Beginning Notes on a Plan for Tutoring

The US education system of mass industrial schooling has failed, and will continue to fail. That's not going to change anytime soon, the US government is far too corrupt to do even the most basic things for improvement. Instead of government schooling, what would be better for education and learning?

The obvious answer is private schools. There are a few issues with this. One issue is that many private schools are based on the same things as public schools. Another issue is that private schools can cost quite a bit of money, and it's often more difficult to transport students to and from the schools.

The next obvious answer is homeschooling. One issue with that is both parents often have to work and they don't want to leave the kids alone at home. Another issue is that the parents don't know what or how to teach. That's why they are outsourcing education in the first place, it's logistically easy because it's normal, it's cheap because government taxes pay for the schools, and it's intellectually easy because the school decides who, what, when, where, why, and how the students will be educated.

The fourth option is usually ignored, tutoring. Most of the Founding Fathers of the United States had tutors. George Washington had practical tutors. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and many others had classical tutors. Many of them served apprenticeships, and many of them were self-taught. The first US President that went to a government school was Harry Truman, who became President in 1945. Before that it was practical tutors, classical tutors, apprenticeships, self-teaching, private academies, and a few partly public common schools.

The modern idea of schools is modern, with the idea of manufacturing a student as a repeatable and interchangeable product, just like from an assembly line. This is a deviation from the entire history of Western cultural thought where the value was placed on being able to reason and think independently. It is not an accident that the Founding Fathers were great thinkers. They studied the ancient Greeks and Romans. They knew history and philosophy.

The reason that kids today cannot think is because they've never learned how to. This has had a massive negative impact on society. 

To fix the obvious failings of government schools many people have pushed for solutions that involve raising scores on standardized tests. This is the wrong answer if you want people to be able to think. You cannot have a test for the ability to think. You can have an IQ test for pattern recognition or a test retained information. China has had a structured education system for two thousand years and excels at such tests. That system was originally designed to keep people compliant under an emperor. The government education system in the US is why the US is also becoming more authoritarian.

Hope is essential to be willing to put forth the effort to live, according to the rat experiments of Curt Richter. Mental health requires having a socially meaningful role, according to the rat experiments of John B. Calhoun. The meaning of life is value attainment, according to the philosophy of Viktor Frankl. So I've been considering getting involved in the space. To a certain extent I have been for years. I taught English online to kids in China and kids and adults in the former Soviet Union countries for five years, I've taught classes for two community colleges, and have worked with homeschool groups on writing, public speaking, and debating philosophy. Even though the current state of education is bad, the past and the future offer great hope.

History is full of stories about how people were transformed through education. Frederick Douglass was illegally taught part of phonics reading as a slave by his master's wife. Then he acquired a book of classical speeches. He became a brilliant writer and speaker.

Ben Carson had issues in school when he was young. His mother started requiring him to read two books a week and write reports on them. He became one of the best surgeons in the world.

I have my own stories as well. Angela was a Chinese student struggling with English and with school in general. Her parents had tried other online teachers with no success. They heard about me. Within a couple of weeks Angela and I had agreed to base all of her learning around a specific passion of hers, fashion. Previously her parents had banned her from doing anything with it. Being desperate, they took my advice. Within a couple of months Angela had improved her English reading, writing, and speaking significantly, and increased her grades in all of her Chinese school classes as well.

How to educate well has been known since ancient Greece and Rome. The Greek Plutarch points out that education is about moral and character development around 100 AD. Near the same time the Roman Quintilian wrote about education, and there's probably never been a better book on education written. That's almost 2,000 years ago. Education theory and practice haven't substantially improved in almost 2,000 years. New terms can be useful like "zone of proximal development" and "more knowing other" from Lev Vygotsky, "scaffolding" from Jerome Bruner, and "programmed learning" from B. F. Skinner, but in reality these things have been in practice for millennia, and working the whole time.

All of these things can be applied by a tutor, in a small group whether called a pod or a microschool, or in homeschooling, easier than turning around a school. Schools can be turned around. How to do it is known. The 1988 movie 'Stand and Deliver' shows how. The principle wrote a book explaining it, 'Standing and Delivering' by Henry Gradillas. The 1989 movie 'Lean on Me' shows how. However, it's a massive effort resisted by all major stakeholder groups. And, something that you don't realize watching the movies, is that after the key change agents leave, the schools fall back to their normal failure modes. So it makes sense to put the effort into what will succeed and be useful.

