Classical Christian Education’s Egalitarianism Problem

[Music] it wasn't long ago that the idea of homeschooling your children was more or less a fringe idea just think of the stereotypes of homeschooled children typically bandied about in popular culture that homeschoolers are the socially awkward offspring of religious Fanatics unable to talk to girls or navigate the most basic of social settings they probably only watch Productions from focus on the family and almost definitely ritually burn Harry Potter books each October but only in celebration of reformation day of course not Halloween but in recent years our culture has undergone a seismic shift in attitude

and perception surrounding public education homeschooling and even private schooling a growing number of families are choosing to opt out of the public school system seeking alternative educational Pathways ranging from Homeschooling to Cottage schooling to co-ops and classical Christian private schooling and Beyond take just homeschooling for example which has seen a remarkable surge of late as of the 2024 school year approximately 3.7 million students in the United States are being homeschooled accounting for about 6.73% of all schoolage children this represents a significant increase from just the 2018 to 2019 school year when Just 3.7% of students

received academic instruction at home in the year 2000 only 2.2% of school AG children were homeschooled the trend is marked isn't it running parallel to this trend is the growth of classical Christian schools in America these institutions offer a more traditional liberal arts education grounded in Christian values the number of such schools has expanded markedly as well with over 1,500 now operating across the country notably more than 250 Of these have opened since 2020 reflecting a robust demand for this new or should we say old educational model several factors contribute to this educational migration noting

the continued failure of public school to reliably produce mature and intelligent let alone literate adults parents have increasingly sought out environments that provide rigorous academics moral and character development in a curriculum that reflects their religious And ethical views even quite average parents have grown wearied by the constant indoctrination of their children with leftist Dogma in the average government School these parents have gone out in search of Alternatives and mass whether it is the flexibility and warmth of homeschooling or the structured rigor order and camaraderie on offer with classical Christian schools these Alternatives have clearly grown

in their appeal again not just to The Fringe extremes of society but to the average American it's no secret that we here in Ogden have labored along these exact lines founding St Brendan's class of Christian Academy a full primary and secondary school attached to our local church we're huge Believers in the importance and critical importance of Christian education even refusing membership to families who refuse to give their children a Christian education in some cases this is Something we see as a command from God not a mere matter of preference no you don't have to send

your kids to our school but you do have to give them a Christian education lest you disobey God's instruction to fathers in passages like Ephesians 6:4 much of the momentum behind the rise of homeschooling in general in classical Christian education in particular can be traced to a growing dissatisfaction with modern Educational Theory pedagogy Practice curricula and even guiding presuppositions parents are increasingly questioning the alleged improvements to education that came along with the 19th 20th and 21st centuries they are more and more looking back over their shoulders into the much earlier history of education and seeking

the wisdom of past epics and ages proponents of classical Christian education can often be found lenting the misguided goals of the modern education system rejecting Even the outcomes they are aiming to produce for example on February 17th 2025 Jeremy Wayne Tate CEO of classical learning initiatives wrote The Following CRI speak of even conservatives when it comes to the goals of Education quote most conservatives still don't get it if you walk into almost any school and ask the students what are we doing here what is the point of school the students will tell you the point

of school is to get a better job this is an impoverished Vision for education for Millennia the Telos or goal of Education never changed the goal was always moral formation or the cultivation of virtue this this isn't just one of many problems it is the problem behind the civilizational Decay we have been witnessing across the West you can fix every other problem but if education fundamentally has the wrong goal the nation will die CS Lewis argues that when education is beaten by training civilization dies he was Referring to classical education the only kind of education

that existed until radical progressives hijacked education in the 20th century conservatives need to wake up end quote Tate makes some important and interesting points the kind of points you will hear from nearly any advocate of a return to classical Christian education education cannot be reduced to Mere utility can it we can't think of Education as simply the thing which Allows us to do another thing that earns US income education must transcend the mere practical it must aspire to the formation of a whole soul to the cultivation of a whole person who is able to love

God with his whole body mind soul and strength lest we reduce the human person to a mere economic animal or a piece of industrial machinery and yet here we run into some challenges as with many works of resourc and recovery of things lost from times Past we often run into complexities that don't sit nearly as neatly as we'd like into the real world our actual time and even our own presuppositions and instincts we are all of us prone to oversimplification special pleading and magical thinking for example Dr Steven wolf brought a fascinating layer to the

discussion in a reply to Tate's post on X writing quote there's an egalitarian impulse In classical education Advocates who can't see that get a job must be the End of universal education education for moral formation is traditionally a privilege for the few not a right to the many we can make Universal education more moral but the end for most people is getting a job that's the real world most people are average and they don't need to read Plato or be able to recite antigon in Greek end quote see one of the Hidden reefs under the

surface of the history of classical and Christian education is the at least to us moderns Offensive reality that for most of History the vast majority of the populace simply wasn't educated in the way we think about education today education beyond the most basic rout was typically reserved for the clergy and the nobility for priests pastors Bishops Statesmen Lords Kings and corders most people in most places and in most times were educated in the duties directly needful to their household trade and Community boys grew Up and learned the trade or business of their fathers or other

men in the community or nearby community girls grew up and learned to help in the management of their household in child Ing and many aspects of the family trade or business as well literacy rates in the west were often below 10% with some estimates sitting at 5% or lower in many regions until the 1500s Urban centers often boasted higher rates as much as 20 to 40% and the invention of the printing Press in the 1400s and its subsequent adoptions certainly helped as well but it nonetheless remains true that prior to the 1600s education looked very

different for the average common ER than it does today right around the middle of the 17th century though we begin to feel the first waves of oncoming change rumbling in the cultural undercurrent one influential voice leading the change a voice tragically few are aware of today is that of John Amos cenus You Could argue that as Francis Bacon was to science and Rene dekart was to philosophy so commenius was to education in terms of influence though he's far less known than either of those other men today in fact kenia's greatest work daaa Magna the great

dactic is modeled on the systematic approach of both bacon and deart as it pertains to his own field of Education born in 1592 in Moravia part of the modern-day Czech Republic cenus was the youngest child of Protestant parents who belonged to the unity of the Brethren a movement which served as direct predecessor to what you may have heard of the Moravian Church orphaned at a young age he lived with relatives and faced Financial hardships that delayed his formal education until his late teens despite these struggles cenus showed great intellectual promise he studied at the Latin

School of Prav and later attended the herborn academy and the University of heidleberg at Herborn he was influenced by the emerging pansophic movement which sought to organize all human learning into a cohesive ho this vision would later inform his education ational theories camus's life was profoundly shaped by the 30 Years War of 1618 to 1648 a devastating conflict between Roman Catholic and Protestant factions in Europe as a Protestant Minister and educator he found himself a target of religious persecution so in 1621 he lost His home personal library and many of his early writings when Roman

Catholic forces overran his town forced into Exile he eventually settled in Leo Poland where he led a Protestant school and began formulating his ideas on education during his Exile commenius wrote didactica Magna a comprehensive Treatise on education that argued for systematic Universal learning in this work he made a revolutionary claim quote not the children of the rich or of the Powerful only but of all alike boys and girls both Noble and ignoble rich and poor in all cities and towns Villages and hamlets should be sent to school quote this statement was Radical for its time

as previously noted in the 17th century formal education was largely reserved for the nobility and clergy while commoners received little to no schooling at all cenus rejected this status quo insisting that education should be accessible to all regardless Of social class or even sex his reputation as an educational reformer spread across Europe he was invited to advise whole governments in Sweden England the Netherlands and Hungary on school reform his Innovative teaching methods influenced the design of National Education systems in these countries and more he wrote what is possibly still his most well-known work orbus pictus

a children's textbook that served as the first widely used Children's textbook with pictures which quickly spread across the whole continent and endured for centuries in dozens of countries at one point he was even offered the presidency of of the newly founded Harvard University in the American colonies though he ended up declining this position instead he continued his work in Europe writing and Publishing extensively on education and theology his later years were marked by further hardship in 1656 during a war Between Poland and Sweden Roman Catholic forces burned his home in leau destroying many of his

