Smells Like Humans
Top 5% global podcast! Smells Like Humans is a seasonal podcast dedicated to bringing a humorous perspective to quirky and curious aspects of human behavior. Each show, the SLH crew will focus on a different topic, and share personal stories and observations in a way that sounds like you’re hanging out with your funny friends. The stories and commentary are presented with humor and warmth, since let’s face it: we all smell like humans. (Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com)
Smells Like Humans
NO HOMEWORK? NO SCHOOL? NO PROBLEM!
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Ami joins Ross to discuss the anti-homework movement. Tangents include: concussions at school; Pliny the Younger; mules vs. donkeys as an insult; home schooling; "pig wagons"; Mad Max play time. Ross makes another attempt to convince Ami that kids should go to work instead of school.
Notes:
- https://www.today.com/parents/why-more-teachers-are-joining-anti-homework-movement-t230641
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/01/opinion/schools-education-america.html
Contact us: contactSLH19581980@gmail.com
I'm gonna write a note on my arm so I don't forget.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just write pigwagon.
SPEAKER_01Pigwagon on my arm. I'm getting a tattoo. That's a great idea. I've been thinking of getting a tattoo. Now I know which one. Um it's pigwagon right on my elbows.
SPEAKER_00It's the movie Memento, except it just says pigwagon. Welcome to another episode of Smells Like Humans. This is the podcast where we explore the curious things that people do, the very human things that grab our attention and cause us to wonder what and why. I'm Ross, your host, and today's guest is my dear friend, who along with Charles Dickens novel and a case of sugar baby candies, would be the third thing I would bring if I were stranded on an island and could only bring three things.
SPEAKER_01Amy, hello Amy. Oh, hi Ross! I I am delighted to be after Charles Dickens novel. Everyone needs that.
SPEAKER_00And welcome to the show, everyone. Hey, thanks for helping us grow our community. It is growing. We're still a small independent group, but we love that you come every week and listen. Uh reach out to us on Instagram, follow us on Instagram, reach out to us on Instagram, send us an email. We'd love to hear from you. Any encouraging thoughts or you have questions about me or my guests or have ideas for show topics, feel free to interact with us. We're lonely, and we love to hear from you. Okay. Now, Amy. Yes, Ross. We know that since as far back as ancient Rome and Pliny the Younger, you remember Pliny? Yes, absolutely. And definitely since the 1800s, when it spread eventually from Europe to America, kids have been asked to take schoolwork home. Homework was believed to be an important aspect of educating kids, not to mention a means of controlling the little whippersnappers. You might be surprised to know that in the early 1900s, some places in America banned homework. Oh. They said it was too stressful for the little gutter snipes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, yes, naturally.
SPEAKER_00When did it pick up again? During the Cold War, when everybody got nervous about our kids being dumb because of the space race. The Russians were beating our butts in the space race, and we were falling behind, so they thought. So they wanted our kids to be smarter and not be such, you know, bumps on a log. Get going, kids, learn something. And so homework became a thing again. And then in the 80s, everyone got super jacked up about the importance of homework. So, you know, homework's been going on for a while, but now you know that pendulum that swings around back and forth? Oh, yeah, I do. That pendulum is swinging the other way, and people are rising up against homework.
SPEAKER_01No homework.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so let me tell you, let me tell you the reasons that people don't want homework for kids. Did you know that Pliny the Younger was the nephew of Pliny the Elder?
SPEAKER_01That I did know. I was actually going to mention that, but you brought it up before me, so they were both uh men of letters and of some wealth.
SPEAKER_00But Pliny the Elder, I mentioned this on a recent podcast. Pliny the Elder tried to rescue some people during uh the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii, and he didn't make it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What a way to go. He couldn't get out of port. So Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger was uh interested in having people practice their homework.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh that's what Pliny liked.
SPEAKER_01Were they were they teachers? Were they professors?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they were like teachers, philosophers, they were uh men of letters, lawyers, you know. They were they were uh, you know, bigwigs, intellectual bigwigs. So here's the reason people think that homework is bad now. Okay. They say the kids who do the homework don't need to do it. They're already they already get everything. The kids who don't do the homework are the ones that really need to do it, but they don't do it. Um, or they do it incorrectly, they need more support, they don't get it at home because not everyone has a home environment that's conducive to doing homework. Some people live in stressful situations, they don't have helpful caretakers around to like coach them or give them encouragement or help them, you know, figure out things. Some people's home life is very chaotic. No doubt. And so that's a problem. They say homework causes anxiety, yeah, causes a loss of interest in learning, cuts into time that kids can use for exercise, reading, or other personal development, introspection, creative thinking, relaxation, and intellectual growth. Uh, I think homework makes parents feel dumb.
