We're often deceived into thinking that if we just teach our kids the "right" answers, we will have done our job. Check. Complete.
But instruction on the particulars is simply not enough. Otherwise, what happens once your kids move out and confront a question for which they hadn't studied? Can you really say they are well prepared for a robust Christian life?
This is why any education worthy of the adjective "Christian" must impart a distinctly Christian lens through which our children will see ALL the particulars of life. Education is never neutral, so ours shouldn't pretend to be either.
Join Headmaster Kevin Love and Pastor Eric Conn for Season 1, Episode 3 as they discuss the importance of imparting this Christian lens for our children.
P.S. if you haven't already, make sure you sign up for the New Christendom Press Conference in June 2024. See you there!
P.P.S. join us over on Patreon if you're looking for more resources as well as community with other like-minded parents.
We're often deceived into thinking that if we just teach our kids the "right" answers, we will have done our job. Check. Complete.
But instruction on the particulars is simply not enough. Otherwise, what happens once your kids move out and confront a question for which they hadn't studied? Can you really say they are well prepared for a robust Christian life?
This is why any education worthy of the adjective "Christian" must impart a distinctly Christian lens through which our children will see ALL the particulars of life. Education is never neutral, so ours shouldn't pretend to be either.
Join Headmaster Kevin Love and Pastor Eric Conn for Season 1, Episode 3 as they discuss the importance of imparting this Christian lens for our children.
P.S. if you haven't already, make sure you sign up for the New Christendom Press Conference in June 2024. See you there!
P.P.S. join us over on Patreon if you're looking for more resources as well as community with other like-minded parents.
In not mentioning God. My public school teachers preached a thundering sermon every day. By implication, they taught that God is not relevant to most areas of life. The most destructive things I was taught in the government schools were not the outright lies that were presented, eg I descended from apes, the Puritans were nasty people, etc. These obvious falsehoods can be easily corrected. The most destructive things I was taught were by far the subtle lies about the character of God.
Speaker 1:Daily I was taught that two and two are four, the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, and that frogs breathe in water, regardless of whether Jesus Christ is Lord over such matters. Every lesson attempted to debunk the clear teaching of Scripture that Jesus Christ is the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Colossians 2.3. I had believed in God since childhood and I never relinquished this belief. But with every lesson, in every class period, all day, every day, for 12 years, I was being taught to think like an atheist in the academic realm, and I didn't even know that I was being indoctrinated. Welcome to the St Brendan's Podcast, where we exist to equip you with rigorous, practicable and affordable Christian education for many generations to come.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this episode of the podcast. I'm one of your hosts, eric Kahn, joined today by Headmaster Pastor Kevin Love Kevin. How are you today? I am doing great. How are you? I'm one of your hosts, eric Kahn, joined today by headmaster pastor Kevin Love Kevin. How are you today? I am doing great. How are you? I'm doing well. So that was a really interesting quote. That's from Repairing the Ruins.
Speaker 1:And who's the author on that one? That was Dr Chris Schlecht. Yeah, Repairing the Ruins.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so really interesting, I think, as we kind of tee up. Today's conversation really fascinates me because, as we're having this conversation about how we see the world, and it really gets into this territory of these are the things you don't even notice, like fish and water, yes, and so it's so important to think through kind of these presuppositions and foundations that a lot of us are taking for granted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you would wish, you would hope that his experience was unique. Yeah for sure, right that, none of us, because surely Kevin Love myself, I was not in that same environment, but I was right, it was in California. Yeah, it was 12 years. It was day after day, lesson after lesson, where you're being taught to reject Christ in a way, at least intellectually, where you're saying Christ does not matter for these things, right, and so, yeah, it kind of comes down to really what we're going to talk about today understanding Christian education as a lens. That's what they're doing. That's what the teacher was giving him, right, that's what he was kind of lamenting looking back in his life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting because I think about even you know how hostile public school has gotten. Yeah, and it's gotten worse. More recently but say, like when I was in high school in the 00s, 90s and 00s, we're going back a little bit, but it's interesting because we were in that era. It was more like just keep Christianity out. These are like a neutral space where we're just doing science and facts yeah, and also, by the way, evolution Also here we go and God isn't real yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's sort of ramped up and, I think, gotten a lot worse. Part of this problem, though, as we were talking about, is the deceptive nature of it and it being very sneaky, so walk me through that. Why is it so important to understand this?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the reason that it's sneaky is because it would just realistically, it would be different if the teacher stood up day after day and said you know what, guys, I am not a Christian. I actually worship Satan and I want you to worship Satan as well.
