Origin Post
Let’s think about something for a minute.
We are spending the first 18 years of our children’s lives essentially teaching them to be proficient in their first language and learn math skills that they are going to forget.
Yes, I’m oversimplifying. At the same time, I’m not.
And in many, many cases, this modest bit of educational aspiration is not actually being done all that well.
No finger pointing. There are heroic efforts underway. Amazing teachers. Amazing administrators. Doing heroic things.
Part of the issue is that the whole bleeping system is tragic-comically out of step with the current reality of our lives and how a modern education should be practiced.
In the same way that we will hopefully look back on chemotherapy as an antiquated, low-tech way of going after cancer, the current K-12 model is very likely going to be revealed as a blunt, barbaric instrument.
This is all particularly true when you add a pandemic into the mix and flip the switch so that the old model is suddenly practiced remotely.
These concerns may be less relevant to parents whose children are currently attending elite private schools or affluent public schools where every kid gets their own 3D printer in second grade and by middle school they are studying brain tissue of the NFL players whose suicide notes indicated that they wanted their brains donated to research.
My concerns are likely most relevant for my fellow well-intentioned parents who know their kids are not going to an award-winning institution.
Possibly, you live an urban environment, believing in part that in the importance of your kids growing up benefitting from the stimulus of the city, including diversity of culture and diversity of economic background.
And yet you are struggling to fully enjoy the enlightened woke-ness of your parenting in midst of the dawning awareness that your little social experiment may be coming at the cost of your kids being able to do things you sort of assumed would be a given in school, like adding and spelling.
What am I saying? Where is this going? Good, valid questions.
I am a parent. A father. I have two kids. A boy who is 14, and a girl who is 11. I am crazy about these kids. Which is good, because as a parent, I am sacrificing much of my current life to them. Just being honest.
It is worth it. They are great kids. They absolutely kick ass. One of my favorite lines I say to them is: you’re so amazing—I wish I had a kid like you.
Awesome dad humor.
Recently, I had a regret premonition. A regret premonition—which is a concept my mind just made up—is a moment of grace. For a second, you actually experience your future regret, have a preview of how irked you will be with the thing you didn’t do and the resulting self-roasting you will directing inward.
The regret premonition had to do this current education the kids are receiving. I had this insight into the breadth of the chasm that has developed between what K-12 is and what it should be, given how modern life has evolved.
In addition, I also suddenly realized how the outdated K-12 model that my kids are experiencing in many ways isn’t even succeeding at consistently imbuing my kids with the fundamentals.
This is a taboo subject. I imagine I will come under fire for finding fault with some of the ridiculous gaps in their learning, for calling out the inadequacy of their education in light of where the world at large is heading. Perhaps these words will be seen as impugning teachers or wanting more for my kids at the expense of other less fortunate kids. God knows.
The glorious thing about a regret premonition, the reason that they seem so heaven sent, is that they, unlike a future regret, afford us the opportunity to do something about them. We can course correct now.
This can be easier said than done. In my earlier years, I would blow right past the regret premonition and only later cringe as I thought back and realized I had had inkling of being off course.
Fortunately, though I am what on a playground would be referred to as an old dad (as in, “That’s your dad? Wow, he’s old”). My extra years of life of experience, and the scars that come with them, have me more attuned a regret premonition and what to do about it.
What am I saying? Where is this going?
Old dad is not sitting still. Old dad is upending the fully laden table in the restaurant, plates and glasses crashing everywhere. A pot roast flying across the room. Old dad is trashing the hotel room.
My kids, like yours, are too awesome. Too flipping kick ass. And I have invested too much of freaking time in them.
We are going to change course. Not completely. I am not taking them out of school and homeschooling. At least not yet.
My current theory is that the kids will continue going to their public schools, learn what is being taught while basking in the good and bad of middle school socialization, but we are going to simultaneously going to start making small and big changes at home aimed at supplementing their educations.
This supplementing will be aimed at bridging chasm-level disconnect between what standard public K-12 education is today and what it should be.
My suspicion is that we can all supplement the learning of our kids in radical, transformative ways—taking the initiative to give our kids the education of the future today.
I am going to be documenting our efforts because I suspect that, at a minimum, there are other parents who have the sense that their kids could use a little supplementation when it comes to education.
I think there are some going to be some great nuggets in the blog posts that follow. They will presumably start small, but hopefully the gold grows as time goes along and I learn more in the process.
All I know at the moment is that I am motivated. With our kids a bit past the halfway point in their K-12, I am disturbed over the state their educations to date. Disturbed verging on angry.
And I am most angry with myself, because it only just occurred to me that I don’t have to just sit back and let it happen. I can do something about it. Starting now.
Details and Disclaimers:
I am launching this site very much in an MVP spirit—so these early entries will be have an air of minimally viableness about them. But just think how good the site will be ten years from now!!!
The best way to read the blog is likely in chronological order, which you can access by clicking on BLOG tab at the top of the site and going by oldest to newest dates.
I am also loosely grouping posts, in case that is helpful, currently organizing them around Supplemental Strategies, Life Lessons, and Miscellany.
Please Subscribe when you have a moment in order to get notification of new posts and possibly to receive a newsletter version with highlights from the site and other areas of interest.
Finally, please share in and all thoughts in the Comments fields as you are so inspired—they will help me with the writing and ideally lead to some community building.