The BEST Education | Find Your Purpose and Homeschool

Thank you. Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hogue, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills.

Here's A.J. with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. The best education. That's our topic today. The best education.

And a very positive show today, I think. Because today we're talking about the solution. We've talked about a lot of the problems with schools, right? The problems.

We know about the problems. The problems with English classes, the problems with textbooks, the problems with schools and schooling in general. Okay, we all understand the problems. What about the solution?

What's the solution? What's the best education for you now at any age? Doesn't matter what your age is. And then also, of course, for your children. For your children.

Maybe more importantly, for your children. That's our topic today, the best education. And as part of this education, that the best education is not just about reading, math, English, science.

The best education helps you find your purpose or purposes in life. We're going to read another chapter from John Taylor Gatto's book, Weapons of Mass Instruction, which is a fabulous book. Fantastic book. Really, really, really good.

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Join now. Just go to the website and sign up. All right, here we go. Welcome everyone coming live right now. Hello, good morning from Japan. It might be night where you are, I don't know.

I know we've got Brazilians, we have Russians, we've got people in Canada, people all over the place. Alright, here we go. So this is a chapter, and I love the title of the chapter. It's the title of the chapter.

This is the book. Let me give you the book title. I'm going to type it in the comments. Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto. Weapons of Mass Instruction by John Taylor Gatto.

I put it in the comments if you're watching live. Let's read this chapter and it's a fantastic chapter. I really love it because it's positive. It's talking about what can we do, right?

Sometimes it's okay. We have to understand problems in life, right? We understand the problems of the school system, understand the problems in society. That's fine.

But too many people, too often, all of us, We focus too long on the problem. Once we understand the problem, there's no need to continue complaining about it endlessly. This is why I don't like politics or political, I don't know, commentators, news.

It's just the same thing, endlessly, again and again and again. So eventually we have to change our focus to a solution. What's the solution? Or a possible solution, right?

We have to start looking for solutions or solutions. You know, ways to change. Or else we just complain all the time and nothing happens. And then we just get depressed and angry.

So here, this, I gave you the book title. The chapter, name of the chapter is The Camino de Santiago. So you can imagine that I like that topic. I like that name.

It says, why is the... Why is this chapter called the Camino de Santiago? We'll talk about the Camino in a minute. Well, let's just go ahead and read through.

I just highlighted some sections. I'm not going to read the whole thing. You can probably learn a little English vocabulary today, too. All right, so this is John Taylor Gatto.

He was a teacher in the school system in New York, I believe, New York City. And he got a lot of, and I think New Jersey, actually. Actually, maybe New Jersey, which is next to New York.

And he got a lot of awards for being a great teacher, best teacher in the whole state. But he, like most great teachers, he really hated the school system. And he eventually left and he wrote all these books about how terrible the school system is.

This is one of those books. So here's a quote. He says, As a school teacher, I found that the kids who drove me crazy were always big TV watchers. Their behavior wasn't pretty.

TV addicted kids were irresponsible, childish, dishonest, malicious to one another. Above all, they seem to lack any purpose of their own. Powerful. So, this chapter begins with him attacking TV.

And what he's saying is that, the worst students in his class, the ones that drove him crazy, meaning they had terrible behavior, they were bullies, they were not nice, they had no self-discipline, no control, right?

They were the ones who watched TV the most. So the more they watched TV, the worse their behavior. And also, maybe worst of all, the ones who watch TV a lot had no purpose in life. They never got a purpose.

They could never figure out their purpose in life. And I believe he taught in middle school. So these were kind of young teenagers. And so he saw them kind of become, you know, older.

And they never got a purpose in life. They just kind of like, nothing. Passive. Right? So he's saying, he's identifying number one, TV is terrible. So let me just repeat that and I'll give you some.

So as a school teacher, I found kids who drove me crazy. That's a nice phrase. If you drive someone crazy, it means you really frustrate them. You really frustrate them.

You annoy them. You bother them. Drive them crazy. So they were TV watchers. And then he gives some adjectives here. Irresponsible. TV addicted kids. Kids addicted to TV who watched a lot of TV.

They were irresponsible. What does that mean? It's the opposite of responsible. Responsible means kind of have self-control. You do what you should do.

So irresponsible means no self-control, no self-discipline. TV addicted kids were childish. Now this is important in English. It's a little tricky. There's a few words.

There's childlike and childish. And they have quite different meanings, different feelings, these words. Childlike, childlike, if you describe someone as he's very childlike, it's actually usually a positive adjective, a positive description, a compliment. It means they are kind of innocent and

And they maybe have a lot of energy, very curious. So they have the positive qualities of a child, the positive things about a child, even if they're an adult. You might describe an old person. Oh, they're very old.

They're 80 years old, but they're still kind of childlike. They're still curious. They're still enthusiastic, still interested in life. So that's very positive, childlike.

On the other hand, this word in this book here, childish, is usually negative. It has a very negative feeling, childish. Childish means really that the person has a lot of the negative qualities of a child, right?

For example, children, maybe they want what they want. They can be quite selfish. They don't have self-control yet. If they don't get what they want, maybe they scream and yell.