unpublished manuscripts he eventually relocated to Amsterdam where he spent his final years compiling and Publishing his educational theories though he died in 1670 camus's influence endured his ideas laid the groundwork for modern education and his advocacy for Universal schooling foreshadowed the eventual development of public education systems worldwide for Example the system he outlined in datica Magna is the exact analog of our current system of Education in the US with our kindergarten Elementary School Secondary School college and university part of the move towards Universal education almost certainly arose from the Protestant focus on the priesthood of

all believers the notion that all believers are priests unto God you can see how an emphasis on this Doctrine would naturally lead to the conclusion That as priests All Saints must be able to read and handle the scriptures a task requiring at minimum Universal or near Universal literacy this is evident historically speaking in early American Colonial efforts at Universal education which were heavily influenced by religious and moral concerns particularly in puritan New England one of the earliest and most significant educational laws was the Massachusetts Bay colony's 1647 old duder Satan act Which aimed to ensure

literacy so children could read the Bible and resist the influence of Satan the law required towns with 50 or more households to hire a teacher to instruct children in reading and writing while towns with 100 or more households were mandated to establish a grammar school to prepare students for higher education such as Harvard College this act laid the foundation for the tradition of publicly funed education in America and Demonstrated the colonist belief that widespread literacy was essential not just for religious but also for civic life but it wasn't just educational theorists and Protestant do Ral

development which drove the transformation of Education from the few to the many technology also played a massive role as it did for many other aspects of human life and societal ordering the second and third order effects of the first and second Industrial revolutions transformed the world of Education the first Industrial Revolution ran from 1760 to 1840 bringing mechanization steam power and a proliferation of factories to the west but especially Britain the second from 1870 to 1914 brought advancements in steel electricity and mass production across Western Europe and the US with the rise of factory jobs

and industrialization along with a huge boom in Printing and Publishing of Cheaper Books newspapers and pamphlets literacy Rose as well by 1850 Britain boasted nearly 70% male literacy and 50% female literacy the US exceeded those numbers with some regions hitting 80% Literacy By 1880 School attendance became mandatory in Britain with the US following suit in Most states throughout the 1800s leading to near Universal Literacy By the turn of the 20th century in the west Society was being transformed but the transformation would Take even deeper route in the early to mid 20th century the Great Depression

of 1929 to 1939 played a pivotal role in this transformation a role of which many today are totally ignorant most of us today assume that the idea of educating most of our children through age 18 and often longer extending well into the mid-20s for many is fairly ordinary this couldn't be further from the case though Most states had compulsory education laws by the early 20th century it was During the 1930s that compulsory education was extended through Secondary School effectively keeping students in school through High School think about this prior to this occurring something like 70%

of us students didn't continue their formal education into high school but entered the workforce or took up work in the home but during the Great Depression in an attempt to keep young men in particular out of the workforce and thereby prevent them from competing For scarce jobs with older men who were seen as being in Greater need of the available work states began to require schooling all the way through High School the result by 1940 more than 75% % of teenagers were in high school today nearly 90% of teens will graduate high school and even

higher if you control for certain outlier groups like Native Americans what's the point of all this many of these changes are of course positives Universal literacy allows men And women of all stations to drink at the Deep Wells of scripture history philosophy and Beyond the human soul grows to the size of the Beauties it beholds we were made to grow into greater and greater glory by the contemp contemplation and beholding of our God we were made to grow in our worship and our awe as we contemplate the Wonders that our God has woven into his

world as Solomon teaches us in Proverbs 4:7 to9 the beginning of wisdom is this get Wisdom and whatever you get get insight priz her highly and she will exalt you she will honor you if you Embrace her she will place on your head a graceful Garland she will bestow on you a beautiful crown yes and amen but we must acknowledge something that we moderns are often quite reticent to make eye contact with in the transformations of the last three centuries we've moved many ancient landmarks set down by our fathers and if we're honest the results

Haven't always been glowing as another proverb warns do not move an ancient Landmark that your fathers have set it is essential for the wise to understand why a landmark was laid down prior to casually casting it way we should therefore embark on the difficult and sometimes painful journey of self-reflection on these very issues maybe it would look like working through thoughts and questions like these throughout much of History formal Education was primarily reserved for the clergy and the nobility the reasoning behind this was not arbitrary but rooted in a deep understanding of social order vocation

and the hierarchical structure of God's creation education was was not seen as a universal right but as a tool for shaping leaders theologians and Statesmen those who would guide both the church and Society the modern world however has largely abandoned this model in favor of universal education A system That assumes all people should spend the first 18 plus years of life in formal schooling often with little regard for their natural aptitudes or future roles in society was this unqualifiedly wise did we adequately account for the hierarchical nature of God's world when we moved these landmarks

have we misunderstood the hierarchical nature of God's very gifting in the world did we overestimate the usefulness of devoting so many years to academic study for Nearly everyone in society perhaps instead of assuming that all must be trained in the same intellectual disciplines we should ask whether the average man truly benefits from learning Latin all the way into early adulthood or whether he would be better served by learning father's trade do not move the ancient Landmark that your fathers have set the landmarks of society its roles structures and traditions ought not to be thoughtlessly discarded

but preserved And understood the shift toward Universal education however has often ignored this wisdom assuming that one broad educational system can fit all one of the driving Notions of our current understanding of universal education is that anyone may become anything you can do anything you set your mind to We Tell ourselves but in the world God actually made Not all men are called to the same station same vocation and the same Heights God distributes his gifts Variably and unequally whether we like it or not some are meant to lead some to teach and some to

labor with their hands some are given 10 some five still others one Talent now every man is called to lead at the very least to lead himself to rule his own Spirit to order his own thoughts loves and desires Into The Obedience of Faith but not every man is called to be a leader of men an intellectual a pastor a Statesman a judge to make it seem as if this is the Case may seem to us to be kind but it turns out rather to be an unkindness speaking of sacred cows let's add another wrinkle

to the conversation sex piety and vocation we're Christians and one thing that means is that we don't believe men and women are infinitely interchangeable Humanity units though all of the Saints share in many vocations there are critical distinctions between the vocation of the man and the vocation of the woman in the Home the church and Society the man is called to lead Rule and protect in the same the woman is called to submit to help and to nurture I just said that without a lot of nuance but let me put it another way that I

think will help you grab on to the truth I'm trying to communicate another way of putting this would be to say that we are not preparing our daughters for the same thing as our sons that we are likewise not preparing our sons for the same Thing as our daughters now yes both are headed for Glory in Christ both are set to receive the inheritance of Christ there is certainly a broad Foundation of shared and equally applicable subjects of study and knowledge that we must deliver to both a shared inheritance we ought to diligently bequeath to

both our sons and our daughters but if we would make men and women of God we must also distinguish even glorified men and glorified women will Yet be men and women how does this show up in our modern systems of Education how does it show up even in our classical Christian schools in our homeschool co-ops are we adequately distinguishing or are we unhelpfully muddling have we given each the right measures and tools to succeed in obedience to God's calling these are challenging questions and certainly not simple ones how do we balance the goods of universal

education with its pitfalls How do we maintain an instinct to give our hearty Amen to the world of unequal gifting hierarchy and variation spoken by God into his creation but yet also love and serve and care for the Brethren regardless of capacity gifting and calling how do we train our boys to be men and our girls to be women not muddling them into a gray homogeneous lump of indistinctness and confusion in this episode of The King's Hall podcast we'll work through some of These questions and more questions that we ourselves have been asking about the

nature of Education the glories and the challenges of classical Christian education and some of the ways in which we think about learning from the wisdom of the ancient landmarks that even modern classical Christian education has sometimes neglected to examine we'll interrogate some of the presuppositions guiding the way we moderns think about education even things that we consider To be obvious and unqualified Goods in our day like Universal education how can we make Christian men and women who are prepared to do their duties glorify God and love the good true and beautiful how do we account

for God's very distribution of gifts and callings how do we address some of the pitfalls of modern education even the modern versions of ancient educational paradigms that are on the rise in our nation today the Kings Hall podcast Exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world welcome to this episode of the Kings Hall podcast uh a couple just brilliant educational Minds here first of all Dan Bolder yes yes thank you Eric I would like to expound the average yeah you are right public schooled my whole life yes all however 20 many