Speaker 2:And I want to steal your soul.
Speaker 1:I want to steal your soul, and here are the four steps I need you to follow right, I mean your soul. I want to steal your soul, and here are the four steps I need you to follow right? I mean even, honestly, non-christian parents who have any, you know, who haven't been so hardened morally in a way, would say wait, that's wrong, I'm not going to have that for my own kids. Yes, it's not like that, it's more like so. We live in Utah, right, utah is very sunny. I myself have to wear sunglasses, but not only that. Prescription sunglasses. Those sunglasses do two things for me. One, the glasses color everything that I see. It gives a tint to everything that I see. The other thing about it, though this lens it gives clarity. Prescription sunglasses it gives clarity. It's kind of like the example that Calvin gave with using the spectacles. Right, giving you clarity by seeing the world through the scriptures. Right.
Speaker 1:What we have to recognize about education is that every education is like this I don't care if you're in the public school, you're doing homeschooling, you're at a private classical Christian school, it does not matter. Every education is imparting some kind of lens. Whether they do this intentionally or unintentionally, the teacher has a framework that they are, even if they're not trying to impose it, they are imposing this on the children and that's why it's so sneaky. Kind of going back to your question, it's not as obvious as the teacher saying let's, you know all hail Satan. It's not like that. It's more in the sneaky, deceptive things like Dr Schlecht was talking about. It was the subtle lies about the character of God, where we basically look at all of these examples in our classroom and say, yeah, it doesn't matter if you know Christ or you care about Christ or you follow Christ to understand this, that or the other thing.
Speaker 1:Again, evolution, even there, right, it's like, okay, that's a little bit more forward. What we're thinking about, even when you were going to school, when I was going to school, is it's those subtle things that now have metastasized, have gotten to this, you know, are really showing on the outside. It wasn't internal bleeding, but now it's really showing on the outside, as it's just. It's spiraling downhill. Right, we talked about the furries last time, right, just rampant craziness, sexual degeneracy, all of that arises from. At first, it's just this subtle. We're just going to introduce this idea, right, that this is a secular, neutral space. Keep God out of this right. But that ends up informing every little detail of what you're reading and what you're thinking through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so interesting. I remember, you know, getting out of high school, getting into college I think much like yourself then being exposed to what I would call sort of like Christian philosophical thought. So you get into guys like Cornelius Van Til and Francis Schaeffer and they're causing you to really address this issue of the Christian foundation. Is it one or isn't it? You know, Schaeffer would break it down in terms of like creation, fall redemption. He would say every worldview, even like Marxism, has a pattern for that.
Speaker 1:What is their anthropology? The basic questions of life. All of that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So as you start to think through this the need to lay a really a Christian foundation and you're thinking through some of maybe the errors you know we think of like, crt in the intersection here of like. Why is that so important?
Speaker 1:as we start to evaluate specific idea sets, yeah Well, it kind of goes back to our conversation from last time right, where we saw that clear antithesis in the scriptures. It's not, like you know, there's a third option between serving the Lord and not serving the Lord. There's no option C, right. And so, as we see that antithesis, we have to recognize that what the public schools are doing and this kind of goes to, you know, if you were to call it problem number two, right, the problem that we see is that in the public schools it's not simply a we're trying to give you this, you know, very common ground kind of neutral idea about the world, Because Christ said if you're not for me, you are against me. In other words, what they're trying to teach day after day after day is if we can just pull back the curtain a little bit, right is an anti-Christian lens. They are equipping these students with an anti-Christian lens. In other words, if you try to teach something contrary to what God teaches in his word, that would be anti-Christian, it would be against Christ and his word and his teaching. So, like when we think about something like CRT and CRT, by the way, has been wildly successful for one reason it's because education is imparting a lens. That is subtle, oftentimes subtle, where the person who's being indoctrinated in this you don't know, you're being discipled, you don't recognize right Again, you think about just how evil this is.
