The Families of Character Show
We serve parents who want more for their family. Our show offers research-based parenting solutions to the most common family problems, real-life parenting stories, and authentic support. The host, Jordan Langdon, is a wife, mother, and Licensed Clinical Social Worker who validates what parents go through and offers practical actionable steps parents can implement today to transform their families in joy and unity. Guests are experts in their field of work and provide high-value material for parents and families.
The Families of Character Show
Ep. #166: Inspiring Virtue Through Storytelling with Jeff Minick
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What if the secret to raising virtuous children isn't found in lectures or lessons, but in the stories we share? When educator and father Jeff Minnick recalls the tale of "The Countess and the Impossible" – a story about a boy striving for excellence in lawn-mowing that shaped his work ethic for six decades – we glimpse the extraordinary power of literature in character formation.
In this episode we discuss:
• Stories serve as powerful examples children naturally want to emulate
• Reading aloud to children for just 15 minutes daily creates crucial bonding time while building language skills
• Classic books like Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables teach virtue without preaching
• Parents can find quality book recommendations through resources like "Honey for a Child's Heart", "Honey for a Teens Heart", and "Books Children Love"
• Poetry helps develop language patterns and moral lessons that stay with children throughout life
• It's never too late to start reading aloud with children, even with teenagers
Reclaim your role as the primary educator of faith and morals by sharing great stories with your children today.
Be sure to check out Jeff Minick's articles on The Epoch Times website and Intellectual Takeout.
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Hey parents, welcome back to our show. Have you ever wondered how to instill virtues like courage, kindness and responsibility in your children? Well, what if the secret lies not in lectures, but in the stories we share? Today, we're exploring how the tales we tell can shape the hearts and minds of our young ones. Welcome back to the Families of Character show. I'm your host, jordan Langdon, and I'm thrilled to welcome Jeff Minnick to the show. Jeff is a seasoned educator, author and father of four with a growing platoon of grandchildren. For two decades he taught history, literature and Latin to homeschooling students in Asheville, north Carolina, and Jeff has penned several novels and nonfiction works, and his recent article in the Epoch Times, educating the Heart Stories Can Inspire Virtue in Our Children, offers profound insights into the role of literature in character formation, and that's what we're all about here at Families of Character is character formation being the primary educators of faith and morals for our kids. So welcome to the Families of.
Speaker 2:Character show, Jeff. Thank you very much. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you very much. Yes, it is such a gift to be able to have a guest in person. Usually we do these over Zoom and so I'm sitting here with Jeff. If you're not watching on YouTube, well you could flip over there and check us out but we are posted up in a little audio booth in the library in Front, royal Virginia. So this is going to be a great, great conversation.
Speaker 1:So, jeff, I told you as we were having coffee before the interview that I am a recent lover of the Epoch Times and that I saw this article that you had written and I read it and it really spoke to my heart as a mom of three and someone who is wanting my kids to really enjoy great stories and to learn from them, and I just thought, oh man, this, this article, hits the heart of so many parents today. I want to just see if I can track this guy down and get an interview with him. So in that article you begin with the idea that virtue is best taught by example. So can you elaborate on how stories serve as examples for children to emulate?
Speaker 2:Okay, I will start with myself. Way back I'm obviously I'm 74 years old, so we're going back in a time machine, but when I was a kid. I'll give two examples. The first or three examples, the first books that interested me other than Learning to Read and there's a funny story about Learning to Read, I can get to later but basically the first ones that I really fell in love with, and there's some still in print and they're called Childhood of Famous Americans series. What the author does is they take the childhood of a famous person like George Custer, dwight Eisenhower and these people and they tell you about their childhood and the last chapter tells you what they did as an adult. And a lot of it is, of course, sort of fictionalized history, but it just really snagged my attention. And when people say, what's one of the greatest influences on you from reading?
