Excellent, Patrick. Really superb. I wonder how much of your advice here might also be shown to be an effective antidote for the depression crisis? Quite a lot, I suspect.
When I was young, just out of college, I lived for several years on a sailboat which I sailed extensively around the Caribbean, the northeast, and offshore. That's as real as it gets: cold, sickness, storms, survival. But also: stars, dolphins, sunsets, the tides. This was just before GPS was widely available. I learned to navigate with paper charts, taking visual fixes, manually calculating set and drift, and even using a radio direction finder to pick up signals offshore. I've climbed to the top of a 60 foot mast in a bosun's chair to fix a jammed mainsail, and bathed in the Atlantic hundreds of miles offshore where shafts of sunlight disappear entirely into the dark blue without ever reaching the ocean floor. In total, I spent about 8 years on my boat--all of it while also serving in the military--and it was the best "education" I've ever had.
Amy, thanks for your note! The nautical represents a gaping hole in my own education. I've spent time at sea on naval vessels and conducted amphibious ops from them both by helicopter and zodiac, but that's just not the same as sailing in a sailboat! Reading Belloc on sailing first game me a sense that I was missing something profound by not knowing how to sail. Now you've confirmed it. Your paragraph reads like a poem. You'll have to teach me.
Well, it helps if you live near the ocean haha! Although...lake sailing can sometimes be as challenging and treacherous. I also spent a lot of time at sea on an aircraft carrier, which is its own education as you know. If nothing else, it teaches you just how BIG the ocean is, which even flying over it doesn't impart.
Once again, I am SO onboard with your understanding of real education. In preschool (in MY understanding), having children use any kind of device with a screen is tantamount to causing brain damage. It literally limits the growth of their brains!!!
Superb piece Patrick - Truly should serve to inspire all educators! I especially love your list of "The Thing Itself"examples, which is far from a "fools errand" but rather opens the eyes to what we often fail to see.
I have been truly inspired by your work and would be very curious to hear about your experience of co-founding the farm-based bording school. Have you ever considered writing about this?
Ruth, thanks so much for the encouragement and for the prompt to write about founding St. Martin's. That's a wonderful idea--one I'll take to the desk.
I am just writing a brief post for my "unconformed education" subscibers (a subsection of my newsletter) and am including a link to your post. I have to say, your perspective is truly inspiring, especially for our 16-year old who would like to pursue the type of work you do (we even checked out your certification course).
Patrick, I've read this four times already and every time I feel like I need to take a step back and absorb the experience. It's outstanding. I'm not sure I know how to place the educational correlatives into the mix, which is what I've been thinking about. How much do we owe it to our kids to mix those education correlatives in with the real if their soil has never experienced it? Can we ever hope Shackleton's story will be even a poor introduction to walking on ice, feeling it move underfoot, remembering the pain when frostbitten fingers get warmed up? What risk do we need to accept for our children to grow up understanding cold itself? And that seems the most benign example of the bunch. Death, speed, and conflict are the experiences I really want to teach. Along with friendship, love, envy, heartbreak, government, technology, passion. Those are lessons I believe all kids deserve to experience and to meditate on.
Also, I'm seriously honored you linked to my project. Thank you!
Latham, thanks for this thoughtful note. I struggled with how to represent the "educational correlatives" myself. Seems like a weird idea when education ought to be about reality in the first place.
Risk. You're right that this whole idea places risk tolerance and responsibility squarely on the table. My son broke his knee wrestling last year. After a practice, he complained that it was hurting him. Not knowing it was broken, my wife and I encouraged him to be tough. So he was. He wrestled in multiple practices and two tournaments over the next couple weeks. After mentioning that it was still bothering him, we took him to the doc, and sure enough, there was a small break. He was in a brace for six weeks and is fine now. If I had known it was broken at first, I would have taken him to the doctor right away. But as it turned out, he had a fantastic training opportunity in being tough. I would have denied him that opportunity if I had known...but I'm grateful for how it worked out.
"Understanding the difficulty of cultivating food and also the incredible abundance of the earth are at the heart of living decently." I extend this to include harvesting the abundance of food that requires no cultivation, but significant effort. Most Americans have near zero understanding of what it takes to fill a market and where we accumulate the hidden costs of that abundance. And even if that market includes whole foods, many now choose to eat food products that eliminate any real understanding of how whole foods become meals. It is up to parents to provide learning opportunities with "the real" as neither government nor industry has any incentive to change the status quo.
Patrick, this was fantastic. Thanks for putting this together. I'll be coming back to it as I continue to flesh out how to best educate my own kids within and without the "formal" education system. (Plus, it perfectly aligns with my own pet philosophy of "radical living.")
Excellent, Patrick. Really superb. I wonder how much of your advice here might also be shown to be an effective antidote for the depression crisis? Quite a lot, I suspect.