Speaker 1:Like the little first grader, little Susie. She goes into class right, she's getting hit with CRT about how she should be ashamed for her whiteness and how we're basically trying to pit, we're trying to race bait, this race against that race. It's evil because she grows up in it. She's again the fish in the water, doesn't know that it's wet. She is getting inundated with this day after day after day where she doesn't even question it anymore. It's just, it's just assumed. Yeah, of course I'm evil, Like all of my people have been evil, because I'm white.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's interesting, I mean the way that children are going to work by imitation. Student will become like its teacher, that whole thing. And then I was even thinking yesterday on Twitter I had seen this ad for Aveeno. It was like their, like body lotion. And it's like a kid taking a bath and they're like now I feel fresh and clean, so I can be a princess astronaut. And it was like a boy in like a rainbow colored dress.
Speaker 2:And I was like what in the world is going on, and the sad thing is a lot of people see that and they don't even think hey, there's a problem here.
Speaker 1:Well, it's crazy, remember I was saying growing up in California. There are things that I still find today where my like, just internally, you kind of get a little squeamish. When you hear something You're like, wait, no, but that's right, yeah, mish. When you hear something you're like, wait, no, but that's right. That's actually right, and my trained affections are wrong. They need to be corrected. But again, growing up in California you learn to be ashamed of the wrong things. It's kind of like that quote in Augustine where he is speaking in the confessions or writing the confessions, where he says, basically all around me, in my sexual degeneracy, all of that, I heard the world all around me saying well done, well done, right. That's what I grew up in, that's what we've been growing up in. Those who are in the public schools and that's why it's so dangerous is because they don't even know that that's a problem.
Speaker 2:They're so used to it, right, well, and it's interesting. I want to ask you what the solution is here, and obviously we're going to talk about Christian education, but I do think it's interesting, just as sort of an anecdotal story, watching my kids in St Brennan's. It's been interesting because they'll interact with people from the outside world and we kind of realize we're in a bubble. Right, totally are, which is the idea, yeah, uh, for their formation for a time, yeah for a time and they're interacting with people in the world.
Speaker 2:You know so don't get me wrong, but it is just so funny to me because people will say or do something that fits like the woke narrative and my kids will just be like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Like they have no catechesis in, like DEI. You know from the public school system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want them. You want them to think that way. There is a part where we're trying to rein them in right, because they're still needing to land that principle. Well, it's like the kid we talked about this. I was at the store, you know, a few months ago and my own daughter, right, she sees this woman with her breasts hanging out and everything and she's like she's not modest and she's five feet away from it and she's like pointing at her.
Speaker 2:It's like okay, you're right, we're teaching the principle. You're right, I haven't quite figured out how to land or to have like the filter for it, but it still gets to this question of really what is the solution for education. So walk me through that, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the solution is just that we need to be unashamed of recognizing that Christian education imparts a distinctly Christian lens. So every education is going to be that lens. It's going to color everything you see and it's going to give you clarity to see it right. But at the same time, if we see that, we need to recognize that the Christian education is going to do the same thing, and so we're going to say what God choose today, what God you're going to serve, right, and you need to be able to say, as for me and my household, we're going to serve the Lord. Yes, I'm trying to give them a Christian lens. I, my household, we're going to serve the Lord. Yes, I'm trying to give them a Christian lens. I'm trying to give them a framework by which they can understand every particular thing in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to ask you a question about this because I remember, like in some of the early, early Christian education stuff that we got into, there was sort of this idea you would have like Christian schools, christian high schools, and it was basically like public school curriculum with a Bible verse, and so some people might say like, is that what you're talking about? Yeah, I think the obvious answer would be no here, no, no, it's not. This has to go so much deeper than that.
Speaker 1:It's much more basic than that. So, something I've always appreciated from Pastor Sauvé, he would say that Christian education is not like the seasoning packet for the top ramen that you just, you know, sprinkle over the top.
Speaker 1:It's not like that. It's not like you could just go to, you know your secular, anti-christian education in public school for 35 hours a week and then be content as a father that your child is getting you know their hour and a half, two hours of God honoringhonoring education on Sunday, on the Lord's Day, when you're there, when sports haven't taken its place, right. No, it's much more fundamental than that. Again, it's trying to train you to see every particular of life in a certain way. This is where I think the presuppositional guys are helpful in this. So you're thinking about Van Til, you're thinking about Bonson.
