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Education is being disrupted. Jeremy Tate spent his early years in public education and is now part of the remaking of education in the USA. We talk about how we got to where we are and where education may be headed.
Intentional fatherhood while living a life of purpose. Hosted by Mike Sudyk. www.2centdad.com
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[00:00:00] Jeremy Tate: [00:01:00] [00:02:00] [00:03:00] [00:04:00] [00:05:00] as Well, I mean, I went to public schools. My mom was a public school teacher. I taught in public schools, my wife taught in public schools. And so I hate when people say Jeremy you're, you know, you're so against public school. Actually, no, I don't mind the concept of the government paying for education.
I'm not against that at all. Right. I'm against anything that excludes, you know, the most important questions, um, and, and parading around is education,[00:06:00]
[00:06:00] Mike Sudyk: Well today we have Jeremy Tate on the podcast who primarily he's a father of six that qualifies him to be on the Tucson dad podcast, but he's also a co-founder and president of the classical learning test who is slowly, you know, reforming the education system in the U S you know, or opening people's eyes.
I'd like to say Jeremy. So, um, I'm excited to have you on to talk about this kind of Renaissance or movement that's going on in the
[00:06:25] Jeremy Tate: Hey, Mike, thrilled to be here. Thanks for the invite.
[00:06:29] Mike Sudyk: Yeah. So, so we have a lot to cover. I know you also host an anchored podcast, um, and you do a lot around the classical education and I, you know, I want to, so I want to cover a lot, so I'm a little bit excited. So, um, I want to hear a little bit about your story, cause you, you actually are quite far from where you started, you know, coming out of college as a.
As a teacher in the New York
city school system. And now you're, you're kind of a leading voice in, I think, shining a [00:07:00] light on how far our education system or how much it's
changed in the last 50 plus years.
Like in that, you know, since the department education came about and everything. And, um, that's something that's super fascinating to me that I think a lot of people maybe aren't clued into.
Um, so I'd like to hear, maybe you could start there, you know, your, your story coming out of college and kind of
[00:07:20] Jeremy Tate: Yeah, absolutely. Again, Mike, I'm really thrilled to be here. You know, my mom was a teacher growing up French and Spanish teacher. I actually refuse to learn the language just because, uh, I, I was a, kind
of a punk middle school kid, but, uh, you know, going into my senior in high school, I had a conversion to Christianity and, uh, just started reading books.
Copy of mere Christianity. And so in college, I was a bit of a hermit made up for a bunch of lost time and, uh, and decided actually wanted to become a pastor. Um, and, uh, went to started off at Westminster theological seminary. Uh, and at the same time, then I was, I started teaching in New York city. This would have been 2004, uh, 2007.
And over the period of about six years, I was, I was finishing 17. [00:08:00] And I was teaching, uh, at the same time. And I was really shocked at seeing the disconnect between the way like every other generation. Had understood education, like the basic purpose of what we're doing. Like they understood it completely differently than what we were trying to do in 2022.
And in every school I was at, whether it was inner city in New York, teaching in Brooklyn, our old mill high school or broad neck high school. I mean that, that's a range from like, uh, you know, uh, very intense, uh, urban setting, uh, to really a super affluent suburban setting. Um, I saw. Kind of a spiritual wasteland, uh, the most fundamental needs of these things.
For purpose for meaning for truth, um, w is just completely neglected. Um, in some ways it was just kind of like massive, uh, spiritual neglect on kind of a wide scale. Right. And, um, and so yeah, one of the things I [00:09:00] noticed when I was there, uh, and, and especially leaving the public school arena after just kind of having enough of it, um, was the way that, uh, big companies, big companies like the college board.
Act play a huge role in education, but that may be a, getting a bit ahead of the story.
[00:09:20] Mike Sudyk: No, I think it is. I, cause I think, um, you know, I've read some of your, your, the stuff that you put out about that time period. And you said you kind of talk about. All of the rampant breakdown of the family and how that carried into education. And I think people can see that, but I think what, what may be isn't as apparent on the surface as some of the other, like things that were at play to kind of get us
to the point that we're at.
