School from Scratch

ScOo FrM

ScAtH Barry Lewis

If you believe that we are mostly a blank slate at birth, then you must believe we have the ability to create any society we choose through education

www.schoolfromscratch.com

Preface My earliest recollection of school contemplation came during college. Like many young people, I was looking forward to this grand, educational experience that would engage my mind in ways I could only imagine.

Unfortunately, I quickly learned that college would simply be an extension of my previous dull schooling experience but at a higher price tag. I was genuinely disillusioned.

Consequently, my earliest writings were only about college. Shortly, I found that picking apart flaws in college was relatively easy and became bored with it over time. Especially, since very few seemed to care.

Anytime I brought up school, I could see eyes glaze over.

I stopped contemplating school for a period of time until my kids began to attend and I was reminded of the anxiety associated with the institution. Even I felt it as a parent. School has a genuinely unfriendly and militant vibe to it. You always feel like stepping out of line could be a serious problem. School has absolutely no problem sending out a threatening letter or email to get you back in line.

My question quickly became “does school have to be like this?�

Once I asked the question the answer became abundantly clear. Personal reponsibility was the solution to every question raised.

If you can take care of yourself no one can legimately give you grief and you are also an asset to society.

What more could we ask of someone?

Once I knew what the goal was (personal responsibility), I just had to work backwards and everything would fall into line. Everything had to move the student towards personal responsibility, autonomy, independence and the final goal of personal freedom.

The idea is for us as individuals to relieve pressure on society by being capable, independent and competent, by doing more than our share, thus creating a situation where as many people thrive as possible. All the while, we need to celebrate the goodness in each other instead of fearing one another. n

Barry Lewis

School is the only realistic option to effect sweeping social change because we are mandated by the government to participate for at least 10,000 hours which means virtually any agenda put forth will succeed. The fact that we are forced to participate for such a long period of time, with complete attention, should assure that we will learn whatever the government mandates Intro We hold a false belief that we were born innately to shirk responsibility and run from consequence. We’ve been convinced that because we are so inept, immoral and shiftless we need large amounts of outside direction and guidance to help us mature from incapable children to fine, capable adults. We’ve blindly accepted that we have to follow a singular dogmatic, highly directed path to be successful at life.

The problem with this, never examined, concept is that it can never lead us to being the best we can be. It can never lead to unabashed happiness. The reason being it’s built on a principle of thinking the worst in us.

It’s core foundation is we will do despicable, unproductive behaviors if we are not supervised in a highly structured, authoritarian environment.

It’s weird how no one can fathom the idea that quite possibly the drudgery element of life isn’t a given. No one will entertain the notion that we could prosper and become successful, productive adults without the need to make everyday as dull and difficult as possible under the guise of backbone development.

Personal responsibility is the answer. It’s a concept we talk a lot about but don’t teach in school. Parents don’t have the fortitude to stay on message because they have no support from the community.

The unspoken rule in life is you’re good to go if you don’t require others to handle your responsibilities. Unfortunately, a large segment of the population relies on others to carry their existence. This sad truth is what empowers people to believe in the drudgery method which they erroneously believe will lead to responsible adults. n

1

www.schoolfromscratch.com

You can’t expect someone to be literate without teaching them to read. You can’t expect someone to be moral without teaching them about morality. Likewise, you can’t expect someone to display personal responsibility without showing them how to go about it and without detailing how important it is.

If people made good on their word, showed up on time, kept themselves healthy and were taught various methods of making money, we could avoid the need to live in a mundane, overbearing, punitive society.

All this could be done relatively easily through school if it was a stated priority. Then, we could fulfill the promise of what life has to offer instead of trying to fend off the world because we do not have the requisite skills to handle it.

Life The question we need to ponder is how much innate instinct do we have at birth. Would we think about walking, talking, eating or are these learned ideas? Would we be naturally materialistic, egotistical, helpful, kind, considerate or are these learned traits? If you believe that we are mostly a blank slate at birth, then you must believe we have the ability to create any society we choose through education. This is a powerful concept because it implies that we have much more control over the outcome of our society than most believe.

