorse or, or denigrate any of them. So my experience primarily is with the public education system. I Waldorf, as I wrote in that article and in the book, was not never really a consideration for us, in no small part because of cost. And I. And I ass the same would largely be true of Montessori. I suspect that these options would be preferable to most contemporary public school institutions. But for us, you know, we just really wanted the autonomy that can only come of doing it the way we're doing it. And I feel like even. And you know, we know plenty that Waldorf. There's a very vibrant and active Waldorf school around here. We know plenty of people. We have friends who send their kids there and whose kids really seem to enjoy it and thrive there. From my vantage point, I still would not be comfortable with simply the extent to which school, as an institution, takes over your life. I mean, I just see the extent to which that becomes a huge part a part of their life. And they're. In some ways, it's admirable. They're obviously really committed to it, but it doesn't make room for much outside of their school commitments. Now, there's a flip side to that, which I think is really interesting and in some ways is an endorsement of that type of schooling, which is. I also see the ways in which really vibrant and interdependent and interconnected communities spring up around those schools. And that, I think, is really interesting. And that's one thing. You know, school has become such a foundational aspect in contemporary American society that for a lot of families, it forms a default community. And we could argue about whether that's good or bad, but it's just true. And so part of what we've had to do as part of our facilitation is really work to create community for our children. And that's something that. I think it can be really, really challenging for parents to choose this path. And that's probably particularly true for those of us in rural areas.

How have you done that?

We've done that by being the host of a regular group that meets here three out of four seasons, summer being the season when most of our friends are. Got way too much other stuff going on to commit to that. But. And we've done that again through you know, regular facilitation of mentorships with our kids and other sort of relationships in their community. I mean, one of the. One of the advantages that I feel is really important to this style of education is that it provides much more opportunity for our children to develop, cultivate relationships with people in our community who are not necessarily their peers. I mean, school really age segregates children in a way that I think is in some ways really unnatural. I mean, that's not really how the world beyond outside of school operates. And so our children, in large part, again, because we've made room for them to have these experiences, have developed these relationships with mentors who are in their 20s, 30s, and even older, and also with other people in their community. In our community, if they had been in school or if they were in school, they just simply wouldn't have time to develop these relationships.

Now, do you find that your children, because they're gaining the ability, perhaps at a faster rate than their conventionally schooled counterparts, their ability to interact with mentors, with people who are older, do you find that. That they tend to be arrogant or aloof or standoffish or have difficulty being team players when around children of their own age?

I haven't had that experience. I'm trying to think, well, there's a.

Reason I asked Ben.

Yeah, no, I think.

And it's because that was something that I personally dealt with and that I had a hard time with and still do. I grew into a great independent thinker and leader being homeschooled myself, K through 12. And even though my parents did go out of their way to put me into peer situations, such as team sports or clubs, I still found that when placed in environments where I was surrounded by peers, either in work situations or team sports situations or whatever, that unless I was in a position of leadership and leading others, I tended to not, shall we say, play with others quite as well as some of my conventionally schooled counterparts. And I'm just curious if you've noticed that among other kids who are unschooled or homeschooled.

You know, I really. I have to say I haven't. And one of the things I've noticed with our kids that is really a wonderful thing to me and to my wife is their willingness to work with kids who are much younger than themselves. So. And I think that's a direct result of them having been received so much tutelage and guidance from mentors, not in sort of a, you know, I mean, school is such a. It's such a hierarchical relationship between the teacher and the students. And in some ways, I think that that's important. I think, you know, children need to understand the times at which it's important to acknowledge that adults are in control and should be in control. Right. But I also think so often that relationship among teacher and student in the institutionalized system is not one of mutual respect. So I think that even though I do believe in a certain hierarchy in terms of children understanding when it's important to do what they're told and as they're told, I also believe in a tremendous amount of mutual respect. And that's been our experience, at least with the mentors that we sought out, which is that they are incredibly respectful of our kids, even as they seem also very capable of sort of, I guess, the shorthand term. Would be putting them in their place when need be. So our kids are, I have noticed this over and over. Really, really patient and tolerant and generous with younger children particularly.

