Welcome to The Christie Faith Show, the show where we explore ideas, strategies, and tools to empower your homeschooling journey. Today, we're tackling a topic that's more important than ever in our fast paced tech driven world, how to foster critical thinking in our homeschools. Studies show a troubling decline in critical thinking skills. For example, researchers found that increased reliance on AI tools correlates with significant drop in the ability to evaluate information and solve problems critically. Younger generations in particular are experiencing cognitive offloading where they depend on technology instead of sharpening their own mental muscles.

What is the cost of this, and what can we do about it? I knew just who to invite on today's episode to discuss this. Our guest, Renton Rathbun, has been at the forefront of teaching logic and critical thinking for over twenty five years, including fifteen years dedicated specifically to the subject that we're talking about today. Renton has witnessed firsthand the challenges educators and families face in cultivating critical thought, and he's raising the alarm about how emerging technologies like AI are further complicating the issue. He's a homeschooling dad himself, has more advanced degrees than I can even list, and a world class speaker on the topics of critical thinking, culture, and worldview.

Today, Renton will share with us some of his insights into how we as parents can address these challenges head on from practical techniques to philosophical frameworks that will instill lifelong learning habits of discernment and inquiry in our kids. This is gonna be a great show. Welcome, Renton. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited about this.

Yes. Well, I wanna start out today. Can you share a little bit about your background and what led you to focus on critical thinking and education, particularly with homeschooling?

Yeah. So from a series of unfortunate events, I became a professor, and it really was. I'd I that was not on my field of vision. The Lord kinda just made it happen, and so I ended up being a professor at a college that led me to some degrees that I got that ended up leading me to teach logic in college. And for fifteen years of my teaching background, I taught at a public college, community college, and some public universities.

Ethics was another one that I taught. And on the first day of ethics, I would ask the students this question. I would say, is it wrong to murder? And you would be so proud of the public school system because almost everyone agreed that it was wrong. So that was my first question of them.

But then my second question was then, what makes it wrong to murder? And it was that question that I got a lot of silence. They didn't know why it was wrong to murder. And I would push and push and say, surely you think it's wrong, so what makes it wrong? You know, kids wouldn't say, well, maybe it's the law.

And I was like, well, you know, is the law the only thing keeping you from murdering? And so, you know, we would have these conversations, and they just could not get there. Now you might think that this is an issue of, you know, some ethical issue, but what I discovered was that this was an issue of critical thinking. The students knew the right answer because they had been brought up in an educational system that whether you go to a public school or a private school or a Christian school, whatever it is, they are addicted in those schools to a standardized testing format. And when you go to standardized testing, having the right answer made you smart.

I mean, that's what the kids thought. They thought they were smart because they were regurgitating what they learned. And so this regurgitation of data was what they were coming from, and they weren't ready for a question about how things, actually happen or how something could be possible and how you explain those kind of things. And so as I continued my work, in getting more degrees, I I got my degree in philosophy and then and what was called apologetics, both concentrating on this big word called epistemology, which is a big word that just means how do we come to know something. That is what fascinated me because I I knew everyone had opinions and everyone had beliefs, but my question was, how do we have a belief?

Where does that come from, and how do we trace that back? And so that's what my study was, and so that became my passion. And then when we started homeschooling, I really felt the incredible pressure of bringing in a generation that knows how to think. I just believe that there are so many people that are passing on, and we don't have a generation to replace them who knows how to think. And I think it's the best place we're gonna find those kind of kids are in homeschool families.

You know, it's really funny because we're often accused of indoctrinating our kids, and I laugh at that so much because homeschooling, particularly the classical movement, although it's not just the classical movement because it's something that you and I care very much about as well. We're kind of the forerunners of bringing that back, right, from the ancients. It's really fascinating that it's the homeschooling movement where we're giving our kids formal logic, for example. But we have to define terms. So would you please define for all of us what is critical thinking and then follow-up, and I'll remind you if you forget the second question.

Why is it such a vital skill for our kiddos to develop?

So critical thinking is a term that a lot of people like to use, but no one that I have met really understood what it meant. And so even on the on the college level, they would we'd have these faculty meetings where they would bring all the faculty into a room, and they would rent some guy to come in and tell us that we need critical thinking in our classrooms. And he would go on and on about how important critical thinking is and how if we don't do it, we're not really teaching. Just, you know, huge guilt trip, all that stuff. However, he never told us what it was, and that's the big secret.

Even all the way to grad school, everyone is talking about this. No one knows what it means, but we don't, you know, admit it because we're afraid that if we don't know what it means, then we're not really doing it. And I think that's really what's happening, especially when it comes to what's going on in America today and the educational system. But this is what I would say critical thinking is. Critical thinking is having a strategy for thinking.

Now I know that sounds kind of basic, but I want you to think about it this way. If you go to the gym and, you know, people go to the gym for lots of different reasons. But if you go to the gym, if you don't have a goal, if you don't have a strategy, you end up just using the different machines that are around. Maybe you'll start running on a treadmill for a little while, jump over to the free weights, try and lift something, put it down, get on one of those weird machines and try and do something with the weird machine. And if you just keep on doing it randomly, you have no idea what's really helping you.