SPEAKER_03Gosh, yes.
SPEAKER_00That's not one of the reasons, but that's one of the reasons I'm listing. There's no real evidence that homework is good for people. It's the studies that have been done are not really that powerful and convincing one way or the other. And homework deprives some kids of sleep. These are the reasons. Except for the parents feeling dumb. Those are the reasons that are given for maybe we should not be doing homework. The reasons for doing homework are not that many.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00One, kids need time to practice, and they don't get that time in class, and homework gives them time to practice stuff they learned and understand it better. And then the only other reason that I found is this idea that it helps kids learn independent responsibility, just like real life. You're asked to do something, you have to budget your time, you have to figure out how you're gonna do it. And it's a good training for life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's good enough for me, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You like it? Yeah. So I was gonna ask you, what do you think? Homework or no homework? Are you for it or against it?
SPEAKER_01It it's really this is very, very timely. So up to the moment when we started recording this podcast today, I was working on my syllabus and I struggle with this idea of homework. The um my college students, they're so they have so many demands on them. But I've part of my class is about learning time management and classroom uh skills, sort of overall, as applied to life. I do have homework throughout the semester, assignments, but I'm trying this time around to give them, they have assignments every week, but they can choose uh there's maybe 15 weeks worth of assignments. They can choose to do 10 of those 15, any 10 that they want to do. Um, so they can leave five of them now. And that way, when they're busy, they can skip a week. Um, and if they're not busy, they they do the assignments. But the catch is they have to do all 10. If you do nine out of 10, you get zero, zero, no credit. So you have to do at least 10. But you could, and you could do 15 if you wanted to. And the bonus, of course, is that you get to do all of them. But that's my compromise because I agree. I I worry that it's cutting into some of their other work, their other time. But I think we need some way for them to practice time management and to reinforce the skills we're learning in class.
SPEAKER_00The thought is that it's really puts an added burden and cuts into time that they could use more productively. I wanted to know, like when you were a kid, I'm assuming you had homework.
SPEAKER_01I did.
SPEAKER_00Because you were you were a kid during the that sweet spot of homework time in the last century. Did your parents sort of so first of all, were you a good homework kid? Did you do your homework? Were that important to you? Did you were you a reliable homework doer?
SPEAKER_01I was a moderately good homework doer for the for some of my schooling. I was not, I mean, I did okay, and I could slip by with a lot of stuff, but I wasn't really a good academic student until I got to college.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, I was very easily distracted and I liked doing other things. I really hated math, and there was a lot of math homework.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Did your parents kind of stay on you? Did they help you? Were they in the equation at all, or were you left to your own devices?
SPEAKER_01So my parents ironically also taught school, which um seems like that would be bad. It was. That's what it was.
SPEAKER_00I would not want that.
SPEAKER_01No, and mainly what it meant was they were they taught in a different town, so they were about 30 minutes away. So of course their school day ended later, and then they had to drive home. So they were not in the house at the time when I was typically uh required to do homework. I was supposed to do it before they got home from work. Um and there was uh alternating plans, um, neither really worked, but uh schedules of punishment, and then there were series of rewards. Um there were I I sometimes got paid money for like not just doing not doing my homework, but for getting good grades overall, and homework was a part of that. And then also I got privileges taken away when I did badly. I I really don't remember either thing working very well, but I remember my parents really trying. Like they were very invested in like what was the trick to get me to do homework, but it really was, I think because they cared so much, I cared very little because it seemed really important to them. And I was a kid and I thought I knew everything. So if it was important to them, it must be dumb. So yeah, it wasn't until I got to college that I was very good at it. How about you? I I have a I have a sense of what I think the answer is, but I'm curious.