Speaker 2:I always say that first that was there and then just different things. I read, one of which let me make sure I get the title right here. I read in ninth grade at Southwest Junior High School, winston-salem, in our literature class English literature and it was called the Countess and the Impossible and it was from Reader's Digest 1958, the Countess and the Impossible. You can find the story online.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And it tells the story of this boy. It just had a profound impact on my work life and it tells the story of this boy who this old woman who's known as the Countess in town is very dignified and maybe even an accountess sort of wraps him on the head as he's walking by and says I want you to mow my lawn. This is back when you had push mowers that just turned like this. And so he starts mowing the lawn and she explains that there's different levels. $3 is what you do for a really good mowing job. $4 is the next level up. It's almost unattainable, and nobody's ever done a $5 lawn. Keep in mind this was back in the 40s. And so the kid takes over and he starts getting frustrated because he'll go to her and he has to tell her what he's worth, and so he always says $3. And one day he had his sights set on doing a $4 lawn and then he sort of punked out on that and said $3. And that night in bed he had this huge revelation and he thought I should be aiming at the five dollar lawn. So the next time he mows he goes out. I'm sorry it takes so long. I love this.
Speaker 2:He goes out and mows and mows, and mows. Then he takes some kind of machine they had back then. It was like a drum barrel that you would roll over the lawn to make it look even better, mow a little bit more. He clipped all the stuff, pulled weeds, and so from literally early in the morning until almost dusk he's out there working in the yard. He goes and knocks on the countess's door and says I finished, and it's a $5 job. And she says nobody does a $5 job. So she comes out.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful scene. They're walking in the twilight, descriptions of the lawn are there, and all of this supposedly by the way, this is a true story. They're walking and they're looking at the lawn and she says you've done this magnificent thing, you've done a $5 job. And he and she says why did you do all this? And he said because I think she. He says at the end because you said it was impossible, and so that's what really attracts people. And that story has stuck with me now for 60 years. I looked it up online to come here and talk to Jordan, and I looked it up once before, three or four years ago, and I couldn't remember it. Then I remembered it was something that I put lawn mowing in the Countess and the story comes up online if you want to look for it. But it's just a marvelous story, but it's just one indication. Everybody has different ones. Can I keep going?
Speaker 1:for a second yes, please.
Speaker 2:Okay, I was helping found a private library here for homeschoolers and also just for the community at large, sort of open up the doors to everybody. And the nice thing about this library, it's not done in opposition to here. It's been a lifelong dream of a woman, and the younger woman who actually opened it was her dream too, and so they've opened this library. They're getting all these donations and a young woman who worked there who's named Magdalene Fitzpatrick. I only met her a couple of times but I asked her why she was working there and she said well, I love libraries and she was Catholic. It's going to be sort of a Catholic-based but still tons of excellent old books you can't really find anymore stuff a lot of us have never heard of that were popular, say, back in the 30s and 40s. And so, magdalene, I said, oh, that's really cool. And she said you know my father, we just started the seventh reading of the Little House books.
Speaker 2:That's in the article that Jordan mentioned that I wrote and I love it. She was very enthused. She said I just love the story of Laura, the Ingalls family, the whole thing. And when you think about it, think of how your character is being formed by having your dad read aloud to you every evening seven times and she goes back. This is a teenager, she's 17 and just loves sitting there listening to her dad read the Little House books. And I will say if you're a critic of prose, I encourage you to go. Start out with the book Little House in the Big Woods and you're going to find almost a Hemingway-esque style of prose there. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 1:If you read that aloud.
Speaker 2:It's gorgeous prose, but she's not only getting the prose, she's getting all those good old character values that are in the Little House books. That was a long answer to your question about how virgin. I have more to say, I know and I can't wait to hear more about it, but you do.
Speaker 1:You mentioned, like in the article I think you mentioned, little House on the Prairie books and Anne of.
Speaker 2:Green Gables.
Speaker 1:And so how do those, practically speaking, how do these stories contribute to a child's understanding of virtue? Because you talked about reading aloud, which is a beautiful gift. If that's the only takeaway from this interview you get, is the value of a father reading aloud to their children, even a mother reading aloud to their children. And you start there. That would be a great gift to your family is reading aloud instead of what we normally do. Set the timer, get the reading log out, give them a book, make them go off in a corner and read on their own, and then tell them to come back and let us know when they're done so we can put our initials on the reading log right, that's just kind of the checkbox mentality we have with reading sometimes these days.
Speaker 1:So Anna Green Gables, Little House, on the Prairie series how are these stories really contributing to a child's understanding of virtue?
Speaker 2:Okay, first I want to start with something else you said, which is how important it is. You see this all the time. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows how important it is to read aloud to little kids and recently online, a woman named Sarah Anderson I follow her work a little bit, I'm going to have to read the title off of here because it's long, but it's called the Most Important.