Speaker 1:They recognize that we can't just talk about the facts themselves, because a fact is only a fact when it's within a certain system, a certain framework. For example, you're, you're talking to an unbeliever and you say, I mean, man, it's just it, it is a. You cannot fight against this fact. Jesus walked on water. What do you say about that? And they say, well, no, I mean just think he was probably on a peninsula. And they come up with all these examples. Right, it was like okay, but what about Peter? Peter fell, obviously, he was drowning in the water. And it's like, well, he just wasn't on the peninsula. He stepped in a sinkhole, he stepped in something.
Speaker 1:So, in other words, if you're just trying to talk about the fact as if we're on some kind of common neutral ground, you're never going to press them. So this is now like talking about apologetics. You're never going to be able to give them that thorough, robust presentation of the gospel as you challenge them on their worldview, because you have to again pull back the curtain and say no, this is fundamentally your assumption. Going into your consideration of this fact, it's not enough to talk about all the little particulars. We're trying to give a framework. We're trying to give a robust world and life view that they'll take with them for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2:When it really gets to this principle too, I've obviously like many of us and I'm sure some of our listeners too you listen to somebody like Votie Bauckham and the fear and admonition of the Lord being raised up in those things. Yes, even understanding what education is. It's very different than, hey, give them some neutral facts and they will take those and some will go this way, some will go that, but they all know basic math. That's not what Christians are called and it's really not what anybody is doing in education.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not possible, right? It's actually physically not possible because we have this myth of neutrality that realistically a lie, because it doesn't agree with the fundamental nature of how God made the world. Metaphysically, it is a lie right.
Speaker 2:It's sort of the same thing you hear in the political realm, but people will say we shouldn't legislate morality. And then you'll hear other people say legislation is like you're always legislating somebody's morality. The question is just whose?
Speaker 1:Like law is moral. All they're trying to say when they say that is they don't want you to legislate your morality. It's fine when they do it. You know when they say that is, they don't want you to legislate your morality. It's fine when they do it. You know when they say yes, this is okay.
Speaker 2:And no, that's actually not okay. They're doing the same thing, they just don't want your morality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every law is going to have, fundamentally at root, it's going to have some kind of basis in morality.
Speaker 2:It's just whose you think of that education piece with Joshua which you were quoting, Brian. Brian was actually preaching from that. But this question of which God will you serve, Joshua doesn't say hey, do you want God, Do you want Baal or just neutral? The question is, which one You're going to be serving some.
Speaker 1:God Make your choice. And so that's what we're trying to do, even in this discussion is just even to help our listeners, even to encourage us, as obviously we're running a school. We think this is important, but we recognize that it's not about just the little particulars, it's not about winning the trivia game, you know, for Christianity of, you know even if it's Bible trivia even if it's Bible trivia, knowing all the particular right answers.
Speaker 1:Because what happens when you get to that next particular that you didn't prepare for? You don't have the catechism question and answer for what do you do then? What does your child do Then? Your child graduates from your home, graduates from school. They're off, living on their own, they're 25 years old and if you have not equipped them with this Christian lens, they're going to find another particular that's going to trip them up and stump them, because they've been trained in an anti-Christian kind of environment to think through that particular. So it's not enough that we focus on those little, the minutiae right, but we actually have to give them an overarching Christian lens to understand it as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really interesting. It also makes me think of another question when we're thinking of something like math right, yeah, that's a common yeah. People will say things you hear this all the time. They're like okay, oh, I don't need to be a Christian to understand that two plus two equals four. Yeah, be a Christian to understand that two plus two equals four. Yeah, right. So when you get these types of objections because people are still leaning toward this, well, basically can't I still be neutral.
Speaker 1:They're trying to carve out a space for it, that's right, so how?