years that I was in the public school system multiple grades I'm the best did them all yeah but have six grade expert two Times reigning Champion have you ever repeated a grade though that's the sign of true genius I really I I would like to say I have just because of that but I I haven't repeated a grade so Dan hasn't repeated a grade but Brian has repeated greatness what I don't even know what that means but I accept I have many requests for you later you owe me uh Brian s welcome to the show

it's uh it is so good to be here Eric and and welcome to yourself as well welcome Welcome to me uh I listened to the cold open I thought it was great basically I want to summarize uh what you said which is that everyone should be dumb except for us smart people let's not teach people to read that's what I heard Martin in postproduction can you put the purple hair now on Eric thank you so what you're saying is women shouldn't read so what you're saying is actually no that's not what I'm saying I'm saying

something other than I'm saying the Things I said not all the things I didn't say let me just get ahead of that right now can you just keep that clip on file I'm saying all the things I did say not all the things I didn't say that's beautiful one of the things I I hope hope you will say as we jump into this we have a new conference video that's out absolutely we do American greatness absolutely we are great the new Christendom Maga conference if you will let's just let's just like all of those Accounts

with like 200 followers that make their whole living just writing like questionably truthful and obviously uncharitable threads about us after tagging six of the biggest accounts that don't like us and sing at them let let's just give them all the possible ammunition we can we're going to give them all the ammunition we can uh but they could also come to the conference June 12 through 14 so true they should uh but you're going to be speaking yeah Not only that though we're going to have like uh new Christ press games where they could prove that

they can't back up what they say online there you go I thought that was just a idea I didn't know we were actually doing that it's happening we' had somebody challenged me to shooting and then it turned into a long range rifle duel I was like we're going to need to back up more than 500 yards if you want to stand a chance let's just do duels in general we settle All disputes at the conference come to our confence our half of you will die I like how we just we just uh told everybody about

our conference and then just a whole bunch of stuff that we're actually not going to do we Brian is speaking we are doing the games yeah we're doing games yeah Brian's already started training yeah I've started training like six months ago for it are we gonna okay you know what it's gonna be like we'll do an episode on K Taylor Is is leading leading out Y and organizing it there's going to be multiple competitions of strength and endurance and we're going to Crown Victors that's what we're going to be doing because I think there's there's

even a qualifier there's going to be an online qualifier to get in so no I'm literally hearing about this for the first time I saw on twit well I saw it on Twitter but I was like that's a good joke that's really funny but you guys Are being serious right now are you just like no this is not a joke I feel like I'm too gullible right now this is this is how all like male dominant Society should work yeah all I'm not arguing with that I'm not arguing with that what what are we doing

like is this a Scottish Highland Games no it's going to be like I think they got like the whole sandbag flip over your back thing there's multiple weights of that there's a one mile run that's a good way to make Me a paraplegic you know but mile run mile run American mile a whole one a whole m not a kilometer you run the whole mile too no breaks the whole time pause pause okay so so we're doing games Brian is speaking I hear Eric con is also speaking Yeah the the headliner what's what's your talk

by the way do you have a title picked out yet I do yeah yeah it's it's my talk is very specific it's on leadership that's that's that's it That's how far I've made that's the H wow you got me actually Bri orig wrote a title for it oh I did it was really clever yeah whatever um but I think whatever Eric's talking about is oh recovering the American will to lead correct yeah so it it kind of ties in actually to a lot of stuff I'm doing for the right response conference which will be uh

you know how do we get rid of the gynocracy and the long house but functionally like we we have to have a Certain kind of leadership in the 21st century if we're going to recover yeah the American Spirit of greatness we can't have women of either sex no if we're in the leader ship roles if we're going to recover the American World of greatness exactly well and when you think about it like modern corporations for example I think they said that HR positions are like in the 70th percentile staffed by women and so it could

actually well that surprises me It surprises me so you're telling me that women like to nag other people who are trying to get get we're also that's why time I'm hearing this that's why Brian is named third safy third is the name our conference really a theme for much of what we do here in Ogden we're also going to have Steven wolf he's going to be out St wolf Joel webin we're going to have kundum the kundum guys CJ angle Andrew iser Andrew JJ day JJ day Otherwise to non insiders he's known as J Chase

Davis but JJ day is going to be there we're gonna have some panels live haunted Cosmos there's G to be a concert singles mixer Pastor breakfast VIP hangout business mixer there's like more stuff than we've ever done stay safe mask up get the VX don't take unnecessary risks be careful we've been coddled smothered in warnings trained to fear and avoid risk we've been taught to play it safe and be on our guard and not Just against a scraped knee or a failed Endeavor no we've been taught to censor our speech our words even our thoughts

don't think those dangerous thoughts don't notice don't speak out if you do we're coming from for you who's coming for you it almost doesn't even matter whether it's the HR lady at your company of either sex weaponized Church courts the social media sensors or even those you once considered allies watch out take care play it safe but was it always This way have we always lived under this kind of stifling wet blanketing panopticon is this the spirit of our Christian forefathers of the men who founded our nation in Blood and in faith will to face

down all the might of Britannia and her Red Coats there was a time when Americans didn't shrink from risk when they would rather die than bend our Christian forefathers knew what it was to draw the sword and throw away the Scabbard they knew what it was to Set sail for the unknown they defied tyrants they built explored and dared great things who settled this land who built one of one of the greatest Nations ever to be who settled the west and covered the continent from SE to sea with the Christian people who searched out glories

crisscrossed the plains with railroads and fought off usurpers and Invaders on all sides risk wasn't a bug it was a feature without it our fathers Knew there was no greatness and now we're supposed to trade boldness for bureaucracy we're supposed to tremble at the unknown instead of mastering it we supposed to Bow and scrape not even before bul but before HR ladies we don't think so it's time to remember who we are this year join us here at new christom press for our annual conference safety third recovering the American will to Greatness four days to

forge new friendships build Coalition and work to Recover what was lost it's time to reclaim the spirit that built this nation to break free from Fear to risk to build to lead the future belongs to the Bold a lot of it geared at hanging out with others and networking more than just sitting and listening to a talk just to clarify I will be uh doing the concert myself I will be um yeah covering Alan Jackson songs there will be line dancing but in POA style interesting yep yeah po Style Wisconsin po I I mean I

could do po as well yeah could teach everybody how to PO at the same time at same we're going to get a rash of emails for the concert people trying to like get re F on their ticket actually I think people would pay to see that I am I'm going to play some songs that are not released that no one's heard before except for my children so they could be bad actually but come and check that out wow quite The sales pitch right there they could be bad listen to unreleased songs so bad they didn't

make the cut for the latest Al I mean I'm working on them no that'll be great uh as we jump into this discussion now on Christian education um I I kind of want to ask just in general this idea of universal education Brian you asked the question in the cold open is it an unqualified good thing and I think one of the things you that would cause you to ask a Question would just be the fruit in general of the education system and so if you if you just stop and you say look at education