Speaker 2:15 Minutes of a Child's Day are Disappearing and the article covers reading aloud to your children, not your teens, so much, but like, and so she every. You know, if you look up 15 minutes a day of reading, you'll see article after article saying how important that is. And they're disappearing for two reasons, three reasons. Number one, technology. Number two is people are too pressed for time. And then number three unfortunately a large percentage of parents don't like reading out loud to their kids, which to me is sort of unbelievable Interesting. That was really interesting to me. Forty-one percent out of the survey they had taken said no, I don't like reading out loud to their kids, which to me is sort of unbelievable Interesting.
Speaker 2:That was really interesting to me. 41% out of the survey they had taken said no, I don't like reading aloud. They do it sometimes, but they don't enjoy it Okay, so to me, reading aloud is really important. My family in part because of our work situation. Our business was a bed and breakfast, so we were living in the middle of work. We did not read aloud as a family too much, but we did read aloud every day to our kids, either at bedtime or other points during the day, sometimes several times a day, and but even the reading part is just crucial, especially for your younger children. So just in terms of learning to read, reading is crucial and keeping it up. And so don't you know? But the way we learn virtue is the way we learn it. We learn it every day in every way. I mean I just made that up, that's a little rhyme, that's a rhyme. We learn it every day in every way. I mean I just made that up, that's a little rhyme.
Speaker 1:That's a rhyme. We learn it every day, in every way, whether we're at work or play.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love it.
Speaker 2:But we do learn virtue. If you're watching a movie, you're learning virtues of some kind or vices. Yes. If you're on social media, you may be learning virtue. Listening to an influencer, you may be learning virtue. Listening to an influencer, you may be learning a vice. So it's a two-edged sword, and literature can be the same way, but in a much more limited sense and especially if you're reading older literature.
Speaker 2:There's a book that I mentioned in the article called the Norton Anthology of Children's Literature. It's massive, it's literally this thick and it's just huge, and it contains literature back to well, even a little bit earlier but the 1700s. And if you start flipping through that book, all of those stories right up to the present time, in a lot of cases, like the Little House, books like Anne of Green Gables teach virtue. They don't preach virtue, they teach virtue. The good stuff doesn't hammer it away in your head. You come away and go. That's nice, you know.
Speaker 2:I sort of hope I act like Anne of Green Gables someday. You don't even think about the virtues, you're just saying, oh, she's kind of a cool person. Or you think you read the Childhood of Famous Americans, about Robert E Lee, and you go. He was pretty, had an amazing childhood. Look at some of the stuff that happened to him, and so that's what I'm talking about as you, as you, learn this stuff by osmosis, sort of Hmm, and you're right when, a few minutes ago, you said you don't learn it. You can learn it getting lectured, but most of the time we learn it by. We learn it from our friends, we learn it from family, we learn it from media, we learn it from by example.
Speaker 2:By example, even solitude, because you're thinking then so anyway, yes, and that 15 minutes of reading a day going away. We've got to bring it is we've got to bring it back. We've got to bring it back.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:People should read to their if your kid is under. Some kids, like Magdalene, loves being read to when she's 17. I think I might like being read to.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I've never had that, but people, it does so many things. The reading when you're little. Not only are they hearing words, rhythms, like if you're reading fairy tales, even earlier, nursery rhymes, they're hearing the rhythm of the language, they're hearing vocabulary, they're hearing all sorts of stuff. But what the other thing that people point out? This is not original with me, but it's just so true. They're bonding and being intimate with the parent. They're sitting in the lab, they're sitting here leaning on them, like our kids used to do studying, following the pictures and stuff like this. It's a moment, a great moment for 15 minutes of bonding Connections.
Speaker 1:Connections yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's got all these positives and, to be honest, at least sitting here right now, I can't think of a single negative. I know it's got positives galore, so we should do it, that's right One of the things as a parent I could say.
Speaker 1:When I was rushing around from my job to picking up kids at school or whatever, I thought, oh, that's the last thing I want to do. It's the end of the day, I'm whipped, I'm tired, I don't have the energy. And then I just started. I just started. I picked up a book with my two kids. I happen to love Liz Boyle's books and so I thought, well, they say that this is good for us.
Speaker 1:And I used to read to my little little kids you know babies and toddlers and that made sense. We were either, we were usually multitasking, I was either feeding one of them or something. So it seemed like I was being efficient with my time, because we're obsessed with efficiency and productivity. Right, so I can kind of justify it then. But then when our kids got older, I thought, all right, I'm going to sit down. All these homeschool parents do this. They read to their children. They seem to enjoy it. The kids seem to be just curious and inventive and just socially in tune, and so let's see what this does.