SPEAKER_00Well, I didn't uh I was not great in school anyway. So homework was yeah, I never wanted to do it, I didn't do it all the time, uh, or did it badly. I got nothing out of doing it, I learned nothing, I didn't regain any like a sense of responsibility. I mainly it helped me learn how to come up with excuse convincing excuses. Right, exactly. So it helped me in a in my creative thinking, maybe, but not in the way that anyone would have wanted. I will say that my mother, uh, her contribution to each kid was to teach them how to read before they went to school.
SPEAKER_03Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00So I was already reading uh uh you know, like novels, like kid novels when I was four years old. I was already reading because she worked so hard on our reading.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_00And so that was good for me. That was the only thing I excelled at when I was in, you know, grade school. And I could read better than just about any other kid, because most kids, you know, they wait till they get to school before they crack a book and start actually like, what's this? Um, and I remember this one school um that they came up with reading groups depending on how good you were, which is a great idea. So I was in the best, the fast group. It was called the Jets. I thought it was cool because there was a picture of a jet, you know, yeah, definitely on your little thard, and we sat in our own little group and we all like read really fast and we're all proud of ourselves. And then the next group, which isn't not quite as fast, not quite as able, were called like the race cars or something, and that was pretty cool. But then it dropped off from there. And then like the third group, which were kids that kind of more on the average side, they were like the pig wagons. Okay, they had like a picture of a horse pulling a pig car. I don't they weren't called the pig wagons, but it was something.
SPEAKER_01No, I get it. And then there were the turtles, and you just know as a kid that you want to be in the jet group, like nobody wants to be in the turtle group.
SPEAKER_00That's well, they called them, yeah, they called them the butt dragon losers, but it was yeah, you didn't want to be in that group.
SPEAKER_01That's gonna hurt your feelings if you're a butt dragon loser.
SPEAKER_00The knuckle scrapers, the mouth breathers, whatever they called them. It wasn't good, and so that's not something you want to do with kids, but that was my that was that was the way um I had any uh academic cachet because otherwise I was just a mess. But my parents pretty much left us alone when it came to doing our schoolwork, like it was up to you, and you know, they would get involved if something weird happened at school. But mostly our school was up to us and what we made of it, and you know, their job was to be disappointed when we came back with less than stellar grades, and so that's kind of how I learned personal responsibility was well, you're on your own, and if you don't do your homework and you don't study, then bad things happen to you. And if something, as I say, something really out of the ordinary happened, they would get involved, like the time I got my head slammed in a door.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry, what?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so this was actually in high school. Now, I used to be sort of a cut-up, I don't use the word class clown because that seems diminishing to me in terms of the quality that I was bringing in terms of the kids' entertainment world. I mean, I was bringing some quality material.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so I I never used that term, try to stay away from it. Class clowns were, you know, it was amateur hour.
SPEAKER_01That was like fart bags and yeah, the whoopee cushions. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I was I I was aiming much higher. But anyway, so um I was always just seizing the moment. And so I'm in summer school because why?
SPEAKER_01Didn't do any homework.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I failed, whatever. I can't, this was a math, some kind of math. Um so I failed in the regular year and I had to take it back in summer. So I'm taking summer school class and I'm enjoying the hell out of it because uh I've got the kids and to some extent the teacher in the palm of my hand. It's a great audience. I'm working them every day. I bring something a little different. And so we're sitting there, and if some kid walks in with an announcement or something, and just the way he walked in and kind of made the announcement, I found particularly interesting. So as he turns to leave, I get up and silently mime his work on the way out. Like I'm admired, I'm a I'm an admirer, I'm working it, and I'm doing my version of that on his way out. And he goes out and I go out, but I realize I'm not really going to leave. I'm going to come back and enjoy the laughter some more. So I think. Uh oh. So as I go halfway out the door and turn around, and you remember those big heavy school doors, you know, and the brick buildings, those are like substantial doors.
SPEAKER_01They're like prison doors.
SPEAKER_00Like a prison door. I turn around, uh, little did I know that the teacher, had having seen enough of this little act, was following me right behind, and he was going to lock me out as a joke. So he was having fun in his own way. So you can see we were all just one big fun happy group. And as I turn around it about halfway through the door, he's already slamming, he's pulling it really hard to slam it. No, and my head is caught between the door and the like the door jam, like a like a melon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Smash.
SPEAKER_01Oh Ross, that had to hurt so bad.