They have no emotional control. These kind of more negative or these kind of weaknesses of children, which of course are natural for small children. These are totally natural for babies and small children. But what he's saying is the problem is that the older TV addicted kids, the older kids, if they watched a lot of TV, they were acting like small children still.

They were childish. They didn't grow up. They didn't learn any emotional control. They didn't learn any self-discipline. So that's when childish becomes negative.

If you say that person is very childish, you're describing a teenager or an adult, then it becomes a negative. You're saying something negative about them. You're saying they have no emotional control. They still act like a baby.

He said TV addicted kids are dishonest. They're not honest. The opposite of honest. They don't tell the truth. They lie. They're dishonest. They lie. And then this one is really talking about where we see where bullying becomes a problem.

They are malicious to one another. Malicious. That's a nice word. Malicious means not kind. It means mean. M-E-A-N, right? Mean, unkind, bullying, right?

Malicious. Malicious means trying to hurt. Someone who tries to hurt others. So he's saying that he noticed that the kids who watched lots and lots of TV, they became kind of mean and they were to kind of bully and try to hurt other kids.

And then the final problem of kids who watched a lot of TV, they lacked any purpose of their own. They did not have their own purpose. There was no self-motivation for anything. They seemed kind of lost.

You can see why I am against TV so much. And this is not only a problem with kids. Of course, it's also a problem for adults of any age. If you're 20 or 25 or 40, watching TV can still produce these kinds of terrible results.

So, number one, throw away the TV. This is exactly what John Taylor Gatto in this chapter says. He says unplug the TV. I say throw it away. If you're not going to watch it, well, I have it.

Just throw it away. So next he gets in why. And this part is very interesting, I think. He has an interesting idea about why TV is so bad. And he believes the problem is not so much the programming in the TV itself.

I think that is still a problem. But he thinks the main problem is that watching TV makes you passive. You're not doing anything. And when you become passive, all these other problems will show up, will happen.

He's saying it makes you a spectator. It makes the kids spectator. Spectator pursuits which require only consumption, not active behavior. So it's not active, it's passive is the problem.

And this can also be a problem on the internet. It can be a problem with phones. Anything that makes you passive or you're just watching... You're not actually doing anything.

You're not trying things. You're not failing. You're not learning. You're just passively watching or listening can be a problem if you do it too much.

So that's the problem. Now let's get into the solution, which is the nice part. So he started thinking about it. How can I help these students? How can I help?

I've got all these students that are addicted to TV. How do I help them? And he said, you can't just tell them. If you just say, don't watch TV, don't watch TV, tell that to kids, eh, they don't really listen.

So he says, you have to actually give them an alternative. What should they do instead? This is in most things in life. You can say, don't do that. That's fine.

Don't do something bad. But you need something to replace the activity, right? Do something good instead. What good thing can you do instead? So he said, the number one problem of TV and phones and internet is that it suppresses, I'll teach you that word in a minute, suppresses the natural feedback which allows us to learn from our mistakes.

And here's another big problem with schools and also. Okay, suppresses means to push down, to make weak, to make quiet, to suppress things. The kind of idea of pushing down.

So he's saying naturally, we have natural feedback circuits. Natural feedback means you do something, you take an action, and then there's a result. Action, result, action, result. And then you see the result, and you can learn from it.

That's feedback. It means some result is coming back to you. You do something out in the world, and then the result comes back to you. That's feedback, and then you can learn from it, right?

Fighting is a good example. Let's say you're boxing. You throw your right hand a punch, and you miss, and the guy hits you in the face. That's feedback.

You tried something. You tried to punch him with your right hand, and what was the result? You got hit in the face, and you missed. So that's feedback, right?

And that's how we really learn best, is by trying something and learning from the result. And often, very often, the result is a mistake. What does that mean? What's a mistake, really?

A mistake, like Tony Robbins says, a mistake is just a result you don't like. Okay? It's a result you don't like. If you're boxing, you're fighting...

You want to punch the other guy. You don't want to get hit. So if you throw a punch and he hits you in the face, that's kind of a mistake. You made a mistake.

You did something wrong. You're trying to hit him. Instead, he hit you. So now you've got to think, well, why did that happen? Right? Especially if it happens a lot.

Of course, if it happens one time, that's not... In boxing, you're going to get hit. But every time you throw your right hand, you get hit in the face...

Instead, and you miss, then you start to think, hmm, what am I doing wrong? You need to start, like, something about my punching is not working, right? And this is where you got to start looking at your technique. Maybe a coach can help you, and you think, okay, maybe I'm stepping wrong.

Maybe I'm dropping my hand when I punch, right? There's a lot of things you could be doing wrong, but that's how you learn to have a better punch, right?

not just from reading a book about how to do a punch, right? Not just passively watching it on video. You actually have to get in there and try things, try things, try things, get results, get feedback, a lot of bad feedback, a lot of mistakes, a lot of failures, and then you adjust, adjust, adjust. So that's the problem of TV.

It's also the problem of school, that the kids, the students, they're not allowed to make a mistake, right? If you watch TV, of course, there's no actions at all, so there's no mistakes, there's no results, there's no feedback, so there's no learning.