And so if you find it's easier to pick up, you know, your kids, you know, and you're like, well, what what caused that? What machine should I be using that helped me pick up my kid easier? What I find is a lot of people think this way. People's thinking is so random. They don't they don't have any discipline behind their thinking.

They don't have a strategy behind their thinking. They think thinking is something that just happens. And just like the gym, you've gotta have a goal so you know what machines to use and what strategy to use. You know, do I wanna lose weight? Do I wanna gain weight?

Do I wanna work on my heart? Do I wanna work on my muscle? Whatever that is, whatever that goal is, that's gonna dictate the strategy. So critical thinking is when I have a strategy for thinking based on a goal for my thinking. We have to ask ourselves when we're doing critical thinking, what's my goal?

What's the best way to get there? And then what's a pattern I can keep using or a discipline I can keep going back to day to day to get back to that way that I thought was best to get to my goal. And I think this is helpful for homeschoolers because they have a huge advantage. They are not stuck in a system that relies on standardized testing. Yes.

In homeschool, we do have standardized testing, you know, to make the government happy or whatever. But in the end, we have we have teachers that know their students better than anybody else in the world when you homeschool. And when you homeschool, you are able to grasp not just the the way your student thinks, but you understand the student so you can you can help them get to that goal. And so the real question is when we think about critical thinking as being a strategy for thinking to accomplish my goal, our biggest question then is what is my goal for thinking? Part of your question was, why is it so important for our homeschool families to do this?

And this is why I think it's important. I want you to think about all the great men just in the past one hundred years and great women that have died and have passed away. I mean, I mean, you think about, you know, Winston Churchill. You think about great people that have done these great things because when the time came and it really mattered, they had the thinking that came through. And I ask myself all the time, even people that aren't famous, there's a man that did not have to, but he decided to invest in me.

He was an older man. His name was doctor Robert Forney. He was a medical doctor and had, you know, a PhD on top of that. Just this crazy, you know, man who was super important in this world, and he decided to meet with me on a regular basis to teach me what it meant to be a man, what it meant to be a thinker, and he just decided to do that. About two years ago, he died of brain cancer.

And it it bothered me not just his passing, but who is going to be the next Robert Forney. And when I look at my children and when you look at your children, you know, we should be thinking about all the great people that have passed away that need to be replaced. And are our children going to be the people that are good thinkers at the right time to do something quite extraordinary when it needs to be done? And I think that's why we need good thinkers.

And from the sounds of it, there's a couple things that I heard, and I do want you to go into that goal. But one thing I heard is that this is a skill set that needs to be trained. And often when I think about critical thinking, and maybe this is just rudimentary, but I often think of if I am arming my kids and pouring into them and teaching them how to think critically, it's almost a shield, and it's a shield and a guide in navigating life. I consider people who cannot think critically to be extremely vulnerable, easily manipulated, making decisions based on emotion, which we know all those things are relatively dangerous. Just look at, like, the fights on the Internet over politics, right, when no one really knows anything.

But I do wanna circle back to what is the goal then? That's really fascinating.

So when we're thinking about a goal of thinking, what we need is some kind of way or picture that will help us think about this. So if you think of a tetherball, do you remember tetherballs?

Oh, yeah.

Okay. Good.

Yes. So a tall girl. I dominated.

Oh, that's right. Well, some of your younger listeners

all the boys on the playground in tetherball just because I was I towered over them. No other reason than that.

That was the great advantage, wasn't it? There's nothing you could do. If you were short, it didn't matter. You were done. So your younger listeners may may not know what tetherball is because it's an old person's thing, but it was it's a if you don't know what it is, it's this big pole that you cement into the ground.

Then you have this this rope that's tied, you know, to a ball, which is really weird because it's really hard to tie ropes to balls. So they had to create a special ball for the rope anyway, tetherball. So the point is you hit the ball. The ball's the most, you know, interesting part about the whole thing. You're hitting the ball.

It wraps around the pole. If you think of the most interesting part about tetherballs, that, you know, bright, usually yellow ball, That's usually what our beliefs are. They're like that bright shiny thing that everyone can see. It's what we plaster all over the Internet. It's it's what we it's what we tout when we talk to our friends.

You know, I have beliefs, and I you know, I'm passionate when we're passionate, all that sort of thing. Usually, we're passionate about our beliefs, you know, the ballpark, because we believe they're true.

Mhmm.

You can think of the the pole as something that doesn't move. We can think of that as truth. When I'm sure about my belief, I believe it's grounded in truth. And so that's why I can be passionate. That's why I can guilt other people into believing my beliefs because I think it applies to everybody because it's it's grounded.

It's true. So if you can imagine the pole then is truth itself, grounded. No matter what happens, that stays there. The ball might fly around, but it's grounded. Now the question is, how do I tie my belief all back to truth?

Well, I need a rope. Now that rope is what we call justification. How do I justify my beliefs? In other words, it's not just that I think my belief is true. How do I how do I help you walk you through why I think it's true?