And, and to me, I think that's super interesting, especially as we're in a period right now where higher education is kind of in a weird
spot. I don't know, maybe plateauing or what, where, you know, the value is maybe coming down for the while the costs are going up in certain areas, certain colleges, [00:10:00] certain universities.
And, um,
so it seems like we're re we're on this cusp of disruption. So you
kind of naturally have to ask yourself, well, how do we get here? And, and that's what I'm, that's what
I'm
[00:10:10] Jeremy Tate: Oh, yeah. I, I think we're, we're in the midst of it, of a massive, massive disruption. I mean, I think finally about 10 years ago, people started questioning, you know, what, what is the value of a four year college degree? What does it even mean? What does it convey? What does it signify? I think COVID forced a lot of parents to kind of go back and start asking questions about first principles.
Like, what are we, what are we even doing in education? What's the point? And you
know, I, it was interesting to me, Mike, Education didn't change very much for a really, really long time. Right? I mean, you can go back to, you know, reading the Republic. You can, you can read Augustine's confessions. Um, basically what we would call classical education was really in place from the, you know, in the ancient world, through, you know, the, the early centuries of the church, really through the beginning of the [00:11:00] 20th century, right.
What was a good education and a good education was rooted. In philosophy in classical languages, uh, studying logic and grammar and rhetoric, right. Um, everything that was kind of the meat and potatoes of a really good education has been stripped away. I think so much so that even, you know, America's founding generation, I don't think that they would recognize it as education when we say, oh yeah, we, we, we don't do any languages.
Classical languages. Uh, we don't do any philosophy. We don't do more morality or religion. We don't do ethics. Um, all of the things that were central are now gone and it's actually really vague what we're trying to. You know, develop skills. Well, what, what kind of skills, you know, it's, it's all very, very unclear.
Um, I think the other thing that was happening generation after generation, is it education was this beautiful passing down. Um, I had this, this image in my head. I'd love to share with you, but I was at a bar. Uh, one of the [00:12:00] few bar mitzvahs I've ever been to, this is probably eight or 10 years ago as I'm kind of sorting through all of this.
And there was this really beautiful picture. It's one of my daughter's friends who was very tiny little girl and her parents physically passed down to her, um, this massive tour up. And it was beautiful because you know, she she's holding it and you can hardly see the little girl behind the massive Turo, but it was a physical literal passing down of this beautiful, spiritual and intellectual inherent.
That's fundamentally what education was, this is how Chesterton described it, right? That education is the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to the next. And I have found that in mainstream education, um, that has been almost completely lost. And I think that's what we're hoping to raise aware, uh, awareness of, uh, with CLT.
And I think throughout the classical renewal movement that now is really, really starting to pick up.
[00:12:56] Mike Sudyk: Yeah. So the passing down, I mean, [00:13:00] To me, that conjures up images of like, of like homeschooling or like a community, a more like family unit, um, you know, a larger extended family, that sort of thing where you're around even like your grandparents, that sort of thing, where you're, it's a collective kind of passing down.
Um, like how does that relate to, um, You know, maybe our, our current educational model, like when, when did that kind of pop up? Cause I think for some people they realize, you know, okay, this doesn't
seem right, but is this the way it's always been? You know, because
that's just the, the, the near past has been kind of the, you go to school for a certain number of hours
a day.
You, you, you know, You, kind of do the school
thing. I'm talking like K through 12, you know, kind of period. Right. Um,
But that's relatively recent. That's one thing you
talk about, right? And you say it, the model has changed. You just said that the founders, the founding fathers wouldn't even call it. We're doing
[00:13:54] Jeremy Tate: w it wouldn't be recognizable for sure. And you know, my one book I would love to recommend for your audience, it's coming out in [00:14:00] June And I got an early copy and I'm about finished reading the, the early edition here. Uh, but it's called battle for the American mind. And so kind of a play of course, uh, Bloom Allan Bloom's 1986, the closing of the American mind.