Across America simple question is it working no it's not working well right now what I know it's unbelievable the thing is we've made like with subjects like this the instinct is always going to be to oversimplify and try to basically say it's all good or it's all bad and we Have to resist that because I think when we're talking about Universal education from a Christian perspective societal perspective we're talking about something that on the one hand if properly defined and with the right safeguards and and we're aware of certain pitfalls that are possible Universal education

isn't ideal it's a good ideal like I do think that the the Protestants were right in the 17th century and beyond in uh developing this Concept of universal Universal education from the priesthood of all believers I think that's true we should want our um girls and our boys to grow up to be women and men who are able to read interact with the scriptures directly reason well like we say at St Brennan's a lot to think well read well write well and speak well within the the the boundaries and varied giftings that God gave them

in particular so I I think that's definitely a good goal we should Want that but but then on the other side I think of some of the wisdom of past ages that we've erased with some of the things that came along with the rise of universal education I'm not saying they're necessarily causely related but we've certainly embraced things like egalitarianism we've flattened out the world in terms of hierarchy and we have embraced ideas about man kind that simply aren't true they're not how God made the world like the idea that Anybody can become anything um

that everybody has the same amount of talent everybody has the same amount of amount of an aid we know whatever that's just not true and also looping in the sex py discussion that men and women are interchangeable and that we should educate them identically um I kind of like what John Milton talked about in one of his uh you know Paradise Lost he talked about um one of his educational Trea is it was like Tractatus educ something about education in the and he he's talked about how he wanted all he had daughters and he wanted

them all to be literate and and well read and and and that sort of thing but then he actually warned about a ditch he's like but I also don't want them to lose track of essentially their particular vocation as women and that's the kind of wisdom that I think we're in danger of Los we're we've certainly lost it In terms of popular culture like the background average of universal education in the west but I think we've also even lost it or degraded it significantly in the world of Christian education classical Christian education homeschooling and and

many other areas yeah Dan thoughts on that U kind of the nature I think what Brian's getting at the nature of universal education what sort of the idea uh you know I was thinking about this uh even with kids Who are 17 18 years old if they want to get married they want to go start working the knee-jerk reaction even among Christians is what what about college like we take it as that is you know to Brian's point it's like a natural right for everybody somehow that they would do that or even that that would

be good so do you see this as helpful in the way we've thought through education as a society there was a there were a lot of Questions actually there the first thing I would say is universal education in itself isn't it's transitive I guess in a way it depend it depends on what they're being educated to if if the principle was was essentially we want people to be able to read and write and do basic mathematics like who could say that's that's really a bad thing um but I think the universal education system we have

now while it's not working in one sense it is working in another sense And that is to produce what we have like this is it's not accidental uh that we have this the the people that we have now the educated people that we have now we'll probably get into like voter demographics and in uh into like gender uh or sexual uh confusion and things like that it's really been used uh to undermine Christian values and Christian principles and things like that so it is working and it isn't working depends on the measure that you Have

but as a as a standard like one of the one of the things that Brian read in the cold open was the Puritan Instinct with the desire and actually the government uh oversight of mandating education for for people for young young people so that they knew how to read so they could read the scriptures you know things like that I think univers Universal education is great uh if you were to take our current system though I would say it's not great because it's of What it's producing and so if you were to have the standpoint

that uh you know you could Define education there's it's multifaceted one of the ways to look at education though is to say that it's it's liberating in a a way that like it separates you from the beasts you know you have you're image bearer of God and as such you can do things like think and create and communicate and build and all of these sorts of things and so what education does is it actually frees you From the confines of like beastial Man versus you know ascendant man and I know that's rif with all sorts

of problems you know evolutionary stuff and things like that but but but the point is like education actually does liberate you it gives you the ability to think and to reason and it does transcend from like basic man into into a you know a different sort of man a man that can read the scriptures you know a man that has access to knowledge and everything Like that and and so we should desire that to a degree for every person now uh as far as the continuing education I I also think that Brian read this in

the cold open you know that the assumption that every person would be in school until their 20s I think that's pretty crazy I think that's actually insane why well part of the reason is because uh because of the Industrial Revolution the motives to actually educate people uh further in their in Their lifespan into an older age remove them from the workforce it it does things like it extends adolescence so that men and women are no longer maturing at a rate that they did in the past and you can see this with the uh you know

the the stereotypical basement dweller in Millennial world it's really where you saw this uh where Millennials are staying with their parents into their mid 20s and into their 30s obviously those Millennials are now Older but uh I think the trend will definitely continue uh because how you can't even work until you're what 16 like it really depends on the job um but you can't even get employment at this point you know so it extends that adolescence it removes uh this idea of responsibility and being a productive member of your family because your job is now

School in perpetuity it does something else too it creates people that are really good at school and the Metrics of school so so you have a very strict task list you have your syllabus you have your daily assignments or weekly assignments you have your readings assigned and everything like that you're force-fed everything that you're given preparing for tests and so then you go out into the workforce and it's like here's your here's your realm of responsibility get these job get this job done and you're like well how what am I supposed to do like you

didn't give Me the reading you didn't give me the test and so it's not actually creating people who have the ability to think which is one of the things that Brian said about uh our students is being able to think well they're not able to actually interact with a world outside of a a a high school or university you know sort of environment so I mean I could ramble on all day about that but but essentially summarizing Universal education I think is a good thing but it Depends on your measure what are you yeah what

what it depends on is what it's an inescapable concept it's not what kind like you're going to have education or not it's just what do you mean by that and and I think this is what Steven wolf one of the things he was getting at in his critique of uh Jeremy Wayne Tate I think is his name um his he said a very boilerplate classical Christian education thing which is the crit criticism that modern education in A way that wasn't normative in history was primarily geared towards getting you a job so that's the way most

moderns think about education he's right to push back on that um because that is an impoverished view of Education you're you're basically reducing man to an an economic machine or an industrial Mach piece of industrial machinery and you're you're not actually thinking about his moral formation The Ordering of his loves all of these things what Steph Wolf is pushing back on though is that in our society when you add in something that while Jeremy Tate is correct about historically that's not how they thought about education but wait a second if we're going to be doing

resourc about what education was like in times past let's make sure we recover the whole thing because also education wasn't Universal it it didn't have to be about how to get a job because all of the people who were doing it already had a Job they're nobility they were clergy and nobility so the masses the commoners they didn't have the luxury the the time the money and the the lack of a need to work to make a living in the same way um to go about and learn basically multiple Lang angues interact with all the

classic Works to excel in these are specific skills of those trades rhetoric logic some of these things so what modern classical education and Christian classical Christian education Especially of the Protestant variety um has done is to say okay but Hang On We're All Saints we're all we're Kingdom of priests so we all to an extent have a need to have these kingly abilities The Book of Proverbs was also written quite particularly to educate young men to be Kings Solomon that's what he was doing they were his sons however God saw fit to give the Proverbs

to all of us so apparently there's wisdom there that we all need maybe all of us are supposed to Be Kings on some level we're supposed to rule our own Spirit but then when you get so true king so true king it's when you take that there's a two-step here though that egalitarianism has done particularly theological egal arianism has done and it is to misunderstand how that truth works out in its application into the Earthly Kingdom right we see it with sex piety we see it all over the place with people saying there's neither male

nor female therefore stop you guys Stop emphasizing all these distinctions between men and women they're taking a theological truth that is true of our status as Saints um There's no distinction between a man and a woman before God in terms of their inheritance in C that's true and they're yeah they're misapplying it how does that relate to the Earthly Kingdom though and it doesn't mean now that of course it doesn't mean there's no male and female in household code things because Paul Himself who wrote that other sentence also wrote another sentence why Smiths your husbands

you children obey your parents um onesimus go back to F like he SL slaves obey your masters so what I what I think Stephen is getting at is a c couple important things and it's really where the idea for this episode came was like that's something we've been talking about a lot is how do we honor both of these truth as they relate to each of the Realms they they live in Without flattening everything when it's applied to the Earthly Kingdom so how do we yes educate all of our people men and women boys and

girls to be able to perform the duties of saints which is a high and lofty duty to contemplate their God to have whol soulold ability to glory and revel in the god that made them and the world that that God made absolutely we need to do that but then also how do we make sure that we don't muddle them all together and and Eliminate all distinction in the same way the theological egalitarians did with everything else when it comes to like but in terms of the Practical they actually most people do have to go get

a job and so Universal education by its nature must prepare the average person for the duties God gave them and most of those people one of the big duties they're going to have at least we believe that the men ought to be thinking I have to go get a job what Classical Christian education um in its rhetoric often does is it minimizes the variegation and hierarchy in the world when it comes to that and they say basically yeah but everybody will be benefited from getting 12 years through age 18 of classical Christian schooling and then

an additional four years of a liberal arts degree because it will make them great leaders and thinkers and whatever then go do and put their hand to in terms of vocation and I Think that's overblown I actually think the average person does not need a 4-year liberal arts degree post at least postsecondary school and that the average person actually should really be shifting into thinking about their vocation and duties whether the vocations of a man or of a woman somewhere around secondary school I mean Junior High High School somewhere in that not waiting till they're

