Socratic educator Michael Strong with father Ryan Nohea Garcia

It's my turn in the back seat in the parking lot.

There we go. I see you've got your Second Verse of the ABCs t-shirt on.

Yeah, I'm always trying to represent.

Excellent. So yeah, yeah, I'm interested to know to what extent and in what ways you or you and Marlo are kind of engaging Alana in intellectual dialogue and getting her to think. And we haven't touched base on that side of things for a while, so love to kind of hear your experience of interacting with her conversationally.

Well, um, we talked to her about everything. If something pops up on a show or on a podcast or on a commercial, or randomly we pass by something— could be something, I mean, a common circumstance is we'll be walking down the street and there's some homeless person drooling on themselves with a needle on the ground. So we talk about that. There may be a movie or a TV show and there's a battle. So we talk about what's war. So we try and answer it plainly and honestly as we can. And if we don't know the answer, we Google it. Um, we whip out the phone and we find out. If I can't explain something to her well enough that I could use that same explanation to an adult, I look it up. We talk about it. I try and show her what I don't know, what I learned. We just try and be honest about it and give her information.

Wonderful. And what's the pattern of you asking her questions versus her asking you questions? And when you say you engage her in conversation, do you guys initiate questions? Does she? Or is it pretty mixed?

I would say mixed. Alana does a really good job asking questions. If she doesn't know something, she pipes up and asks. I think that we've encouraged that. We always, we always want our children to ask us questions. Um, you know, uh, and as, as she gets older, she asks more and better questions. Um, and we found out too that if we don't tell her stuff, if we don't bring it up, or if we don't honestly address certain issues or certain questions or topics, she's going to find out about them on her own. She's pretty smart. Um, I'd say the subject that's been the most difficult for Marlo and I to just explain to her or give her information about would be anything sexual in nature. Not that we're trying to do some Puritan shield her from the truth type thing, but I guess we didn't think that 5 or 6 was when you had to start talking about birds and bees. But something that we take for granted too is that we don't live, you know, she's not growing up on a farm. She's not seen birds and bees in action, animals and whatnot, to at least, I don't know, explain the basics or what are these genitalia for. So that's when we just had to talk about it. She pieced it together on her own. She thought that when people kiss, they share DNA and that's how babies are made.

Not a bad hypothesis.

Yeah, it's pretty close.

So, you know, sometimes you hear about kids asking questions and parents shutting them down. Do you think that a big part of the pattern of interactions is that Unlike maybe some parents who don't always, um, respond, that you guys are both always on the ball to give her responses to any questions she asks?

Yes, and we have to be because that's the only means by which we communicate with her. We don't hit her or threaten her or tell her to be quiet or tell her that there are certain topics that are, uh, beyond the pale and are not for discussion. Um, you know, growing up in Hawaii, there's a— it's a real context-based society, it's kind of passive-aggressive for a lot of different reasons, and there are some virtues to those things, but she's not growing up there. So she's not, you know, she doesn't know anything unless it's shown to her or explained to her. So we really try and keep that in mind, and, you know, we just have to talk to her about it, even if it's hard for us or it forces us to reconsider. There just isn't a time where we say, no, don't ask, none of your business. Not yet, you're too young. We always try and address things head-on.

Do you do anything that might be described as sort of Socratic where you ask her questions and get her to think?

Yeah, at times, especially like on— like if there's a topic on a podcast that I think is like relevant to her that she doesn't know much about, um, we'll bring it up. Um, I'll often engage her in Socratic dialogue on things where she's so sure of Like, she's so sure she loves school. I'm like, why? Why don't you quit school? Have you ever thought about it? Think of all the things you could be doing with your time. And she just won't hear it. She is, I love school.

Got it, got it.

But that's where we try and push her is that whenever she thinks like something is so crystal clear, we try and show her how complicated it can be.

What's an example of a podcast um, where you might have questioned her on it?

Oh, a lot of topics come up on whether it be a Rogan podcast, even a story podcast, like some of the kid podcasts. Like we're listening to one right now, it's about— and I wouldn't say it's for children, but it kind of is— it's about the, uh, first moon landing. It's like a 13-part— I think it's a BBC podcast about going to the moon. And so I'd ask her, it's like, hey, do you, do you know that, you know, that's like probably the greatest achievement in mankind is going to the moon? She's like, yeah. I said, do you know, like, they basically did it without computers? She's like, well, how do they talk to each other, with phones? Like, no, there's not phones. So we kind of get into that. Um, other topics that may come up, like Joe Rogan talks a lot about hunting, and I'll ask if she knows much about it, and she doesn't, and we talk about it. And then I'll tell her that I grew up hunting, and she thinks that's cool, so we talk. But, uh, you know, podcasts, they really hit a lot of subjects, so it It's, it's, it's always a good opportunity to talk about something.

It sounds both as if you're very interested in her world, but also she's very interested in your world.

100%. She wants to be in our world. She wants to know everything. She wants to do— to learn what we've learned and do what we do. You know, she sees that I'm running a couple of businesses and there's ups and downs there, and she's always trying to find a way to do something. She's making an art a poster for something, coming up with new ideas to sell something. Um, she's also very artistic. She loves just producing art. She loves holidays. She's actually criticized me of late for not being sentimental enough, although it wasn't the word she used, that I don't, I don't like holidays enough is the way she put it, because that's kind of true. Like, they come, they go, I pay no mind. And she was— Fourth of July, so the night before Fourth of July, she blew up some balloons which I had to tie because she can't tie it yet. And then she wrote, "Happy Fourth of July to Dad and Mom." She gave us balloons for Fourth of July because we hadn't done anything for the holiday.

