American Thought Leaders - Why We Teach Our First Graders Shakespeare: Michael Fitzgerald

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

As part of our special series on alternative models of education, I’m sitting down with Michael Fitzgerald, principal of Northern Schoolhouse, an upstate New York private school focused on classical literature and art, immersion in nature, and nurturing strong moral character based on time-tested virtues.“This is the trend in education: ‘It doesn’t matter what you’re reading, as long as you’re reading.’ And I actually disagree with that. I think it’s very important what you’re reading,” Fitzgerald says.“In the end, we want them becoming autonomous people who know how to move themselves well through the world, as truly good people who recognize beauty,” he says.“If you recognize beauty, you can recognize what’s good. And those are highly correlated in the classical world, especially in the Socratic sense. They talk a lot about truth, beauty, and goodness.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

What we're doing at the schoolhouse is we've taken away those letter grades, but we've simply filled the entire atmosphere with the best things you can learn. And of course, the students don't want to study Shakespeare. They don't necessarily want to study Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. It's hard, but actually, it's about going back into tradition, back into the humanities. And as you constantly go back to the origin, your work becomes more creative and it becomes more original. Skills are highly important but those most sophisticated skills come out of rich challenging content. As part of our special series on

alternative models of education, I'm sitting down with Michael Fitzgerald. He's the principal of Northern Schoolhouse, an upstate New York private school focused on classical education, nature and art, and nurturing strong moral character based on time-tested virtues. In the end, we want them becoming autonomous people who know how to move themselves well through the world, who recognize beauty. If you recognize beauty, you can recognize what's good. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.

Michael Fitzgerald, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So tell me about Northern Schoolhouse. Well, Northern Schoolhouse, it's an elementary school. It's grades one through five, though we can, some of our sixth graders can stay with us. So it's like one through five, one through six. It's a part of a larger system called Northern Academy, which was originally a middle school and high school. So it serves grades six through 12 and rigorous academics doing some wonderful things, focus on dance and music and fine arts. It's just a very well-rounded school. And I was working at the academy and then they asked, do you

want to start an elementary school? My wife and I, she's also very forward thinking, I think with education, but with this hard line, traditional emphasis. And so we started putting some ideas together and out came Northern Schoolhouse. What makes it special? Generally, you'll get schools that kind of fall into, especially today, you'll get schools that kind of fall into, especially today, you'll

get schools that kind of fall into one track or the other. And you'll get these schools that are sort of nature-based, creative, student-led. And so you kind of get that vein. And then you've got kind of another track that's what schools might call classical. And I'm talking about private schools mostly. And classical schools talking about private schools mostly. And classical schools are really focusing on maintaining tradition, maintaining spiritual elements, largely Christian. A lot of Catholic schools would call themselves classical,

trying to maintain a focus on beauty and high standards and these sorts of things. But you don't have a lot of schools that intentionally try to mesh both together. And so our goal was to create a school that was focused on giving the kids the best literature and history and art throughout time. We start Shakespeare in grade one, for instance, with all our kids. But also bringing in this heavy emphasis on self-direction for the students. Lots of nature study.

Being outside as much as possible, and a lot of opportunities for the kids to practice leadership and to kind of step out of the path a little bit. So we call ourselves creative classical. So it's kind of the merging of these two worlds. You don't really have many schools that exist like this. So I noticed, you know, the kids in grade school are memorizing Sonnet 65 by Shakespeare. Yeah. Yep. So I hadn't heard that happening before. Yeah. If I was to say schools should focus on two things, you'd have Shakespeare and math. Those are the things we're starting as soon as we can with them. And then blending in the heavy nature with it.

And so we said, well, we're starting the school and it's like, what would our dream school look like? We said, well, we have to have Shakespeare. It plays a center role in the humanities for the last 400 or 500 years. It draws on everything from biblical stories and Greek and Roman mythology and the contemporary issues of the time and pulls them all in. And I've been an English teacher and that's my main background. And oftentimes when you get kids in high school and you're okay, well, now's our Shakespeare unit and they're all Shakespeare. I never understand this. It's too hard. So we want

our kids from the schoolhouse when they come across across Shakespeare later on, to go, oh, I've already studied this. I love this play. I can't wait to do this. Or as soon as they hear Shakespeare, they go, oh, shall I compare thee to a summer's day? You know, that's Sonnet 18. They learned that one as well. But Sonnet 65, since brass nor stone, nor earth nor boundless seas. We want the kids saying that as soon as they hear Shakespeare.

And actually, when we're out on trails, they'll start reciting the sonnets together, just ad hoc. It's amazing. And it's beautiful. And frankly, you know, I haven't sat down and read Shakespeare in a long time. So, you know, just reading that, I was like, my God, this is amazing. It's amazing. It's so beautiful and thought provoking and insightful and hard. It's really hard. And so we want to give the kids really hard, challenging things that are completely worthy of their time and worthy of them as humans. So we give them Shakespeare instead of Sesame Street, for instance.