In our current society, a successful outcome would be material wealth, appealing physical looks, power, an array of egotistical knowledge, the ability to gain control of others through manipulation, the appearance of religious morality and a host of other traits that don’t look so great on paper. It is essentially every man for himself.

Our current system leads us down this path and we never question it.

We go along with the status quo because we somehow believe it’s working and we don’t have enough creativity to think of something else.

One example of how we could vastly improve the system is by making health a stated goal in school. We all know that if you live a healthier n

2

Barry Lewis

lifestyle you will become healthier. This one simple concept could solve our healthcare problem while making people happier as well. Yet, very few believe that such a simple and common sense solution could ever be implemented. It seems too easy.

Commonality If we were to poll the entire world and ask them if they thought Christianity was the only true religion and the others were just cheap imitations, what would the percentage of people who agree with that be?

If we asked everyone about the need for universal healthcare, how much consensus would we get? If we polled about the importance of learning biology, geometry, social studies and Latin what would that look like?

None of these topics are anywhere close to being a slam dunk in the court of public opinion.

Conversely, if people were asked about the need to be healthy, to have skills to make money to support themselves, to have significant friendships there probably wouldn’t be much dispute about the importance of these subjects. Additionally, topics such as compassion, empathy, selflessness and personal responsibility would hardly generate much robust opposition because they are widely accepted as good, necessary qualities.

Wouldn’t it be smart to first teach the subjects most of us agree are necessary to create good, functioning human beings? n

The Great, Untapped Resource If you were magically transformed into the Secretary of Education and were handed a huge wad of cash, a sizable workforce and infrastructure with the only instructions being help the masses and don’t make it cost any more, what would you do?

You’ve got thousands of paid employees ready and willing to espouse your message.

Your goal is for society to erect statues of you because you so over n

3

www.schoolfromscratch.com

delivered you gave them what they actually needed instead of what they thought they wanted.

What would you do with this enormous resource and responsibility?

You can do anything. Each child will have no less than 10,000 hours of potential training which they will have no choice but to follow. You can have them learn about anything for any amount of time.

What would you do?

The Beginning What society owes each and every person is a chance. A legitimate chance. We need to be able say to anyone “if you fail, it isn’t because you didn’t have an outstanding opportunity. We really went to great lengths to ensure your success regardless of your background, race, social standing etc.”

Unfortunately, this is far from the case in our current society. The truth is only the super motivated and affluent have a decent shot in our current system because the motivated can rise above the inanity and the rich can buy their way out.

This leaves the other 95% struggling to try and overcome the odds.

We need a system that allows each individual a legitimate shot at a decent life. The playing field doesn’t have to be equal, but it has to present a legitimate opportunity for everyone regardless of background, race and social standing.

Any reasonable person only asks for a legitimate shot.

The conspiracy theorists believe this lack of opportunity is a designed plan to keep control of the masses and leave power in the hands of a privileged few. The real truth probably has more to do with our reluctance to change long established institutions.

School is one of these institutions.

School is viewed similarly to a church. In both institutions, people have a genuine reluctance to analyze the heart of it and ask the hard questions about its relevance and goals. For most of us, we’ve never n

4

Barry Lewis

even considered the idea of making wholesale changes to established institutions like school and church. For the rest, it is probably fear of the answers and the cognitive dissonance it would cause having real, honest answers to questions we never really wanted to ask.

Consequently, things seldom change.

This might be a question worth pondering “how do I feel about an institution where the majority of the participants loathe it. Especially, when it is going to consume thousands and thousands of hours of their life? Does this make me uneasy in any way?”

Another question, “why is it that people really like to learn new things, almost a human need, but despise school?”

The last, and most important, one “Is it possible that school could be the panacea, the game changer, that completely transforms our society?”

If you think about it, most of our major problems could be resolved through school.

Healthcare. We currently reduce our child’s school activity as they get older. We teach them next to nothing about health. We don’t do anything to ensure they have, or know much about, proper nutrition. Most importantly, kids aren’t moving around enough. They need to move. It promotes health in two ways. It improves their physical health as well as their emotional health. Physical activity is this crucial to our fundamental well being.

We’re rationalizing that something could be more important than our child’s health. We’re sacrificing our kid’s health in favor of biology and geometry. Let me repeat this, we’re sacrificing our child’s health in favor of subjects that few of us are totally convinced are that important.