22 to 24 but somewhere in second secondary school We should start really branching out and saying and I think look at how God made the world that's also the time when boys and girls begin to enter into their physical and distinction in particular with puberty little boys start to become young men little girls start to become young women at that point we really need to start being careful that we're not actually giving our girls the measures for Success that are befitting of boys and not giving our boys measures of Success that are really befitting of

girls yeah I think it's great point one of the things too I I've noticed in our society is the secular society will develop a model like Universal education um but they'll also do things like um this even shows up in something like JD Vance's book and it's not all wrong there's a good point to be made here but there's kind of a presupposition in all of it that if you just had the right education it would bring everybody out Of white trash Appalachia for example right the education itself is going to be the Savior and

and the idea is that any body could go from a JD Vance in Appalachia to the White House and I think the reality that that you're getting at is hey that that's just not true that's not normative um and so to set a system up where you're aiming at that for everyone you're failing to recognize reality which is that a lot of our sons are going to become welders and Plumbers and they're going to do a whole host of different things there will be a group of them that go on to be politicians and leaders

but when you think even about the world to to your point in the cold open 98% of people are not meant to be leaders so should and when we're thinking about our institutions few layers to this first of all we need to recognize that Universal education is here to stay and it's actually overall I think a positive good In its basic conception that we should be aiming for for literacy and B some some basic body of knowledge that all of our boys all of our girls all of our men all of our women have 100%

agree with that someone's going to hear this and say the Ogden guys think girls shouldn't learn how to read and those people are because that's not what we're saying and here let me just make it plain that's not what I'm saying but when we're thinking about shaping our Institutions we need to and we need to make sure that we're not shaping our institutions to cater to the whole as if that hole is made up of the of the top or of a particular 2 to 10% of the population that's actually a bad idea you'll you'll

end up failing the average person if you shape it in that way instead we need to take a principle that I I think is a very good principle from another educational theorist Charlotte Mason she talked about how children are Persons and there's a real egalitarian like individualistic everybody's a snowflake way of understanding this that I don't think is what she meant like everybody's a special Snowflake and they're all equally great that's not true but um people are different so we need to make sure that in our educational paradigms we're we're budgeting for we're factoring in

the the the average differentiation and we have Pathways basically to say Um guy who's really not been fitted by God to be a leader of men um here is the thing you need to be focused on learning you need to become the most Godly productive version of you that you actually are guy who is gifted in terms of rhetoric and Leadership and state here's here's what you maybe you you might be called to statesmanship or to study of law or a whole lot of you maybe you're going to start businesses that are going to employ

a lot of people and And but what we need say is that God smiles over all those vocations God doesn't look at the plumber doing his plumbing and think yeah but if only he had more liberal arts education he'd be better no God Smiles at the plumber doing his duty that he set before him with the gifts God gave him right God smiles over the lawyer God smiles over the king God smiles over the commoner and and what we tend to do in our egalitarian age is to think like it's Such a perfect example everybody's

a JD Vance JD Vance is brilliantly intelligent he's like a one in a million okay I mean yes he had all these challeng it's it's a very inspiring story about overcoming obstacles and working with what the lord gave you to accomplish the best you can amazing story that he rose to now be the vice president of the United States but 999 out of a thousand people in his same circumstance could not have done that It's not that just given the right opportunities God literally didn't fit them for that well and some of the getting to

some of the foundational issues um so this is as of 2022 but as of 2022 almost 60% of all undergraduates in the US were females so then asking a question like is that actually good that we're taking our young women and we're saying you need to extend higher education uh until you're let's say 24 Somewhere in that range that doesn't include postgrad uate and all that other stuff but then as we'll get into Dan mentioned you start looking at what 70 80% of those women are going to vote for leftist causes and you know really

atrocious things like abortion um is it actually a good thing that that's happening but then we have to say in the Christian world do we create colleges and we call them Christian and then we just do the same thing and we flood them With women right particularly when we're looking at something like Titus 2 and and what Paul says in first Timothy and and you're you're looking at the standard vocation the normative vocation for a Godly woman is household and mother you know that's what she's made to be and then you're saying okay we're we're

going to put her in an environment where she's going to get debt where she's going to go to college then she's going to feel like she has to work after She gets out is that the ideal I think the problem today if you have that again if you have that fundamental presupposition that education is the savior of mankind then you're just going to say well more of it would surely be better right uh which may not be the case I I want to ask Brian about um here with st Brennan's first of all just the

general why did we start the school this may shock some people there Are girls enrolled in the school many of them many such cases some of them so first descended from me that's right I want to get kind of the first uh the concept and philosophy behind what we're doing and then I think what we'll do is we'll move into kind of some issues we seen along the way that why are we addressing this sort of question sure yeah so I mean education is an inescapable Concept in Universal education is here to stay and that's

Actually probably not a bad thing in its B like I've already said so given that I think Christians ought to be thinking in terms of building institutions that create and control those uh basically address that need in society christianly so rather than leaving it to our our government are leaving it to um the pagans Christians therefore should be ones who are stepping in and saying actually we understand what a person is and what People are for and when we're talking about education we're talking about discharging or creating people to be and do what they're for

right so Christians should be creating educational institutions I absolutely believe that we should be known for that so we we started a Christian School also to address some of the um I think particular strengths of of a school model um we wanted those to exist in our community comaraderie specialization and We've addressed some of this before so we started St Brennan's classical Christian educ uh classical Christian Academy in the after hours um for our for patrons of the show I think we're going to talk more about some particulars like how we set it up so

that it doesn't our members it's only open to members of our church and we don't charge tuition basically if you're member of our church in U tithe then the school is attached to our church we We'll talk more about some a lot of people asked on Twitter as I opened it up for questions before this episode um about those particulars we'll talk about that in the after hours um but on a basic level what we're trying to do is especially as we grow and learn going forward we're trying to to address both of those needs

that well the need of yes we we want that Heavenly priesthood of all believers men and women both having a certain inheritance of learning and Shaping the ability for all of our men and our women to think well to read well to have the tools of learning to inherit this great body of knowledge that um is an inheritance of the West we want them to have all of those things everybody but then also and this is something that we've been learning and growing in and having lots of conversations about also addressing that issue of and

yet how do we make that school so it's not just catered to to feminine strengths like Sitting still and being polite and learning a lot you know and not moving like the boys aren't as good at that um as well as the particular skills of a certain subset who are really wired for some of those cultural Elite roles like States um pastors Statesmen how do we address both of those so that we're we're actually forming men and women who are able to do the duties God actually has called them to while receiving that glorious Inheritance

in the right way and those are not their intention to some degree but there is a way to do it it's never going to be perfect like you're never to hit perfectly with every single student but I think there's a way to do it and I think we're a little bit further off in the background average of classical Christian education in particular I think we're a little too egalitarian and a little might be an understatement and I think that we have inadequately considered the ancient Landmark that we moved in the 17th century and beyond when

education began to expand in the way that it did I think some of this is just natural we've we've had these big societal shifts it takes a while for things to to see the ends of things and then go back and say let's Tinker with our pre founding presuppositions and move forward and see if we can and if if we can make the Fruit even better so those are some of the concerns we're thinking let's build educational institutions amen I think um lots of Christians should be thinking about this right now and lots of good

men and women are thinking about this in lots of communities around the nation and the world Amen I want to say keep going I want to encourage those people um this shouldn't be a wet blanket on them at all but I I want them to think like we are and and maybe we can all be Thinking about this as we grow and say yeah let's figure out though let's let's be critical of our own presuppositions and try to address where maybe we've been steering off in an egalitarian Direction yeah Dan I want to ask you

kind of same question St Brenan some of the Practical things that we've looked at where we've said uh yeah hey maybe we need some adjustments here and and why thinking through uh you know we talked boys and Girls school for example uh maybe starting earlier with kind of that pushing people down certain tracks um which is going to sound radical in our society but when you're in that like 13 14 15 range and and you start identifying giftings and a young man for example we say well maybe we supplement with some apprenticeship vocational training they're

really going to go this direction um and then even for the young ladies saying um is it is it important That we have a young lady in the school every day of the week till she's 18 or are we going to supplement some of those things with say more time in uh her mom's presence learning homemaking skills that that sort of thing so so just kind of talk about some of those issues yeah a lot of what you talked about are aspirational because the foundations of the school is like hey we need a school yeah