So if you think of the Tetherball model, the goal of of the Tetherball model when I'm talking about a belief is tracing my belief back to a source that tells me my belief is true. So if I have a strategy for critical thinking that I wanna trace back beliefs, whether it's someone else's belief or my own belief, I wanna trace that back to how I know it's true, then my goal then is has to involve, well, what is the source of truth so that I can use to know what's true? And then what is the appropriate steps I need to take to show that my belief, the ball, goes back to that truth? It's tied there. There's something that binds it to that truth.

And so oftentimes, you know, I use for my students, I help them by thinking of it this way. You know, when you're reading Romeo and Juliet, you know, everyone knows that story and that, you know, Romeo meets a girl on you know, and the first night they meet, they fall in love, and it's all about falling in love. And and Romeo, you know, as as teenagers are want to do, as they fall in love, on the first night they meet, Romeo asks her to marry him. And and, of course, the next day they marry each other, and everything's fine until, of course, they die at the end. So sorry for your listeners that may not have seen Romeo and Juliet yet, but that's a spoiler.

You can you can delete that later. But Romeo and Juliet's all about love. So what is love? Did Romeo really love Juliet? And it's a it's a good question for the story.

It's a good question for life. It's why we read Romeo and Juliet. It's why it's part of literature. It's part of Western civilization. And so what is love?

Once we start defining that term, we need to know if we're right about how we defined it. Well, how do I know if I'm right? How do I know that the definition I used for love goes back to some kind of source that tells me whether it's true or not? And this is important because you had a court that decided on gay marriage, and, you know, the supreme court, even one of the I think it was Kennedy, admitted that he he made the choice he made about gay marriage based on love, and that love is love. And so if someone loves someone else, then we we shouldn't regulate whether they can marry them or not.

They should be allowed. But it's all based on that word. And if you read his comments, what you find is he never defined what love is to decide if he that's what's really happening. And so we see love as being this subjective thing, so we have to define it. And if I define it, I need to show you how I walk back to a source that tells me I'm right.

That's what that is. And then we can go back to Romeo and Juliet and find out, no. Indeed, they were definitely not in love, because teenagers don't know what that means. So our goal, I think, when it comes to critical thinking is always how do I trace my belief back to my source of truth.

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Correct. Now there there are ways around that that I learned very quickly in my philosophy class classes when I was getting my degree in it, that, you know, there is a view that says, I may not know absolute truth, but I do know what I feel. Right. And kind of like what you you were talking about before, that you have people that have come to stop thinking, and they are now just moving to being sure about what they feel. When I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, that was looked down upon.

You shouldn't just do what you feel. You should be thinking. And we talked about that way back then. But today is different because today, making choices based on how you feel has been legitimized. And because it has become legitimized, people are no longer embarrassed to say, well, this is how I feel.

It doesn't matter, you know, if you can come up with a better argument. You can't argue with how I feel. And in that, you know, legitimizing that idea, we have ruined millions of people and how they've how they've decided they're going to think, if I can put it that way.

Yeah. And, you know, the thing about the feeling piece is just how dangerous that is. I mean, you can it it doesn't take long to be in regular therapy going to, you know, weekly therapy sessions for your therapist to tell you that your feelings don't define you. And if it's a Christian therapist that our feelings are what God gives us and they're they're indicators, they're tools, they're things like that, but they can be very deceiving. Right?

And so I find that fascinating. I wanna ask you because I think it is helpful when we're trying to understand concepts that are a little bit abstract to also talk about what they are not. So for example, in a simple way, when I was a teacher in the classroom, we had to fulfill a critical thinking requirement in our lessons. Right? And so often people don't know this, but teachers are reading scripts too.

Like, for all those moms that are insecure about their homeschooling, the teachers are reading scripts too the night before they're teaching the lessons. And it'll say, like, critical thinking component. And I more often than not, it was compare and contrast.

Yeah.

And then tick, you just checked the box. We covered critical thinking. So could you define for us in a more robust way than that? What is it not? Because here's why.

We are all about empowering homeschool moms and building their skills, and every website she goes to is going to claim that this curriculum you know, this is curriculum buying season right now. We're filming this in spring. You might be watching this at a different time of the year. But when you go and shop for curriculum, it will probably say we foster critical thinking. And some do.

Like, I know you and I both love the JUPress homeschool because it actually does do that. So but what about the stuff that isn't really critical thinking? Can you talk about what it is not?

So one way of thinking about this is that the best curriculum can do for you is give you an opportunity to do critical thinking. And some of those opportunities are like what you said, like compare and contrast, and you you have all these all these words, you know, formulate, you know, evaluate, and you're like, oh, that sounds good. We're we've gotta be doing it now because

The follow the Roman empire like a 12 year old can figure it out and can solve the puzzle.

Yeah. So we have to get our quote in about talking about the Roman empire. Yeah.

Of course. Of course.