But again, the title is the battle for the American mind. It's Pete hegseth and David Goodwin. David is kind of the lay historian of the history of education in America. Um, and absolutely, I mean, what you really have is, uh, embracing aspects of the industrial revolution, applying those to education. Um, and at a time when.
Everything connected to progressivism seem to be working right. Uh, the advances that were being made in agriculture and in medicine. And so that there was a distinct philosophy of education, uh, with this movement as well. That was really connected to, uh, kind of a utilitarian outlook, right. That there's no purpose in learning.
Latin, if you're not going to use it right. Education, instead of it being this thing that shaped you, the main [00:15:00] idea was that you should be able to go use it, uh, to do the certain things that you want to do. And so we kind of gave up on this endeavor, uh, of human formation, which really can never be mass produced.
Right. And so when we went to the compulsory education model beginning, really right after the civil war in Massachusetts, and then. Um, really by all 50 states by the 1920s had compulsory education laws. Um, you can't, you can't have a classical, uh, human forming, a compulsory education system. Um, and so this utilitarian way of doing it was a way of kind of mass producing it and introducing really a factory model, uh, into education.
[00:15:46] Mike Sudyk: Yeah.
And so you have, uh, you know, you get to that factory model and then a couple of generations in after the twenties and the fifties is like, it becomes just kind of the standard, right. That's what you do. And I mean, what I heard you say, and what I, I would agree with is like [00:16:00] with the pandemic and all
that people kind of real like eyes opening and questioning the current system and saying, okay, what, what are we doing?
And, and what what's happening or maybe
embracing it too. Cause you know, homeschooling is kind of on the rise or maybe they're looking at, Hey, we want to get them into a different school or different model or something. Right. Is that, is that kinda what happened? You know, you had
this, this kind of re I would say eyes open, but it's a,
it just forced you to say what you know, is this just childcare that
[00:16:29] Jeremy Tate: I mean, and the takeover was so complete, you know, that, that you go back to before the civil war And and we're talking about very small. One room, school houses, a lot of homeschooling, um, to, within a few generations, it just becomes so normal that nobody remembers it being any other way. Right. And it's this way, I think really peaks and
probably the 1960s or early seventies, um, when there are very few exceptions, uh, the, you know, the Catholic [00:17:00] schools, you know, start a massive decline in the 1960s.
Um, and really nobody is questioning it in 1973. There's about 13,000 homeschoolers nationwide. Right. Um, that number now is over 5 million. Um, and so it's really all been within the last generation that people have really started to question, what is this, this thing that we've bought into, where did it arise from?
Um, and is it really passing down? What I care most about for my children. Uh, clearly Mike, uh, you know, your house, you've got five kiddos. You you've made a decision to opt out, uh, and to homeschool, which I, I love to hear. And I think, I think we're going to see continued exponential growth for
some time.
[00:17:44] Mike Sudyk: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Like you kind of the opting out, but the opting, I think it's, it's almost like you're opting into taking responsibility for your children's education. Cause one thing that we always talk about with, with parents is like, well, you're, you know, people might say, well, you're [00:18:00] anti public school.
It's not really that it's that I don't really think that's a working. But it can maybe work, you know, in certain locales or, or even a private school, but ultimately
philosophically, we believe we are the primary responsibility for educating and passing down to our children. And that can happen through the tools
that we use, you know, or as you define homeschool or whatever can be a variety and it can, it can vary based on the child, you know, like based on their learning style or what, you know, how they're adapting to things.
And, um, That's a, I think that's a key distinction because it's kind of like, what are you for as opposed to what are you against? Like, that's a conversation
[00:18:37] Jeremy Tate: yeah, I really
[00:18:38] Mike Sudyk: about homeschooling
[00:18:38] Jeremy Tate: and I've heard that as well. I mean, I went to public schools. My mom was a public school teacher. I taught in public schools, my wife taught in public schools. And so I hate when people say Jeremy you're, you know, you're so against public school. Actually, no, I don't mind the concept of the government paying for education.