SPEAKER_00Oh man, it was whenever you get hit that hard in the head, it is stunning.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh, of course, I'm bleeding because you know your head will bleed a lot. Oh no. So blood is like going all over the place. He looks like he's stunned because he's like, What did I just do? I killed this kid. I'm stunned, literally. And he's kind of and I start wandering. Oh no, aimlessly off. And he's like, Ross, Ross. And I just keep going because it all seems very weird, right?
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um do you have a concussion? It feels like you have a concussion. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, I'm in a daze.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00It was hammered. And so I go walking off in this daze, and the only thing I remember next that happens is I wander into a frog dissection class.
SPEAKER_01Oh no, oh, what a horrible thing.
SPEAKER_00What are we supposed to do with this? So at that point, somebody uh takes me to you know the clinic or whatever it was called back then, and you know, goes on from there, and I live to tell about it. I have no idea why the teacher kind of let me wander off. I don't know why. I don't remember, I don't know if he was just shocked or felt horribly. I'm sure he felt bad.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00But that's my father did get involved because normally my father was not involved in any aspect of my school situation. My mom handled everything, he was not involved, but he got involved then because he wanted to find out why there are crunching melons down at the high school. Sure, yeah. What's that about? Like uh, you know, and I feel when I think about it today, I feel bad about it because I'm sure of course first of all, it was all my fault for goofing around. And I'm sure it caused the teacher uh undue stress, you know, because I'm sure at some point, and I don't know what happened, but I'm sure he was asked at some point, like, what you can you crushed this kid's brain bag? Like what why what were you uh like what were you thinking? And it's because he see, I know the effect I have on people is that I start making everything so fun that even the teacher likes to join in.
SPEAKER_01Well, sure, yeah. It wasn't it wasn't his fault. He was just drawn into the Ross atmosphere.
SPEAKER_00It was the Ross atmosphere, and as a kid, and as a kid, that's what I was always going for. I wanted to co-opt everybody into my little wacky world and have everybody have a good time. And if I could get the teachers ever to join in, it always felt like the biggest ego win. You know, it's like, yeah, now it because usually they were just you know cracking down on me. But when they join in, but that one is one time where they joined in and it didn't go well.
SPEAKER_01Didn't go well. No.
SPEAKER_00And it's funny, I don't I don't remember what happened after somebody at the frog lab decided to stop pulling apart their frog, and you know, maybe maybe they put me on the table and started working me over. I don't know, but it I I eventually uh, you know, went to the hospital and I did have a concussion.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00But it wasn't the first time I got brained at school like that.
SPEAKER_01Wait, it wasn't the first time even.
SPEAKER_00No, the first time was I was in uh kindergarten, and it's a very big actually it's a big mystery to this day. We're still looking into it, but there I was standing in the middle of the playground and there was a kid on some kind of pedaled vehicle. I don't know if it was a bike or something, something that was there for everyone to use. And the kid wouldn't give me a turn. And so I was sort of working them a little bit, you know. Like you do, wise cracking them a little bit, you know, riding them, getting on them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So he's going around and around, and I'm staying there, he's going around and around, and then he goes around, and the next thing I know, well, I'm coming to in the nurse's office, and they're like, Oh, somebody said an older kid knocked you down by accident. And even in that moment, like I'm four years old, I'm thinking, no, that isn't what happened. That kid on the bike ran me over.
SPEAKER_01That was that that bastard.
SPEAKER_00That sucker took me out. So again, I probably kind of asked for it. Um, we never got to the bottom of what really happened. No one seemed interested in getting to the truth, not like they would today, where there'd be a documentary about it, there'd be a TikTok.
SPEAKER_01There'd be video footage for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like all kinds of security cams. Probably kids now wear their own security cams on their heads.
SPEAKER_01You have to, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, go GoPros, body cams, yeah, head cams. And so so what I learned from that is this was an important thing, and this was replicated a couple different times in my school career, grade school career, was when something bad happens to you, grown-ups are strangely nice to you. I'm talking about grown-ups in the school, like teaching they're really they get their niceness comes out. I didn't understand then it was all about being petrified of being sued.
SPEAKER_01Well, sure, yes.
SPEAKER_00I thought they so these two women took me home.
SPEAKER_01Well, you can't do that anymore either. That's part of it.