But in schools, this is also true, right? You sit in a chair, mostly, and you just listen to a teacher talk, and you're not actually trying anything, you're not actually doing anything, so again, and in fact, you're punished for trying.

If you make a mistake, right? What happens in school if you fail? If you make a mistake? You get punished with bad grades. You're discouraged from learning from mistakes.

You're discouraged from trying new things. Just memorize kind of passively. It's not totally passive, but it's pretty passive. Okay, so moving on. So, you might guess what's the solution then is to do the opposite.

Active, active, active learning. And this is very interesting. So, he said, my idea was I would get my students to stop being spectators. and become players instead.

So he's using a sports analogy. He's comparing it to sports, right? Instead of watching, spectator means a watcher, someone who watches, just watches.

A player in the sport, they're the ones on the field. They're playing the game, and then maybe you have a lot of people watching the game. He's saying, don't be a watcher. Don't be someone who watches the game.

Be a player, right? You want to be doing it. So that's true for sports. It's much better to play sports than watch them. It's much better for you. Of course it is, right?

Watching sports is just mindless. It's mindless. It doesn't do anything for you. It's passive. There's nothing positive about it, really. But playing sports, on the other hand, has many, many, many, many positive benefits.

So instead of watching tennis, watching professional tennis players, become a tennis player. Play tennis, even if you're very bad. I'm terrible at jiu-jitsu. I suck at jiu-jitsu.

So what? I'm doing it. I'm doing it. If I just watched jiu-jitsu as a fan, I would get no benefit at all. I can watch it now because I'm a player. Because I do it, maybe I can try to learn something when I watch some of the

professionals, although usually not because they're too good. You get the idea, right? Instead of watching golf, boring, play golf, right? But he's saying this is not just for sports.

It's for all of life. Don't watch actors living fake lives, doing fake things. Go out in the world and do things yourself. And this is what he did with his students.

And this is where we come to the topic of the Camino de Santiago. He talks about the Camino de Santiago. And how, if you don't know, the Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage, which I did with my friend Joe.

And it's a long walk across northern Spain. It is a pilgrimage, meaning you're walking. At the end, you visit the burial place of St. James's. in Santiago, Spain, right?

But you can start in many different places. The kind of most popular place to start is a place called Saint-Jean-de-Pied, I think, something like that, in France, just over the border in France. And then you walk across Spain. It's about a one-month walk if you start there.

But he talks about how it was such a great experience. I guess he did it. He must have walked across Spain and did the Santiago, Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage. And, you know, there are many other pilgrimages.

There's the pilgrimage to Mecca. There are pilgrimages to, you know, Vrindavan and Varanasi and Bogaia and, you know, Rome. It depends on your religion. And there are even non-religious pilgrimages.

So... But the point is, it's a long trip. It's an experience. You're out in the real world. You're not just reading about it. When you do a pilgrimage, you have to actually travel and go there.

So you're out in the real world experiencing things. So he got this idea. He said, well, what if I had my kids, my kids, my middle school kids, what if I had them do a pilgrimage?

Of course, the kids were not rich, not rich families. He was at a public school, not a private school. So they can't go to Spain, but he thought, well, I'll have them walk around New York City.

And so he gave them an assignment. I think it was like extra credit. They didn't have to do it, but he strongly encouraged them to do it. They were 13 years old, and they would take a journey alone.

on foot means walking, so not using the trains, not using the buses, through all the five areas of New York, of New York City. Which, of course, took them a long time. Like he said, that could be one full long day, starting early morning, and that's like all day long. Just walking around, and what did they do while they walked around?

They just explored things. Maybe they explored museums. Maybe they went into a police station. Maybe they went to a university and looked around. And they could do this in one or two days, he said, as long as they were willing to try to explore and learn about things as they walked around.

And this became a huge success in his classes. Because what he did, he said, you can leave school. You don't have to come to school that day. And you won't be absent.

You won't get in trouble. You can just go. But you just have to come back and you have to teach us, tell us, what did you learn? What did you find when you walked around the city?

And this became like a really... successful project for him the students they loved it and they started writing about their experiences so they would write about it and then they started making a travel brochure so they decided let's make a travel guide let's make a travel guide to New York City and we'll all walk around each of us to different places in New York and we'll describe all kinds of interesting places in the city

And, you know, like places to get pizza, great buildings with great architecture, kind of unusual things, not just normal tourist stuff. And they wrote this like huge big guide to New York City together, all these middle school students.

And they became super excited about all of this. And he said what happens is because they were doing real world things, they became interested in this real world project.

making something, creating something, exploring and creating something real, and being out in the real world, not just sitting on their butts in a class, they watched less and less and less TV.

They became less interested in TV because they found active, amazing things to do just by this little pilgrimage in the city that they lived in. And then he said, then this became, that started it, and then he realized, wow, like, doing useful projects, doing active projects, was a much better way to teach and to learn.

And so he began to... focus on that in his teaching. So instead of just talking to them and they would take notes and they have to memorize, they would have to create things, do things, explore out in the real world as much as possible. He sent them out into the real world to learn about things, to explore, but also to create.