you know we had convictions just like Brian had talked About you know um in our in our mind we had a hierarchy of ideals in the a classical Christian School seem to fit that ideal and so we opened it up uh from first grade to 12th grade and we're like okay we got a school now this is great and then along the way we've come to different not different convictions but also just reality to where you just start where you are with what you have which is usually not a lot of money or a lot

of resources as far as like people Go and teachers and things like that praise God our teachers have been great like since the very beginning and part of that is uh you know without derailing too much is is we look at the teachers as really like guides to the to original sources and to the great teachers uh and the great tradition you know Western tradition so that's really what what they're doing and they're doing an excellent job of it but then there were certain things along the way where we're Like we have we had a

um a male teacher in the older grades uh and we realized that's that's great on purpose yes on purpose we did that and realized how important it was to have that masculine influence in the school you know as far as a model for for boys to look to and for girls to look to for a future husband is like this is what a Godly man looks like you know and and so we actually like our male teachers are are really important for the older grades For a model and and and now what we're really thinking

through like um like you mentioned was uh we we see just simply because we had to start somewhere and we started with everybody's together we don't have a lot of resources you know boys and girls are learning together and we've had a couple of issues you know pop up uh as will happen with teenagers and and uh you know boys and girls being together nothing major but it's it's just like distractions in the class and Just by the nature of having women in male spaces or or M men in in women's spaces there's naturally going

to be some sort of change of the environment when you do that like if you're if you're in a a guy's locker room and a lady comes in like a lady reporter as so often happens in sports it changes the dynamic uh of the locker room it's just not the same place and so we we kind of see that in the school and so that's part of our our Exploratory uh desire to actually have a boys and girls school uh to really help emphasize what you what you also mentioned was the tracks that we've been

thinking through because I think one of the mistakes that we have it's both in Universal education really you're creating like cubicle workers in University you know Universal education in the public school system in Christian classical schools I think you're creating intellectuals But delaying the potential of each student is to what they can do because I think that the presupposition is that education will just fix everything like your JD Vance sort of idea well simultaneously those same people will say things like oh masculinity is caught but not taught right you can read all of the books

on masculinity you want that doesn't mean you're going to be like a masculine man you actually need a model in order to follow and so that's kind of The motivation part of the motivation behind tracks as you see uh certain students that they've just got like the salesman Riz and the entrepreneurial spirit and so identifying uh different men in the church that also share that sort of gifting and encouraging more of an apprenticeship model and there are other guys who are good at farming and just love the idea of farming and same thing like identifying

men that are really Gifted at that and and having them uh you know catch that sort of farmer or entrepreneurial or whatever whatever the uh gifting is really from different models and the same thing with ladies having having girls with different giftings and affinities in the home this is already happening with like I really like sewing and I really like stitching and there are ladies that do that and there are clubs already that exist and there's cooking and all of these things As far as the feminine realm to where we can actually have a model

that is first it's education uh all the things that Brian talked about and second like an entrepreneurial discipleship into the realm that they really will thrive in and so it creates a lot more customization but it's it's important because you have to know know the people you have and also what they're really good at and then making them putting them in a position to where they can Succeed and I think a large part of that is with right models of actual people that they can follow and become like and imitate and it's also important that

it's not just merely the mother and father because the mother and father are I mean you can't like overstate the the importance of a mother and father but having that another like for your son um your your eldest son Eric you know the importance of having other men come into his life and show him and challenge him You know uh in different areas that he might not see or might not listen as readily to his own father as he would to other men that he respects and speak to him differently and treat him differently I'm

sure you've seen that as well yeah 100% I think you need we're talking a lot about like mentorship um but this it's can be adjacent with the school right but I think having other guys uh speak into their lives is is super important um Brian I want to ask you particularly on the girls yeah uh maybe a potential Pitfall um with this higher education for everybody MH even if it's Christian uh that I've seen is you know in one way we want to say well higher education isn't about getting a job but come on I

mean it it it really is though uh for most Americans the you know the reason I got a journalism degree in college wasn't so that I could just bask in the Ethereal Glory of Journalism as a you Know concept A plutonic ideal um so when you think about that for girls though one of the problems just at a very practical level um you're in a household you're under mom and dad you're generally going away MH you you are taking on kind of the single lady life and then if you let's say a a young man

says you know I want to get married I want to start a family one of the things that I've seen is a lot of these young ladies actually Have a hard time going back into the home yes because life was easy you got coffee at 10:00 a.m. you worked a couple hours you hung out with your girlfriends you went and did fun things like see movies that's actually not preparing you for your vocation whereas on the flip side I've seen a lot of uh young ladies who spend most of their time with their family mom

and dad they're getting an education but they're also working in a productive home there's never a period In that young lady's life where she's not around the household Duty yeah that's right so I guess just talk to that do you see that and and maybe why would we be thinking through that educationally yeah I mean there's some basic principles that are important in this discussion Jesus talks about them in Luke that the the student when he's fully trained will become like his teacher so you're we're imagers we're we're made to become what we behold 2

Corinthians 3:18 that we all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed from one degree of Glory to another into the same image we're coming what we're looking like Hugh of St Victor uh who is a big name in the world of classical Christian education um in the Middle Ages he said that he compared a student to the soft wax put on an envelope and the teacher to the Signet ring the seal stamped into that wax that the teacher actually is Not just putting his in the information he's teaching the curricula

but he's putting his his own the mark of himself on the student and and there were there were even debates and movements within the of classical education um that moved more one way or the other more towards we need a dynamic teacher whose stamp we're going to be putting on a student through we need the right information and it's all about the books it really is both because the books are just People their ideas wrw like put put on paper um Leon ptal adds a layer to it that brings in the sex piety because that's

all true I think foundationally important to understand Leon poal wrote the church impotent and he talked about um this Li liminality when it comes to becoming a man lional is from the the Latin word for threshold so a a Lial place is a threshold place it's where you're between two states when you are a boy you're in one state when you're a Man you're in another state but there's this threshold between it that's really important where things can go wrong and then he he connected some things on this thought that I'd never considered before that

for a young lady you you you know pict she's in the home and Dad is working even in older pre-industrial times dad was often out in the blacksmith shop out on the fields he was out somewhere and the woman was more in the Home and the business too in pre-industrial World a lot but it was very much Homeward oriented she was there a lot more nurturing raising so the young girls are constantly surrounded by the image that they ought to become which is a woman but the sons they actually have to exercise a departure from

that they have to self-consciously almost depart reject the woman as the model for what they need to become and then go out and find The world of men and find the image that they are to become become a man and then be properly reunited with the feminine in marriage so there's this Lial stage where they're still in the world of women more in youth but they're departing to become truly a man the women have a different process and right now our educational process doesn't tend to reflect this so what we often do one of the

problems of sending our ladies out into this world even in classical Christian colleges the mass majority of teachers are men so we're sending our our women out into what is functionally I don't care what they say it's the world of men where they're learning the vocations of Statesmen and of pastors and of leaders and they're falling into the very ditch Milton warned about in that 1644 tractate on education they are becoming UND they're becoming detached from the world of women they're doing what the men need to do they're Departing the model of the woman to

go become more like the man and now they have to return and reunite to the to the feminine in a way that's dysfunctional there's a break why are we doing that we're not actually preparing them for their vocation properly we're telling them mixed things about what their vocation actually is the men on the other hand they need to depart this is why even from the very beginning with limited Resources we said starting at about puberty so about Secondary School junior high we're going to have a male teacher at the very beginning we I remember conversations

where we were like we it would be ideal to have a boy School split especially at Junior High but we can't yet achieve that we don't even have enough people there like one student in each of the schools so let's let's wait on that one one teacher per student is not quite fin great I mean it Works great ratio but it doesn't work financially as well so we're in the real world and now as our school grows and enrollment you know goes up by sometimes 20 30% each year with the lot of young kids coming

in people moving that sort of thing so we're now looking and saying let's let's start planning ahead and saying how can we accomplish what we set out to do which is to make sure that in that Lial stage the young women are still becoming like a woman and the Young men are now becoming like a man uh like men with the boys and girls school let's also consider things like some of these again they're aspirational we're still talking about them on our school board but like um thinking about the school week and saying we don't