We don't have cartoons posted all over the walls. We want to give them the real stuff. And that's really interesting. So every school that I've been to, including some very innovative schools that I visited in the, over the last few years, always, there seems to be some kind of, uh, I don't know, like caricatures, cartoons, this kind of, it's a very different feel that it was completely absent from, from everything I've seen. Yeah.'s that's a that's a major piece in schools it's kind of taking kids and thinking well they're kids and so we better give them kids stuff

but actually it doesn't mean we're get we give them adult materials but we give them things that are fit for humans and um because they are they're they're born people um charlotte mason a great educator from the 1800s she's that one of her first rules for teaching was to remember that children are born people. And so what do people feed upon the best? And they feed upon great ideas, beautiful things. Socrates says the goal of education is to teach kids to identify what is beautiful. And so we have to give them beautiful things. And that means what do we have on our walls? Well, we should have the School of Athens. We should have paintings from the Song Dynasty. Other classical pieces that are going to evoke in them a deep sense of reverence for tradition,

but also beauty and truth. And these are the things we want the kids to have. And so that's Shakespeare, that's poetry from the Tong Dynasty. It's these really deep things that even if an adult goes and studies to them, they won't get to the bottom. And so that's what we need to give to the kids. You know, something that I was thinking as I've been wandering around your campus here is there's a lot of talk about, you know, our society kind of infantilizing young adults and even adults in some cases i thought to myself you know could it be that we're actually infantilizing kids does that make sense right given your approach right yeah it's interesting infantilizing kids yeah it kind of is

it kind of is happening like that it's like we want to keep them as kids as long as possible and and I think you see this happening a lot, pushing certain things out of curriculums later on. It's like trying to protect them because we should protect kids. We should protect them. We should shelter them. And then also as things come up, we want to prepare them with truthful ideas. But what happens is we insulate them so much with childlike things, they have no sense of taste. And if they have no sense of taste, then it's quite possible they're going to lose

their reverence for tasteful things later on. So we have to give that to them now. But also challenge them, right? And challenge them. Right? Because that, I mean, the sonnet, of course, in many areas, you know, you were, you've been doing these wordsmithing, I believe. Yeah, wordsmith.

Right, wordsmith. Yeah. And that's a kind of a progression. It is. Right. So just explain that idea. Wordsmith is kind of our language studies program for English and along with literature, studying literature year round, deep, deep pieces of literature. But in terms of building their handwriting, their grammar, and their spelling, we call that wordsmith. But even within it, there's five different levels of study,

starting with the lowest level we call petroglyph, and then the highest level, level five, we call thesaurus, which is where we get the word thesaurus, and it actually means, etymologically, it means treasure chest. It has scroll up to codex which are the first bound books and each level of words is increases in its difficulty and so students can work at any level that they want to and the goal is they want to be able to master that level but they can shoot for any level and so our next on the next step we're like okay you've aced this level let's go to the highest next next highest one to keep keep pushing them forward and to keep seeing these challenges not not as a problem but as opportunities something we talk about with students a lot is how do you everything's going to be a

challenge it's it's a question of well is it a problem or an opportunity which way which way do you want to take this and this is that's old idea. That's not anything new we're giving the students. These are just really old ideas for humans and connecting them. You mentioned Socrates as one of the thinkers that's guiding what's happening here. Confucius is also another one. Yes, very much. And in fact, those are the two that you kind of make a point of highlighting. Yes. So explain that.

Yeah, so I'd say we have our two sort of ancient thinkers who we look directly to, Confucius and Socrates, and another one from the 1800s, a classical educator named Charlotte Mason. And she's well worth discussing as well. But Confucianism is huge. And obviously the Confucian system touches on everything. You know, how do you dress in mourning?

How do you enter buildings? These sorts of things. And of course, this is all about maintaining society, cohesion in society. And so he then talks about education, extensively on education. And now the difference is in when he's writing in the Zhou dynasty,

there is no such thing as elementary schools. Those things don't exist. So he's really talking about education for teenagers and young adults who are building their skills to become deeper scholars and public officials and these sorts of things, but it still perfectly applies to if we're going to have a system of education and we're going to apply it institutionally. Well, some of the things he has to say still works perfectly for educating children. And he talks a lot about maintaining rituals. And so there's this idea that rules are extremely important in society, but sometimes rules, we don't necessarily know why we're following them. We don't know why we're doing them. But rituals is this sort of glue

that binds people together. Rituals include how do our students enter the classroom? And they don't get punished for doing it wrong because you're not breaking a rule. But we remind them constantly that this is how humans interact in the world. You should try this out. Give this a shot. Every morning they bow to their teachers. This is a great way to bow. You should

try this. Or the girls. Hey, here's a way you can curtsy. You can try this. Feel free to try this. This is how we study well. This is how we sit while we're studying. Oh, here's a way to write. Here's a way to write your cursive L. Here's a way to write your cursive G. That's one way to do it. These are rituals. It's not a set way that you have to do it, but it's based on human interaction, lots of reminders, because that's how rituals are formed.

So, of course, when you have kids getting very out of line and you have to bring in, you bring in discipline, but why are you disciplining them? Not because they broke a rule, but because that's the wrong way of behaving. That is not helping the group. It's not helping our little society.

We're a very small school. We only have 30-some kids. And so it gives us a lot of leeway to try to work with them, to give them an exceptional education. But it doesn't happen without conversation, without lots of dialogue. And that's where the rituals come in. So, you know, something that comes up, I've also interviewed a number of people doing homeschooling or leading homeschooling efforts, developing homeschooling materials. The criticism is that somehow the kids that do this often are just not socialized into the mainstream society because of, well,

some of the unusual things that you've been just describing. How do you respond to that? There's two types of homeschooling. There's homeschooling where you have your child and you sit them down in front of some canned curriculum that's delivered through a computer. And then you have this sort of traditional homeschooling, which is what schooling was for thousands of years, which was the parents handing down rich learning opportunities to their students in math and handwriting and literature. In the Western society, it would be especially reading the Bible and becoming highly literate. For the East, it would have been studying the Book of Odes. The Tong Dynasty, it was about the dad teaching poetry to their children. These are highly educated people

throughout time. But what happens now is we take these children in some homeschooling situations and plug them down in front of a computer. But many homeschool families, most homeschool families throughout the country are actually, their kids are the most socialized because they're going out and learning in society so they're they're going out and the kids are the ones calculating the tip for instance or the child might be placing the order for all of the family they're being socialized they're the and on top of that there's co-ops all around the country these kids are mixing together with kids of all different backgrounds and all different ages. You don't have this idea where you have your 13 year old son or daughter doesn't want to associate

with an 11 year old because they're different aged. They're mixing with all the children, caring for each other, tending for each other, and helping them learn in these large co-ops that come together. But when it comes to Northern Schoolhouse, I mean, it sounds like this approach has influenced your thinking and your development here, right? Very much.