I'm not against that at all. Right. I'm against anything that [00:19:00] excludes, you know, the most important questions, um, and, and parading around is education, Right. Uh, cause I think it has this placebo effect on young people. Uh, I, I remember, I love to tell this story, but. You know, I, I came into teaching through the world of kind of youth ministry.
I was a convert through something called young life. And so during an advisory class, uh, when I was teaching abroad and at high school, you know, there are some students that were, you know, just kind of overheard him talking about how much they hate school and they don't want to go to college. And so I just kind of jumped into the conversation and I was saying, you know, well thinking about like the amazing questions that we get to think about, you know, why are we here?
Why do we exist? What is human, happiness? What is freedom? What's the point of life? And they were like, Talk about any of that stuff ever, you know? And so there's this hugely missed opportunity when the, this hunger that young people have is at its peak. We fail to meet them there.
[00:19:58] Mike Sudyk: Yeah. I, I strongly believe that. I [00:20:00] mean, that's one thing. My wife was the oldest of eight and they all homeschooled. And so I feel like her perspective was stronger around them school and the, and the power of it. I was for a shorter time and I was the youngest. So I had a different experience, but the biggest aha has been, you are just feeding fuel to a fire that already exists.
You're not really trying to start the fire with kids and their curiosity and their learning, you know, and I think. One, one very strong opinion I have is that I feel like in an institutionalized, um, you know, um, schooling system can really just beats the love of learning out of children, you know, that's, and that is, that is I think, a huge evil, because it turns them off to it for, you know, the rest of their life.
Then they're just like, Just relay the facts. What facts do I have to use, you know, to get, and not every case, not every public school, not every T I'm not saying that, but I think the system itself is conducive to that. And I think that's extremely sad. It's like you have these kids that could be great kids, or they have these gifts or these [00:21:00] learning styles that could do so much, but it's just been beat up.
When you had a fire that you just needed to kind of Kindle, it's like a fire. It's going to be gentle with it. When it's a little flame, you don't like, you don't want to throw a big log on it. Right. You can put a little bit of lint on there, you know, get it going. It's like, and that's what it's about.
[00:21:14] Jeremy Tate: I love that. That's very well.
[00:21:18] Mike Sudyk: So what, how, I mean, Jerry, how do you said not a lot of people realized the path that things were going from say just after the civil war up to like the seventies, you know, you mentioned Catholic schools, like tell me a little bit about that process, you know, Is it completely driven
by, you know, these big companies that were saying, Hey, we have to have an industrialized model because we got to
have, you know, workforce that's, something that's often heard or was it that just, you had so much money that from the government that was coming in, that they were funding
the system or, you know, what what were some of the key
drivers that kinda got us to where we're at?
Because how do we avoid those in the future?
Like if we're thinking towards the future to
say, you know, w how do we not end up in this
master? How do we [00:22:00] fix some of
[00:22:00] Jeremy Tate: It's a great question. H how did we go from, you know, we're all education was basically cloud classical education to now it's this kind of strange thing that maybe five or 10% of households are engaged with either through homeschooling or through brick and mortar schools. I think there was a, again, kind of a number of hacks along the way.
Um, it couldn't have happened quickly, right? Because, uh, The change has been so dramatic that it only could have happened over a long period of time. I think people would have been very alarmed to introduce what is now the mainstream experience, um, from what the kind of formation that they were getting.
And so, uh, yeah, I think over a period of time, you have clear moments, you know, of a big moment, of course, is something like Sputnik in the 1950s where, uh, you know, you have a, an aha, this is kind of a final. Below to a focus on the humanities and classical literature. Uh, and these things, you know, it's the obsession.