SPEAKER_00They took me to no, they took me to my house, but nobody was at my house, and that was very unusual. I don't know why.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00They took me to my house, but somehow they had like an emergency key. And they got me in, and somehow, because we never had coke in our house. They had one of them had a coke. And they gave me a coke, and they were saying, Now you this coke will make your head feel better.
SPEAKER_01Ross, I think you were kidnapped by two teachers that had copied a you were not at your house. You were you had brain damage.
SPEAKER_00Now they wonder where my ADHD came from. I mean, people were constantly braining me.
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, speaking of uh a number of things that you brought up. So I was in kindergarten also, and I was in elementary school, like you are at that age, and we were walking down one of those covered walkways. Um, so there were school buildings, but in between the buildings, there were these walkways that had posts that held up the little roof on the covered walkway.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01And there was a young woman who was she may have been a first grader, so she was an older kid too, and she was calling me a donkey, which was of course of the highest insult level at at the four or five, six years old.
SPEAKER_00Did she mean donkey or burrow?
SPEAKER_01You know, I don't know. I assume she meant donkey.
SPEAKER_00This is basically the same, but you know what's not the same as a mule. So you don't want to be a mule because a mule is mixed with a horse and they're taller, and I think I find that they're ugly. But a donkey is kind of cute.
SPEAKER_01I feel like she may have been calling me a mule now that you say that.
SPEAKER_00See, now those are fighting words right there.
SPEAKER_01I think she called me a mule. Yeah, this was that, you know, you're that wow. The psychologically, I think I blocked out the fact that this this little girl called me a mule instead of a donkey. I think I sweetened it up a little bit by changing it to donkey.
SPEAKER_00We do that in our memories. We try to protect ourselves from the reality, but this was uh quite an assault on your on your physical appearance, I think.
SPEAKER_01Wow, I think so too. So I don't know if I had done something to her before or she just was struck by my gangliness and needed to share that with me. But I turned back to retaliate by calling her uh I'm gonna say mule now, um, which was the only comeback I could come up with. You came back with mule? Yeah, I just said the same exact thing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, back then you weren't really doing your improv homework.
SPEAKER_01No, definitely not. This may be what led me to be an improviser, honestly.
SPEAKER_00Is this uh she came back with mule? She goes at you with mule and you come back with mule.
SPEAKER_01You didn't really, you know, yes, and I didn't, I didn't up the ante at all. All right. I didn't I didn't build. Um, but she was behind me, and so I'm walking down this walkway turned towards her to give her this information. So at some point, you know, maybe my teacher calls me, or maybe I just realize it's time to you know, Amy, you could have come back with pig wagon. A pig wagon, knuckle dragger. There were lots and lots of options that would have been better than just repeating the same thing she was saying.
SPEAKER_00In case you find a wormhole and you get to relive this moment, you know, just wanted you to be prepared. Okay, so back to your story, please. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna write a note on my arm so I don't forget.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just like pigwagon.
SPEAKER_01Pigwagon on my arm. I'm getting a tattoo. That's a great idea. I've been thinking of getting a tattoo. Now I know which one. Um it's pigwagon right on my elbows.
SPEAKER_00It's the movie Memento, except it just says pig wagon. You wake up and it's oh pig wagon. Okay. Oh, I got it.
SPEAKER_01And now I know where to go with this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so I'm turning around calling her a pig wagon because it's the new reality now. And I turn back real quick because I'm in a line, like you are in elementary school, to catch back up with my class. And unfortunately, as I've been walking, I've drifted out of the center of the walkway and into the side of the walkway where that post is that's holding up the whole school roof. Yeah. The roof of the roof of the walkway.
SPEAKER_00Where's this going?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, I slammed into it pretty good with my face area. Um, and I immediately broke open my forehead, my nose, and my lip. Um and as you mentioned already, as we're well acquainted with in this particular episode, I was bleeding profusely. So uh yeah, my teacher grabbed me, and um, I just a really quick and important side note to me, probably exclusively. I did not get a lot of new to me clothes as a young person, but for some reason I had gotten, and I'm pretty sure it was a hand-me-down, but it was new to me. This um, so this was in the 1970s. I don't know why I said 19, as though it was in the 2070s. It was in the 1970s, and it was a like a poet shirt, you know, kind of a blousey shirt with um elastic bands on the sleeves and little strings that would tie up the neck. I don't know if you can picture all of this.
