Lessons From a “Renegade Educator”

If you walk away from my interview with Hannah Frankman and only remember one thing, I hope it is this: Public school is not kind to children. 

It’s a system that crushes the creativity, curiosity, and sense of optimism that comes so naturally to children. Public schools waste an enormous amount of kids' time. A child will spend about 15,000 hours in their school between grades K through 12. Put differently, that is 625 days worth of time your child is being taught about the world by someone else. That’s just under two years of precious time as a parent, lost. 

Did you know that it supposedly takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in something? 

Kids spend 15,000 hours and are good at almost nothing, through no fault of their own or even the teachers in the classroom. It's a system that is simply broken. In the broken gears of that industrial-age model of education, a child’s light all too often is snuffed out. 

The famed author of The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis, notably wrote in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955), as if his experience in an English public school was more traumatizing than his later service in the trenches of World War I. He described “unmeasurable suffering” in the classroom as a “jungle of dates, battles, exports, imports and the like, forgotten as soon as learned and perfectly useless had they been remembered.” He longed only for the wild woods back home in Ireland, his mother’s bookcase, and lively conversation. 

One of Rome’s greatest emperors, Marcus Aurelius, wrote in the very first page of his famous diary now known as Meditations (180 AD), of his gratitude toward his great-grandfather for “avoiding the public schools, hiring good private teachers, and accepting the resulting costs as money well-spent.” 

It’s relatable, isn’t it? A timeless struggle faced by one generation after the next, balancing the needs of children with the realities of adult life. Education can be expensive. Most families today feature two working parents, so public school serves as a free default option while Mom and Dad work jobs. 

This dynamic reveals the true purpose of public schooling: It’s a form of daycare. 

If this resonates with you, check out my full, in-depth interview on the subject with Hannah Frankman. 

What Are the Alternatives? 

Hannah Frankman, the “Renegade Educator,” wants to help as many families as possible feel empowered, knowledgeable, and courageous enough to pull their kids out of public school and find something better. 

There are Waldorf schools.

Montessori schools.

Acton Academies.

Parochial schools.

Homeschooling.

Micro-schools.

Heck, there’s even “Unschooling.”

There is so much more out there than even this.

When Did the Problems Begin?

To understand the current state of public education, it's helpful to look at its history. In 21st century America, the public school system as it exists today has been the norm for multiple generations. However, for most of human history, education was more localized and less standardized. 

It is helpful to think of “public school” today as a very recent experiment in the grand scheme of things. 

In the mid-19th century, America was rapidly expanding thanks to a large influx of immigrants from diverse cultures, all coming to America at breakneck speed to be part of westward expansion and land opportunities. This prompted concern about integrating immigrants into American society, especially in the Northeast, namely Massachusetts. There the first attempts at a centralized education system began, and by the early 20th century, the project had been initiated nationwide. The system was designed to be scalable, with high student-to-teacher ratios and a standardized curriculum to educate children en masse.

The public education system was intended to train children across America for gainful employment and integrate them into the workforce, not to cultivate curiosity or creativity. It was designed for a rapidly industrializing world and focused on creating compliant workers, rather than thinkers. This system's foundational goals were to build a cohesive society and produce a workforce for a bygone era. Talents and natural interests were of secondary concern.

The Modern Deterioration of Public Education

The public education system has worsened with each passing year, especially with the increased emphasis on standardized testing. The Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind Act and similar policies have tied school funding to test scores, incentivizing schools to focus on test preparation rather than meaningful learning. As a result, grades have been systematically inflated while test scores have declined, indicating a drop in actual educational outcomes.

Just since 2020, new forms of grade inflation have taken off with an even more sinister motivation. Radical progressive educators have sought to do away with “D” and “F” grades as a means of advancing “equity” goals in the post-George Floyd political landscape. According to Gallup, over 90 percent of public school parents believe their children are performing at grade level. But based on test score performance, only about 50 percent are. School districts nationwide are even scrapping due dates for assignments in the name of empathy, training a new generation of students to not value timeliness or organization. 

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

Standardized testing can provide reasonable metrics within the school system, and it helps schools attempt to define success. But even still, that metric of success has little to do with life in the real world. Once those 15,000 hours of schooling are done, what does it all amount to? Kids who know how to pass tests. 

Remember what C.S. Lewis said about a “jungle of dates, battles, exports, imports and the like, forgotten as soon as learned and perfectly useless had they been remembered.”

Useless. We must raise children to be thinkers and guide them in the direction of their natural proclivities. Kids each have their own unique gifts. The role of parents is to draw them out and invest in those gifts. 

Emperor Marcus Aurelius put it well. “Accept the resulting costs as money well-spent.” 

Check out my full interview with Hannah Frankman for more insights into alternative education models and inspiration to educate your children courageously. We can all do so much better to support our children's development and unlock their potential.