We homeschooled for many years. And actually, what was fascinating was we found that in the homeschool communities is where all the most traditional forms of education were held. And it was the sort of really rich learning environments with the best literature. And you had these like second and third graders in these homeschool groups like studying Plutarch. And it's like the mom never knew Plutarch, but she had heard from other homeschoolers that we should be teaching their kids Plutarch. And so they're like giving it to them. It's absolutely amazing. And those ideas are locked in these homeschool groups,

especially homeschool groups that are influenced by Charlotte Mason, who I've mentioned. And they're highly classical, very traditional, very strict with their kids' learning. And this is why oftentimes, if you look at the SAT test scores, for instance, you kind of have three different groups. You have, you have public school and private school, and you kind of get public school here. And then you have private schools and they're about here on their scores. And then you have homeschool groups and they're up here. So it's like they out, they, they outshine even on standardized tests, which those families aren't using to guide their learning, but they're giving their kids such rich material that they're

acing those tests. Like it doesn't quite make sense, but that's what the data shows. And so we're definitely influenced by homeschool ideas in terms of giving the kids the best opportunities to learn, letting them move at their own pace. And exactly what Confucius says, he says, if I open up one corner, I expect the student to go get the other three corners. And because what you open up under that corner should be so compelling.

You want more, you don't quite get it, but you want more. And then as they go to each corner, we might help them just lift it a little bit, but they should get those other three corners. It's a very homeschooling idea, actually. So you give them a little bit that they want to get the rest. It's very interesting, because it's very, you're describing something

that's very, very self-directed, but within a sort of, I guess, a moral framework, right? Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's very self-directed, but not student-led. Student-led would be this idea that if we were to compare learning to nutrition or learning to eating, then student-led learning would be

the students set the table and eat whatever they students set the table and eat whatever they want on the table. But in our system, we say we're teacher-guided, but student-invested. And so what that means is another Charlotte Mason idea. She says the teacher's job is to set the feast. And she says that whatever the teacher's job, the parent's job, is to set the table with the best possible learning that we possibly can. And so some of that might be some roast beef over here and some broccoli over here and some grapes over here. I don't, I'm not actually too concerned with how much broccoli they take or if they're not

taking broccoli yet because whatever they take on this table I've put there for them. My job is if they're taking a little bit of roast beef to encourage them to get to these other things, because whatever I put on here, I'm happy with. And if I'm not happy with them taking it, I'm not going to set it on the table. And so it is, it's very self-directed because we want them to become self-directed human beings so they can become the leaders of society. Our job is to not just train them to become consumers and to train them to become employees. They need to become employees and they need to be consumers. But that's not our goal. Our goal is to have them become leaders, leaders of society,

to have them become adventurers, interesting, thoughtful, intelligent people. But what about decent? And decent, yes. I shouldn't leave decent out there. Good, virtuous, knowledgeable people who can look at a situation and assess it immediately based on what's right and what's wrong. And that's kind of the mark of being a decent person, a good, morally sound person. And they're going to have lots of mistakes in that, but our goal is to keep directing them back. And this is why, go back to Confucius again, he says that if we lead with coercive regulations, then we will produce students who have no sense of shame and will become evasive. And so if we're only leading them in this tiny little box and we're pushing them along with that,

then they'll become evasive. They'll hide. They'll hide what they're really doing when we're watching them. And as soon as we're not watching, they're gonna do what they really wanna do because they have no shame. But instead, if we set the feast for them

with the best things possible and allow them to freely interact with those things under our guidance, under our tutelage. He has another section in the Analects. He says, we lead and strengthen, but do not drag. And he says, the goal is to strengthen them. So teaching is you have to constantly be on top of it all the time.

But in the end, we want them becoming autonomous people who know how to move themselves well through the world as truly good people who recognize beauty if you recognize beauty you can recognize what's good and those are you know highly correlated in the classical world especially in the socratic sense they talk a lot about truth beauty and goodness so you have this speaking of beauty you have this amazing set of four paintings on the wall up near the, I guess the main room of the schoolhouse. That's right. We have by a painter named Thomas Cole. And this one's called the journey of life of what it's

kind of the course of life from a person's birth to their death. And it's four different pieces. And the first one is a baby being born and they're on their little boat sailing through life. And they're very close to their angel who's entered the world with them. They're very close to divinity. The divine is clearly illuminated for them and they're very close to it. And the baby's very happy to be in the world. And the next one is that they're entering their youth. And in this painting, they're sort of being separated from

the divine, I suppose, but the divine is still waving them on as if to push them forward. And this youth is now aiming for a larger goal in the sky. And I've never been so sure if the goal is real or not, because it's in the sky. It's kind of made of clouds. So is it real? Is it necessary? I'm not really sure. And then in the third piece, in manhood, what used to be the youth is now facing hardship. And the waters are boiling over and ferocious and the storm is dark and black and terrifying. And he's praying for help. And maybe he thinks he's been abandoned by the divine. I don't really know for sure. And then the final painting is the man is now at the end of his life

and the divine are slowly coming back down to return him to his home. And the students love this work. And actually we surround them with beautiful artwork everywhere. But they see this and they can all speak well about it. And you can go up and ask any one of them and they'll walk you through it. Thomas Cole, 1800s painter from the Hudson Valley. We went and visited his studios last year and the students were, they're so good when we take them. They're so good. We're just people who see our students out in public.