So so don't be fooled that merely accomplishing an objective in a in a in some kind of curriculum that says, you know, evaluate the following or whatever is actually doing the critical thinking. Do not be comforted by the idea that because my child has memorized an incredible, you know, body of knowledge and they're able to regurgitate that, that now, you know, they're really hitting critical thinking hard. If we start thinking that that those verbs, you know, analyze, identify, evaluate, formulate, that that's real critical thinking. And let me tell you something. This is what I used to do as a teacher.

I used to be guilty of this all the time. I would think my students are doing critical thinking because I did the critical thinking. So what I would do is I would prepare my lesson, and I would go through the steps of how I do critical thinking. I would then make them memorize the steps that I took and the conclusions that I came to. And then when they were able to regurgitate the steps I took and the conclusions I came to, I thought, man, those kids are good.

And I they're coming to the same conclusion I'm coming to. And look at those steps. They went right through the right step. I am I'm an amazing teacher. And I did this for years.

I mean, years. And this happens all over in academia. Please do not think that because people have degrees or they went to college or something that there's that they have reached some pinnacle of thought.

Oh, no. Let me tell you. Yeah. When I meet some of these yeah. Well, my whole working career was a listers, billionaires, entertainment, but also, like, hedge fund managers.

And I'd be sitting across the table, and I'm like, you're running this company? I'd be thinking to myself. Yeah. So, yeah, don't assume just because someone has like, even if they've graduated from an Ivy League school that they're somehow more intelligent. I mean, more privileged maybe, but yeah.

Yeah. Well, what you find is that you have these people that are able to do these you know, are able to talk in a sophisticated way. Yeah. And this is what I would this is what I'd tell your your listeners. There is a difference between being sophisticated and being a critical thinker.

There are there are terms and and little secrets to be able to talk in a certain way that sounds very sophisticated, but they still haven't done any thinking yet. It sounds like they've done thinking, but they haven't. And so critical thinking is not memorizing a bunch of go to words. Critical thinking is not merely walking through the steps of these special verbs that that we go through to make sure they're getting their objectives done and so that they get a good grade on the test. Critical thinking has got to begin with mom and dad who have a goal for their kid.

They

have to have a goal, And this goal has to be this unifying idea that no matter what subject you go you go to, whether you're doing social studies, history, languages, you know, whatever it is, that you have this little paradigm, this little this little pattern that you can always go back to and say, okay. Here here's a belief. We're learning about politics today in social studies, and and this this president from such and such a time believed this. What do you think about that belief? And, you know, is it true?

Well, how would we know it's true, and what steps can we take to decide if it's true based on the source that we know is true? And that leads us, of course, to another question, what's what's the source of truth, which, of course, we can talk about as we go.

Yes. So I have to ask you, though. Let's talk about maybe this is self indulgent, but I wanna talk about confirmation bias as you were using that analogy with the tetherball and the ball is our belief, and I am guilty of this too. I know particularly in my study of apologetics where I, you know, I I didn't wanna leave my faith. I've had two main faith crises in my life where I almost walked away.

Yeah. And I turned to apologetics for help. And particularly in the inerrancy of scripture, and can I believe the bible to be true? Because if it is true, then I have to believe what the bible says. Right?

And so that's kind of but, you know, there is this human tendency to look for the things that will confirm our bias. Right? So how does that fit into this conversation? Confirmation bias.

Okay. Yeah. That is a that's an excellent question because we are as as humans, you are always trying to find certainty in the way that culture has taught you to find certainty. And so I think confirmation bias really comes from a buying into what the culture has taught us to to come to believe something. So if you think of the word certainty, you know, oftentimes we think of truth, but rarely does certainty have anything to do with truth at all.

The world has taught us, this the our our culture has taught us that that you can be certain of something when you are able to find something that relates to you and something then also that is physical because the supernatural is too hard to believe. We can't we can't deal with that. So it has to be something physical Mhmm. Something that relates to you. And if you find that, your certainty will then create this psychological feeling of satisfaction.

And when you have that psychological feeling of satisfaction, you have achieved certainty. And so when we are in doubt of something or we are struggling with something, oftentimes, we are looking for something that relates to us and that is physical in this world. And that that's what we've been taught. That's what we believe is gonna bring that psychological feeling of satisfaction. But that's just a belief.

Should certainty come about through something physical that relates back to me and my personal experiences? Where would we know whether that's true or not? It certainly satisfies us. I mean, you know, when you think of Tom Cruise, who, by the way, is credible, credible. I mean, he does his own stunts.

Whenever I bring up Tom Cruise, everyone thinks I'm joking, but I love Tom Cruise. And, you know, if you can arrange just a just a short meeting, I would just really appreciate it. Anyway, Tom Cruise, man. But he's also a Scientologist. And Scientology, it's a real hard sell.

It's you know, you'd have to believe in a guy on another planet named Zenu who was really displeased with some of his people, and he progenically froze them and sent them away, and they crashed on Earth and incinerated, but their bad feelings kind of escaped and get into us and makes us have bad feeling. Anyway, it's a hard sell. But he seems to be pretty certain about it. And when you really look at it, there's there's people that have opposing views everywhere that are very certain about it. You may not agree with certain politicians, but they're certain about it.