And I know Mike here, you're an engineer, so we could have all kinds of great conversations about that. So, you know, but my, you know, my own thought is actually what is more terrifying [00:23:00] than, you know, an engineer or a coding wizard or, or, you know, scientific, technical knowledge completely, completely divorced from ethical formation is terrible.
I can't imagine what is more terrifying.
Uh, but That's where we, you know, we start.
[00:23:17] Mike Sudyk: That's like Terminator movies,
right? I
[00:23:18] Jeremy Tate: yeah,
yeah,
[00:23:19] Mike Sudyk: Right.
[00:23:20] Jeremy Tate: Absolutely. I mean, there's tremendous moral responsibility to have the kind of power that technology has given us and that we we've removed kids completely from even, even thinking about the ethical consequences of what they can do with technology.
Um, so I think you do have moments like that. Like in the fifties where you take a, we take took a clear jump nationally, even further away from. Um, what education always
had been.
[00:23:45] Mike Sudyk: Yeah, but the interesting thing is you have this. So even in the last, like 20, 30 years, you have this, like this emphasis on like, um, the social sciences too. And like, [00:24:00] um, the, almost the liberal arts kind of education, almost like softening on some of the stem stuff. So this is my observation. Maybe this is incorrect, but you kind of have these opposing views of like,
Oh, it's it's, it's, you know, you can get a degree in like communication and you don't
really, you know, from a local college and you don't really
study anything of value.
And
then people on the stem side would be like, no, you've got to learn like hard sciences and you gotta, you got to get a degree in
something that's worth, you know, like, like nursing or engineering or something, which is good. I think there's, you know, because you have a path to a career, you know, from a purely financial standpoint, but they seem to both be missing the mark if they're, if they're only striving at
that.
[00:24:38] Jeremy Tate: does make sense, but I think even, even what you call the, the liberal arts, right, or the understanding of the humanities, I am convinced that 80, 90% of colleges that
call themselves liberal arts. If you walked onto campus and asked five professors, They couldn't possibly tell you what the seven, seven liberal arts were [00:25:00] as traditionally defined, you know, uh, the general conception,
even, you know, mainstream America, the liberal arts college is literally that it conveys some kind of like political.
Uh, left this connotation, right? Um, this idea of education is fundamentally, uh, I, what it's Frederick Douglas, his definition of education it's, uh, that education is emancipation, right? That it's this transition from darkness into light. Um, that it's freedom from being enslaved to your own impulses and desires.
That that vision of education I think is what is still missing. Even if there is a, you know, I think David Coleman, he's the CEO of the college board, an interesting character. Here's a, guy's a Rhode scholar, PhD in philosophy from Oxford. Um, and so if anybody would, you would think would want to move the giant ship of the college board.
Um, and I think it's been a at, at best. Kind of soulless, um, version of the liberal arts, because [00:26:00] the day at the end of the day, there's still no moral framework that it's connected to them. And so it's so pushes relativism and, um, and I think skepticism towards everything and this new God of, uh, you know, the only, only actual truth can come from from science.
[00:26:20] Mike Sudyk: Yeah, which is conducive to the, to the model of the industrialized system. Right? I mean, If that's big picture what's happening of like a replacement of a, of an absolute truth with just science as he has is the absolute truth. Then by all means you'd want to just churn out as many people that just have the scientific facts,
right?
[00:26:40] Jeremy Tate: Yeah. Oh, I think, I
[00:26:41] Mike Sudyk: right? Or
no?
[00:26:42] Jeremy Tate: I mean, that, that is one, you know, th this is a formative question, like. W w where do we look to
for, for answers to questions about ultimate purpose and meaning, right. And historically science never attempted to give us questions
about meaning at [00:27:00] all, that wasn't the purpose of science, right? And so we've had this
conflation of philosophy with science, um, where kids look
to it now as, as, a, as a source for meaning and ultimate truth. And that's never been the purpose of.