They're so well behaved. They can't even believe it. Well, you know, it's something also that comes to my mind, you know, having spent a little bit of time with the students, there's a lot of, it's like self-control. Yeah. It's like, you know, maybe self-mastery to use this kind of Confucian idea. Or it seems to be there at some level. Something's happening right, I guess, right? Yeah, it's there. Because that's really important.

I'm thinking back to my own education. That's not something I learned a lot. Yeah, right. What's fascinating about that is a little of my background is also in brain-based education. So neuroeducation, just focusing on how does the brain interact with memory and attention and processing and sequencing. And so I kind of took everything I'd studied, both on the ground in practical terms, but also philosophically and in terms of the brain as well, and tried to bring that all together into the schoolhouse and try to integrate them all together. And this self-control that you mentioned, it's really so

big. And there's this area in the brain, it doesn't matter what it's called, but it's called the anterior cingulate cortex. And the anterior cingulate cortex it it does a lots of things but two main things it does one of them is it lights up when we're practicing self-control and so when we are let's say you were you you were trying to cut down on sugar and you're out walking and all of a sudden you're and you love ice cream and you're walking by an ice cream shop and then and then you stop and you think about it you're like well i could go get a scoop of ice cream and it could be very tasty and i've done a good job recently on withholding from that ice cream and so maybe today is a good one as soon as you're fighting with yourself your anterior cingulate cortex lights up it sees an

increase of blood flow and electrical activity and it's like can you can you see it through so you're practicing self-control self-restraint it lights up is that does that work like a muscle by the way it's very yeah so in the brain i don't know i've heard both i've heard both said right yeah it does work like a muscle it is either it's like a muscle but also a little bit different they what they call it is neuroplasticity and so the brain is they compare it to plastic and it's constantly reforming and shaping on itself. And if you lose, um, if, if the brain loses function in one area, other parts of the brain will take over for it. It's quite remarkable. And so this anterior cingulate cortex or the ACC, it also lights up, it doesn't distinguish and it lights up as well when somebody is making a meaningful decision.

And so if somebody has, for instance, the feast is laid out before them and they have to choose between two or three different options, it lights up. And so it does not distinguish anatomically. It's the same thing, self-control and making decisions. And so sometimes you can see a student who has no self-control, and in their life, they have no decisions to make in their life. Or like an inability to make them? Well, not in... Oh, they don't have the opportunity to make the decisions. It's not presented to them.

I see, I see. It's not presented. And this wouldn't be just like, oh, okay, Jan, where do we want to go out for dinner tonight and you're just following your desires versus do you want to go out and have some italian food tonight or do you want to go out and have some vietnamese food which one do you want and now those options are placed in front of you and your brain has to zoom in and figure out how does it want to handle this in the same exact way it does the brain does not distinguish when you are trying to hold off

on ice cream and you walk by the ice cream store and you're practicing self-restraint that's fascinating they've seen a master meditators for instance um tibetan monks who can meditate for a day straight their anterior cingular cortexes are very well developed because they're able just to hold that for so long they They've seen it as well with physical trainers, for instance, and they've seen it with other folks who have less self-control and they see that it's largely diminished. So what is the lesson here? The lesson here is the idea that students in their education, it's the teacher's job to lay out well-placed opportunities for the students to engage with their learning in meaningful ways.

So this goes back to the feast idea where we set the table with them to learn. We go back to the wordsmith. Which level of this wordsmith does the student wanna go for? I don't care which one they go for. I just want them to choose one because as soon as they choose,

they're practicing self-restraint. So self-restraint. So self-restraint and decision-making are one in the same. But so often we set up the, we completely curate a child's education from start to finish. We tell them when they're going to start, how much of it they're going to do, exactly how it's going to look, when it needs to be done. And if it's not done, they're going to be punished or they're going to be rewarded, essentially bribed. They're going to be bribed to have it done exactly how it needs to be that whole time.

And so if we want highly self-controlled students, we have to find ways to get them to make decisions to activate the anterior cingulate cortex. And when they're making decisions, they are practicing self-restraint. They'll get very good at both. But if we take away all decisions from them, And when they're making decisions, they are practicing self-restraint. They'll get very good at both. But if we take away all decisions from them,

and I'm not talking like a decision like, do you want to go to school today or not? No, no, no. It's more like, I use an example all the time. If you're trying to get your kid ready to go to bed and they don't want to go to bed. And of course they don't want to go to bed. What child wants to go to bed? Well, it's not about going to bed or not.