actually necessarily have to have a 5-day school week that's exactly the same hours as public school maybe we have a 4-day school week and that gives another day in the home or when you start to get Into that boy school and girls school more time that where the education begins more and more to overlap directly with the future vocation whether it's trades business states you know whatever is or homemaking child rearing the the becoming a Godly woman those kinds of vocations as well um we're we're trying to account for those things so you see kind

of where you you're always um having to figure out how to chart a course through the average while still Calling those two to 5% of young you know men who are like come on man you're called to be a lord of men right like you're a business leader you're a church you're a church leader you're a you're a thinker talker reader writer that's what you are come on like you're not fooling anybody that's what you are and then other guys were like praise God you're actually not that you're probably what are you what are you

passionate about what do you gift where did the Lord give you great talents and people think like you can't figure this out till kid's 20 dude I'm seeing this in my six-year-olds like fiveyear olds 10 year olds I could I could talk about all my kids with the exception probably of Alfred because he's just under two and he just eats and Chuckles a lot but I could I maybe I could guess the general direction each of my children will go and I think with a high degree of Accuracy we were actually talking about this things

that our parents told us I think Brian was saying something like you know when you were young people were like you're going to be like a preacher or my sixth grade teacher said you're going to be the president of the United States and every single person in my whole life has said you're you're going to be a Statesman a lawyer or a pastor those are one of the three things you're nobody said anything different I wanted To be a fighter pilot till I was 16 cuz my Air Force family I was like no I'm going

to get an engineering degree I'm going to be a fighter pilot they sat me down at pre-engineering school in high school and they said not my brother in Christ but it was the same idea you are not good at math you're good at talkie talkie do do not try this what you're saying get out so I left I had to leave the like high school they have these emphases like you could be Pre-engineering like educ track like all these different ones they're like you need to go something whatever it is not this yeah and and

it was not obvious to me but everybody else in my whole life was like my parents were probably like yeah sure you're going to be a fighter probably Bri no you're G to be a lawyer Statesman Pastor that's what you're going to be and then it caught up but I was convinced I was going to play in the NBA but Um what what led you to that nothing but yeah it was funny even as a kid I don't think it was a compliment but I would have you know extended family members that' be like I

think you're going to be a lawyer or a preacher usually that means that you argue with people a lot you talk a lot I'm like okay uh but yeah I think identifying some of those things uh it's interesting too you mentioned with the Lial State Lial range there with Leon Ptal but I was also thinking of an Douglas in the feminization of American culture one of the things that she brings up it what happened with the pastorate in the 1800s in America was that the primary person who got called into Ministry were boys who stayed

home with Mom they were usually sickly oh no and so they became this is not making me feel good about myself no especially the the unitarians they became men who could communicate with their wives and mothers And women female sensibilities so I mean another but it's another case and point of you want to make sure that again that you don't have young men who are constantly their teachers are all women which is especially in scho with the mark of women it was odd in high school I think like my High School uh junior senior year

you had more of it but in junior year and Senior year we had two teachers who were men and that was like we're like wow they they found men to do This job but predominantly all your teachers were women and so you want to be able to think through those things uh Dan on the kind of like future trajectories not only for our school but thinking through these issues um it is a contentious thing maybe even the Steven wolf Jeremy Wayne Tate you can see that this isn't really something that a lot of people have

they've accepted the way that things are so it's a little bit I guess Controversial or it can be contentious to go back and say why was the ancient Landmark there um I guess what encouragement especially pastorally you've had to think through a lot of issues in your life and change positions uh what kind of advice would you give people when you're going to examine an issue like this um you know maybe maybe for example the knee-jerk for people is like oh you're a misogynist you know of course women can do everything men can Do just

thinking through those issues how would you encourage somebody yeah the first thing I would say and this is actually one of the aims of the school of uh of St Brennan's is that uh interested people are interesting people and first be interested the uninterested person just accepts whatever they see whatever they're given and so first be interested second is uh something that that you know pastors say we say all the time is Have no problem passages so when you're reading the scriptures and you look at the household code uh you're talking specifically about sex piety

and how it relates to education and the future of your children because even even still there it's snuck into the through the walls of the church because the walls of the church are permeable is this idea like yeah my girls you know they could just settle to be a mom and a wife and a homemaker but You know she could also be like a dragon slayer though on the side right you know sort of thing and you then you examine the scriptures and you're like yeah I mean there was like yel you know some dude

cicora came into her tent she was just heating up milk in her tent she was heating up milk and like killer Hospitality but hey I'll be here all a week wow I've been saving that for a long wow unbelievable unbelievable can't get no Respect anyway um so I would I would just just first and foremost look at the scriptures and just examine what it has to say and when you start running into these presuppositions that are like this is this is actually in conflict with what the scriptures are saying about what I understand understand about

the world and what I what I think the aims of my children are and what men and women are actually supposed what they were made for you actually have to be Willing to bend your will towards the scriptures and just say God ordered the world this way and there's obviously Nuance within that because one of the common objections Brian is the Proverbs 31 Woman is like oh yeah you just want women to stay at home and to just like what just make babies be barefoot pregnant in the kitchen and part of that is like well

my wife does that she's probably doing that right now by the way but but then they're like well the Proverbs 31 Woman was like a business Mogul Real Estate Mogul you know she had a winery she would buy sell and trade she was uh in the import export business you know really stretching the pretty much Donald Trump this is she's the best uh so I mean she was the Mistress of a productive domain over which her husband was Lord he was an important this this cracks me up this is such a great point we talk

a lot about Soviet Union at least I feel like we have recently Mainly because I read a lot of Tom Clancy but the the Soviet Union what it tried to do is um it it tried on Marxism and then Marxism leninism basically theorized that all of the problems were related to class and class distinction and we have the the Bourgeois and we have the basically the capitalist class that's oppressing and extracting resources sinfully and wickedly from this oppressed class we need the people to rise up and that will be the the Communist Revolution they will

seize the means of production eliminate structural inequity and inequality and then there will be Utopia do you know what happened when the Soviet Union actually attempted all of that is that all they did is they rebranded everything so instead of SAR Nicholas II and you know you have the Zars in Russia who were many of them comically incompetent there no no question many monarchs have been incompetent in history all they did was They elected through the party apparatus Regional some over tens some over 50s some over hundreds some over thousands at the top was the

poot Bureau of you know a dozen men or you know a handful of men they were the voting members and then they had a second ring within the poet Bureau that were the non-voting poet Bureau members who were coming up and learning from the the vote the voting poit Bureau members and and oh you know what we we need we're going to Need because the poet Bureau members they have such important work and they're all really high capacity men let's clear the center lanes of all the roads and no one's allowed to use them except

the polot bureau because they need to be able to get back and forth really quickly and then you know what they have a lot of stress we're going to give them special privileges like houses out in the countryside datas out in the Hills they they can go and and Recuperate there and have important meetings there and you know what they did they invented monarchy they just invent because hierarchy is inescapable what you will find is that and and this offends our sensibilities because we're so egalitarian guys God made a world where something like 40% or