Wouldn’t it make sense that health trumps every other topic. Ironically, it wouldn’t be hard to keep kids healthy because moving around is what they want to do in the first place. They want to move around and be educated about a healthy lifestyle. This information is not only critical, but interesting. Most of us are very interested in health information.

Chances are healthy kids lead to healthy adults and everyone gener-

5

www.schoolfromscratch.com

ally getting healthier is the only real solution to our healthcare situation.

Is trigonometry this important to you?

Money. We all need it. Wouldn’t be hard to teach if we started early. Our kids should assimilate into the business community at an early age (12-13) and prepare for the idea of taking care of themselves.

Kids need to get into the good habit of personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is the center piece of any thriving society and it is, unquestionably, something that can be honed.

Once they have immersed themselves into the world of business, with supplementation from school, they’ll be on equal financial footing with anyone no matter their financial status or background. This is the real game changer. Real economic opportunity is at the heart of most of societal problems and is the engine of real societal change.

Making money is pretty easy if you are focused and properly trained because business is actually fairly simple and more about backbone than intelligence.

Once people are confident about making money, they have little desire for crime, racial issues get minimized and welfare that government needs to provide greatly reduced. This is what should make people in lower economic communities energized. It takes surprisingly minimal training to afford almost anyone a decent chance at having a bright economic future. It’s more about laser focus than a school’s credentials.

Entrepreneurs We need at least four times as many entrepreneurs as we currently have. This would solve many issues. First, most people dream of being an entrepreneur. Second, entrepreneurs create new industries which tend to raise wages. Third, entrepreneurs create, much needed, competition.

Lastly, you want people to have a feeling like they can take care of themselves in all circumstances and having entrepreneurial skills is the best way to foster this confidence.

Current school is a model of dependence so entrepreneurial training is not encouraged or a priority. Independence and self reliance have to be n

6

Barry Lewis

constantly discussed and honed so kids can have a feeling of autonomy.

No one wants to be reliant on someone else. The amount of dependence in our society is becoming like a toxic cancer.

The way things are currently setup you have to have at least an undergraduate college degree to have any chance at surviving comfortably. If you are three credits short, you might as well not have gone at all.

Most importantly, any education doesn’t count pre-degree in the business world. This means non-college graduates are completely on the outside looking in and will have an incredibly difficult challenge trying to make ends meet financially. This brief period of four years determines a lot about your future.

This can be completely changed by teaching people to be entrepreneurial in their thinking and making sure they are confident and practiced in business. Our goal should be to forego the need for college by taking the financial incentive away by training our children during their high school years by having an active, integrated relationship with businesses.

Businesses would welcome this free labor with open arms and our children could get an idea of how business life really is.

Social Situation. Our social life is an area that is greatly overlooked in our society because we feel guilty about it. We tend to feel guilt about having a robust social life because it somehow implies we’re lazy. Yet, we all crave it in a major way.

Unfortunately, very few are skilled in social situations because we were never taught the skills. Consequently, the mixture of a stigmatized feeling about being overly social combined with a lack of proper social skills leaves many of us isolated and depressed.

Depression is rampant in our society. All the offshoots of it cost us billions and make the world generally unhappy.

Most people believe depression is more circumstantial than genetic.

This means the problems can be fixed.

People’s social life tends to mimic their self worth. Issues that influence self worth are health, money and a feeling of inadequacy.

7

www.schoolfromscratch.com

School needs to prioritize teaching kids how to properly interact, how to be helpful and have empathy, compassion and humility. This sounds like a tall task, but really isn’t if it is ingrained at an early age and is a stated goal.

Practical vs Ego Education Education falls into two categories. They are practical and ego education. School teaches mostly ego education. This is information that is nice to know, but has very little practical value. Which planet is closest to the sun is nice to know, but has limited use here on earth.

Practically, people need their health, money and social situations to be in order. Beyond this, other information is not pressing or even necessary. Great scholars will pull their hair out reading this, but it’s true. n

Well Rounded People School currently tries to make kids “well rounded” by filling them full of ego information. This flawed approach is devastating our society.