It's about, okay, we need to start getting ready for bed. Do you want to brush your teeth first or put your pajamas on first? Which one do you want? Get them to make a decision moving forward. If we're reciting Shakespeare, do you want to practice all four lines of the first quatrain or just half of the first quatrain? You'd be surprised. Some kids go

for all four. Some kids just want two. I don't care if they memorize two lines. I'm so happy if they memorize two lines. Yeah, that's such a great way to explain the setting the framework or setting the feast. That's very, yeah, absolutely. That's what it is. And so of course, if a kid was just picking grapes the whole time, as the teacher, I need to try and get them over to roast beef. And if not roast beef, then it needs to be some of the chicken or the tofu or some of the beans, some protein. I'm going to try to get them over this thing and that's the teacher's job, to elevate them,

to bring them out of this cave that Socrates talks about, the allegory of the cave, and try to bring them up into where it's there's more light and more truth. I've been thinking about the fact that you don't have cartoons, you don't have Dr. Seuss. I mean, I kind of have quite fond memories of Dr. Seuss myself. I liked it quite a bit. So are we not depriving the kids? Are you not depriving the kids of this? In my home with my kids, we have Dr. Seuss on the shelves. We've read it.

I remember reading it as a child, having it read to me and the rhythm. You know, there's lots of iambic pentameter throughout. It's very rhythmic and lots of imagery and it's fun. It's silly, but if we have the chance to give the kids a rewritten version for children of Charles Dickens, then we should go with Charles Dickens. And the messages are much deeper, the moral significance of it,

the problems that the characters are dealing with, that they're dealing with in it are just richer and deeper and more beautiful. What we're really talking about is a school, that the characters are dealing with in that they're dealing with in it are just richer and deeper and more beautiful what we're really talking about is a school we have this time we can either enrich the students edify their their hearts and their souls or we can entertain them so the question is do we want to edify or entertain what is the objective of school? And if it's just to have them read any old thing, a lot of teachers, especially English teachers, would not agree with what I'm going to say, which is oftentimes they would suggest, and this is the trend in education, it doesn't matter what

you're reading as long as you're reading. And I actually disagree with that. I think it's very important what you're reading. So important, we're so sensitive to language and words, so sensitive that if you even look at a word, you're not even reading it anymore. You see the word red and you automatically recognize it. It's like it takes root in our hearts, words, you're not even sounding them out anymore.

It's like they become no different than seeing colors and sensing colors. Actually, all the data suggests that you different than seeing colors and sensing colors. Actually, all the data suggests that you recognize words faster than you recognize colors. Literacy doesn't just mean that you can sound words out. It means that you're culturally literate. And so we want our kids being sensitive to the ideas that are contained in the greats, in the traditional works of art. It's the same with math. If a kid could understand, he can do more than just count beads, then we should start giving him an addition and multiplication and division. We should start teaching him how to factor. We're not just going to keep giving him beads all the time. Maybe beads

have their place in the beginning for counting, but after that we should move on very quickly. So Dr. Seuss has its place, but that's not the goal of education. It's to enrich their hearts and their minds. It's to have them, what we used to call in the past, the liberal arts, to help you become a liberated person who can live freely. You be your own master. You no longer need a master. You're your own master. That's the point of the liberal arts.

And it doesn't cease to exist just because our children are five or six or eleven or thirteen or fourteen this isn't reserved just for a 40 year old guy like me it's not reserved just for me and it's not reserved for college students it starts with them young it just looks different for the fifth graders so more from uh kind of i guess a bigger picture, like school governance. You talked about this, that there's an element of culture. And of course, this is this Confucian ideal that we've been describing. On the other hand, there's the actual management of the school. And you've said that the culture always needs to lead for the school to be effective. Do I have that right? Yeah, yeah, I think you do. And I think it's not just for schools, but for any organization,

that there's a certain culture that has to take root. And the culture being, what do we believe as an institution? Are we all on the same page with the vision that we're moving for, what we might call shared vision? Are we on the same page with that? It's the mindsets that we hold. It's the values that we're moving forward, what we might call shared vision. Are we on the same page with that? It's the mindsets that we hold, it's the values that we hold, and those will drive our actions.

So as a school, we need to have management practices of like, this would be like the, for a school, this might look like the curriculum. It might look like attendance policies. It might look like behavioral practices or how we work with kids whose conduct and behavior isn't up to snuff. Are there certain things we do? Is there some sort of graduated tier that we look at? These are the protocols of a school, the regulations. But if that's

the primary focus, then that's what's going to dictate the culture. And so then you run the risk of having your culture be one that's a little more mechanical, a little more sterile. It's just far more institutional. Whereas you need those institutional practices, but what you want, what we want is we want the vitality of the people. We want them to have a growth mindset. We want them to value the opportunity to overcome hardships. But you can't force somebody to want to overcome hardships. You can't say you either overcome this hardship well, or I give you an F. It doesn't work like that. They might pass the, they might pass the assignment with an A, but it doesn't mean that that, that those lessons have taken

root in their heart. And we, it should. There's a reason why even plato's academy um over the gate of their gardens that they would go have their lessons in it said let no one enter here who does not know geometry so geometry for them wasn't just wasn't just a a test to pass it was geometry because for socrates and and then later for Plato, his student, math was and shapes were proof that there's some sort of divine essence in the world. There's no perfect triangle in the world. Yet if we use these symbols that work perfectly, they're good enough to put satellites orbiting our earth.

Yet they don't exist materially. So there's something about numbers and geometry with which point to some other truth that doesn't exist here so for them that was you know their own proof for a when socrates wanted to stop messing around with you he would just he would just go to numbers if you say i only see it if i believe it, Socrates, he'd be like, well, what about the number five? You know, I would, I imagine that, you know, just watching these kids do what they do, knowing how successful they've been in their, you know, kind of meeting the standards. I imagine this is something that might become popular. And the question, you know, I often think about the issues of scale because, you know, I think often it's much easier for a culture to lead at a smaller scale than a larger one. That's right. That's right. Right. So have you thought about that? Yeah, this is a major this is a major challenge for schools that want to do anything like what we're doing or even if they're schools that are way more radical. They're truly radical schools that are like student-led,

there's no classical emphasis at all, and it's just kind of willy-nilly. They know that even at a larger level, that doesn't work because at some point you run into this management problem. Whereas the culture side might be more about how effective is it, how impactful is it, the management side, it's about efficiency. And at some point, we're going to run into efficiency.