SPEAKER_00No, that's what uh Pliny the Younger used to wear.
SPEAKER_01Exactly what Pliny the Younger wore, basically daily. Um, and I had on some burgundy cac or burgundy corduroy pants and some stunning. Yeah, and some knee-high boots that were brown, right? I was feeling super whatever the equivalent of fresh is at the time or even now. I was feeling really fresh. Like I had a cool fit on.
SPEAKER_00You were slapping.
SPEAKER_01I was totally slapping. I probably even had drip. So I felt really great. It's right up to the moment where I started uh bleeding profusely onto my cool shirt. So uh somebody rushed me into a bathroom. Now, as I mentioned, my mom was a teacher. It just so happened at that time. My mom also taught at the school, and they brought her into the bathroom. My mom is not she's not the calmest person in a crisis or in when there's blood, frankly. So she came into the bathroom and she screamed because I was covered in blood, and they had me like hanging over the sink, like because I don't know if there was no nurses station or just this was the closest spot, or um, so they just shoved me full of cotton balls and whatnot to get the bleeding to stop. I did not go to the doctor, maybe because there wasn't one. Um, but I don't know. Um, I I know I got to go home early and I got to have ice on me for the rest of the day. And I can remember even like a week later, my my poet's shirt sitting in this vat of like baking soda water, maybe, or something to try to get that stain out, but it it never it never came out. And that might explain my ADD. So early brain injuries, self-inflicted brain injuries.
SPEAKER_00No doubt. Well, they do kind of add up as they're finding out with the football players, yeah, American football players with their CTE. So who knows? I mean, we might be on the spectrum there to some extent, having all those head knocks. But my question is, are we on the cusp of questioning the whole? This is a slippery slope, by the way. Okay. And it's my favorite logical fallacy. It really is. It's used a lot. Sure. You know, the slippery slope. Um, but it doesn't mean it's always wrong.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00That's sometimes sometimes you are on a slippery slope.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, stuff gets icy sometimes and then it's slippery.
SPEAKER_00So the cusp, the question I'm wondering is are we on the cusp of questioning the value of school in general? Yeah. If we start questioning homework, how big of a step is it to say, well, what about school itself? Is it doing anybody any good? I'm on that slippery slope for sure. Now you've had several kids.
SPEAKER_01I have a number of them.
SPEAKER_00And you know, we've talked before my whole theory about why don't we just put kids to work and forget about the whole school thing. Let's get kids working. You if you want a kid to learn something, put them out there, you know, you know, in the factory. I mean, I think kids need to learn to read an adjunct.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's fair.
SPEAKER_00You don't want to be clipped at the 7-Eleven when you're buying a Slurpee and a bag of sugar babies. I have to keep saying a bag of sugar babies because a sugar baby now is a thing. Like if you type in sugar babies, you don't go to candy, you go to a a whole different space.
SPEAKER_01What what's can you say what space you go to? Because I don't know how to do it.
SPEAKER_00I don't know a space where young young people are looking for older partners. Like I'm a sugar baby, I'm 25 years old, I'm hot, and I'm looking for someone like 65 with some bank.
SPEAKER_01And we're gonna date, or we're just gonna hang out for a while.
SPEAKER_00We'll see where it goes. We'll see where it goes.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00I used to look askance at homeschooling. I thought it was uh destination weird.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00I thought if you were homeschooled, it meant that you were some kind of religious wacko.
SPEAKER_01I don't that's that's no, that's not the case, right? You know that now.
SPEAKER_00No, it's not the case now. I'm talking about when it first started happening.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Like when it first started, you started hearing about kids getting homeschooled. My first reaction was, this is a weird situation, and these people are weird. Um, which I often find out after I look into something that I'm way off. And that's why it's always important to look into things that seem weird because you find out, oh, there's more to it. I'm not sure there was more to it back when it first started, but there's certainly more to it now. Homeschooling is legit now. Oh, sure, yeah. And the research, and this is the part that will blow the rest, whatever's uh uh left over of your mule brain. Very small that didn't go into the sink. Research is telling us that homeschooled children tend to do better on standardized tests, stick around longer in college, and do better once they're in college. They do better than public school kids, they do better than private school kids. Yeah, they do. How do you like them apples?