And so is certainty really the psychological satisfaction I get from something that related to me that has something in you know, tied to the physical world? Now my source of truth would say no. That's not what certainty is. I think it could create a lot of confirmation bias for sure because everyone's looking for for that same pattern to give them some feeling of satisfaction. But I would say real certainty has very little to do with my psychological satisfaction and a whole lot to do with how I have come from belief and stepped towards something that I have put my real faith in, which we all have, whether you're an atheist, agnostic, or religious, we all have to have faith in that source that has told us there is truths.

For some people, it's gonna be this physical world. For some other people, it's gonna be supernatural. And so, you know, if you don't know that goal, if you don't have that goal, I have to trace my beliefs back to what's true, and I need a source of truth, then you can get caught up in confirmation bias in a second because you'll just you'll just default to the culture.

Oh, a %. I remember when I was first a younger mom, I had my kids in Awana. Okay. Are you ready for this?

Yes. I am ready.

Ed Boyd and oh, I loved it. I thought I was a great mom. I was volunteering at Awana. The kids are memorizing all these verses, and I volunteered with the the leaders, like the junior high and high school leaders. So my kids were in the kids program, and I was volunteering, and it was great.

No shade. It was good community. It got us to the church midweek. It fostered friendships, a lot of great things, you know, and you had the car derby. It was just it was it was a great building, right, social experience.

So anyway, we we left that church, whatever, haven't been in Awana for a while. I recently a friend told me that there was an Awana program literally five minutes from my house that was apparently booming. And it's on a a certain weeknight that really worked for us. And so I was like, kids, what do you think? So and so's going and this person's going.

What do you think about this? And they're like, yeah, let's try it. One thing about my kids that I I love is we've definitely created a culture of trying. Like, we try things. We try new foods.

We try it's just a value Scott and I have. So they're game for a lot of things, and then we evaluate afterwards. Okay? So we go there and I they were low on volunteers, and so they asked me to stay. Apparently, lot it's this is a booming program right now, and a lot of newcomers came that week.

And I'm sitting there and I am it's the same book from seven years ago, same everything, and the kids are reciting their verses, and they're getting their badges and marks and stars. And the whole time, right, because I have learned so much, and I have studied so much about human psychology. And boy, have I made a turnaround. I'm sitting there going, this is Skinner behaviorism. This is Skinner behaviorism.

I can't take this. And I'm just like, they're just reciting the verses to get the awards. And and and we left. And my kids are like, we hated it. Don't make us go back.

And I was like, kids, I can't go back. But my point is I was so turned off. And my the the level of convincing I had that Awana was this amazing thing seven years ago, I mean, you could not change my mind. My kids are gonna be Christians forever. They're gonna have scripture in their heart forever, which by the way, they don't.

They forget it. Like, that was something the junior high and high schoolers, they would talk about. They were sweet and they would come to us leaders and say, you know, I went through the whole Oahuano program and I can't remember anything. How can we help? They were sweet high schoolers.

Like, how can we help the kids actually remember this stuff? I don't remember any of it and I was, you know, the big award winner. Anyway, and to talk about that the dissatisfaction that you were referring to earlier, I was so satisfied and that we were participating in this. I thought I was doing the best thing for my kids and look at the studies, the kids who go through Awana, maintain their faith through life and all this stuff. And then I was just like, this is just feels like surface level performance.

Are these kids gonna remember these scriptures? Do they even know what these scriptures mean? And and no shade. Honestly, those volunteers are sweet people, but I'm gonna publicly say I think a little bit of the mark is being missed there. So my point is, is this convincing?

And and I gotta tell you, in listening to you talk about like truth, where does this come from? How can we know what's true? I find it really depressing because how much can I not trust my own thinking? When I just look at that one example, how seven years ago I believed this so strongly with all my heart, and now I'm almost as passionately against it, right, for my own family. How do you and I find that really scary, Renton.

Can we turn this into a therapy session right now?

Sounds good. Let's do it.

Okay. Yeah. I find it really scary. And as a Christian, you know, with dealing with all these attacks and and what can we trust, and can we trust our critical thinking to arrive at truth, all this. So with that hot mess, now it's your turn.

Well, I would say this. There was a reformer back during the reformation, during the Renaissance time that said this, our hearts are idle factories. And

Oh, dude.

We just we just wanna make an idol out of everything.

And Don't do. Do.

There was this famous writer who ended up committing suicide. He was an atheist. He was one of those writers that had three names, something something Wallace or some anyway, he was giving this commencement speech, and he, as an atheist, said, we are all worshipers. It's not a matter of whether you're gonna worship. It just matters what you're gonna worship.

And and that is really true. We even you know, whether you believe in God, the bible, Christianity, or whatever it is you're you're holding to, your heart is still gonna wanna make an idol out of something other than your god. Mhmm. And so you're you know, you might fall at the idol of feeling secure and having that sense of of security and watching your kid, you know, recite a verse. Let me tell you something.