Speaker 1:I couldn't believe how much I got into the book myself, just from reading it aloud, hearing my own voice and then watching the kids just like hanging on every word, bonding for the story that they could resonate with because it wasn't me saying you know, we really need to work on honesty and responsibility and gratitude, and this is what honesty is and then giving them the definition of the virtue or the character strength and then telling them what they needed to do.
Speaker 1:But when they heard someone else in a natural way living out the virtue of honesty or courage right, because they're being brave and taking some risk that lands in a whole different way, you know, and, like you said, they could say wow, I'd really like to be like Anne Anne of Cream Gables, like there's something about her and they can't put their finger on it. They might not use virtue language, but they're attracted to that character and the story, which is why it's so important to introduce your kids to good media, good books and good shows to watch on TV, so that you're introducing them to the right characters Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that's, yeah, it's yep.
Speaker 1:Well, and with so many books available, we're sitting in the library full of books and there's little pop-up libraries all over the place. Now how can parents choose stories that genuinely inspire virtue in children? Do you particularly have a book list that you recommend to parents of young kids?
Speaker 2:I used to have more, but I've actually, because I mentioned that in the article, so I copied down a couple to bring in. And then I just want to talk about the library a little bit. There's a woman named Elizabeth Wilson. These were back, so these are older lists, these are back when we were raising our kids and Elizabeth Wilson wrote a book called Books, children, love.
Speaker 2:And again, what you want to do is, if you get one of these, don't just get a list, get the ones like she has, where she has reviews, even short ones, of what the book is.
Speaker 2:You go oh, that might appeal to my son, or something like this. And then there's a woman named Gladys Hunt who wrote two books, one one she wrote with her daughters, but the first book she wrote was called Honey for a Child's Heart, and Honey for a Child's Heart talks about that means the books, and so she's got books and those go up to about eighth grade. So that's a good book. But then she has another one called Honey for a Teen's Heart, and so that goes along the same lines, but more for teenagers, more maturity, like George Orwell books and things like this in there. So those would be good lists. And then the other thing you can do is if you go to the, if your library and most public libraries do use Dewey Decimal, if you go to the early, I'll just say it's zero to zero the very early shelves, the first ones there, you'll find a section of, and I love books like this.
Speaker 2:They don't say this, but it'll be books about books, including books for teens, books for kids, and so that's a second option where you can find all sorts of books and books that tell you, give reading lists and tell you what to read and why you should read, and things like this. The next one I hesitate to make as a recommendation. It depends on your public library. We'll just leave it like that. You can always ask librarians what they've read to make as a recommendation. It depends on your public library. We'll just leave it like that. You can always ask librarians what they've read. Oh, then another one. This is a good connection is ask your friends who have, especially if they're children a little older than yours and you trust your friends then ask them what did your kids read when they were little? What did you want them reading? There's kids books, whether you're talking about kindergarten or high school books, and I'm not talking about young adult fiction. I'm leaving that off the table. I'm talking about old-timey books, maybe, but they're just marvelous.
Speaker 2:I mean the English in the late 19th century. That's known as the golden age of children's literature. One other golden age of children's literature was in America post-World War II up through maybe the 80s. I mean, it was a lot, just tons of stuff coming out there.
Speaker 1:That's great, okay, so honey for the child's Gladys Hunt's Honey.
Speaker 2:No, no, yeah, gladys Hunt's Honey for a Child's Heart.
Speaker 1:And then Honey for a Teen's Heart.
Speaker 2:I like those books. Those were good books, I thought.
Speaker 1:Wonderful.
Speaker 2:To be honest, I didn't check to see if they're still in print, but I'm sure if they're not, you can get them from a dealer. And then Elizabeth Wilson's book, but I'm sure, if they're not, you can get them from a dealer. And then Elizabeth Wilson's book Books Children.
Speaker 1:Love is also a good book, wonderful, and you mentioned and I will just echo this for our audience, but that used to be that you could ask your librarian. You know what do you recommend. I think it's different now in public libraries, and so I like the idea of asking your friends first, right, like-minded individuals what are your kids reading, sharing, doing book swaps, right? You moms get together in such beautiful ways with your kids, play dates and moms groups and things like that. It'd be great to share these good books that really help develop the character of our kids and get them out of this sort of dynamic with us where we're just talking at them in some ways, telling them about the virtues, and instead get them inspired and intrigued by these stories that really develop virtue, these stories that really develop virtue.