I don't know what percentage some large percent of the population will do better if they are ruled over by employed by whatever you want to call it in its economic Function by somebody else who was gifted with a leadership and ruling capacity and then this principle will go all the way up until you have a few people leading a great number of people Jesus led the three within the 12 then there was the 72 and the 44 and you can go out if the second you get into bureaucratic um egalitarianism what you know is that

you don't like the world God actually made and you want to impose your own and what You the only thing you'll end up doing is either incompetence or you will reinvent hierarchy and you'll just call it something else it's the pup Bureau not the monarchy so we do this constantly in history we rearrange a few basic principles and we're like aha we we found all the problems and it was in this hierarchy stuff God's like am I a joke to you I did that was me I think part of the problem too is that um

for for people who have pressed Into sex piy for a long period of time one of the things we try to do with education or can be tempted to try to do is kind of to say to the world who hates us see we're not so bad yeah you know and and particularly and how we treat Our Ladies so one one of It kind of goes like this right you're like see we educate them to a really high standard see we treat functionally we treat them like the men um we we put them through these

extensive educational rigor all Those things instead of I think Dan toer point and Zach Aris over here to my left uh in honor of thy fathers instead of saying let's just start with the scripture and then let's also look at the history of Christendom and say what did people think about this sort of thing and the answer that you get will not be hey every girl needs to go in higher education be a Sligh Queen you will find very little slay Queen in history except where it can be Artificially sustained by a Cadre of men

who protect it with swords correct right so I think even just the notion and it's hard like culturally to get over it to recognize hey if we put forward this kind of philosophy of education tracks we put more of an emphasis on the home for women Yeah in our culture or you're just going to be hated for those sorts of things no I think that's a good point is we we do this with uh business books all the time you you see a successful Business and the the founder of the business writes a book on

how to do what he did like how do you emulate this success but for some reason in our in the Christian world we we haven't had the interest I think there's an emerging interest in different eras of Christian history of church history that there have been societal blessings Ing and a lot of success and and then looking back at well what did they do during that time And so much of it is such a jarring difference from what we're doing now but I think that's really where where things start to fall apart is when you

just take like well the public school model and we'll just sprinkle Jesus on it and we'll get a different outcome or we'll have the same education yeah it'll just be christianized it'll be christianized instead of actually looking back at previous models previous successful and flourishing periods in church history And saying like what did they do how did they apply the scriptures how did they understand sex piety how did they understand the role of uh men in society and of rulers and of government and of the church and things like that and it and you can

see the mistakes and missteps and how it ended you know that's another part of the story you can see how it began you can see how it ended and then figure out how not to do those things you know that caused it to Fall apart and so that's part of our interest in in really the the history of the church in in in its entirety not just in this you know snapshot period in the Reformation which we have interest in but the entirety of church history yeah the other thing I think it may be a

good place to close but just recovering the idea of the productive household we've done an episode on this with Pastor Madden but this is also really important you can read Allan Carlson and There's lots of people right uh CR wy's talked about this uh Rory Groves recovering the productive household becomes important because then you you think okay I think this is the biblical model and then what we're actually trying to do is prepare men and women to be a part of that entity as opposed to the raw you know individualism of America that we have

today where it's like no you know having you know so many single Women is a really good thing that's what most people think today where as you say like no actually there's a reason that they're one of the most powerful voting blocks for the left we actually don't want to it's not primarily to get a woman a career it's not primarily to get her through an advanced degree but and for men to say like the thing that even vocationally what you're training for is to lead a productive household well that's a different Taos that's a

Different aim than simply you know go crush it make a ton of money spend it on yourself and then go on Social Security later in life if that's even there by the time we get there probably not probably won't even be there um so I think productive household becomes a really important part of the equation yeah the the indust the first in Second Industrial revolutions I brought up in the cold open for a reason because those really Did play a huge part in reshaping how education ended up shaking out because it made it possible all

of a sudden to disconnect PE the vast majority of people from doing the thing their dad did or a household from replicating itself it creat the nuclear family instead of the extended family and tribe right so you know even the ways that we think about women working today like we talk a lot about how women shouldn't you know they need to be workers at home Instead of like going and getting a career even that language is is so foreign to the way that like women did work in history um they worked in the household often

connected with the husband's trade they were directly connected so you might have a store maybe a a mercantilist store that would be you know run a husband is the head of this house and he's engaged in this business and she's helping a ton in that store and in that because it's their Household blacksmith shop and she's helping a lot with managing client like there was lots of ways in which the man and the woman teamed up she was his helper so it wasn't like there was vocation where they made money and then there was this

clean hermetic break and then she was over here with the household the household and the economy were a unit that's what people that's what we mean by productive household so what we talk about in brigh hearth all The time it's like my wife is my helper in accomplishing my vocational things as well as a pastor and as you know a publishing company where like all these different things that I do and she's deeply connected to them but in ways that are distinctly feminine and free me to be undistracted able to accomplish the mission y so

when there was that level of connection you could see why the bulk of Education was the replication of that household of Replicating the man and the woman to go out and form new little seed households that would grow and still be interconnected with the original that was great that was what community was industry separated those things with mechanization and the rise of factories and even like these you know steel production technology played a part a lot of different things played a part ultimately globalist trade played a large part now we have this kind of Artificially

like we are able to sustain these very strange modes of being where you can like have this individual floating person who has like the economic productivity to some degree but it's not pouring into or building anything bigger than itself it doesn't know what it's for it's why a lot of rich single ladies are absolutely miserable they're not doing what they were what they were for not building anything bigger than they're not helping Anything bigger they're not doing the things God made them to be and to do so when we get all the way out on

the end of the branch to this educational question like we have to adequately reckon for with all of that change if we're to figure out how to balance between the the ideal of this morally virt virtue imposing educa or virtue imparting education and the real world we live in where that's like the wreckage of nuclear families and the Jobs are what they are and and I think the chart back is to think about them holistically let's make men and women who make households that in so far as it's possible in our day and age and

I it's very possible just have to get creative and work hard to build households that function more like households are supposed to function in their interconnected intergenerational communal aspect across lots of them and then we will build economies over time And schools and institutions of Education that more perfectly fit with the Telos of the man the woman the family the community the church the business the economy and all these things we're not there yet so right now we're going to be CH we're going to be building in the wreckage in a lot of ways yeah

um so we have to be patient with each other and not like eat each other alive when someone says it's about moral Formation and someone says it's about jobs you kind of have to go it is yes you're both saying a true thing and each may be inadequately reconing the importance of the other but we're going to have to be building in in wreckage something better than we're in the midst of yeah I think that's really helpful uh we'll wrap up there uh just a reminder we have the patreon exclusive after hours will be talking

about some of the specifics with st Brennan's Christian Classical Academy going through some of the Practical questions uh you got a lot of questions on Twitter as well on X and uh so we'll be talking about that so stick around if you're not yet you can sign up for patreon follow us there's a lot of exclusive content including the de Vault uh which is predominantly a show my son does yeah we had a big hitter recently we had Julius Caesar dang uh and that was a big a big thing for people so a lot of

people seem to Like that one of thing worth mentioning here yeah a lot of you guys saw us talking about this on Twitter is that we've partnered with contra mundum CJ angle and Andrew isar they do their Friday podcast um they're going to be doing a lot with us and uh we're we're officially in Partnership one of the things to look forward to that we're actually helping produce uh is a Monday special show that they're going to be working on it will be a little bit Before the first one comes out but what we're going

to do is have a season of this show that's kundum repealing the 20th century going to be going through like exhaustively in classic iscar and and CJ angle style um all of the problems of the 20th century a lot of what we're talking about today has roots in some of the things they're going to be talking about a really well produced show and it it's going to be a subscriber exclusive show for a while And then when they get into the second season of that show which we're already talking about I won't tell you the

topic but it's going to be amazing um then we'll start releasing those episodes publicly as well for everybody to check out so so go check out what they're doing at kundum um and they're and welcome them as an official now new Christendom partner new Christ impress partner show um and uh please if you have a great podcast that you do Yourself don't send us an email about it because we probably don't have time but I'm just kidding excited about that would encourage people as well a couple places you can go to contam mundum pod.com we

can include links for that in the show notes or contam mundum do supercast yeah.com this is uh going to be a really cool thing I we're excited lots of great content happy to partner with those guys Brian I guess if you would just give us a a charge and close Us down yeah I I would encourage listeners a lot of you guys were building in the rumble and you're feeling sometimes these competing instincts where you have this Grand ideal that you want to build but it's really hard to map onto the real world and and

I would just encourage um all of you to keep pushing and doing the next thing that's in front of you you're not going to get it perfect but don't let like the the inability to build the Platonic ideal of the thing that you think should exist keep you from starting St Brennan's classical Christian Academy we'll talk about it in the after hours has been a work of what can we do today to take one more step closer to glory and one step further away from the wreckage of the 20th century and all of the the

dysfunction that surrounds us how can we take one more step closer to making the world our sons and daughters inherit better than The world that we stand in today that's the attitude we need to be thinking about as we build not this perfectionist um just waiting for the perfect moment and the perfect opportunity just get to work get to work building get to work pouring your yourself out for your people and may the Lord bless you in whatever you put your hand to [Music] [Music]