[00:27:16] Mike Sudyk: So, where do you think this is leading? So you, you obviously started down the cl you know, the CLT classical learning test path, because you were doing act prep, you know, as to put food on the table and then you saw, oh, there's got to be this, this, this, this assessment for classical education. It kind of, that's my interpretation of that.
But now. W, where is this kind of going? It seems to me like it's kind of diverging and there's people that are staying in the current system. There's people that are kind of opting out or opting
into. And you mentioned
one time, which right down the, relatively
down the road from us as Hillsdale, which is like the only, uh, college
that has like, not accepted, like federal funding they're there.
They're like roll them in and numbers are up. Like everything is up and then like everything else on the utmost is our town. And I've [00:28:00] talked to, I know people have gone to Hills.
I always been really impressed. Everyone spoke really highly of
it. Um, And, so I'm just kind of curious, where does this
kind of lead? Where does it go over the next
[00:28:09] Jeremy Tate: Yeah, I appreciate that. And, and, uh, Mike Love to, um, kind of give a bit of a context with the idea behind CLT and so. Essentially 2013, 2014, as I transitioned out of the public school system into a great Catholic school, not in the sales academy in Katensville, Maryland, where my daughter goes. Now it's run by these really lovely Dominican sisters there.
And, uh, I was also running their sat act prep company. And so I kind of got my. Myself really immersed into the actual content that was on an sat or act. And, you know, I think at best it's just really boring. Right. And one of the reasons it's boring is because they have what they call a sensitivity committee.
And, you know, if any passage could offend a kid for any. It's going to be distracting to them in the test taking process. And so I get how this developed, you know, it makes sense, you know, that's probably well-intended for [00:29:00] the student now, but it's gotten really crazy. And so even something like a reference to marry parents, right?
Well, that would be offensive to, to kids who have divorced parents that could be, could trigger them. So we can't have that, oh, we can't have a reference to gender because the kid's not binary, you know, that would be really offensive to them. And so. W we're left with, I mean, literally this is how you get passages just about, you know, the history of mustard seed, which is kind of interesting, whatever, or penguins and Antarctica, and this is their habitat, but you have no meaningful LA you know, timeless text.
And so the thought was CLT was, you know, what?
[00:29:37] Mike Sudyk: Yeah.
[00:29:38] Jeremy Tate: These tests ended up driving curriculum, right. Um, if teachers in schools knew, okay. On the sat. My students are going to have to read Thomas Aquinas. They're gonna have to go to read CS Lewis and Flannery O'Connor and Jane Austin and the boys and Frederick Douglas.
If they knew that was the kind of texts that their students were going to have to read on the tests that mattered [00:30:00] most, they think about what that would do to mainstream education. You know, so the, the CLT idea, when in some ways it was very simple. It was like, okay, what if you took the most important test and.
You, you, you required students to be able to read the, the best of what has been done and set, right? The kind of education that I think all of America's founders had a classical education and, you know, historically in the CLT seven-year journey, people pushed back because that doesn't sound very global.
It sounds like we're just making a case for. The Western Canon and granted the CLT does lean heavily into the Western Canada. We do have others on there, like avarice and ever seen and Confucius. And there are some Eastern grades on there as well. Uh, but you know, in other parts of the world right now in India, we CLTs most second popular country is India right now.
Um, because this kind of education is valued around the world. Way [00:31:00] more than the kind of secular progressive education that is now mainly. You know, and, uh, you know, one of my, my friends who you may have noticed on Twitter, his name is Sachin. Uh, he's kind of a Catholic social media influencer. You know, we we've chatted before we're hosting.
You know, this education is being kind of shamed in America where it's being discovered and other parts of the world as this great treasure, you know, um,
[00:31:27] Mike Sudyk: Yeah. That's fascinating. Yeah. I wouldn't have guessed that in India, especially, um, India, you know, so, um, they're so like wrote with a lot of their education and very, um, I wouldn't have, I would just wouldn't have thought that. So that's really, really encouraging
[00:31:45] Jeremy Tate: I think that the movement really is happening worldwide as well though. I mean, we, we've just been so quickly catapulted into the modern world and we've been so radically cut off from history. Um, and. Recovering your history and your [00:32:00] story is this fundamental component of understanding your own identity.