First, kids aren’t interested in non-relevant information. This is probably the biggest mistake school makes. If an adult doesn’t want to be force fed useless information, why would a child? They tune it out just like we do.

School should make it a mission to replace all theoretical work with real life work. For example, making a Youtube video about a real subject that the students really care about is much more beneficial and engaging than dissecting a frog or learning the quadratic formula.

And, having a real deadline where they can see the real life effects of missing the deadline is much more valuable than a meaningless deadline on a meaningless homework assignment. Young and old want to believe anything they are working on has a purpose. This is the main reason kids are so bored at school. They want to feel like they are working on something that actually makes a difference.

Second, think of the most well rounded person you know. It is probably hard to come up with one. If you do, chances are descriptives such n

8

Barry Lewis

egotist, full of themselves, self involved and boring probably fill your head. People that fancy themselves as educationally well rounded are usually the last people you want to be around because they tend to be egotistical and elitist.

We need more people who are “salt of the earth,” good willed and generally kind, compassionate and empathetic. The education we currently endorse leads to the egotist not the compassionate.

People can get well rounded on their own time and only if they genuinely want to. Most people have a natural thirst for information so they will seek it on their own. Information that is force fed to us doesn’t connect and creates anxiety because it is so meaningless. This is at the heart of why kids dislike school so much. The information presented seems so worthless that it drives them crazy. ______________________________________________________

It’s 3am and your car broke down 30 miles from town. Organize in your mind the people who you would call and in which order. The people probably break down into three categories.

1) Don’t need any details, I’ll be there 2) Let me know the situation and I’ll decide if I’m going to help 3) I’ll pretend like I never saw the call.

______________________________________________________

The Goal It’s all about the goal. If you ask yourself what you want from this incredible resource, you might be surprised with the answer. There is no law that says we have to use this resource in any particular way. What would really motivate us to change is the realization of how impactful school is on our lives. Most of us mistakenly believe it only affects us n

9

www.schoolfromscratch.com

while we’re doing it. It affects us our entire life and dictates much of our life. A few simple changes could transform our society while giving everyone a decent shot. _______________________________________________________

We need to convene a group of educational experts to come up with a school format that meets these criteria: 1. It absolutely has to be fun.

2. Mastery of health, money and social needs has to be mandatory.

3. Compassion, empathy and selflessness along with personal responsibility have to be themes.

_______________________________________________________ Curriculum The important centerpiece of this curriculum is that every exercise has meaning and consequence. For example, if the school needs computers the students are given guidance on how to obtain them. The class project is to discuss and implement a strategy to successfully get computers. This will involve figuring out who to contact, what to say and showing perseverance until the mission is accomplished.

The primary goal is to show the students that they are very capable of taking care of themselves. The upside to doing this at this age is they can fail without major consequence. n

Kindergarten through Second Grade The primary focus should be on English and Math while teaching basic skills like how to use a ruler. Math should be focused on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and percentages. More time should be spent on English than math focusing on reading, grammar and writing. n

10

Barry Lewis

First Day Much of the first day will be devoted to discussing the importance of personal responsibility. Each student has to fully understand that their ultimate goal is to be able to take care of themselves.

Health and Fitness Students will spend 2-3 hours a day engaged in physical activity.

Each student will have individual fitness goals that will be obtained through enjoyable activity such as sports and supplemented by learning extensively about proper diet.

Economic Impact of this Curriculum Healthcare If we decide to put an emphasis on creating healthier kids, it will happen. The reason is because we have a captive audience who must comply with the rules and one of the rules would be to have fitness goals.

Fitness goals are very easy to meet when a person does the work. Consequently, our society would get significantly healthier which would lead to billions of dollars saved on healthcare that we normally provide to individuals who don’t take care of themselves.

Personal Responsibility The minimum standard we ask of each other is to be able to not be reliant financially on somebody else. If our system puts a premium on self reliance by having students interface with the business community from a young age along with a constant message that you must take care of yourself, our welfare needs would be significantly reduced. The potential savings on government welfare programs could be substantial.

Entrepreneurialism The new curriculum would encourage entrepreneurialism. This would mean students would no longer wait around for jobs to open up

11

www.schoolfromscratch.com

because they will have been trained to create their own. Unemployment would drastically be reduced because no one would fear not being able to make money. This also means larger companies would have to pay better wages because there would be a shortage of available labor.