I've found that kids who are homeschooled make great babysitters.

Yeah, right. I will say that our kids haven't expressed an interest in team sports. So we haven't had the experience of them being part of a baseball team. And your question is really interesting to me because I don't, and I guess I don't have a great answer other than. And I haven't seen it. But I also, you know, we haven't been in situations such as a team sport. I suspect, you know, that my, I mean, there is. I think your point is really pertinent, which is that this, A lot of what we're trying to teach our kids is to be really resourceful and to be really critical thinkers. And I talk about this actually in the book. You know, it's really common. I remember my wife and I having this conversation years ago and just being like, why the heck are they always questioning us? You know, she goes, well, listen, you know, why should we think. We are constantly sort of teaching them to think critically and not to just sort of accept the status quo. Why should we believe that they are going to not turn that critical thinking on us? And it's totally true. You know, in some ways, this is one of the more challenging aspects, I think, of this, of raising kids who are really critical thinkers is sort of acknowledging and realizing that they are at times going to turn that critical thinking on you. And so I do wonder if they were placed in a situation where there were these sort of hierarchical rules handed down from above that might seem pretty arbitrary to them if they would be a little bit like you're talking about. I don't know. It's a fascinating question.

There is a, there's. There's almost a hybrid model out there popularized, I believe, initially by Seth Godin, who, who I think he did a TED Talk or he was on a. He had some kind of an interview or somewhere. He expressed the fact that he. He was not a huge fan of modern public schooling or a college education. And then you then he kind of said that, or he almost retracted that statement. And I may not be getting the story 100% correct, but regardless, this is kind of the model, retracted that statement, expressing that perhaps it is good in some situations for our children to be in environments during the day, surrounded by peers, in what some might call a factory worker setting. If you were to look at it in that light. Some people might look at it more in the light of learning how to cooperate well with others who are in your peer group setting, but ultimately to have a model in which they spend some of their day in that setting, surrounded by peers, learning how to cooperate with peers, and learning in an environment that might be very much like the environment they'd be in were they to work for whatever Google or Apple or any other organization which they're, they're surrounded by their peers working and then as another part of the day to put them into this environment where they are being unschooled, where they are being homeschooled, where once they're home from school, your job as a parent is to be ready to drop everything for the next, you know, three or four or five hours and get them out into the world, onto the farm, out into the streets, you know, out exploring and satisfying their own creative yearnings and et cetera, and to kind of do the best of both worlds, so to speak. When you hear about a model like that, what are your thoughts?

Well, my thoughts are that perhaps it has some merit, but also that the way our educational system is structured right now, it would be incredibly difficult to accomplish. And not just our educational system, but our entire economic, cultural system, because to do so would require again, a level of engagement and facilitation by the parent that is really, really, really difficult to accomplish in the contemporary model in which in so many cases both parents work full time jobs just to make ends meet or are otherwise distracted by other interests. So I don't know. It's an interesting thought. Seth is definitely, I've read a little bit of stuff and he actually read, we had a little email exchange because he'd read the outside article and was kind of intrigued by it. And he's clearly very sympathetic to the notion of what we're doing or this style of education. And I hadn't really heard anything about this idea of this hybrid model.

I mean, it's one that I think may not be scalable as you've alluded to. Right. It's not like the answer for education because it does require, well, it requires a certain model at home to where both parents are at home. It also requires a schooling setting, in my opinion, that still doesn't allow for. And obviously there are a ton of things in your book that we haven't really touched, touched on much. And one is the inactivity component. Right. The problem with schools that you're simply sitting there all day and even with that model of having children in a situation where potentially they're getting that positive peer interaction. Right. That ability to cooperate, that ability to be in a good way, a good little factory worker. Right. Because in some ways not being able to be a good little factory worker has actually come back to bite me in the butt many times in my life. Sure, but, but yeah, you, you still have to have a schooling model in which kids are using, you know, stand up desks and getting outside all the time and, and being able to fidget and being able to think outside the box and not being thrust into a, necessarily a sit down formal educational model. So yeah, I would agree that it's not scalable. But you know, the reason I ask is partially selfish because it is kind of like what I'm trying to set up for my kids. Like I'm, I, my kids are going to a school on 120 acre campus where they have rowing and shooting and huge nature trails where they'll read a book, but the book is actually set up on a nature trail where they're actually walking the trail and reading sections of the book and they're allowing me to purchase stand up desks for the classrooms. And it's very kind of outside the box thinking, but again, not scalable. But it's the model I'm trying to use and I just wanted to kind of hear what you're thinking, what your reaction was to that type of, type of thing.