SPEAKER_01I totally believe it.
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you something else. I'll tell you something else.
SPEAKER_01What's that?
SPEAKER_00Even though it's called homeschooling, a lot of these kids are like taking instruction in community colleges, they go to libraries, they go to museums, they're on trips. They're they're they're you know, they're having experiences that help them mature more quickly, they become more open-minded. Um, the most common misconception is they lack social skills. I used that's what I used to think. Mm-hmm. Right. I thought they were just a bunch of pig wagon kids. Pig wagons. But um, but no, because with the internet, you know, they can meet people all over the world and do and interact with them. Now I still think that's a little weird if that's all the people you're seeing. But still they get in groups, right? They get in little homeschool groups. They get in groups and clubs and cults or whatever it is, you know. Sure, yeah. They're doing it and they're seeing people, you know, they're seeing people. They also get to have a range of academic topics that are way different than when you go to school and they just hit you up with all that boring junk and the the rote instruction and you know, the workbooks and all that crap. They these these kids can study things like finance or psychology in the fourth grade.
SPEAKER_01Well, sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You could be a head shrinker at age nine.
SPEAKER_01No, yeah, and you should be. Nine-year-olds are some of the best psychiatrists you could have.
SPEAKER_00You could help your parents because they're wigging out right and left.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so much wigging out.
SPEAKER_00Parents are so like parents are so freaking on a nutbender, they need a kid with a little psychology, help themselves survive that tough situation. So that's kind of cool, right? They get to take all kinds of classes, and you know, if if the parents, some parents are like super like into it and you know, do a lot of the instruction, but there's also like online courses and and special training guides that you know, even if you don't want to teach your kid or you don't know jack about anything like me, you can still um you know give them that kind of experience, which is cool. And uh, of course, students don't have to deal with clicks or bullying. Ever heard of clicks and bullying in school?
SPEAKER_01Have I ever? I've been called a mule at my elementary school.
SPEAKER_00That's emotional bullying. And uh anyone who has ever been in school dealt with clicks or bullying. Either you were in a click or you were kept out of a click, so you know what that was, or you were bullied, or you were a bully. Yeah, or both, because sometimes the a bigger bully comes along and bullies the bullies, yeah. And so you could you just keep your kid away from the that toxic element, and there's all kinds of other stuff that goes on at school. We all know about some of that stuff. You know, there's kids in the drugs and other weird stuff happening. As I think about it today, like if I had school-age kids today, I would seriously think about homeschooling, which is such a radical thing for me to say given where I started on homeschooling back in the day when I first started hearing about it. I was so against it. I thought it was so wrongheaded, but now I'm kind of like, you know what? This sounds kind of awesome. Mainly because of the ability to expose them to all this cool stuff. I've got a friend who like homeschooled both of his kids, and they would take all these trips different countries and around the world, and that was part of their education.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that sounds great.
SPEAKER_00Now these kids can't add.
SPEAKER_01No, but they don't need to because they'll they've been to Madrid, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00Right. Can they really not add? I bet they can add. No, they can they can add. I mean, you know, they have sort of herky jerky movements.
SPEAKER_01They dress weird, they can't they can't hold their head upright, but other than that, they wear pillowcases for some reason.
SPEAKER_00I don't know why. Uh yeah, I would definitely consider doing it. Uh, the only thing I would say about school, which I know is what I learned. This is the one thing I learned from grade school and high school, is I learned to cope with the world.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It you know, socially and emotionally, that's that's what's going on there. You are getting a crash course in what people are like and how to deal with them. Yeah. And you know, like the mule kids. Like, you know, some kids are mean, some kids are nice, some kids are needy, some kids, you know, will hurt your feelings, some kids you can count on. And what kind of kid are you? You know, who what kind of person are you in this in society, and how do you fit in? I don't know if homeschooling can simulate that. It's stressful sometimes, but I think it's really the most important thing that happens in school or even college for that matter. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. Often what you're learning is how to learn and learn with other people. But there's a lot of value, I think, in interacting with teachers who not just aren't your parents, but are just all different varieties. Bad teachers are actually, they're not gonna teach you the material, but they're gonna teach you a lot about how to interact with difficult people, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that is well said. This is a news flash. The world is filled with difficult people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if you're gonna be successful in however you want to define that, however, I mean, I don't care if you're riding a pig wagon, you're pulling a pig wagon, you're designing you are a pig wagon, right? Whatever your relationship is to the pig wagon, I don't care, you are gonna run into difficult people. And your ability to navigate a world filled with difficult people is a real skill set that does require exposure and practice because you don't get it the first time. The first time some kid calls you a mule, you end up with your head in a sink bleeding out.
