Chapter House

Do you want to save Western Civilization? Here is one simple step you can take… …subscribe to our newsletter. virtueandwonder.com/subscribe?simp…

Yep! And it has to continue there, too.

@MatthewBerry That is a great book!

@ChHouseBooks I can’t read your post yet, but I’m learning.

Virtus et Miraculum

One of my biggest pet peeves about homeschooling addressed in today’s newsletter.

“Are our children falling behind?” Behind whom? Behind which benchmark? In our latest Virtue and Wonder essay, we argue that the real question is accountability: Who owns a child’s formation, and who can correct course quickly when something is not working? virtueandwonder.com/p/behind-whom

@KLWardenBooks When you homeschool, you often learn as much as your children! That is definitely the case for us.

@ChHouseBooks I am learning so much homeschooling my kids, it's awesome. I can't give them the classical education that my ancestors received, but it's a hell of a start.

Old books. Hard questions. Raising children who can think. Classical education is not about going backward. It is about giving children tools that actually work. The great books. “Dead” languages. Big ideas. It sounds elite until you try it.

@bigdaddymode Synergy

@ChHouseBooks got any more buzzwords?

Grades are a system built for machines. Not for human beings. GPT-4 passes most college exams. ChatGPT scored a B-minus on a Wharton MBA final. After AI hit campuses, exam scores jumped 22 points. Grades measure compliance. Narration measures understanding. virtueandwonder.com/p/the-grade-is…

When young Caesar is moved to tears by the statue of Alexander, he's not crying out of frustration, he's crying because something has clicked about his own true destiny, and the magnitude of the task ahead. We'd probably call that 'introspection" today. What doesn't seem to have occurred to Caesar is the line of thought "Geez, why can't I just chill out? Is it my domineering mother? Is it the fact that I lost my dad when I was a teenager? What is keeping me from just being content with where I am??" We'd also call the latter introspection, maybe this is what Mark means.

It will not disappoint! Look for her art in our upcoming children’s editions of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Preorders open soon!

@withsaintgeorge Spreadsheet brain!

In the one and only homeschool cover organization I've been in, I was HARASSED because they wanted to know my kids grades, and I told them we keep working until they've got it down... if they get a few wrong on a math test, I don't grade it, file it, and call it a day... I work with them to figure out what they weren't understanding, cause what's the point if they don't understand the material? They derided me, like it was the absolute stupidest thing they'd ever heard.

Tomorrow on Virtue and Wonder…

@davidsenra @pmarca Caesar wept because he felt his accomplishments paled in comparison to Alexander the Great.

Great men of history had little to no introspection. The personality that builds empires is not the same personality that sits around quietly questioning itself. @pmarca and I discuss what we both noticed but no one talks about: David: You don't have any levels of introspection? Marc: Yes, zero. As little as possible. David: Why? Marc: Move forward. Go! I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. David: So I've read 400 biographies of history’s greatest entrepreneurs and someone asked me what the most surprising thing I’ve learned from this was [and I answered] they have little or zero introspection. Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up and was like: I like building Walmart. I'm going to keep building Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts. And he just kept doing it over and over again. Marc: If you go back 400 years ago it never would've occurred to anybody to be introspective. All of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy, and all the things that kind of result from that are, a kind of a manufacture of the 1910s, 1920s. Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff. The individual runs and does all these things and builds things and builds empires and builds companies and builds technology. And then this kind of this kind of guilt based whammy kind of showed up from Europe. A lot of it from Vienna in 1910, 1920s, Freud and all that entire movement. And kind of turned all that inward and basically said, okay, now we need to basically second guess the individual. We need to criticize the individual. The individual needs to self criticize. The individual needs to feel guilt, needs to look backwards, needs to dwell in the past. It never resonated with me.

The struggle is real.

@FoundationDads It is the same attitude as the people upset that a man treated his dog’s cancer with ChatGPT.

"You aren't qualified to homeschool your children." "Interesting. I need a graduate degree to teach my child 3rd-grade math?" "No, but you need to understand how children learn, different learning styles, and teaching methods." "How about I just get to know my child, and how he learns will become apparent very quickly." "No. You're ignoring classroom management techniques." "...Not sure I need classroom management techniques for my living room." "But you need to be an expert in teaching to teach your children?" "Will that guarantee better outcomes?" "Absolutely not. In fact, in most places, outcomes are getting worse with every passing year." "Sooo...what's the point?" "The point is that I spent time and money on a degree and you can't just go and do things without my approval it's totally not fair."

Most children do not hate hard books. They hate being handed lifeless books. Give them language with rhythm, heroes with burdens, and stories that assume courage is possible. You will be surprised what they rise to. (A little preview of @Rux_Dacoromana’s art for The Iliad.)

It's funny how people are so concerned that homeschoolers might not be doing enough "school", when the school system is graduating kids who can't read right in front of your faces & y'all don't have much to say about it.