That's something we all struggle with because I have a I have a 24 year old son, and I have a nine and a and a 10 year old a nine year old son and a 10 year old daughter. And and so we've seen you know, we've gone through the through the teenage years. We've gone through the big rebellion. We've I mean, he's fine. He's a good kid.

In fact, I'm gonna have supper with him tonight. He's married. But but the fear you get when you when especially when they start hitting those double digits and the rebellion that comes out of them just scares you to death because you think they're gonna walk away. They're gonna walk away. And you you start making an idol out of what gives you comfort.

Watching them say a verse gives you comfort. Watching them, you know, go to church and be halfway happy. And, you know, and that's why, you know, even where you decide to send your kid to church, is it based on what will really help them, or is it based on this is a church that my kids really like, and I want them to like church? And so whatever it takes, you know, even if the youth pastor, you know, has to swallow a fish and, you know, during Sunday school to make the kids entertained, whatever he has to do, as long as they like it, it makes me feel better. And so, you know, if that's one of our idols, we have to we have to deal with that lest we start worshiping our comfort instead of what's best for our kids.

Yeah. And I definitely I mean, I think we all fall for it because you're right. That's just our where we go as humans and really just to replace the one thing that will actually fulfill our hearts, which is really powerful. And by the way, disclaimer, we do we do memory work in my homeschool. I don't know if you know that.

I am a believer in memory work, and we memorize scripture. But we memorize passages, and we take it really slow, and we talk about what they mean. They're not my I just I kinda moved away from the snippets of the you know, because it got to the point where it's like, wait, which Romans verse is this? Because it's all, like, snippets of sound bites all floating. So, anyway, now let me before we conclude, well, let me ask you this.

What can we do as homeschooling parents? You mentioned a couple times in this episode of having a framework. I do know that you are gonna do a masterclass in Thrive where you are going to give us a framework for fostering critical thinking in our kids. But for this episode today, what are a couple takeaways that maybe are really not only relatable, but also doable, tangible takeaways that maybe a parent could implement right now after listening?

First of all, you have to know what joins all your subjects together. So you have, you know, you you have math, you have social studies, you have history, you have English, writing, all this all these subjects. This is what frustrates kids. They think each subject is its own world, and they have to enter a new world and try and learn new rules for that big world that you've just created. Now, okay, math.

Okay. Math is a different world, and I gotta have different rules for math. What really helps kids learn is knowing that there is a source of truth by which all these subjects are jetting out of that they have they find their if I could put it this way, their rope is tied to this pole. So what is that pole? And, you know, in our family, the pole is is god's word, the bible.

Now other people will say, well, we don't we don't use that pole. But if you don't have a pole, if you don't have, this is my source of truth, then you have no way to unite all those things together. So the first thing I would say is, do you have a source of truth? Whatever that is, you need to be able to see that it it connects to all your subjects. If it connects to all your subjects, then you can ask questions that help them get to the poll.

That's your goal. Get them to the poll. You wanna start with what questions. So what questions say, what do you believe about this subject? You know?

And so that can be everything from, you know, whether it's literature, you know, and you're doing Romeo and Juliet, or you are doing, you know, and saying, you know, what do you believe about love or whatever that is, or you're or math. You know? What do you what do you think math you know, does does math tell us the absolute truth of the world, or is math just the model that we use? Whatever it is, you're asking them what questions about what they believe about the subject. You gotta get to that.

Then you ask how questions. How do you know this is true, or how do you know this is possible? When we're doing when we're doing science, we're predicting things. You know, how why do you think you can predict things? Why how is it possible that you're able to predict based on these, you know, the things that your book is telling you to to do?

Where do we get that idea? And those how questions then get us to the, you know, the the where questions. Where do we get the idea that we're right about x or x is true? So having a what question to know what they believe, a how question to bring them to a place where they're tracing that that belief to a source of truth and then where questions to ask ourselves questions about our source. Those those three things are very important.

If you don't have that, you're gonna be like someone at a gym that's just grabbing different weights or grabbing different machines and just seeing what works, and you'll never know what is really helping your your kid.

Yes. So those are really powerful, those particular questions. Now I have to ask you this as a follow-up. Something that bothered me when I was in the education sector, I guess I still am. I'm just, you know, in a different one now, is when they would ask kids opinions when it's like you you don't know enough to have an opinion.

Like, I was just, you know, how do you feel about this particular war or whatever? And it's like, they're six. They they you're right. And I'm a trained historian, and when you study historiography and, like, zeitgeists and eras, you you actually it's pretty depressing because you actually know that none of us actually know what happened ever ever. Right.

So then you kind of like so then what's the point of history? Well, my belief is that the point of history is for us to be changed and that the this is gonna come up. My my listeners are gonna think I'm crazy. I've said this in Thrive before. So then the truth doesn't necessarily matter when we're studying history.

Okay? Because we're not arriving at it anyway. I mean, there's some factual things that we can say actually happen, but when we're surmising people's motivations or things like that, there is no way. We we honestly do not know what Yeah. A lot of history that we study.

And so we have to kind of change the conversation. So then why are we studying it in the first place? So how do you balance that? Because I I really don't I really don't care what my six year old has to say about the Prussian war. Like Yeah.