Speaker 1:One of the things that, as a young parent, I would hear often and it usually was around my church community was this idea that, as a parent, I am solely responsible to be the primary educator of my kids in faith and morals, and I thought I have no idea what that means, but that sounds awfully intimidating. You, as a parent, you are supposed to be primary educator of your kid in faith and morals, and so I thought I'm determined to break this down for myself, first of all because I'm this is one of my gifts is that I just go. I have no clue what that means. Would you please tell me, because I want to rise to the occasion, but I really don't know what that means. I don't know if that means I'm supposed to educate my kids at home and and and homeschool them, or if there's some underlying you know, something else that I should be doing outside of that. And what I found was that, in the busyness of our culture today, I think what?
Speaker 1:What my husband and I found we were doing is we were sending our kids to great Christian schools, um, and we were going to church. But then, when we had our kids home, you know, in the evenings which is what I'm looking at now a window of influence of maybe two or three hours a night, if they don't have sports right before they go to bed and after they get home from school, is get them in the bath, get them into bed, make sure they have homework done and and put some food in their belly. And so what I realized is we were outsourcing the development of faith and morals to the church and to the schools and, um, one of the things that I was able to recognize that I can do differently to form their character is just what you were talking about hey, 30 minutes of read alouds at home. But I did spend some time researching decent material because I thought if I only have an influence, this two hour influence in the evenings, then I got to make sure it's not junk and trash stuff that's going to encourage them to play more video games or to want more screen time or whatever.
Speaker 1:But instead some of these older books and these nursery rhymes and poetry blew my mind when we started reading these types of things. So I did want you to mention, in your experience of homeschooling, teaching, homeschool kids and just your background in literature, the value of poetry for kids, even if they've never been introduced before. Why poetry? Why should we consider, as a family, memorizing poems and reciting poems?
Speaker 2:That's a very good question and I think I have some answers to it. The people, if you go back 120, 140 years, even up until say 1920, when radio started becoming big people still, at least in a lot of homes not across America depending on the home, but people gathered together in the evening and would often read. Even they did their own music you can turn on a radio they did their own reading and would read aloud, in part because in a lot of homes I'll tell the Dolly Parton story in a second, if that's okay. Yes, In a lot of homes they didn't have many books and so they would read aloud things like the Bible, which contains poetry. But they would also read aloud Shakespeare. They would read aloud, and I know this sounds highfalutin, but to them it wasn't. This was big in the 19th century. Shakespeare had a huge sort of welcome in America, but then they also just read. People even like a little bit later poets like Robert Service or I can't remember his name, but like Casey at the Bat or things like this.
Speaker 2:And the reason to read poetry to me is number one is the language, the rhythm, the beat, the meter, the rhyme. All the stuff gets in bed. And if you have your kids memorize a little poetry, all the better. I mean, I don't want to beat them into memorization, but it does. It's really good if they learn some poetry. My heart stays with them the rest of their lives. And then also because poetry, if you think about it, and it's true poetry can put into a sonnet the same amount of emotion that goes into a novel. I mean so, instead of reading 300 pages, you love the characters and stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love reading fiction, but you can put a ton of stuff into a sonnet.
Speaker 2:There's experience on it. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways Browning all these things. So I don't know if that answers that question, but poetry is really to me important and we neglect it and partly the reason we neglect poetry these days. And, by the way, poetry can also just be fun. Shel Silverstein most parents know who he is and he had a poem. I used to be we homeschooled. I used to be a. I taught homeschoolers in seminars. I used to be a we homeschooled. I used to be a. I taught homeschoolers in seminars. I used to be a judge. What do you call it? What do you call the person off stage who tells them if they can't think of the next line?
Speaker 1:Oh, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I can't think of the word.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That was my duty.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And every year people would do Shel Silverstein's poem about being sick in bed, I can't go to school. And then they find out it's Saturday and they said I'm better. So kids do like poetry and they like funny poetry. You can make it dramatic. You have to read poetry in a little bit different way and make your mood really match the poem. And then, well, here's I'm just going to give you an example. This just popped into my head, let's go. Okay. When I was a kid I had a joke book that I liked to carry around and read. And here's what poetry, how it can sometimes stick with you. A green little chemist on a green little day makes some green little chemicals in a green little way. Now the green little grass tenderly waves over the green little chemicals in a green little way. Now the green little grass tenderly waves over the green little chemists. Green little gray oh, I love that.