One fear of parents is test prep. If a kid wants to go on and become a lawyer or doctor or something else they may need to succeed at a standardized test. This is easily addressed by a tutor. The best way to test prep is to do a practice test in a similar environment to what the actual test will be. Then go back through the results, study all of the questions you get wrong, and then do another practice test. The tests themselves are a type of programmed learning. Bobby Fischer is one of the greatest chess champions of all time. The book he wrote teaching chess has a programmed learning methodology. When needed, that same philosophy can be incorporated.

For many people, if they want to raise a genius they will need to put a large amount of focus and effort into it, but it's possible. Laszlo Polgar proved this by purposely raising all three of his daughters to be geniuses in chess, and told how in his book 'Raise a Genius'. Most people don't necessarily need or want that, but it's a result probably only achievable through tutoring. From this it's obvious that easier levels of achievement are highly attainable through tutoring.

The current state of a society almost wholly comes from the education of the previous generation. This is for good or bad. As Viktor Frankl states in his book 'The Doctor and the Soul', “I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek were ultimately prepared, not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”

The goal then is to develop the seed in the human soul that is the ability to think. Humans have the ability to think, feel, and do. The development of these capacities is the fulfillment of human potential. Authoritarian education moves in the other direction. As Hannah Arendt states in her book 'The Origins of Totalitarianism', "The preparation has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow men as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction {i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false {i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist."

These quotes give us a direction to move toward. Move toward meaning, experience, and thought. Schools do not currently do this, although some well-meaning educators attempt to inside of the broken system. The reality is that current government schools could be replaced with two types of tv shows, documentaries and trivia shows. Real education is something more than that.

Benjamin Franklin didn't have tv shows, or almost any schooling. Once he was able to write he pursued interests from a young age that he was interested in and taught himself. This corrects for the lack of engagement, interest, and relevance we currently see in education. William James' talks about the usefulness of children pursuing their native interests and associations in his 'Talks to Teachers on Psychology'. This has always been true.

"What should be learned?" is a good question, better than "What should be taught?" The folk wisdom of the three Rs is a solid starting point: reading, writing, and arithmetic. The ancient idea of rhetoric as the highest form of learning is solid. The classic idea of the trivium and quadrivium are good: grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The idea of STEM is good, but not by itself: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This leaves a massive gap in understanding history, literature, and philosophy, which are essential to understanding human nature and society, so those should be incorporated. Citizenship and governance is important, business is important, religion is important. Law and medicine are important. Trades from construction to mechanical to agricultural work are essential to the functioning of civilization. The trifecta of literacy, oracy, and numeracy is important. How can you know what to teach and what is important to learn?

All of these things are great to learn, and can be fun and interesting to learn. Yet government schools usually suck the fun and interest out of anything. There is an obsession with grades and a disregard for learning.

The first thing to realize is that everyone can't know everything. No one can know everything. So there will be things you don't know. To focus on some areas you have to not focus on other areas. Life is a continual set of choices. The question then becomes, "Who should choose what the student is learning?" In government schools it is mostly the government that determines what the student will learn, with some limited choice for teachers, students, and parents. This ignores the primary stakeholders who should be the prime movers in the decision process. Finding a good tutor and letting them make the decisions could work for some kids. Having just the student decide could work for some kids. Having the parents decide could work for some kids. But, in each of these situations, it could also not work because it's unbalanced.

These same lessons apply throughout all of history. For instance, Socrates was executed for the charge of corrupting the youth, which essentially meant that he was teaching them to think too differently than their parents. In that case the teacher and student were involved, but the parents were not. There should be a tripartite balance in education decisions between the student, parents, and teacher. This should be the foundation of non-industrial education. Ken Robinson points out in his book 'Creative Schools' that a choice has to be made between standardization and personalization. Properly involving the proper stakeholders does this.

You want the student to be able to do something, and to have demonstrated that they can do something. To have generated a project that they can claim. For this reason the production of a written portfolio is valuable. This can be creative fiction, reflective essays on written works and personal experiences, and even formal research projects. Life projects can be carried out and then communicated.

At the highest levels of education this is the ability that is attained and demonstrated. People do a master's thesis and a PhD dissertation. The written work isn't the only part. The written work is also verbally presented, and then a defense is given through answering questions. With this as an end goal, there is no reason for students to wait to work directly on this ability. With the prerequisite knowledge of being able to read and write, students learn the procedural knowledge of researching, writing, presenting, and discussing, and the propositional knowledge the student, parent, and tutor have chosen.

Here's a process that would develop advanced levels of rhetoric while also developing knowledge in any chosen area. This is chosen learning instead of compulsory school.