And so with the schoolhouse, we are really small. I mean, we get to do these things. We go on a hike every week. Every Friday, we're on hikes. And we offer workshops in everything from archery to bread baking to whatever it is the teachers want to offer and teach that week. And it's not obvious to me how we do that right now. If I was to double our size and say we were at 60 to 70 students and then double that one, we're at 150 students, 200 students. How do we do the things we're doing at a larger scale? And I don't have the answer to that yet, but as our system becomes more efficient, as those management practices sort of mesh well

with the culture that we want, I think those, my hope is that those become more obvious. And you might just not be able to do all the things we're doing, all the great things. You have to pick and choose the most powerful ones. And then scale up. I don't know what that looks like entirely yet, but it definitely is

something i think about often because we have we we do have lots of people wanting to come into the school and we can't accommodate all them we choose not to because otherwise you start doing you you have to incorporate things that we don't yet want to incorporate yet okay so step by step step by step yeah thoughtfully that's right it has to be it has to be very intentional and thoughtful to incorporate yet. Okay, so step by step. Step by step. Yeah, thoughtfully. That's right. It has to be very intentional and thoughtful. And it has to really work.

We're so lucky. We have families that want to be here. We have teachers that want to be here because of what it is that we're offering and what we're aspiring toward. We're aspiring for something that's really remarkable for our small group. What could public schools learn from what you're doing? Yeah, that's a really challenging issue because they're so big.

They're so big. And the teachers there, like they're well-meaning. They go into it as an occupation. You're saying that from experience? From experience. and really what's interesting is is the idea of of vocation vocation comes from the the latin root vocalis which just means the call your your the voice that's calling you so your vocation is is now it doesn't mean that it means more like occupation but it really means this thing that's calling you forward

this thing that's like like you're calling thing that's like you're calling from God. And for a lot of teachers, it is a vocation. It's something that's very deep for them. And they want to change the world for the better. And they want to impact kids' lives. And they remember teachers that did that for them. And that's what they wanna do. If they were to do anything with their size,

it would be about looking back to tradition. That's really where the answer is. You have to look right now. It's about chopping the curriculum into bits and pieces that are about trying to pull in texts that align with what they think the students really want. And of course, the students don't want to study Shakespeare. They don't necessarily want to study Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. It's hard. But actually, those old texts, that's where the answer is. It's about going back into tradition, back into the humanities, and bringing those things out to the students. You become more original by going to the origin. I think it's something more like that.

And as you constantly go back to the origin, your work becomes more creative and it becomes more original. Even though it's not in the, what we think of as original at all, it's not. You're just looking to what the ancients did and trying to put your own spin on what they did.

Rather than what we're doing today is we're trying to cut it off. And the curriculums are getting all chopped up because of that. And they say it's more about skills are highly important but to me i think the content is the most important the culture and the content is way more important than the skills i say that the those those really high level skills those most sophisticated skills come out of rich challenging content and so i think they have to switch the mindset back

to getting to the content, but that's not always the most efficient because it's harder to test somebody's love of the content where it's much easier just to test the raw skill. So it's a major challenge. The schooling as we see it today is kind of a recent phenomenon where you have compulsory education laws where everyone has to go to school and you have standardized curriculums that are set up by politicians, essentially, with the help of teachers, people who have left the teaching profession and now are with departments of education and these sorts of things, and well-meaning people, the great hearts. But again, they run into this culture versus management problem, and that's it. It's a challenge. There's lots

of people in the schools. What is your biggest challenge that you face? It's related to that problem in that we've all gone to school in a certain way. We've seen report cards issued in a certain way. We have our own unique report card we issue. We're not giving the kids letter grades like we've all received. They get different forms of feedback. And so I think some of the hard things to overcome are the habits that we bring to understanding.

We come with a certain set of notions into schools now because we've been raised in those schools. Our parents were, our grandparents were, they were all raised in the same style of schooling. And so we think that's how schooling always looked. And so sometimes it's about, um, first you can articulate, you can articulate a certain vision and then you put the vision into motion. And even if people see it and they're like, oh, it's really good. I really love what's going on. But it still doesn't perfectly resonate with me because that's not how I was schooled. Typically from people I've spoken to in the educational profession, kind of, you know, pushing the boundaries or trying to, you know, increase standards again, the removal of the use of letter grades or percentages or something that

is associated with the lowering of the standard yes yes yes so explain to me what you're doing yeah and that and it can definitely be that way it can definitely be that way because oftentimes what happens is you take away the letter grades and in the name of taking away the letter grades you're making it more student-centered. And so in that way to make it more student-centered, the students aren't gonna choose to wanna study Shakespeare. I keep mentioning Shakespeare. I just keep going back to Shakespeare.

I love it anyways, and so I just keep going there. But it could be any traditional text. They're not necessarily gonna wanna choose to study higher forms of math. You know, an eighth grader isn't necessarily gonna wanna choose to study algebra. Like if you leave it up to them, they might not choose that. They'd rather just stick with their multiplication tables. So if you take away letter grades, then you, it also can, it can easily come with students having

more say in what they're learning, which means they're going to choose to learn the easier things. And in that case, the standards are being lowered. What we're doing at the schoolhouse is we've taken away those letter grades, but we've simply filled the entire atmosphere with the best things you can learn. Like many of our kids can recite all of Sonnet 65.