Speaker 1:I don't know where that came from, getting a little loopy here, but that could have been like 65 years.
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, it was longer than that. No, that'd be about right. 65 probably. Yeah, it was probably 8 to 10 in there and it just stuck for some reason.
Speaker 1:Well, and look. It brings you so much joy too.
Speaker 2:I know I still say it to the grandkids sometimes.
Speaker 1:So that's the value too, and it is, and it's a goofy poem yeah, I get it all the way, but it does teach.
Speaker 2:It stayed with me because of the repetition of brain, the beat and rhythm of the line.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, yes, Well, and I'll never forget just the story you started with about you know, the lawnmower, the kid that was you know a level three lawnmower.
Speaker 2:And then that's such a marvelous teaching tool.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes and the bonding and the unity that comes from sharing poetry. Just, you're sitting on your sectional couch in your living room. You got the the bonding and the unity that comes from sharing poetry. You're sitting on your sectional couch in your living room. You've got the fireplace going, it's a winter day and you pull out the poetry book that you put on the table, that you're going. I hope nobody asks me what this poem means, because I've never even seen it myself as a parent, but then you open it and you just let yourself go.
Speaker 1:You let your guard down and you go. We're just going to try it. And it builds such great unity and you see these characters bubbling up in your children as they act things out, they get their sword out or they, you know, they challenge each other to memorize something and you can participate as a family. It's just turn the screens off for a while.
Speaker 2:Turn the screens off for a while.
Speaker 1:Get these books out and enjoy digging. Tell them I've never done this. I wasn't raised on poetry myself, but I'm trying something new with you. Right, we're this like partnership here, that's journeying along life together, and that's what's so beautiful about these things, you know. So talk to us about Dolly Parton. I'll give Dolly Parton.
Speaker 2:I'll get to Dolly Parton in one second, but first I want to mention when I was doing that poetry contest thing. It was once a year in the spring and they had everybody from three and four-year-olds who would get up and sometimes they'd start crying, but usually they'd get up and recite a little poem. But this woman, a young woman I'll leave her last name out, but I did know her. She was a student of mine in the seminars I taught Caroline was her first name she got up and she recited and I had the sheet right there with dramatic emphasis, word for word TS Eliot's the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Now go look. You know if you haven't read that poem. It's modernist, but he was Eliot, was a Christian. Go read that poem and it's pages long without really any. All I can remember from it is I can remember several lines I grow old, I grow old. I show where my trousers rolled. I don't know why I'm getting old, but I don't have any big urge to roll my trousers. Sometimes I have trouble keeping them up, but not rolling them up. But okay, dolly Parton we were talking in reference that, that households with fewer books and if I'll get to this in a second too but households with fewer books.
Speaker 2:Dolly Parton grew up in Tennessee. Very poor environment, home. Her dad worked hard and everything, but they just didn't. Back then a lot of people didn't have much money and you can look this up online. Her mom would cuddle them in the bed and read the Bible too, because that's what they had.
Speaker 2:But somehow she got her hands on the Little Engine that Could book. This is showing lifelong influence of literature and virtue. So she got this little book and loved it. She took it everywhere. She read from it constantly. She said she had it memorized, which I believe. I think it's Walter Piper, I think was the author. It's the one with the little. It's a real 30s-looking design. So she read this. Well as an adult and this is up until probably even today but as an adult, throughout most of her career, she would get nervous going on stage and she would stand off stage going. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. And that's what the little engine that could says that God's presence delivered in time for Christmas. So I think I can, I think I can. So I just thought it was a cool story.
Speaker 2:And that shows you right there overcoming fear, courage bravery, and that's what her mantra became. That gave her that.
Speaker 1:And she's blessed the world with this gift of being able to sing and she shares her faith, and that story from her childhood inspired that courage in her. I think I can. I think I can, yes. So even famous folks out there are recalling things from their childhood and characters that they learned about and heard about. To inspire them to keep going and give us these beautiful things, wow Can.
Speaker 2:I comment on that to the famous folks, things.