And it's kind of the two sides. So maybe in the beginning, exploring and observing out in the real world, but then trying to do something real. And he gives a list.

He says he wanted them to do real work, to learn real skills, to take real risks, and to think about real ideas. Not just things in a book, but things in the real world.

Real work, just like an adult would do. Some of them started their own businesses as middle school kids, or they built things, they created things. They learned real skills. So maybe they could learn, if they were interested in medicine, they could learn first aid or even study and learn and practice to be like a paramedic.

A paramedic is someone who works in an ambulance driving around, and they help people. take care of people and get them to the hospital, right? So they started doing real things and the kids, the results were amazing. You know, their test scores went up, up, up.

Why did the test scores go up? Because they became interested in reading more and more and more and also some math probably, but I think he was more focused on the reading.

And why did they become more interested in reading? Because they were trying to get information for something in the real world, something they were trying to do, not just a test. They were trying to make something, learn something that they could use and do in the real world, and that became far more interesting to them than they wanted to read about that.

Then he gives kind of an idea. He said, I wish we could throw away two of the years of high school and use the money to send everyone to walk the Camino de Santiago.

It's a nice idea. So he's saying instead of two years of high school, in America, high school is four years. So he says, I wish half of those years, two of those years, we could just send the kids to just travel.

to just explore, and not just tourism stuff, but to do something like the Camino, to go on a pilgrimage, or maybe more than one pilgrimage, and maybe to do other projects too.

He says he wishes every boy and girl in America, he was an American, but we could say in the world really, should have a significant personal Camino de Santiago as part of their schooling. So he's saying he wishes every kid, every boy and girl could have a pilgrimage, like a long pilgrimage as part of their schooling, part of their education.

And then he gives a nice ending here. If the government won't do that for you, you must do it yourself. Of course, the government will not do that for you.

So you must do it for yourself. You must do it for yourself. Then that's the end of the chapter. So as we get to the topic, the best education is out in the real world exploring and doing things and taking real risk and real challenges.

So people ask me about business. I've talked about this. What's the best business education? Go get a master's degree in business from Harvard or start your own business right now today?

The answer is number two. Start your own business right now today and try things and take risks. And of course, you're going to probably read a lot of business books because you've got a real business now and you've got to try to get ideas and try to make it successful. And you might fail in the first business, but so what?

You will learn so much more. Let's say one person goes two years for a master's in business at Harvard. Another person spends two years doing a real business.

At the end of the two years, one person has a piece of paper. I have a master's in business. And the other person has two years of business experience. Even if they failed, even if the business goes bankrupt and they have to close it, they still have much more knowledge.

They have real skills, real experience, possibly real connections and contacts with people. That person is a much better business person, has learned much more by doing a real business in two years.

Even if it goes bankrupt, even if it fails, it doesn't matter. The person with the paper has nothing. They just have ideas, they learn from school, they really don't know what to do, they really don't know what they're doing.

They have no real world experience at all. It's all theory, it's all ideas. So, it's not necessary. Plus, if you know, in terms of Harvard or something like that, they've spent a ton of money to get that piece of paper.

Mostly wasted money. Money they could have used to start their business and do a real business. Instead of spending or borrowing $10,000, $20,000 to get a master's in business, use the $10,000 to start a business.

Much better investment, for sure. But it's not just that, right? It's all these things. In general, and this is also true for your kids. So as I homeschool my kids, for example, right, you know, yes, they've got to learn to read.

Reading is, you know, kind of the master skill is reading. That's how we can find so much knowledge, right? It really increases our ability to learn knowledge and get ideas. But it's not enough.

We have to be careful that even with reading, that we don't focus so much on reading that we make our kids or ourselves passive, where we're just sitting and reading, reading, because reading is better than watching TV, but it can also be kind of passive still. There are a lot of people who will read 100 business books, but they never start the business.

They read 100 relationship books, but they never go have a relationship with a boy or a girl. They don't get married. They never go out and do it in the real world.

It's easy to read about stuff. It's a lot harder to go do it. So there's always that balance. And with my own kids, when you're teaching your kids, I really like this project approach to personal education for yourself and also for your kids, for homeschooling.

That as you teach your kids... math and reading. Be sure that you're always doing real things in the real world. Get out of your house. Don't make all the education happen in just sitting at a table.

It's okay to do that for a couple hours a day, focusing on some reading and math and some stuff, but then get your kids outside doing things. It can be simple, like at a young age. For example, like just for example, like this week with my kids,

uh, they learn to wash dishes. They're three years old, so we practice getting a bowl and getting the soap and rubbing and, you know, rubbing the dishes after, you know, and the dirty dishes, and then you've got to rinse it. Really simple, but it's real, right? That's real, because that's real life.

You've got to learn how to wash your dishes. That's something adults do. We all do it. It's real. It's real world. It's not just reading some textbook.

Um, And we've done cooking projects. We've made cookies together and we've made bread together. And of course, at three, they can't do this by themselves, but they help me kind of mix it a little bit.

And as they get older, they'll do more and more and more, of course. Right? And I think this real-world approach, active learning, has two parts. It's exploring and then doing.