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Well, this is this is where I think classical people really have caught on to something. What you might be tempted to do is try and do everything all the time no matter what their age is. I would not try and take them through the process of, you know, what do you believe about this? You know, how do you know, and what what's our source of truth to a six year old. But I would meet them where they are.

So

this. Yes.

So, you know, and a lot of times, a six year old does know how to memorize things, and so use that. You know? You can memorize facts, which is great. Later on, we're gonna move, you know, down to other questions, but you might, you know, right now, you might be and this is why catechism was so important, during the during the reformation. You had you had Catholics that were saying we, you know, we have to have these these catechisms so people can remember things.

But then you had Martin Luther, who was the first to say, no. We need catechisms for the children. That was a he was the first person to start thinking that way. And so you had you know, a kid can't know that can't understand. You know?

A six year old can't understand how god is independent and has all power that is the source of himself. I mean, how do you explain that to him? You can't explain it. But what you can say is, hey. Who made you?

And the and the catechism, well, God made me. Well, what else did God make? God made all things. And so these these catechisms help them because once they start thinking about the catechism that they memorize, they're like, well, God made me. They made all things.

Well, who made God? Well, nobody made God. You're like, woah. That must be a really amazing God. I have no idea what that means yet, but I do know that.

So by the time, you know, I have reached 10 or 11 years old, maybe I can I can start exploring a how question? Well, how is it that nothing made god? What is that about? And where do we find out, you know, more about, you know, what we can know for sure about god? You know?

And, you know, is there anything physically on this earth that would have a higher you know, could tell us something more about god, or is the bible the highest place? And those kind of questions start appealing to 10 year olds. But by the time they're 16, they've learned this pattern. So it's not that you take this pattern and just slap it on a six year old, but you start looking at when is my kid ready for the how questions? When is my kid ready for the where questions?

And you start asking those kind of questions because usually a teacher with with 30 kids in the room has a curriculum, and they just go. And if your kid ain't ready, sorry. They're moving. But as a homeschooler, you can you can ask these questions and figure out maybe maybe your six year old is ready for a how question. You know, maybe one a really simple how question because you know your six year old.

My nine year old son probably isn't ready for a how you how questions yet. He's he's a boy that just wants to move all the time. And so we we have to adjust for that, but we can because we're homeschoolers. And so so thinking of it as how do I pace this out is a better way of thinking about it, and I think the classical system is really helpful that way.

Yeah. You know, I I get your point, and I think you I see your consistency because as you were talking about that, I was thinking about, oh, that's why he's talking about your goal. What is your goal? So what is your goal for a six year old? So I can say for my younger ones when they were littler, they're a little bit older now.

I really my goal was a high view of scripture and a high view of God and wonder. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Right? That was kind of my my goal.

And so and I'm so curious. Do you do we okay. The people are gonna laugh. They're like, Christy, you don't do Iwana, but you do memory work and you do this. We do a protestant catechism.

Do you do that too in your homeschool?

Yes. We do. Yeah. Yeah. We we we and so, you know, my my denomination is, you know, very catechism friendly, if I can put it that way.

But we use That's

so funny.

We use

And what denomination would that be, Renton?

We're we're Presbyterian. So we yeah. We we Okay. We worship at the feet of of catechisms. Shorter and longer.

Are you doing New City? Is that the one you're doing?

No. But we really like that one. I think they're getting to the age where they're getting ready for New City. Yeah. They're you know?

And and this is, you know, our our two littles are are a little delayed, so so we kinda we kinda deal with that. But we're still on the kids catechism. I mean, like, really simple question and answer. And this is something that I think it needs to be reiterated to your to your audience because this is something that gets under my skin when it comes to how we how we deal with our kids as homeschoolers. We get caught up in systems and and programs, and then we start dedicating ourselves to the system and the program and try and force our kid into that, which is the whole reason we took them out of, you know, schooling, you know, in the in the classroom.

We want them in our home because because we didn't wanna systematize them, if that makes sense. And so if if catechisms work for you, then great. Use those catechisms. If if the if the children's catechism works all the way up until they're teenagers, use it. But, you know, adapt to the kid.

Don't try and force them into into a system because you like the system for your, you know, 15 year old. And that's what I love about about homeschoolers that have all this diverse, you know, curriculum that, you know, they'll buy you know, they might buy, you know, BJU Press for one thing and then maybe another, you know, group for something else because they know their kid. Loyalty is for companies. It's not for families. Don't be loyal to anything.

Be loyal to your kids and what works for them. If a particular system works really well for them, then do it. But as soon as it stops working, find something else because this is what homeschool is all about.

Yes. Absolutely. And I shout this from the rooftops too. At the core, I would say I'm a classical Charlotte Mason homeschooler, and I have found nonclassical and Charlotte Mason curriculum helped me to blossom in blossom in being more of those two things. Like, for example, we use BJU Press homeschool for science, and we just do it in a way that's very classical.