Well, I guess my reaction is like it sounds like it could be a beautiful thing, as many aspects of your children's school sound like they could be beautiful too. And yet, and I think that there are a whole host of potential quote unquote solutions. I guess here the problem is, as I see it anyway, is that what I, the only thing I really hear about education coming out of Washington or any of our, from any of our so called leaders is sort of leading us in the other direction. I feel like we are obsessed with our children's ability to compete on a global stage. And we do not take nearly enough time to stop and think about what all of this competing for resources is doing to our biosphere. So that's a whole other conversation that really maybe someday is worth having because that itself forms some of our backdrop, context and backdrop for why we're doing what we're doing. We want our kids to understand and really feel their relationship to the natural world and to their community and to the greatest extent possible, not feel as if their life is all about a scramble for resources and hoarding resources. And so When I hear talk of education in this country is the same old story of getting our kids to be able to compete on a global stage and how the US Must retain its economic might in order to retain its place in the world. And it's all about competition. It's. It's all about achievement vis a vis education, income and so on and so forth. And really, in my opinion, not really about developing children who are emotionally, spiritually, and perhaps even physically vibrant and evolved. Ben, now, there are exceptions. I want to. And this is actually what I wanted to say. It's like, you know, I've spent a lot of time here indicting the school system, and I want to say that there are exceptions. I also want to say that I think parents can remediate a lot of the issues with public school because I think a lot of parents don't have the choices that we have to do what we're doing. And so they may feel sort of stricken. And I know this to be true because I hear from these parents and I think your point about trying to create opportunities outside of school, you know, and I guess what I want to say is, if you're listening to this and your kids in school and you're thinking, you know, now thinking, oh, my God, what am I going to do? You know, your child is not necessarily ruined for life. There are some amazing, great people, children, young adults that come out of the school system. I do think it's really important, just as you were sort of mentioning earlier, Ben, to sort of try to create those opportunities to make room for learning to happen, to give your children some time, just time to appreciate the world and community around them and to engage and interact with it. I think that's really, really important.

What do your kids want to be when they grow up?

You know, it's funny, when I did that article for Outside, they did a little Q and A with the kids and they, they. I can't remember the exact phrasing of the question or, or the phrasing of the answer even, but basically it was sort of like, you know, what do you want to do for work when you grow up? And our kids were like, work. You know, we just want to. We just want to live our life. We don't want to be defined by our career. And I think. Well, I think two things. One, I think they're 10 and 13. So I think that anything they say or about what they want to do or be when they are adults is highly subject to change. And I also think that they have seen that Penny and myself have worked really hard to forge a meaningful way of life for ourselves that doesn't fit very neatly into any of our contemporary understandings of what it means to sort of like have a career and, you know, even sort of live the quote unquote, American dream. Right? I mean, which is in and of itself kind of, I think, a very flawed term. I mean, I think there's plenty of room for a whole lot of different American dreams. But. So, you know, I guess if I asked them now, I think they would say that they want to live off the land, that they want to live in the woods somewhere, and they want to work in some capacity in the wilderness, whether that means some sort of subsistence living by hunting and trapping and maybe maple sugarin or whatever. And maybe that's what they end up doing. And if that's what they do, I would be ecstatic. I mean, really, I try and I talk about this in the book quite a bit. I think as parents, it can be really damaging to become too attached to any particular outcome for our kids, you know, and that the more specific our dreams for them become, the more likely we are to become disappointed. Because in my experience, our children are always going to surprise us. And so I'm open to a whole host of options for them myself. You didn't ask what I want them to be. And I'm sort of glad because I think in many ways it's not my place to want them. You know, I want them to have, I hope for them to have a meaningful life, whatever that looks like. And I think one of the things that we has been really fortunate to have had exposure to a lot of really interesting people who are living lives way outside the sort of mainstream American experience. And again, that sounds a little cliched. So I guess I'll unpack that a little. And one of those people, for instance, is the mentor I spoke of earlier, who lives most of the year in a four season climate in a wall tent, often embarking on two or two weeks snowshoe expeditions in the middle of winter across the landscape, living only on the animals that he traps and hunts. And he lives a very sort of indigenous Native American life. And to the extent that one can do so in the 21st century. And you know, he makes birch bark canoes, he makes his own, his own clothing, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm just so grateful that we have had such that kind of exposure and that, you know, we even like that we even have an awareness that such a thing is possible. Right. And I would love for my children to have as much awareness about that. Their life is in their hands as possible. And, of course, that cannot ever be completely true. We're all sort of connected to forces beyond our control. But I also think that there's a lot of room and a lot of different ways to live a really, really meaningful, fulfilling life that look, I think, radically different than what most of us have come to understand.