Exploring and doing. Exploring and doing. Exploring means you go out in the real world and you just See what's out there in the world, right? Not just through a book.

It's fine to read about, I don't know, read about architecture, read about buildings. That's okay. Much better to go out and look at them. Oh, there's a real building, right?

Let's look at it. How did they make that? Look at the way they designed that. That's interesting. That's much better. And then you come back and read about it.

I think it's better to do it that way. It's okay to read a little bit, but it's much better to get out. So, for example, this summer, my kids, they have cicadas in Japan every summer.

Those big bugs, cicadas, they're called semi in Japanese. And they're in the trees, they're everywhere. So we just started catching them. A lot of Japanese kids do this, and they run around with nets.

So we'd catch them, we'd hold them, we'd look at them. The real bugs, the real thing, playing around with them. And they have these like, you know, in the beginning they're like these little beetles that crawl out of the ground and they crawl up the trees and then they, the shell opens and then they come out and they have wings and they fly. So they're kind of like two versions, like a caterpillar and a butterfly.

So we kind of, they learned about that. We collected all the shells. Then we read about them. Then we would look at pictures of them and occasionally, you know, maybe watch a video about

you know, how they live in the ground and then they come out of the trees and they climb up the trees and then they become the big cicada. So, right? But first they saw the real bugs and touched the real bugs and looked at the real bugs and heard the sounds and then we read about them and then the reading or the videos, the study is much more valuable and interesting to them.

Right? It's much worse just to A lot of kids or a lot of education, like if they go to school, okay, maybe they'll read about bugs, for example. And there's three phases.

There's the egg and the larva and whatever. But they never actually go and actually do anything with real bugs. It's all just pictures on a page and words. It never connects to the real world.

And this is why kids get lost in school and they get so bored with it. They start to think education is so boring. It's because it's never connected to the real world.

So I think it's always best to start with real life experiences when you can. Sometimes you read first and then you go explore and do it. It's okay too. But I think the best is when they explore and experience first, then read and learn about it.

And then even better is when they create. And that would maybe be step three. So explore and then do, meaning Do something. Create something. Explore, learn, create.

It's not always possible to create something, but I think it often is. So this is the way to really, really learn, right? This is the way to learn anything, is to get out. And this is where people feel lost when they say, I don't have a purpose.

I hear this all the time, people in their 20s. Teenagers, people in their 20s, and even people in their 30s who ask me, I get this comment online all the time, how do I find my purpose? How do I find my purpose? I have no purpose.

Well, how you find your purpose is you go out in the world and you try things. This is the problem. People who've been trained in school, they think the purpose will just pop into their head, like a light, and suddenly, I know what I will do with my life.

I will be a doctor. And I will be an emergency room doctor and save people. Aha! Now I know in my heart with 100% I'm certain that's my purpose in life.

That's not how it works. For most people, maybe there are a few like that, but most people there's not just suddenly boom! You're sitting around in school and then suddenly you know.

You've got to get out there and try things in life. And then the you'll start to figure out, and it can take years, guys. It can take quite a while, so get started.

Where you start to figure out, ah, this makes me really happy. I love this. I'm really good at this kind of thing. Oh, this, not so much. But it takes a long time.

And a lot of times we have in our mind an idea about something. We think, oh, being a doctor would be great. I want to be a doctor. But our ideas come from the media or something we read.

We have no idea what it's like to be a doctor, really. We never worked in a medical office or a hospital. We have no idea, right? So a lot of people, they'll go off to medical school and they hate it or they're not good at it.

And they'll waste so many years and be so frustrated and miserable. Some will become trained doctors and they just keep doing it because they think they're stuck. They spent so many years training. They think they have to do it and they just keep doing their whole lives and they won't be happy.

Right. Others will just quit after all those years. And then they've realized finally that is not for me. Or like, I know a lot of people do this with law, lawyers.

My own sister did this, actually, where she thought she wanted to be a lawyer and went to law school and realized this, being a lawyer is not like on TV. It's not like cool, dramatic cases in court, arguing court cases most of the time. It's mostly a lot, a lot, a lot of paperwork.

And she realized, oh, this is actually really boring and I hate it. So you need real-world experience to start figuring out what you might love in life, not just for jobs, but just in general in life.

And I agree with John Taylor Gatto. I think having some kind of traveling experience, especially something like a pilgrimage, something with some meaning, right? It's okay if you just go travel, take a trip somewhere.

as a tourist and see famous spots. That's more of a vacation. The difference with the pilgrimage is there's a deeper meaning for you. If you're a religious person, it's easy.

You can take a religious pilgrimage and go to a place that's sacred or holy for you, and this can be very deep and meaningful. But you can also do something that's just more personal. A lot of people do this like, say, there's a certain book

that you love you could take a pilgrimage and travel to the place where the book is set you know the setting the place and explore around there's many things you could do if you love coffee you could do a coffee pilgrimage where you would go to countries where they grow coffee and you would explore and visit the farms and try the different coffees and you see what I mean so it doesn't even have to be a deep meaning it could be something like that

something really simple like that. But it will still be a deeper experience. And you get out there in the world. And by doing that, you learn a lot, of course, especially someone who's younger.