SPEAKER_01That's right. But the next time you don't, you don't get your head in a sink.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe yeah. Maybe, maybe yeah, you graduate from the sink and you're in a tub or you know, you just it's it's incremental. Yeah, it's incremental. It's not all gonna happen at once for you. But I'm serious. I I I joke around, but I really I joke because I love. No, I really think I would homeschool my kids because they tend to be outside the box people anyway, uh, sideways thinkers, as I call it, and they would have, I think, flourished in an environment where they were allowed to let their brains run free instead of try to adapt to a very structured, rule-based uh curriculum. I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how wrong I was about homeschooling. And I think now if we're cutting out homework, we might also just forget about school. I think the social stuff is great, but I mean, is it worth it? So if you we could just just to simulate or to recreate the one part of school that works, which is the benefits of this social interaction where you learn about how to deal with difficult people, you could just get a bunch of rando kids and stick them in a big room for a couple hours every other day.
SPEAKER_01That should work.
SPEAKER_00It's sort of like a Mad Max situation. Just stick them in there. There's no supervision. It's just let's see who comes out.
SPEAKER_01And if anybody has a blanket, then all bets are off.
SPEAKER_00If I cut out the whole blanket thing, then no one's gonna know what that meant. But anyway, just suffice it to say, we talked about blanket parties and it was troubling. So uh, and so I had to edit it out. So um, but yeah, so then they learn in that two hours every other day. Maybe it's just once a week. It's four hours once a week. I feel like there's got to be enough time where you know you get exposed to everything.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Well, we don't have to settle on a single time. Maybe it could vary week to week depending on the weather and availability of other children.
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right, right. I I think it could be scientifically structured where you actually have a uh you could perfect the mix of the kind of kids that you stick into the new you.
SPEAKER_01I like it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so they're not it's not all bullies and then one nerd nerd person. That was that's just that would just be dumb. And then my idea from before that we discussed about putting kids to work doesn't sound so crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know what? I um I had a difficult time with some of your kids, kids who work, uh thesis, these thesis I, thesis. Um, but I'm I'm I'm back now that you've backed it up with a lack of education. Yes.
SPEAKER_00You've backed it up now that you've come strong to the hoop with no more schooling for kids. I guess all that's left is from the hit the factory, drop a solid eight and come home and hit the rack and shut up. Wow.
SPEAKER_01So many your phrases are great. A solid eight, hit the rack. You sounded like you were in a 1930s movie there for a minute.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, see, what are you trying to chisel me or what?
SPEAKER_01Ah, this bronze got games, I tell you.
SPEAKER_00Well, Amy, this has been a lot of fun. Uh, and thanks for talking about homework with me. Um we we keep exploring, you know, what we can do better for our kids. I love that. And uh you know, I think that's why people listen to this podcast is to get practical advice that they can use at home. And that's that's what you're that's where you and I come in. Practical advice. Thanks everyone for joining us for this episode. If you like what we're doing, please share the show. Tell someone about us. Uh, word of mouth is the best advertising for us. We're independent, we're small, we're the little guys, and both of us are working on uh damaged brains as indicated if you listen to the earlier parts of this show. Uh so any way that you can help us or if you'd like to reach out to us and give us some words of encouragement. Doing a podcast is a lonely thing because you have no audience reacting. You don't know if people like it or not. You can see the downloads, but like, you know, are they really listening or is it just playing in the background while they are building their pig wagon? We don't know. So reach out to us. We're also on Patreon, you can support us that way. Uh, again, totally independent. We don't have a sponsor, you may have noticed no ads. So any help you can give us is appreciated, and we do appreciate your listening. And we hope you will tune in to another episode because whether you are working hard on homework for Flying the Younger or just someone bleeding out into a sink, it's important to remember that we all smell like humans. Goodbye, everybody.