It's actually given me really great scaffolding for it. So please don't think that because you come out as an educational pedagogy or a certain philosophy that that means a particular program, co op, or system. It's more of a posture. It's more of how you think about education, how you approach it. I have one last question for you because this is a lot one of a lot of us homeschool moms were insecure.

Maybe we didn't start out as teachers. And when we get excited about something, we immediately think, well, what do I buy to do this? What what can I buy to do this? Do you what is your and there are critical thinking curricula. Now what I kinda heard you say throughout this episode is it's more of a weaving in.

It's more of, like, conversations. Where is a like, something like fallacy detective or critical thinking workbooks? Because here's that other piece, you know, I'm my background is education, and I do know about cognitive skills, lagging cognitive skills that you can grow. We used to think IQ was fixed. We now know that it is not.

You can actually grow your IQ. We can know you can work on your working memory, your long term memory, your short term memory, and these are all cognitive skills. Right? So where where would you recommend that? Do you run out and, you know, sign your kid up for a critical thinking class?

Where do you land in all of that? Because I know the insecure moms and I was her is like, okay. Well, just tell me what to buy now.

Right? Yeah. That's right. Yeah. I think, you know, there is so much stuff out there, and there's good stuff.

Like

Yeah. Great stuff.

I mean, if, you know, if you wanted to do a class just on logic or critical thinking, Canon press has good stuff. Memorial press has good stuff. Classical academic press has good stuff. I would I would caution this. Don't feel, okay.

I feel convicted from this from this talk. I now need to have a class. You know? Now I will go to, you know, ChristianHomeschoolBooks.com and find something, and we will get this done. What I would do, if if you haven't done anything like this yet, I would start with how do I begin critical thinking in my science?

How do I begin critical thinking in my bible class if I have a bible class? How do I begin critical thinking in all my classes? What does that look like? What's the goal? How do I get them there?

Once I start doing that, I think, you know what? We need more. We need more. Then maybe I do need a class that's separate to really focus on critical thinking. Build up to it if you haven't because my biggest fear is that someone's gonna get all gung ho, then they look at all the material that's out there.

They get overwhelmed. They think, oh, we can't do this. Then you feel like a failure again.

Yeah.

When when you you cannot put your faith in curriculum or a process, you have to put your faith in the one that said you're in charge of your kid's education. He's the one that you put your faith in. The Lord said that you are the one that is the best person for for educating those kids. Now some people defer that to a school, but you haven't. What you've done is said, I'm gonna do it.

That's what you gotta believe. That's what qualifies you to be there, god himself. Then take a deep breath and say, let me start on these on these different classes if I can get you know, start getting to that goal. And then what else do I need? You know, we're just you know, what are all these terms?

I need something that will help me with terms. And so then you you move to that. Because my biggest complaint, you know, out in academia that really made me upset was that if you went to college, you had to take psychology. Everyone took a psychology course no matter what your major was. It was part of the core curriculum, and so everyone was taking psychology.

Now if you wanted to learn how to think, well, then that's an elective. If you decide you you want to think, you can take a logic course. But that's not the way we started out. I mean, there was logic courses back, you know, back in the day, logic was all the way from elementary to high school. And, you know, back in the, you know, back in the mid middle ages, you know, logic was part of the core curriculum of of of learning at all.

Whatever you majored in, whatever you got your degree in, you were taking logic. It was only when America decided that they were going to care more about how they feel than how they think, that we really, you know, shifted this. So I say all that to say, to start going through your classes and start really having a goal for thinking and having that goal of how do I get my kid from belief to that pole, that that truth. And once we start succeeding at that, maybe I really do need a class that just concentrates on thinking because they're not gonna get it if they go to college unless they want an elective. And who you know, depending on what college you go to, who knows what you're gonna get?

So the only person that's really gonna invest in their thinking process is gonna be you. And by the time they get to college, it's usually too late. You're dealing with a lot of bad habits by then. So be the person that teaches them the good habits.

I love that so much. Thought hygiene. You know, I'm a big person on emotional intelligence, and I talk a lot about thought hygiene, and this is just another context of it. Taking care of our thought life both I I like to talk about it emotionally, but this is also on a more, you know, critical thinking aspect, which is so valuable. Hey, Renton.

Where I know you're gonna teach a master class in Thrive, and I'm so excited because we're gonna get into the nitty gritty of how to do all of this. So excited. Check out Thrive Homeschool Community. If you need to build your homeschooling skills, you need support, we have parent coaching in there. We have the eight step homeschool success framework.

We also have the fail safe homeschool setup, and also it's a place where you can build community. Renton, where can my audience find you?

Well, you can find me at RentonRathbun.com. That's Renton Rathbun. It's not burn. Don't burn the bun, I always say. But, yeah, find me on RentonRathbun.com.

I have a podcast called the Renton Rathbun show where we discuss worldviews that are coming against the family and how to respond to those in an appropriate way to help your kids become a generation that knows the lord. And so if you're interested in that, the Renton Rathman show is on all your favorite podcast platforms, but you can especially find it on rentonrathman.com.

Absolutely fabulous. Thank you so much for coming on today. I am leaving more confused, which is probably the point. Thanks for coming on.