They have to learn to budget. They've got to make the money for the trip and be careful not to spend it all. They've got to learn some money management. They've got to learn planning and calling and hotels.

And when you take trips like that, that are not just tourists, they're not just simple trips, they're a little more difficult. Things always happen, go wrong, you miss the plane, the bus breaks down, all these things happen, and they learn to adapt to these things. It's really, really, I mean, I had, for me, it was very, it changed my life when I started doing some travel like that. You know, I finally grew up more, not such a kid, right?

I was a kid until I was 27, 28 years old, still like childish. I was childish, to use our word today. I was still very childish, probably even into my 30s, which is sad to say. I'm ashamed to say, but true.

But when I finally started getting out in the real world, doing real things, first just exploring and traveling around and getting jobs in different places and working in different countries and all of that experience out in the real world. And then finally starting business.

These real world things are what help you grow up and find what gives you meaning in life. All right, let's get in here. And go into our comments and questions now.

Anna Grigoreva, good to see you. As always, always great comments. She says, I used to work as a teacher. When I gave lessons, I started to realize my children weren't interested in some topics at all.

So I decided to organize a pilgrimage through those towns. Great example. Great example. Very, very, very good example. Just learning about a place. from a book for a kid you know it might be really boring just reading about it but if you go there first and can walk around and now it's a real place it's alive with real people and then then it becomes far more interesting to them and not just kids adults too for us right like you know I guess I could read about you know Rome just reading about Rome it's interesting but visiting Rome is amazing

Yeah, Naoki says, in martial arts, you learn a lot of things because it's dangerous. Yeah, there's great feedback in martial arts. Therefore, the brain becomes sharp. You try to learn through mistakes.

Yeah, this is exactly right. This is one of the great things about martial arts, boxing, kickboxing, jujitsu, judo, wrestling, that you get a very fantastic uh, you get this instant feedback, sometimes painful, often painful, but that sharp, like he says, it sharpens your mind.

You know, like yesterday at Jiu-Jitsu, I was trying a couple new things, and, uh, and I failed. I was trying this new position and these kind of new techniques, and, uh, ah, yeah, you know, I made mistakes.

I'm still trying to figure out what I did wrong, but, uh, I ended up getting smashed, and, you know, I got, I had to tap a few times, uh, kind of things I don't usually problems I don't usually have when I'm but this is how you learn right because I stop I have kind of like my safe methods and safe techniques but when I tried something new yesterday it put me in bad bad positions that I'm not usually in and then I I got you know I failed I lost a couple times worse than usual

Because I'm trying something new. But that's how you learn something new, right? So, you know, tomorrow I'll go to jiu-jitsu again and I'll try these same things again.

And I'll try to adjust. You know, this is how we learn. This is how we learn best. Because now my mind is sharp and because it was painful, I mean, not super painful, but painful enough, it was unpleasant.

You know, guys were smashing me. I was losing. I had to tap. No one likes that when we're doing jiu-jitsu. So... It really sharpens my mind, so now my mind's working.

What did I do wrong? What was I doing wrong? Now I go watch a video, a jiu-jitsu video, and review it, and maybe, and I did, and I think, I think, I think I know what I did wrong, or I probably did a lot of things wrong, but I have some ideas of something, how to do it differently next time, right? So you get an idea.

Okay, how can I change? What can I try differently next time? And tomorrow, I'll go to jiu-jitsu again, And I'll try to do the same things, but I'll try to adjust.

I'll try to do it a little differently. What will happen? I don't know. Probably I'll get smashed again. Probably because I'm trying something that's a little difficult for me, so I'm not going to learn it in one week.

So I'm guessing tomorrow maybe I'll have other problems and more mistakes. And I'll try it. And then you learn again, right? This is the feedback and you keep going, keep going.

And this is how you get better. And it's like Naoki says, what I love about martial arts and really sports in general probably is that that feedback is very clear. Sometimes in life, the feedback is less clear and it's harder to learn.

Like in relationships, it can be challenging, right? Because it's not clear what the problem is. Business can also help, right? You know, you try something and then you lose money or you make money.

You sell something or you don't sell it. And that's a quite clear feedback also in life. And that's why it's so much better than just studying business in a book. It's okay to study the business, but it's better to have some real life feedback.

And sometimes that feedback, too, in business can be painful. When you lose money, oh, it hurts. Michelle says hi from Brazil. Thank you. Oh, and then Anna follows up.

She says, when we came back from our pilgrimage, my children were amazed. They were fascinated. This is great. They told me one thing to hear it and absolutely different to feel, to hear, to touch.

They asked me to do it more. Kids love this. They love it. Do this with your own children. Get out there. Whatever it is you're studying, try to do it in the real world.

Whatever it is. But even math, like, you know, math, for example, what's one of the best ways to learn fractions in math and maybe some other math too? Cooking, one cup, one third of a cup, half of a cup, a fourth of a cup. You can do all kinds of nice little math games with cooking.

You can have a recipe and then you can say, okay, we're going to, this recipe, we're going to make half of it. We're going to make a smaller amount. So this is a recipe to feed four people. We're going to make it for two people, or we're going to double it so we can feed eight people.