Yeah, I agree. And despite my initial dreams of my children perhaps playing doubles tennis at Stanford and going on to become professional tennis players, and they still do quite a bit of tennis and have tennis posters all over their wall, et cetera. One wants to be what he calls a drawer or an artist, and the other wants to be a farmer. You know, it's one of those interesting things where they're being sculpted to a great extent by what they experience in life, because we spend a lot of time here creating and now farming. And they're seeing that. And what they see is that that provides a meaningful contribution to the world.

Yeah, and you bring up sort of a great point, perhaps. I didn't mean to. I hear all the time from, you know, from people. Aren't you worried about the opportunities that they are missing out on by. Or aren't they missing out on opportunities by not going to school? And the only honest answer is, of course they are. No parent anywhere can say that their child is not missing out on certain opportunities. This world is an incredibly rich and diverse place, and you cannot expose your child to everything in the world, no matter what. So, of course, my child, where they are and how they pass their days, of course that's going to inform what they become and how they live their lives. It would be dishonest of me even to suggest that it could be otherwise. And the same, of course, could be said for children who go to school. Well, okay, so, yes, my kids are missing out on certain opportunities, just as kids who go to school are missing out on certain opportunities. So there's no way to say otherwise, I think. You know, and I think acknowledging that and realizing that. And I think actually the irony is, in many cases, the more we try to expose them to all these different opportunities, the more we sort of overwhelm them and their lives become so caught up in the assumed hecticness and busyness of our contemporary society that they really don't have opportunities to just sort of drop in and immerse themselves in their environment and in those things that really do call to them. So I think in our attempt, a really sort of well meaning attempt to expose our children to as many things as possible. We risk, I think, overwhelming them.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what, Ben, you and I could probably talk for a very long time. I hadn't realized before our call kind of how much we kind of have in common until we started talking. And it's just fascinating. And first of all, if you're listening in, please read both of Ben's books if you get a chance to. They're both fantastic. One, the Nourishing Homestead and the other Homegrown. The Homegrown book is more on unschooling and the Nourishing Homestead more on, well, it's entitled One Back to the Land Family's Plan for Cultivating Soil Skills and Spirit. Ben also mentioned the book Deschooling Society and I'll link to those books and other resources that we talked about over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com unschooling that's bengreenfieldfitness.com Unschooling and if you have your own thoughts, questions, comments, feedback, etc. Just leave them there in the show notes. And I read all of those and I'll reply to them in due time as I go through them. And also, Ben, you've been very generous with your time today and I know you probably have a ton going on there with the homestead and your speaking and your writing and managing your kids and everything else. So I'm very grateful for you coming on and sharing all this with us.

Well, thanks for your interest and it was great conversation. I really appreciate. Yeah, you asked some great questions and I really appreciate it.

Awesome. All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and of course Ben Hewitt signing out again. You can access the notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com unschooling have a wonderful week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to Ben Greenfield for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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