Speaker 2:Wow, can I comment on that too? The famous folks, if you, I, just in case your viewers want to look this up if you look up ex libris, which means out of the library or out of the books of really E-X-L-I-B-R-I-S Epic Times, jeff Minnick, you'll see a whole series of articles that I wrote on books that influenced America's famous people, which Dolly Parton's one, but most of them are back in the 19th century. Dolly books influenced someone like oh, I don't know, george Washington was one of the people John Adams, abigail Adams, abigail Adams this guy there's about there's, there were probably about 40 of these and they, if you look at those, they are really amazing at what they were reading. Number one and we're talking about before the age of 20. And and then let me just see my notes here.
Speaker 2:Let me see one thing I was trying to think of, one. Oh, frederick Douglass. I wanted to mention him. He learned to read, was taught illegally by his mistress to read a little bit, and got traded bread for with my kids to teach him more about reading. And then he bought at the age of 12 or 13 the columbian orator, which is this collection. You can still get it online and it's a collection of speeches, history, all these things, but it was focused on teaching people to write and speak well, and speaking well back then was huge and this. He kept that book till the end of his life.
Speaker 2:He called it his treasure and this was something he bought when he was 12. George Washington a lot of people know the rules that he wrote, like 110 rules of civility. He got those out of a text that was originally written by Jesuits. I believe in France. And then they came over here and he copied them. These aren't all made up by him somewhere. And then the Bible had. Just if you go back and look at almost everybody in the 19th century who's well-known says Lincoln I mean from Lincoln to having an old-timer's moment. Who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin? Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, Same thing. She grew up just immersed in the Bible, partly because of their home lives, but partly again because, in Lincoln's case, it was one of the few books they had in the house.
Speaker 1:Yes so.
Speaker 2:I just we see these influences, so they had the bible. I'm going to comment one more thing on the bible. It's amazing to me that people who are going until they become twins dwindling now, but people who were english majors, a lot of them, would not know the bible I I'm not talking about as a religious book, but as literature. And if you don't know the Bible as literature, at least in a not deep way but at least in a familiar way, you can't possibly read hardly, you can hardly read any author writing before 1900. Look at Lincoln, go back and look at Lincoln's speeches. They have nothing to do with the Bible. They do, but the rhythms in there are biblical and Shakespearean. I mean, if you read his second inaugural address, gettysburg.
Speaker 1:Address. It's got all this King James beautiful stuff and that's where he gets it from. So, anyway, yes, bible on the nightstand and and it's not a collector's item, it's just to sit there right, um but to pick it up with your kids and to open to the gospel and and read a little bit of it and not worry about what if my kids know more than I do about the Bible, but, again, to identify this commonality that we should be constantly learning and, as parents, just having that humility to say, oh, if we don't know what this means, let's look it up together, let's learn about it together or ask our friends about this. So that is an interesting point you make, that, whether it's famous people or people in positions of power, elected officials, their mindset and what's important to them starts way back in their childhood and oftentimes with something that has influenced them, like a book or a particular writer or the Bible.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:But I think as parents, modern day parents we could blow that off kids to sports practices and getting caught up in things that ultimately are not moving the needle forward for them. If we think in terms of raising adults, we're not raising kids. We're raising kids to be contributing adults yeah, great point. Yeah, you know Exactly. Contributing adults. Yeah, great point. Yeah, exactly that. It's important to focus on those critical few things and ignoring the trivial many distractions that can really pull us out of some of this good quality stuff like reading and storytelling. What else comes to mind for you? Storytelling, what else comes to mind for you? Are there any other little stories or snippets of information about literature or good books or anything that's on your heart? I made a few notes so let's see what I wrote here.
Speaker 2:I would like to say two more things here. The first is the other thing about literature everything. If you pick classic things that kids like Aesop's Fables, any of the well-known novels for boys and girls, little Women, little Men, all sorts of things like this, if you stick to the good stuff which it is good stuff, and the old stuff, add in new. We all, even CS Lewis, once said if you're going to read new books, try to read one old book in between each new book. If you can't do that, read two or three new books and then read an old book.
Speaker 1:Great idea.