Speaker 1:would you answer that objection? Yeah, so I actually get it. Like the two plus two equals four, I get it. I even get it rhetorically, why they would use something like that and I'm willing to say that formally we could grant, or operationally we could grant that you know, the unbeliever, the atheist, can still use two plus two equals four, and or you can add two and two on his fingers and get to four Like okay, gotcha, I'm not saying he can't do that. What we're trying to say is that he doesn't actually have a reason for saying what he's saying. He doesn't have a reason for why. Right, We've talked about knowledge. What is knowledge? Well, it's true belief. Yes, that's right, but it's justified true belief. You actually have to have a reason for why you believe what you believe, or else you could have guessed right. So, the unbeliever.
Speaker 1:The cool thing about two plus two equals four is because it boils this down and makes it so simple for us to understand. Yes, they can do it formally, operationally. However, what it does is it shows how they just inescapably like there's no getting out of this. They live in God's world. They're borrowing from the world that God made, the goodness that God made, even as they're rejecting the creator Again. They know God, but they don't know God.
Speaker 1:That's what Romans 1 teaches us. They have some kind of knowledge of God, his invisible attributes, his power, and yet they are rejecting God. They're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness because they're saying, no, you don't need to know God to get to this point. But here's the cool thing If you just push, pull just a little bit, maybe pull on that thread, ask enough why questions, you'll actually trip them up or show that their background knowledge, rolling into two plus two equals four, kind of the why questions just reveals the fact that it was based on a Christian, a fundamentally Christian idea of time, of the uniformity of nature, all of that. Like if you were to just again to make it simple, two plus two equals four.
Speaker 2:yes, that's four today, but what about tomorrow? Why would we assume that it's always going to be consistent?
Speaker 1:Yeah, why? Just because you saw it last week, do you think that you're going to see it next week? You kind of have to answer that. Or you might say, hey, honestly, yeah, two plus two equals four in Utah, but does it in California as well, because they do math weird out there right, it's wonky.
Speaker 2:I do everything weird out there. I've been there right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what about on Mars? And if so, why? For us, we would say because Christ is Lord Jesus. Christ made everything that we can see, things invisible and things visible. God made this and that is why two plus two can equal four. Today, tomorrow, the next day, it can be here, it can be in California, it can be in Mars, I don't care, math still stays the same there. I guess, unless you have Einstein right, he's going to say that math is going to change a little bit, some relativity. But we recognize the why, the why behind things, and that's what we're trying to push back against. So even with something like two plus two equals four, you recognize? Wait, you need to have a Christian worldview even for something as simple as that to make sense. So that's why we have to reject the myth of neutrality. Anyways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting. I want to ask you, kind of on the practical front, when you look at the day-to-day of St Brennan's, how does this actually so? We have this framework, we have this lens. What areas do you actually see this showing up in the way that we structure education and we're actually, christianly, doing this task set before us?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is going to be a simple and complex answer at the same time. It's in everything that we do, right, some people would say would almost adopt the same mentality of the public schools, where you can have this bifurcation, you can have this separation between you. Know, here's our religious right. You're going to learn apologetics in this class and then the rest is just done like everybody else. It doesn't work like that. The reality is it's going to permeate every single subject that we have, and a big part of that, yes, it's content. But again, it's not just the particulars, it's how do we view the particulars? How do you understand the Greek gods when you're reading Homer's Iliad or Homer's Odyssey, when you see, even there, the sexual degeneracy, the immorality of their gods? Even Plato critiqued this right.
Speaker 1:You as a teacher, then you know Mr Crawford, for example. Mr Crawford is helping them understand what's appropriate, what's not appropriate, maybe asking them some questions to get them thinking through, even before the lesson starts, before the reading for the day starts, to get them thinking as Christians. So it's that discipleship we're walking through this together. It's the content, it's how the particular materials are taught, and then we also do so. So typical for kind of neoclassical trivium grammar logic, rhetoric, logic in form three, rhetoric in form four.