Um, and I think we're just going to continue to see more of this.
[00:32:10] Mike Sudyk: so so where, um, so yeah, so basically what you just said is we have, it's growing internationally probably faster and, and, and at a quicker rate, you know, than, than, than domestically. So does that drive, do you think, where do you think the policy is gonna get. In the, in the U S you know, with, there's
gotta be the message that's being sent to central, you know, education about these massive homeschooling numbers that you mentioned earlier, you know, up to multi-millions now
from just a couple of decades ago, it was in
the 10 thousands. Right. You know? And so that has to be doing, it's going to have, that's sending a powerful message, right? That's a vote, you know, even if they're not that they're voting with their, their decision. And so.
It seems like that's going to be
[00:32:56] Jeremy Tate: You know, one of my good friends, Lexie Hudson Lexie is over, uh, [00:33:00] at civic Renaissance. Now she started civic Renaissance and she she's written for all the big, big publications. Um, but she worked for about two years of the department of education. And Lexi said there was no, um, awareness or even understanding of the recovery efforts, uh, to, to recover traditional classical education.
Um, and in some ways You think about this. W this may be unprecedented. I wonder in the history, at least of America, where you have kind of an intellectual revival happening almost entirely outside of the universe. And in some ways, university seemed to have no idea, you know, that it's going on and you have these classical education groups, the society for classical learning association and classical Christian schools, the CRC Institute CLT, you've got a, a rapidly growing movement.
Um, that for the most part, I mean, yes, you have great colleges, Hillsdale Grove, city Benedictine, Thomas Aquinas, college [00:34:00] St. John's here in Annapolis that are absolutely on board. Working to champion this kind of education as well, but it is to me, very interesting historically that, um, you have, uh, an effort to recover a kind of education that was almost lost and that, that recovery effort is happening in homes in, in local communities, uh, really outside of mainstream education, outside of the department of that outside of most universe.
[00:34:30] Mike Sudyk: What else do you see? Are you kind of plugged in with the, um, I would say alternative or co-op type homeschool programs. There are some programs that are even just small little
homeschool pods, maybe that are started up
with where they hire even like a, a, teacher or something, right? Like there's these, all these, um, hybrids, if you will, that are popping up, what do you, can you speak to that?
A little bit of what you're seeing there, because you know, some people are.
I don't, I'm not [00:35:00] going to be the full homeschool, you know, in the home the whole time type model. Um, but then they're like, well, I don't know about a private school or they're doing something in between. And what's whereas classical
[00:35:10] Jeremy Tate: a great question. I mean, it's kind of the wild west right now, you know, I mean, you've got these huge, huge groups and classical
conversations, obviously way bigger than any other with the 150,000 students worldwide. A lot of their growth has been in, in re in Russia and in south America over the past couple of years as well. Um, but. It's been interesting, you know, CLT works with all the, a ton of university model schools and independent homeschoolers and groups like Seton and mother divine, grace and Colby. Um, but we also have noticed that a lot of our, um, really high performing students are what we call independence. Um, and they're not connected to any umbrella group at all.
And it's been interesting to me cause I I'll typically call I've kind of gotten out of the habit actually, but I would typically call for years, uh, the top score, recipient their family, and to say. Great job on the last test, [00:36:00] your center daughter, you know, got that one of the highest scores, um, and more often than not, they're independent homeschoolers and it's really blown my mind, man.
We've never done this. We homeschooled for three years. We put them back in brick and mortar two years ago. So we had two babies in about 19 months. We'll have at least one of them back homeschooling next year. We're kind of doing it all, but, um, it's, it's interesting to me, you know, as I've talked to some of these families, um, in fact, this young man, Matthew Tolbert, he was the first to ever get.