Now that's great. And what I really like about it too is the, uh, it's very sweet and charming, but I really like the fact that she has her own opinion and she asserts her own opinion vis-à-vis the two of you. Um, you know, I'm very big on intellectual autonomy and moral and spiritual autonomy. You know, I want young people to become strong, powerful agents of their own lives. And so for her to basically tell you guys, or you in particular, you don't care enough about holidays, I think that's great.

Um, and yeah, sorry, go ahead.

And that you respond in a way that maintains her trust, that she feels safe calling you out on things.

Yeah, it's critical. Um, I didn't have my own independent value set or set of, I guess, choices or preferences or opinions until far too late in life. It was real top-down parental Christian, you know. So I think I was just aping everything that my parents did, even though deep down I had my own feelings, my own thoughts. So we really try and encourage her to have her own opinion. We do push her on it. It's like, do you like this? Why? Like, for instance, school. Why do you like school? What did you learn today? Couldn't you have learned that some other way? We do try and push it and to let her have her own— force her to have her own opinions. And as a result, she compares what we do to other people and she evaluates it. And Alana can be— I wouldn't say a harsh critic, but she can point out the truth, make it hurt.

Well, I think she is developing an incredible ability to be her own person intellectually. And for a 6-year-old, she's phenomenal. And I suspected that there were patterns of interaction that you and Marlo had with her at home. Obviously, me talking to her 10 minutes a week is not going to make that much of a difference. But I suspected that it's part of a larger pattern of interaction where you respect her autonomy intellectually and you nurture and cultivate it in various ways through conversation.

Yeah, and thinking now, another example of how we use Socratic dialogue in just small instances to force her to, I guess, understand what and why of something like, you know, I'll ask her, like, if we're walking down the street, I'll ask her to move away from the curb, and she'll say, "Why? I'm on the sidewalk. Aren't I safe?" Say, "Well, you know, you are mostly safe. The odds of a car jumping the curb are pretty low." On the other hand, you are taking away your margin for error because you're walking right on the edge rather than walking in the middle or toward the inside. I mean, why risk it? What's the benefit of walking near the sidewalk? Well, I think it's fun. Why is it fun? Well, it's kind of cool. I get to see the cars. Well, there's some risk-reward there, you know. I mean, so that's just something that came up recently, um, as I was actually having the same, same, uh, talk with Logan. Hey Logan, move inside. And I didn't explain it to Logan, which I should, but because he's 3 and a half, I just didn't, and I just told him to move. And Alana said, well, why? And it came up.

So, well, no, I think this is very, very rich, and I suspect the more you reflect on this, a lot more you'll see of these kind of interactions. In some ways, my hypothesis is the kind of interactions you and Marlo have had or having with your children is more powerful than schooling per se in terms of an education. And so to some extent, I see schooling as almost a distraction from the kind of work you're doing. Because assuming everything goes fine for Alana from here on out, I believe she's basically set. She's got such an advantage intellectually, morally, spiritually, physically. She's just way ahead of the curve. And it's not because of schooling. It's because of the day-to-day interactions you guys are having with her.

Yes, if anything, school seems to teach her this idea that it's— that what matters is getting the right answer rather than the process or rather than learning. She'll come up to me as she's doing a workbook on her own for fun because she likes learning. Like, she's doing the second grade workbook. It's really quite easy. And some of these questions, she'll come up and say, well, what's the answer? I'm like, well, I don't care if you get the right answer. Like, what's the process? What's the lesson? What are you trying to learn here? And it's like school reinforces this idea that it's all about the right answer. And she goes to it, and as far as schools go, the charter school she goes to is great. They don't test towards, or they don't teach toward tests. They're not even doing the standardized testing yet. Maybe they don't even do it at all, I think. So it's a pretty, you know, you'd probably like this school. Danielle Strockmann started it. It's a good charter school, but they can't help, she can't help but come back with this idea that it's all about the end result rather than the process or the knowledge acquisition.

Yeah, I think it's a deep problem with schooling and it's an interesting challenge. But just in talking with her on the math problem just before this call, I'm very interested in how she figures it out. I want to understand and I want her to understand her own reasoning processes and for her to figure out when she has reliable reasoning processes and when she does not. Because ultimately that's gonna give her power in the world when she can rely on her own mind and know when she can, when she can't rely on her own mind. And basically most of the time she can rely on her own mind.

Yeah, and you know, relative to jiu-jitsu, I think Alana takes a lot of how she experiments on in jiu-jitsu, how she teaches herself, tweaks moves, comes up with her own things, as well as like she draws a lot from that in into other things in life. She knows that she has to have the fundamentals, but she has to think of her own ways to do things as well. And yeah, I mean, she's moving so— she's growing so fast. I feel like I— I mean, I felt this for a while that we could— we can't even keep track of all the things she's learning and all the remarkable things she's doing. She's just hitting that curve and it's not stopping. There's no pause button.

Let's talk about jiu-jitsu next week, and I'll let you and Alana have a wonderful day today.

Sounds good, Michael. Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Ryan. Bye-bye.