So then you can start playing around with the math and having them work with the math in that way. Another great way to learn math and to practice math is money.

And especially if you give kids, I'm not saying spoil your kids with a ton of money, but you give them a little money and you start learning about money. Oh, they become very interested in numbers suddenly.

Very interested because they know that money can get them things they like. And, you know, so money, cooking, you connect the numbers to real things in life becomes much more interesting to them instead of just numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, right? And the same with reading, the same with reading.

Pazzini says, AJ, I'm from Brazil. My son is 10 years old, addicted to video games. I'm guilty of this. I did stupid things. I don't want to fix it. I'm trying to get him into a gym to learn jiu-jitsu.

Yeah, that's awesome. Awesome. See, that'll get him into something positive like that, active. And if he gets hooked, if he likes jiu-jitsu, if he really starts liking it, the video games will become much less interesting to him because, uh,

You know, like, this is the great thing about jiu-jitsu. And I think the pain and the failure is part of it that makes it addicting. Because you get these victories in jiu-jitsu where you do something, you finally do something you've been trying to do, and you finally do it. And, oh, man, it's a great feeling.

And, but then you also, every time you get smashed, you lose. And this is motivating, too. Pain is also motivating. So, you know, no one likes losing.

And in jiu-jitsu, you're always going to lose constantly. Oh, no, you know, unless you're Gordon Ryan, you're going to lose. So you're always having these, and this is motivation. Ah, what happened this time?

And this is motivation to go learn more and practice more. And it becomes quite positive. And then you can take that, and then you start doing other positive real-world things. So this is exactly what the writer, John Taylor Gatto, said.

You could tell your kid, don't play video games, don't play video games, don't play video games. He's not going to want to hear that. But you've got to instead find real world things. You've got to find something.

And if it's not jiu-jitsu, maybe it's something else. But you've got to find other things, probably more than one thing, in the real world and get him connected and doing those real world things. Keep trying, keep trying. And as he finally finds things in the real world that are interesting, fascinating, challenging,

The video games will become less interesting. It may take time. Just keep trying. Don't give up. Do I have a challenge for the new year, Asalina? I haven't thought about the new year.

I usually don't think about that until January. Just kind of my ritual. So at the moment, no. I think probably most of it will be focused on homeschooling and my children.

Safa says, middle school and high school is the worst experience in the USA. One of them, yes. Absolutely terrible. Middle school, high school, awful.

And actually, universities now, too, are terrible. One of the many problems of America. One of the many problems. Akko says, Hi from Tokyo. Good to see you again, Akko.

Just finished my big project yesterday. I feel relaxed. It's such a good feeling when you do things in the real world and do real projects. And this is also true for us and for our kids, where you overcome.

And this is why, actually, it's good if it's difficult. Not impossible, but difficult is good. We don't want it too easy. There's no satisfaction from doing something easy.

This is why things like sports or businesses or anything, creating something for your kids, you should challenge them a bit. It should be somewhat difficult because then the feeling they get, this is where real confidence comes from.

Not fake confidence where you're like, I'm great, I'm great, and you say it a thousand times. But real confidence comes from doing things overcoming difficult things, difficult challenges, and even overcoming lots and lots of failures.

That's where you get some real confidence in life, in different areas of your life. So we've got to create this for our children and for ourselves. Keep creating that for yourself, too.

No, I don't have any exam courses. Someone asked me if I have a preparation course for exams. I do not. Fernando Diaz says, on Sundays, I usually go for a walk with my kids to take pictures from different places from my city.

Awesome idea. It's amazing how excited they are on weekends to go for our city excursions. See, this is awesome. This is great. This is great. So great.

This is an example. See, you don't need to go across the world. So he has a ritual with his kids. Every Sunday, they go out in the city and they take photos.

And so they could get into photography. And they go around and explore different areas of the city, take photos of it. This is great. And you could do this with drawing.

You don't even have to have a camera. Go around and draw. They don't have to draw well. There's a great book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

I'll write it down if you want. This is great for learning how to draw. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, I believe is the name. Anyway, you could get that book for yourself or your kids and walk around.

You could do pictures, try to create photographs. Or you could do just draw. And they're both good. And especially, you know, if you're doing pictures, not just pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, like really quick, fast pictures mindlessly, but really trying to create like nice, beautiful photos.

Like I did a few photography kind of seminars in Japan here with a professional photographer. And he was really good. It was really cool. And we went to, we did one in Kyoto and we did one in, actually we did one in Thailand and Chiang Mai.

But we would go around, like say go to a temple and then do photographs. We had a geisha, if you know what a geisha is. He hired a geisha, and we did photographs of her at a temple.

And not just snapping pictures mindlessly, but really trying to focus on the light and how the photo works. The reason it's great is that it, makes the person, makes you or the photographer really notice.

It's kind of like meditation. You notice all the little details. You notice the light. You notice the shape. You notice the colors. And it's the same with drawing.

So you can do drawing or photography. So going out in your own city with your kids and doing this and encourage them. Maybe this would be a great example of get a couple books on photography.