Uh, one 20 on the CLT first to ever do this. And he was on our podcast on anchor, which you mentioned early on. And he was saying, you know, growing up, there was no difference between life and education. You know, all of education was all of life and all of life was education. And. Ever read it and you get something done, you are reading because the world's fascinating and amazing.
And somehow they had cultivated that in their son and just such a beautiful and powerful way. Uh, and so, you know, but that model that can independent model is actually [00:37:00] terrifying for a lot of people. It's kind of terrifying for my wife. She's like, no, I want structure and accountability, not doing this.
Kind of do your own thing, this unschooling model. So, you know, I, I don't, I think it would be dangerous to think that there are, uh, You know that any one of these methods is maybe better than any others? I think so many factors that they, the student, the particular child is, is hugely important. The local community, the parental support, the grandparents support what's financially feasible.
Uh, you know, I think all of these are big factors that are in play. And then also, what are the. The viable brick and mortar options nearby, you know, um, you know, our chief assessment officer here at CLT Tracy Gardner, she sends her kids to great hearts because look, they've got a free, great classical, uh, publicly funded option, you know, just a mile from their house.
Um, whereas that's not the option for most families.
[00:37:55] Mike Sudyk: And it seems like that there's, um, there's almost like the temptation to [00:38:00] then bring it to the lowest common denominator in that too. While you know, people will have this dog has none of this. And so you kinda gotta get the, the bar set super low too, as opposed to okay. Let's look at what situations people are in and how you can meet them, where they're at to some degree with, with curriculums and that sort of thing.
You know, when you say it's the wild west, I think that's, what's interesting is
you have. On one end of the spectrum, you have in-home homeschoolers, or maybe you can say a ones far extreme of the spectrum is like no structure, you know, kind of these unschooling. And then over here, you have like a classic public, you know, education and people are just trying to figure it out and they're trying to figure it out based on what needs they have and then what, what resources they have at home to, to leverage.
And I think that's, that's, that's a fascinating, it's gonna be a fascinating
[00:38:45] Jeremy Tate: Now Mike, are you doing an umbrella group or are you doing an independent model? Are you connecting to an association?
[00:38:51] Mike Sudyk: We do. We kind of, yeah, we're not really we're my, my wife's philosophy is like, we'll take it one year at a time. And if we want to put a kid in school [00:39:00] too, like, that's fine. We're just taking it one year at a time, which I think is a good outlook, you know? And I'll, I'll confess, my wife does like 95% of the school.
And so plus, and, um, The we do, we do just like, uh, a mix of different curriculum. And then we just do a one day a week. Co-op at like a local, there's a local homeschooling group that, um, meets at a local church, but we've looked at like classical conversation and some other things like that. And we just haven't pulled the trigger on those, um, or just kind of taken it a year, year at a time.
So,
so yeah, I'm part of the partly it's the. We're kind of, I would say we're more like anti of like very rigorous, you know, you know, if we, if we get too much in a rigorous system, you're kind of like, well, why are we doing this in the first place? The first place is to, we don't want to, to be, it become too much of a burden and we want to be able to speak into
it.
We want to have time to explore things and explore curiosities that they have and, and all that. Like, that's the advantages of homeschool in our
[00:39:59] Jeremy Tate: [00:40:00] beautiful. Hello.
[00:40:02] Mike Sudyk: Yeah, so, yeah. Um, well, thank you Jeremy so much for sharing your story and kind of what you guys are doing. I think, um, it, it's a, it is, it is in the season of disruption for education.
It's, it's, it's a little crazy, but exciting to
see where.
[00:40:18] Jeremy Tate: Yeah. And Mike, I thanks for the work that, you're doing. You know, I I'm, I'm convinced that you know, the future of America very much, I think, is connected to the recovery effort, the work. that's going on in homeschools. And you spoke earlier just about. Yeah, that decision to to take responsibility. Uh, And at the end of the day, I think that's the, the most fundamental shift that parents