When I was young, just out of college, I lived for several years on a sailboat which I sailed extensively around the Caribbean, the northeast, and offshore. That's as real as it gets: cold, sickness, storms, survival. But also: stars, dolphins, sunsets, the tides. This was just before GPS was widely available. I learned to navigate with paper charts, taking visual fixes, manually calculating set and drift, and even using a radio direction finder to pick up signals offshore. I've climbed to the top of a 60 foot mast in a bosun's chair to fix a jammed mainsail, and bathed in the Atlantic hundreds of miles offshore where shafts of sunlight disappear entirely into the dark blue without ever reaching the ocean floor. In total, I spent about 8 years on my boat--all of it while also serving in the military--and it was the best "education" I've ever had.
Amy, thanks for your note! The nautical represents a gaping hole in my own education. I've spent time at sea on naval vessels and conducted amphibious ops from them both by helicopter and zodiac, but that's just not the same as sailing in a sailboat! Reading Belloc on sailing first game me a sense that I was missing something profound by not knowing how to sail. Now you've confirmed it. Your paragraph reads like a poem. You'll have to teach me.
Well, it helps if you live near the ocean haha! Although...lake sailing can sometimes be as challenging and treacherous. I also spent a lot of time at sea on an aircraft carrier, which is its own education as you know. If nothing else, it teaches you just how BIG the ocean is, which even flying over it doesn't impart.
Once again, I am SO onboard with your understanding of real education. In preschool (in MY understanding), having children use any kind of device with a screen is tantamount to causing brain damage. It literally limits the growth of their brains!!!
Superb piece Patrick - Truly should serve to inspire all educators! I especially love your list of "The Thing Itself"examples, which is far from a "fools errand" but rather opens the eyes to what we often fail to see.
I have been truly inspired by your work and would be very curious to hear about your experience of co-founding the farm-based bording school. Have you ever considered writing about this?
Ruth, thanks so much for the encouragement and for the prompt to write about founding St. Martin's. That's a wonderful idea--one I'll take to the desk.
I am just writing a brief post for my "unconformed education" subscibers (a subsection of my newsletter) and am including a link to your post. I have to say, your perspective is truly inspiring, especially for our 16-year old who would like to pursue the type of work you do (we even checked out your certification course).
Thanks so much Ruth! We are hosting a camp for that age group at our property this summer: https://iliadathletics.com/train-with-us/
Always welcome! I just wish I could make the Camino with you all...
Patrick, I've read this four times already and every time I feel like I need to take a step back and absorb the experience. It's outstanding. I'm not sure I know how to place the educational correlatives into the mix, which is what I've been thinking about. How much do we owe it to our kids to mix those education correlatives in with the real if their soil has never experienced it? Can we ever hope Shackleton's story will be even a poor introduction to walking on ice, feeling it move underfoot, remembering the pain when frostbitten fingers get warmed up? What risk do we need to accept for our children to grow up understanding cold itself? And that seems the most benign example of the bunch. Death, speed, and conflict are the experiences I really want to teach. Along with friendship, love, envy, heartbreak, government, technology, passion. Those are lessons I believe all kids deserve to experience and to meditate on.
Also, I'm seriously honored you linked to my project. Thank you!
Latham, thanks for this thoughtful note. I struggled with how to represent the "educational correlatives" myself. Seems like a weird idea when education ought to be about reality in the first place.
Risk. You're right that this whole idea places risk tolerance and responsibility squarely on the table. My son broke his knee wrestling last year. After a practice, he complained that it was hurting him. Not knowing it was broken, my wife and I encouraged him to be tough. So he was. He wrestled in multiple practices and two tournaments over the next couple weeks. After mentioning that it was still bothering him, we took him to the doc, and sure enough, there was a small break. He was in a brace for six weeks and is fine now. If I had known it was broken at first, I would have taken him to the doctor right away. But as it turned out, he had a fantastic training opportunity in being tough. I would have denied him that opportunity if I had known...but I'm grateful for how it worked out.
This is clearly true.
"Understanding the difficulty of cultivating food and also the incredible abundance of the earth are at the heart of living decently." I extend this to include harvesting the abundance of food that requires no cultivation, but significant effort. Most Americans have near zero understanding of what it takes to fill a market and where we accumulate the hidden costs of that abundance. And even if that market includes whole foods, many now choose to eat food products that eliminate any real understanding of how whole foods become meals. It is up to parents to provide learning opportunities with "the real" as neither government nor industry has any incentive to change the status quo.
Patrick, this was fantastic. Thanks for putting this together. I'll be coming back to it as I continue to flesh out how to best educate my own kids within and without the "formal" education system. (Plus, it perfectly aligns with my own pet philosophy of "radical living.")
Well done--keep up the good work!