And I don't know what you're, you could focus on, you could also get some books on architecture, maybe focus on taking pictures of buildings, or maybe you go to parks and you focus on plants and trees and things, or people.

It depends, but you could really do a lot of cool things in this way. Yeah, Anna, and this is a good point. I'm noticing this already with my three-year-old children.

Anna says, children really like to be involved in stuff that's connected with real life. They want to do it. My kids, they already want to help with the laundry. We think laundry is a boring job.

This sucks. They want to. They want to put the clothes into the machine. If I'm washing dishes, they want to wash a dish too. They want to help with the cooking.

They want to do all that stuff, right? And we keep them away because we think we're in a hurry and they don't really know how to do it. Teach them to do it. And yes, when they're little, it's going to be slow and everything.

But as much as I can, I try to let my kids do that. Because they really want to be adult. Real world meaning like adult things and real world things. Not just books and video.

Not just screens. And not even just books. As much as you can. Get them to help with the housework. Not like this is your job and you must do it. But say, you want to help?

You want to help shopping? You want to go with me and help me go shopping today? You want to I've got to clean the dishes. You want to help? You can dry them or you can wash this.

I'm doing the laundry. You want to help? Here, put the soap in. This is how we do the laundry detergent. Say you take one scoop, you put it in here, then you push this button.

Teach them how to do it. Even if they're three or four, don't let them do it alone at that age, but they can start getting an idea. And they want to. They want to do it.

And this also, as they get older, this also includes working and business and money and all these things. The more they do that, the less they will be interested in TV and that kind of junk.

Yeah, Naoki says, I believe God gives you difficulties because God wants you to give you chances to grow spiritually. In the modern world, life is easier than a thousand years ago. Therefore, historical people were more virtuous.

I think you're right. I think you're right. We live in an age where a time when it's probably too easy for us, right? We have to create our own challenge in many ways.

In this age now we live in, most of us, if we want to be lazy, we can be. Right. We can just lie around and not do much. We can be pretty lazy. And, you know, a thousand years ago, for most people, that was not so possible to just survive and eat and live.

They had a lot more challenges. It was tougher, more challenging, more difficult in most places for most people. And so, indeed, indeed. Our challenge now is we have to kind of find it ourselves because sometimes, you know, it's easy.

Like I have this problem. I get bored easily. I get really bored. So I have to go out and find new challenges, create them because they're not, they won't, you know, eventually certain things in life will happen and we all face these.

But day to day, Yeah, it's easy to just sit around and look at a TV all day. Or stare at a computer screen all day. A lot of people spend so, so, so many hours doing that.

And it's terrible. So... Getting involved in real things. And it might just be simple things like sports. Finding a sport that you do that you love. And then other hobbies.

They can start with that. And then pilgrimages are also great. And then just other work that you do. Productive work. Productive challenges. Yeah, cool.

Y'all... Pedro says, when I was a child, the best thing was to help my father fix something in the house. Taking the tools and giving it to him. I was involved with that thing.

Yes, yes, yes. Yes, exactly right. They love it. Like yesterday, my kids got tricycles, you know, like bicycles, but three wheels. And I had to put them together.

they, oh, they wanted to help me do it, right? They didn't want to just sit and watch me make it. So, I let them, I said, okay, put that here, you know, put that in, okay, put that here, now this goes on here, and it is very simple, but they loved it, they love it, they want to, they want to do that, they want to participate, they want to do real things in life, they know already, at the youngest age, they can feel what's real and what's not, right?

And they want to be involved, and, uh, we need to be patient and involve them as much as we can. Sometimes we're in a hurry and we can't. But when we can, we should.

And get them involved doing real things. Alright, I think that's about all I'm going to go. Speaking of, it's time for me to do some homeschooling with my kids. I've got

i do i i'm now i've got a schedule with them i i was being a little too loose i think so i've uh decided just just a couple hours a day we work on reading and numbers and uh and but then also some projects like washing the dishes uh cooking what else are we gonna do or just like little art things let them just draw and i try to do that for about

two to three hours a day and the rest of the time we're outdoors so outdoors exploring and i just take them into the city sometimes and uh we go to parks a lot that kind of thing so do this for yourself too get out of the house get off the screens throw away the tv turn off the phones you don't need the phone on

people if it's if people have an important call my attitude if someone if the call is important they will leave a message or they'll text me so um turn it off i i often very often do not take my phone with me i go leave the house i leave the phone at home uh usually the ringer's off i don't get a lot of calls anyway but um you don't need it right so Turn off the phone. Get away from the screens and get out. Even if it's your day off, just go for long walks.

Go explore. You can do this too. Do the same thing John Taylor Gatto did with his 13-year-old kids. Explore your town by walking. You can do it once a week and get out there for a few hours and just walk around and go to places you don't usually go and explore and look around and just...

Wherever you kind of just wander around and explore. And if you live in the country, you can do it in the country too. Walk around on different paths and different hills and woods and just walk around exploring.

That's a great way to start. Getting out of the house, away from the screens, away from the computers, away from the phones, all that stuff. And just outdoors in the real world, looking around.

Exploring. It's a good first step. All right. Join my VIP program at EffortlessEnglishClub.com. And lots of love to you all. See you next time.