Do they feel a pressure to excel? Like that's that because there's this this there's this competitive thing which actually can be quite positive right? It can be right yeah it totally can be and so I think it the way that shows up in our school is with the challenges so every eight weeks they get a set of challenges that they they work through in each one of their core classes uh in that challenge they just simply do the best that they possibly can on the thing and it incorporates everything they've been studying and they'll get it back with feedback in each one of their core classes. In that challenge, they just simply do the best that they possibly can on the thing. And it incorporates everything they've been studying. And they'll get it back with feedback.

But they won't get it back with a letter grade. Now, some kid, and in some of those challenges, like we mentioned, the wordsmith challenge, one kid might go for petroglyph, which is the lowest. And if he's always going for petroglyph, our job as teachers is to bring him up to the next level. Like, you're always choosing this one. Let's try for this one. Whereas some kid might always go for the highest one. And so in that same class, you have different kids sort of mapping onto different goals.

And it's our job as a teacher to bring them up. So there still is a competitive value to it. However, I think most of what we've got today in schools is an overly competitive atmosphere. Here's a great example. We're teaching these remarkable things in education, even in public schools all around the country. They still have great curriculums. They still have great literature, great history, challenging math courses. Now, what would happen today if in those schools you went to those students and you said, we're to study this thing today but you're not going to be graded the students responses would be well why would i study it then i think that's right so they've been conditioned bribed i i don't use this word

lightly they've been bribed to do the work and then we put all of this emphasis on the letter grade. So you're studying these remarkable works of arts. The human enlightenment to math, to mathematics is unreal. It's completely, it's remarkable that we've done this. And why do the kids study math? Because they can get an A. Or they don't want to get an F. So they've been sort of bribed into this thing. And if you take away the bribe, they're not going to study it anymore. They've been conditioned into studying the thing because they want the end result,

not because the thing is valuable for their hearts. Now, that's not to say that grades can't be useful. They can be. They can be done well. They can be done really well, but I don't think they are done well. I think they're used as the sole means to get kids to learn. And because of that, the kids don't actually care, not all the time, but they by and large, don't care about the stuff they're learning. We've broken our periods down into five. So each one of those five, we call a tour. And at the end of those, at the end of each tour, the students, we help them put on these workshops for the parents. And we call it a summit. So the tour, you're touring all of this new knowledge.

And then we hold these giant presentations. But the parents come in and they get about five to seven minutes at each station. And the stations are a representation of what the kids have learned. And so one of those stations might be the students helping the parents learn how to classify insects or how to identify certain parts of an insect. Or another one along the insect ones that nature is actually built into nature. So that was another one the kids ran their parents through. They had another one comparing poetry to some of the Greek myths that they were doing. King Midas and then the Golden Touch, for instance, compared to a Robert Frost poem, Nothing Gold Can Stay. And it was the parents' job to find the similarities and differences

in the poem and in the Greek myth. Some of them are more hands-on. They had some art ones. They had some singing ones where we're having the parents harmonize, practice singing in thirds, this sort of thing. And the student, it's this feast idea. We set the kids up with the templates, and then the kids start bringing ideas to the table

on what do they want the parents to do. And we just help them form these things. And they're super cool. So at the end of the tour, the kids are so excited. They even come up to me the very first day of school and they're like, Mr. Fitzgerald, what's my summit station gonna be? And I say, I don't know yet.

You gotta give me time. But this is all about building the leadership in them and being able to relay the stuff they've learned. And they're so excited about it. It's like, that's the best assessment right there. That's the best assessment. When you see these kids go out there and take command of a workshop and instructing adults how to do this really rich stuff. And they're the ones walking the adults through it for seven minutes. And by the end of it, they're beat because they've done 10 workshops, seven minutes each, and they're just rotating one after another. And it's really

remarkable. It's very special. And they come out of it, they're just better. They level up every single time. So you talked about Fridays which focus on the outdoor learning. Yeah, yeah. And so tell me a little bit more about that. How does that work? So during the week, we have our normal academic lessons, Monday through Thursday. So they get their math lessons and their history lessons and their science lessons. And they get, as we say, we're classic, we're nature nature and the arts those are kind of the three main things we aim for uh we have time where they're studying uh poetry and poetry tea time so they're all pouring each other tea and reading

poetry with each other and that's all happening during the week also dance classes during the week as well um that's monday through thursday and then friday we kind of set all that aside and in the morning every fr, we go on a hike. So we just find trails nearby and go get out on the trails. And we study the plants together, identify trees. And if nothing else, just hike. Just go. And just to be outside.

And that has a tremendous impact on the kids in terms of their either becoming more courageous or it helps restrain them a little bit. After all, you can only climb the tree with the branches it's giving you, or you can only cross the river with the stones it's offering you. You don't get to make your own rules. So for some kids that are less self-restrained,

it restrains them, and for other kids, it encourages them to get off the trail a little bit. Very special. Then the afternoon, we set up a series of workshops. And some of these can be more academically based. Some of it might be an extension of a history lesson they've been doing. And it's some hands-on project. I think one they did last, they were building like Greek theater masks. That was a workshop. The workshops can also be archery. Sometimes they've made sauerkraut or bread, these sorts of things.

So it's a different mixture. And they rotate through all four workshops, about 45 minutes. And they rotate between them. And so we offer four new workshops every week. And so sometimes it's things like math, baseball, or other board games that are very heavy on logic and reasoning. It's just a wide mix of things. Sometimes we have people come in, parents, and they've offered workshops. We had a parent offer a Rosh Hashanah workshop a couple weeks back for the Jewish holiday.