Speaker 1:Logic is teaching you to think through these things well, which means to say thinking through them as a Christian. And then rhetoric is teaching you how to now put this out beautifully, how to explain it well, how to help and encourage and convince others of this truth that you are convinced of right. So that's rhetoric. And in that same time period of rhetoric they're doing apologetics, so they're learning theology. This year actually is apologetics, and so they're reading through Van Til, for example, his defense of the faith right now. And that's been really encouraging because again it just it pulls back the curtain, gives you a clear view of the lens that we are trying to teach, so that they can take that with them for the rest of their lives, for every particular that's going to float across their desk. That's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really helpful. One of the other questions that you often hear come up and I've heard before, I've even kind of thought along these lines sometimes is you'll look at a classical Christian education like ours, or Logos or something like that, and it's rigorous. I've heard a lot of Christians say things like well, yes, we want it to be Christian formation and therefore I mainly want to teach my children in education. I mainly want to teach them to be able to read their Bible, to know Christ, and if they can do a little bit of math or just be barely functional at that, that's fine. Yeah, so it's almost weighting it on the other side of like diminishing academic rigor. Obviously, we haven't done that. Why would you pair the academic rigor with the Christian formation as opposed to having, you know say, less rigor?
Speaker 1:Kind of funny enough, the thought that just crossed my mind because we're off script here. The thought that crossed my mind was actually the podcast that we did, the Hard Men podcast, where we're talking about business and whatnot. It really comes down to love of neighbor. There's a way in which you could say, even hearing our conversations through this first season and trying to understand, you know what is Christian education from a few different angles. There's a little bit of overlap with each of them, but you could look at those and say, okay, well, I'm doing the bare minimum Good Check, my kids are Christianly educated.
Speaker 2:And you could say that too, about like say, if you're a homemaker?
Speaker 1:Oh you could. You could do it in it, in every vocation of life, all of that, but since when? Since when is that okay? First off, I mean just thinking through. Right, even the bond servant, even a slave, a doulos, is going to be encouraged by Paul to labor as unto the Lord and not unto man. Do your best, do your best.
Speaker 1:God gave you these talents, and so time is a talent, for example, in this case, when we're talking about education for your kids. He's given you amazing, wonderfully gifted by God, image bearers and he's saying be a good steward with them, raise them up well, give them the paideia and euthysia of the Lord. We're not going to get into all the details of you know conscience binding on you need to do this or that curriculum. Necessarily, it's like a method yeah, that's okay. But the principle is if God has given you this talent, are you going to take these 10 talents like an amazing amount, a wealth of gifts, and say let's bury it? No, the whole idea is that God has given you this life and you are to commit yourself to God with the time and resources that you've been given. This goes back to the Puritan idea of work and vocation too. Right, I'm going to commit to that. I'm going to be again making sure that you're covering your other duties as well, like to your family, to other people at church, all of that, but I'm going to do the best that I can. Why? Well, because that's how I love my neighbor. That's going to be the primary way that I can love my neighbor.
Speaker 1:So, kind of coming back full circle, why do we hold such a high vision for our kids, then? Well, because we recognize that in equipping them, by making them so astute in their observations of biblical morality, even in the world around them, we're actually making them more useful for God's kingdom, to God's glory, that they could love their neighbor better. Because, because they have been trained at such a high level Uh yeah, it is about character, you're right, but it's also about, um, their, their intellectual acumen is. It's about the knowledge they've gained along the way, so that they can use all of that to love their neighbor better. Whether that's a friend, whether that's a brother or sister they have at church, right, a spiritual brother or sister, whether that's their extended family or their family in the future, right, the neighbors who are closest to you, your wife or, if you're a wife, your husband and your children. You're going to use all of that performing at a very high level to actually help and love other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting, kevin, and I'll just throw this in in closing. But when you look back in King's Hall we've been looking at Christendom and you look at even Christians today who we say like our heroes, a CS Lewis, a Tolkien. You go further back and you're like King Alfred the Great he was great and Charlemagne. And one of the things that interests me is you go back to these men and you'll find, with CS Lewis I asked Dr Rigney, joe Rigney, this I said who was so influential in Lewis? What was he reading? And he was like the Aeneid, he loved Virgil.
Speaker 2:And you look at Tolkien, he was a master of classical literature and beyond that. And so Charlemagne, the great work that they did for the Holy Roman Empire was about what is now before going woke, but the modern university system and now for the great educational reform. So wherever you see great men and this is where I think about my sons, I think about our future generations wherever you saw great men, you saw just robust education. Yes, very seldom do you ever find great men who changed the world and they were like. You know what I like to do? I read Twaddle.
Speaker 1:Or I don't read or log, yeah, just.