Speaker 2:And so when you do that, a guy named ED Hirsch or Hirsch, I think, is how he says it years ago, maybe 40 years ago, I think his institute may still, but he wrote a lot about cultural literacy and it was. How do you stay if you are, and we'll get to poor readers in a second read a lot of good books and you come to a reference like everything from the three billy goats, gruff to shakespeare's polonius, and those are references. You're going to be scratching your head going this doesn't make any sense. And so you basically, and if you don't look it up and educate yourself, you become less reader. So jdsch wrote this book. I can't remember the exact title. If you just look up cultural literacy, you'll find it about this thick and it's things every American should know. When you first see the book, you go I don't know half that stuff. But if you open it up, you do. But his point is if we don't have commonality in what we know, we're fractured, and if we don't have, if certain individuals don't know these things, they can't really read right. And then the last thing that I will bring up it's a story on myself, but it's sort of funny, but a lot of kids are having struggling. I don't like the word struggling. A lot of kids can't read well these days. Public schools and I'm not blaming public schools as opposed to anything else Public schools report. They're the ones who do the reporting that you know. It's like one out of every three children maybe even more than that is reading below grade level Below, not yet Grade level, yes, and it's not improving. I mean, people are getting out of high school reading at third and fourth grade level and that's bad for our society and so we need to really start focusing on that. And that's pretty much where the primary educator idea comes in. It's the parents. We're paying now astronomical sums for public education per student. Uh as well. It's over 20 000 bucks, I think, average across the nation. And but if you um, so really focus on teaching your kids to read and make sure, without drumming in their heads, that they realize somehow maybe see you reading, or if you're reading a lot to them, that increases the thirst for this.
Speaker 2:When I was um, I was in boonville, north carolina, a town of 800. My dad moved there to practice medicine I went to. He was fresh out of medical school from pennsylvania, so we moved to boonville, north car Carolina. Town of 800, little Boonville elementary school, no kindergarten, yet that came the next two years later in school. So I start first grade and I go to class, get dropped off there at class.
Speaker 2:My mom later on I would walk to school because we were close enough. But my mom picked me up and drove me home. I was quiet the whole way home and she pulled into the carport. I got out of the door car didn't slam the door but I closed it pretty hard and she said what's wrong with you? And I said they didn't teach me to read. I was told for like the year before oh, you're going to school, they'll teach you to read and you were so excited for this I thought they would teach you all. I had no idea how you learned to read, so it was like I'm going to learn to read today. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:But we want kids to learn to read.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And it hurts the country and it hurts them when they can't, so it takes away. It not only hurts them job-wise, which we all look at, but it takes away joy, it takes away pleasure and things like this.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that's me on why we need to read. I love it. Jeff, Thank you for sharing all this with us.
Speaker 1:Parents. If you're listening and you're going, I've done it wrong, it's too late. I have teenagers. We never did any of this stuff. Man, I wish we would have had less screens, I would.
Speaker 1:I would encourage you to make it your mission to go on the hunt for some an, an interesting book. Just start with one or two that maybe you read, or or you research and find out a lot of kids are reading this, that this is something of great interest for teenagers or young adults. And, as long as it lines up with your faith and morals, recommend it to your kids and say, man, I may have missed the boat on this reading thing with you. I wish I would have done more of it, but I understand the value and it's never too late. So, gifting kids books, doing that 15 minutes a day of read alouds, you know. Asking your friends for recommendations on the books that they're reading and their good book, you know, lists and and things like that, that's, that's the way to go. I think we can bring back a love for learning and a love for diving into these books to help form the character of our kids. So if you haven't yet, I would strongly encourage you to check out the Epic Times, that's E-P-O-C-H Times.
Speaker 1:This is a publication. Again, it's a newspaper. Is the newspaper still in print, jeff?
Speaker 2:or is it all online? It's once a week. No, it's been once a week for as long as I've been writing for them Once a week and then online. Okay, wonderful Most stuff ends up online.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, wonderful, well, most stuff ends up online, okay, wonderful. Well, you can find more of Jeff's writing and his work in that publication Also you write for another one as well.
Speaker 2:I write for an outfit that's sort of making a comeback right now, called Intellectual Takeout.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that.
Speaker 2:Intellectual Takeout. They're real good. They have a lot of cultural articles. Okay, so that's it.
Speaker 1:Wonderful Intellectual Takeout and the Epic Times. If you yourself want good quality conservative articles and nuggets to read about, I would highly recommend that, and you can scroll down in our show notes and get a link to the articles that Jeff has written and also a link to the Epoch Times and Intellectual Takeout. Children aloud maybe picking up a poetry book on Amazon and putting it on your coffee table and then just challenging yourself to open it up and have a good time with your family and get this started, so we'll catch you on another episode of our show real soon. Thanks for tuning in.