So she came in and led the kids through the traditions of that. How does the school interface with religion? That's interesting. I'd say we're always encouraging the kids toward the divine the best we can to think about it and ponder it. And it shows up in a lot of the literature that we're providing with the kids toward the divine the best we can to think about it and ponder it and it shows up in a lot of the literature that we're providing with the kids and and reading with them it's in Christmas we focus on a bunch of stories from the Bible every Christmas we're reading right now with them the Buddhist text Milarepa about Milarepa other about Milarepa. Other Buddhist literature about Jataka tales, ancient texts, across the board. And we're just trying to encourage the kids toward some sort of understanding that there are these divine elements in the world and it's fine for us to ponder them and think

about them and talk about them. And this is where we're also a little bit different as well, because usually if a school calls themselves a classical school, they're usually religious-based, especially Christian-based. And we're not. We're just a private school that exists in society, but it's very open toward the kids wanting to ponder the deepest questions. And if you're pondering the deepest literature that's and history and you're and you're doing it honestly those lessons are there you can't you can't evade them well because it's such a central part of human existence central right

it's central and i think that also comes out just in nature when the kids are in nature and seeing these patterns everywhere um and and they're just seeing that there's like this perfection that's outside of our control, that the tree is at once beautiful and more powerful than you. And it's like, it really puts you in your place. And if you're put in your place so much and you start to understand your place in the larger scheme of things, some people might call that a spiritual experience. They might call that a glimmer into the divine. So it's very important that the kids are outside and seeing nature and seeing the colors change. Right now in the fall, for instance, they're seeing the colors change.

It's like that's not man-made. There's some other thing that's orchestrating these chemical reactions that's underneath them, and we don't have to really even give it a name. The kids, they have a sense of it themselves. So those are the Fridays. It's a big part of being outside and just forming community with each other, but in these very structured ways.

Again, we are not student-led. Like we're a very open, dynamic school, extremely dynamic and flexible, but in no way are we student-centered. Like we are teacher-gu like we are we are we are teacher guided in everything we do but we just really want to open up the experiences for the students that's how they're going to become leaders and we want to educate their imaginations and build the compass for their heart and though it there's not a there's not one set model to do that but just to

give them more so tell me more about about this tea and poetry that you do. We have a major emphasis on poetry. I mention it all the time, especially when I'm talking about the schoolhouse. And so what we do is throughout the week, we'll have these sessions where the students come into our library and we just set out a bunch of great poetry resources for them. It's all classical poetry.

Some of it might be like other little riddles and things like this from Mother Goose, for instance, things like this. And some of them are very simple like that. And then other ones is Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. These are like real poets. And we just set out this literature for them. And they start perusing through it. And at the same time, they sort of like real poets. And we just set out this literature for them and they start perusing through it. And at the same time, they're serving each other tea and reading poetry with each other. And we have, we set up a reader's chair and they, somebody takes the chair and they

read their poem that they picked for the day. And we just sip tea and listen to them. And it's a very loose, lighthearted environment. This is also where they will practice reciting their sonnet with each other or whatever new poem we've given them. And it's just a chance to form community around normal human things, which is serving each other tea and reading poetry and just sitting with each other in this laid back environment.

And so it's at once very fulfilling and rich. And also it's just pointing to something else that's bigger than us with the tea and poetry. And it's like, let's just serve each other for a minute. It's so fun. It's so wonderful. And again, you're still dealing with little kids. So it's not like a bunch of adults

sitting down with each other and we're all gonna be so perfectly prim and proper with each other. It's not like you know a bunch of adults sitting down with each other and we're all going to be so perfectly prim and proper with each other it's not it's not quite like that but it's a it's a great experience and the kids love it they look forward to it every week and it's just another one of those dynamic experiences but rooted in tradition that we're trying to give the kids so that's what it's about we can just poetry tea time very simple well michael fitzgerald it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you so much. You guys want to head up into the forest over here? Let's head over here to the forest.

Hey, girls, why don't you lead us? Lead us through here. Lead us through the trees. You see it? Oh, yeah, you see that? It's nice, huh? Come on, let's go. You know what this one is?

If it rolls, then it's a spruce. But if it can't roll because it's flat, then it's a fir. Wow, nice find, guys. Here's their nature journals. They label the day, and then they just start putting in whatever they were working on for that day. It's cool and hot. May, one of the girls, caught a moth.

It's small. It's sunny and a little wind. I heard birds, and I'm hungry, caught a moth. It's small. It's sunny and a little wind. I heard birds, and I'm hungry. So I ate this. They're just reflecting on what they're experiencing in nature. This is a 1800s nature journal. They try to just mimic kind of what she's doing. And all the great scientists did this through time. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what scientists you're talking about. They went out and documented their insights. They observed, made predictions, all cool stuff. And so they'll be doing this today outside. Fellas, older boys, you guys are going to go to Mrs. Palmer. It's Monday. Sometimes when we come into class on Monday, it's hard to get our minds right into the game. But what you're doing is you want to force your mind into action. You're here, so you might as well give your perfect heart to what you're doing. Don't forget these words. All right team, put your hearts into it, all right?

Here we go, find your class. Here we go, here we go, here we go. Go to it, go to it, go to it. We'll see you next time. Good morning, schoolhouse. Good morning, Mr. Fitzgerald. Good morning, Mr. Clark. Good morning, Miss Fred. Good morning, Miss Fred. Good morning, Miss Patrick. Thank you all for joining Michael Fitzgerald and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.

I'm your host, Janja Kellek.