The student and the tutor work together in discussions to come up with an idea that the student wants to study and learn about. They then work together to write up a proposal to the student's parents. In early ages this can be a simple proposal with more input from the tutor, in later ages this can be a more complex proposal with less input from the tutor. The written proposal is given to the parents, the student makes a presentation to the parents for the proposed subject and method, and addresses questions that the parents may raise. If rejected, the student and tutor can continue to work to modify the proposal, or to pivot to another subject or methodology. This process is itself learning. If approved, the student and tutor then carryout the work proposal. The end product of the project is a written work given to the parents with a presentation and a verbal defense of questions and answers.

This can work for anything. It can be a young child writing a fiction story about a superhero. It can be an older student doing an internship in a law office. It can be on the history of the church, or on fishing. It can be a research project on the current budget of the local government, or a mapping of the best hiking locations in the county. A student that needs a lot of contact can have a lot of contact with the instructor. A more independent student can have just a small amount of contact with the tutor. The personalization is limitless. At the same time it develops the rhetorical language abilities of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The student develops the ability to negotiate and persuade. The student walks away having learned to think and to do, with proof for themselves and others, and the parents are able to be consistently updated by seeing real results while also having a say in what the child is learning. I've been contemplating educational difficulties for years and this is the best program I can think of, yet I've never come across anyone else with this proposed approach.

It seems somewhat odd to me to get heavily involved in the education industry while not being a parent, yet I keep being drawn into education and learning. When I was young I made a strong emotional decision to find the meaning of life. That led to my study of a wide array of topics and finding unique connections between them. Eventually I understood the meaning of life. After many years I also sorted out my ability to think, feel, and do. Having acquired these unique insights it seems that this may be a worthwhile path to pursue in contributing to others and the transformation of the future of society. Out of curiosity I asked an AI to list famous historical tutors that had no children to see what company I might be in. This is the list:

Plato (428–348 BCE) — Never married, no record of children. Founded the Academy and trained generations of philosophers.

Epictetus (c. 50–135 CE) — Born a slave, freed, became Stoic teacher in Nicopolis. Never married, no children.

Plotinus (204–270 CE) — Refused portraiture or personal discussion; lifelong bachelor, no children.

Boethius (c. 480–524 CE) — No verifiable record of children; focus entirely on study and statesmanship.

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) — Dominican friar; lifelong celibate, no children.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) — Abbess, mystic, composer; vowed celibate life, no children.

Roger Bacon (c. 1219–1292) — Franciscan friar; celibate, no children.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) — No known romantic relationships or children; devoted to art and students.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) — Never married, no children; regarded his apprentices as his artistic “family.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) — Celibate cleric, no children; Europe’s leading humanist teacher.

John Colet (1467–1519) — Celibate priest, founded St. Paul’s School; no children.

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) — Lifelong bachelor, no children; model of disciplined academic life.

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) — Bachelor, no children; philosopher of education and evolution.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) — Never married, no children; taught by living example.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) — Married Harriet Taylor, no children; social and educational reformer.

Simone Weil (1909–1943) — Never married, no children; ascetic teacher and mystic.

Ivan Illich (1926–2002) — Catholic priest, celibate, no children; author of Deschooling Society.

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) — Never married, no children; major theorist of power and education.

Bell Hooks (1952–2021) — Never married, no children; redefined pedagogy as love and liberation.

Cornel West (1953–) — Never married, no children; moral philosopher and public educator.

Some I like and some I don't, but it's a good list to be associated with, and makes a strong case for the historical importance of childless tutors.

The model I've proposed is a done-with-you business model. If the parents want to be less involved it could still be carried out between the tutor and the student as a done-for-you model from the parent's perspective. I could also generate instructional materials for parents that wanted to do it with their child, those materials would support a do-it-yourself model.

Society needs both plumbers and philosophers. That doesn't mean all people need to learn both plumbing and philosophy. It also doesn't mean that plumbers shouldn't learn philosophy and philosophers shouldn't learn plumbing. It means that humans are organic living beings that grow. They aren't manufactured. Juvenal and John Locke agree that the human ideal is a healthy mind in a healthy body. A unique ability of humans is the capacity for high level complex thought, and factory schools don't help kids learn how to do that. But parents can choose a different path than government schools. Kids can learn to think, whether they are learning about plumbing or philosophy, or both. These are my beginning notes on a model that would integrate the success of ancient rhetorical education, with extreme personalization and customization, while balancing stakeholder input from parents, student, and tutor. This is an educational model that could spread and reform the foundation of future society.

Find more at JeffThinks.com or JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com