I homeschool my kids. At the beginning it wasn't because the world had ended (it hadn't yet, that was March 2020), but because even then education had. I was aware because I knew what having STEM degrees meant I knew about the world (nothing.) Still my instinct for STEM was from a desire to learn something real, at least intuiting the liberal arts had been already hollowed out.
I was that odd young person who wanted to be middlebrow and have read the Great Books. And as a homeschooling mom, I intended to ensure we would read them before they left for college since they certainly wouldn't get a chance there.
My joy for ideas grew the more I read about classical Greece, late Rome, anglo Saxon England. Literature came alive (who knew authors intentionally used poetic devices? I didn't!) So did history. Philosophy no longer seemed just a big shaggy dog story where in the end the deny their original premises in which the posed their questions. We used to know what wisdom came before us. It's still there if we just read.
The original scientific revolution came to us via coffee shops and clubs, not universities. We can do it again.
The more the world collapses, the easier it is to not spend worthless effort hamster-wheeling my kids for worthless college, and to instead prepare them to be adults who read and think. The best reward is their sense of purpose, their knowledge of the past, and their ability to reason about the future.
I'm so glad to find your substack! Can't wait to read it all.
I homeschool my kids. At the beginning it wasn't because the world had ended (it hadn't yet, that was March 2020), but because even then education had. I was aware because I knew what having STEM degrees meant I knew about the world (nothing.) Still my instinct for STEM was from a desire to learn something real, at least intuiting the liberal arts had been already hollowed out.
I was that odd young person who wanted to be middlebrow and have read the Great Books. And as a homeschooling mom, I intended to ensure we would read them before they left for college since they certainly wouldn't get a chance there.
My joy for ideas grew the more I read about classical Greece, late Rome, anglo Saxon England. Literature came alive (who knew authors intentionally used poetic devices? I didn't!) So did history. Philosophy no longer seemed just a big shaggy dog story where in the end the deny their original premises in which the posed their questions. We used to know what wisdom came before us. It's still there if we just read.
The original scientific revolution came to us via coffee shops and clubs, not universities. We can do it again.
The more the world collapses, the easier it is to not spend worthless effort hamster-wheeling my kids for worthless college, and to instead prepare them to be adults who read and think. The best reward is their sense of purpose, their knowledge of the past, and their ability to reason about the future.
I'm so glad to find your substack! Can't wait to read it all.
Thank you so much, Madame. You have made my day.