Speaker 2:It's very seldom that you had guys who were unlearned, who were accomplishing great things. So we look at our kids and we say, you know, look at St Brendan's now and we're like, well, we wanted to train you, in a Solomonic sense, to be kings and queens. So if we're going to do that, you need a kingly education. And you can look at history and we're like we actually kind of know what that was, so we can model that and then aim pretty aspirationally for our kids.
Speaker 1:And one thing that we're doing here, that we're trying to do by the time that they graduate St Brendan's or you at homeschool, whatever it is you're trying to make them, you're trying to help them hit that goal of the trivium, which was you will graduate by the end of this and you'll be a master of words. Well, that's important, right? They need to be thoroughly immersed in their Bible. They need to not just in the content side, but actual skill in approaching it and dividing the word correctly, dividing it rightly. So. That's the first thing. We're students of the word. But second, it's because we use words to think, to communicate, to help other people.
Speaker 1:If you had a student and this goes for any student this is not just a student who's going to go to communicate, to help other people. If you had a student and this goes for any student this is not just a student who's going to go to college. Even your farmer, right? Who says, hey, that's what I'm here for, I already know I'm going to be a farmer. And you say, well, yeah, you still need to be an expert in words, you still need to be very gifted in words through this All of the yeah, Because again, it comes down to love of neighbor.
Speaker 1:If you can be such a ninja, in a way, with words, you are going to be able to love your neighbor rightly again, thinking through logic, but then you're going to be able to help them actually live in accordance with God's word. It's going to be not only for your good but for society's good. This was actually the main point in a book I just read recently called Wisdom and Eloquence by Little John and Evans. I believe the main thrust of that book was they were saying there have been different emphases throughout history whether you fall more heavily on logic or rhetoric. And they're saying for a postmodern world, yes, it doesn't think well. So you need logic. Agreed, we still need to do that.
Speaker 1:However, what we really need today is men and women stepping up who not only think well but can actually convince other people also, can actually lead from the front. That's kind of the need of the moment was the crux of their argument. Yeah, rhetoric, yeah, rhetoric, right. And so again, being a master with words, because it's those you know, like we've been both mutually blessed by Pastor Sauvé, for example. He's very gifted on the rhetorical front and that's so helpful for everyone around him. It doesn't matter if it's the podcast or if it's Sunday school sermons, all of that, yeah, and you think about it.
Speaker 2:It's like somebody who can be effective with their words, rhetorically, can change your mind, change your opinion, change your heart, change your conscience, your will. Yeah, those words change lives. And then you look at it at a place like you know, refuge, when you're like, wow, these are really. We've changed our whole lives so many of us simply because of really well-made arguments from scripture.
Speaker 1:Yes, but but we're not robots, right? It's not just like I'm going to take this input and wow, that was logical, and then output my life has changed.
Speaker 1:That's not how it works. Right, we are, you know, flesh and blood. We are not just a skeleton, we actually are enfleshed, like there's flesh on that skeleton, and so, in a similar way, we're not just robots that just take in this input. We actually we have an emotional side.
Speaker 1:This is something that Aristotle understood well. Right, it's like what's the most convincing, you know, argument, in a way, what's the most convincing path of argumentation? Well, sometimes it's appealing to, yes, ethos that's what he said, but pathos as well. Like, don't forget that we're emotional beings. Right, it's convincing when you hear a gut-wrenching story. Right, we're not robots. The robot would say I honestly don't care about that. I'm like Spock. Right, it's like I don't feel okay, but we're not like that, which is why rhetoric is so important. So, becoming a master of words by the time that you graduate is going to be taken into every vocation of life. Whether you're a father, whether you're a mother, husband, wife, you're a doctor, you're a plumber, a farmer, it does not matter. You're going to take that mastery with you wherever you go, and that's what we want to do for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so helpful, kevin. Speaking of conversations, a lot of people will have questions from stuff that we've talked about, we now have a Patreon channel that we want to encourage people to check out to continue in the conversation, so you'll be on there. There'll be a lot of great content answering questions, special content that you won't find in this main feed here, I believe for as little as $5.99, is that right, $5.95. $5.95, you can join, but I guess just walk me through what are some of the things that you're going to be covering on the Patreon exclusive channel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's a few different tiers on this kind of, at the most basic level, we're just saying, like, do you want to help support this work? Right, cause this is a very important work that we're doing. You're kind of voting with your dollars. Hey, let's continue this project together. Past that we have a behind the scenes Q and A kind of stuff, so you guys might ask a question that's relevant how do you guys teach reading in class? Okay, well, that's actually, I think, would be really helpful, just for the general audience. Let's put that out there. Let's record something, either you and me together, or I can just record something personally and then I can throw it out there. I can write something up for you guys. So that would be really helpful.
Speaker 1:Past that we kind of have two different community chat threads. Right, there's one for those who are homeschooling, because wouldn't it be helpful to have other homeschoolers who are following a similar model, especially if you end up buying, kind of the curriculum package, the list that we're all going through, and we can be on that same boat together. Well then it's hey, I got to logic and I'm running into this problem. What do you guys do Then? It's not just me answering stuff too. Then it's another like-minded homeschooling mom or dad who is trying to figure out how do they land logic, too, in the logic years. Well, oh, yeah, you guys, you didn't know about this resource here, it is right. Well, a lot of that is going to happen in that chat thread. So that's for the homeschoolers, for the, for those who are taking this in the private school route. There's gonna be a separate thread for that.
Speaker 1:If you want to build a school, yeah, do you want to build a school? Are you currently running a school? And you want just kind of a you know a sounding board? Hey, we're running into this problem at school. What do you guys? What? What would your teacher do have? Have you guys run into the same problem? Think about how valuable that would be, right. Just, it'll be a little bit more interactive at those two levels. And then we have a corporate tier as well. This is basically for our visionary business owners who say, yes, this is the way of the future. We need more Christian education in more cities with more churches. How can I help further this? Right? And so that would be for, kind of the corporate tier.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, that's exciting. I know we'll also have some stuff in there for, in terms of curriculum, One of the things that's really helpful. I remember this in seminary, but it's just true, with every year, Kevin will send out like the syllabus, oh yeah, and I buy books for my kids and then I go buy myself a copy Because I'm like this is a gold reading list to shape the mind in Western civilization.
Speaker 1:That's a good point. I hadn't even thought of that, just as you're saying it right there. But it would be really helpful, even if you don't have kids who are at that reading age yet, to be able to say okay, my child is in first grade. They will eventually, Lord willing, be in seventh grade and it would be good to know kind of what they're going to be reading through. Maybe I can help prepare, you know, six years ahead of time. Or maybe you see again, you see our curriculum with Greek, so we start the Greek primers in seventh grade. Well, maybe I can get ahead on that and do it with them. That'd be amazing, right? You can help shepherd your family better. That way you can be learning along in the process too and not feel like you're always just having to stay three days ahead of them. You could get a few years ahead, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, super helpful, and we call that doing a little colonizing of the bookshop.
Speaker 1:Colonizing of the bookshop, colonizing of the bookshop.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, though, king's Hall is the same way. The number one thing we get asked for is, like can we have a list of all the books you talked about? Yeah, Because people I think this is a great thing about our listeners Like they want to grow too, yes, and be shaped. We talk about again Western Civ, all that.
Speaker 1:And a big part of what we the book list this is why I'm really excited for the Patreon stuff is because it's not just the book list, Cause then you're writing solo, you're doing your own thing which is good to interact with the community. You actually get some interaction where you know, have you guys, have you guys read the Aeneid, you know any good additional resources for this? Maybe? Maybe somebody has something you just hadn't thought of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would encourage people to, as you sign up for Patreon, be sure to download the app on your phone. It's really helpful. They've got basically forum chat style function built in. Now you can access everything there, of course the app is going to be. I think if you use the desktop it doesn't have quite as many features like fast play, if you want to speed up that sort of thing. So check the app out. That's free for download. You can sign in and then you can access all this wonderful content. I believe we're calling it the captain's log. Uh, yeah, it just has to.
Speaker 1:it's just you're the captain, I know. Look at me.
Speaker 2:Kevin, retired captain Kevin says this to you Look at me, I am the captain. I am the captain now. Kevin is the captain now. Well, we appreciate you guys listening to this episode of the St Brendan's podcast. We will catch all of you in the next episode. We all belong to Jerusalem above and we sail for Eden's shores. And we sail for Eden's shores and we sail for Eden's shores.