THE DREAM We are involved in two major institutions outside of the home. They are work and school. Most work models are a direct reflection of what we do in school. Work is usually set up as drudgery under the belief this is the best way to get production from the workers. With the exception of places like Google and Apple, most work environments are set up with very little creative thought because people lazily follow what is existing.

What this means for the average worker is their enjoyment is limited to the weekends which means two days out of seven they actually get some peace.

School can change all this. We just have to believe that people can handle responsibility without dogmatic exercise. And, we also have to believe that personal responsibility can be honed and strengthened and people can actually improve with the right training. _______________________________________________________

Rate your health, money and social situation on a scale from 1-10 where ten is everything is great. Any one of these areas that you rate less than a six is a major problem for you. Take a moment to really digest the truth of this. These areas of your life are monumental and are the building blocks of your existence.

Now, do the same with biology, geometry and social studies.

Any one of these subjects could get any rating and have virtually no impact on your life. Again, take a moment to really digest this. ___________________________________________________

12

Barry Lewis

Build Your House John and Edsel were friends who decided it was time to build their houses. They found adjacent lots where they would each build the house of their dreams. In this community, it was common for people to build a house as a way to transform from children to adults. Besides having symbolic meaning, there were practical considerations as well. A properly built house, that was approved by the building inspector, virtually insured health, money and a robust social life.

The first step in building the house was picking a building instructor to guide them through the process. Although the building instructor would not be actually doing any of the work, their guidance was critical to proper completion and subsequent approval by the building inspector.

In this community, the home owner was required to oversee all elements of the project and the building instructor could only lend guidance.

John, by all accounts, was considered very pragmatic yet not deterred by social norms. He chose Jim, a virtually unknown building instructor, who had a reputation for building with a single mindedness that was unsettling to many people in the community. Many felt that his style did not give the home owner enough education to take care of his house in the future. His philosophy was to get the house built properly in the shortest amount of time so the home owner could seek additional knowledge on his own without the pressure of a half completed house on his mind. As Jim put it “once the house is built, it’s pretty much downhill from there. You will have the time to pursue the additional knowledge that enhances the look and feel of the house�

Edsel chose Pocahontas as his instructor. Pocahontas had a stellar reputation in the community as being an excellent teacher who was very thorough. One of the main differences between Jim and Pocahontas was it was understood that Pocahontas would not guide the home owner through the entire building process. After she was done with her initial teachings, Edsel would require a secondary building instructor to complete the process. Edsel was alright with this because it was believed in

13

www.schoolfromscratch.com

the community that doing it this way would lead to better overall results.

It was more the accepted method of house building.

Before John and Edsel were to embark upon the building process, they were to take some classroom instruction led by their building instructor that would help them with this job. Jim’s style was to stick primarily with the information necessary to complete this task. Whereas Pocahontas wanted Edsel to know about a variety of things including the history of drywall, houses people built in other parts of the country as well as information pertinent to this task. Her philosophy was that people needed this additional information to be well rounded which, in turn, would serve to make their life richer. They finally completed their coursework and returned to the lots where the houses were to be built.

Jim was waiting for John so they could begin construction. Edsel found a note on his lot telling him that Rainbow would be his secondary building instructor and to report to the class room in one month.

John had some concerns, which he kept to himself, regarding jumping into the project seemingly unprepared. He saw that most people took Edsel’s route and that caused him some inner turmoil. Nonetheless, John and Jim dove headlong into the project. Everything seemed to be moving along well and when John would run into a problem, Jim would show him how to resolve it quickly without incident. Jim knew a lot about the building process and also had a lot of connections in the industry. He never hesitated when he had knowledge or resources that he could lend to the project.

John started to panic. He thought that this must be why Edsel was better off with the extra coursework. In the real world, no one would be there to lend this kind of guidance.

John asked “Why are you making this so easy for me? Wouldn’t I be better off figuring this out for myself?”

Jim said “Life is hard enough. But if you’d like, I can make things harder for you. I consider this part of the teaching process and also why

14

Barry Lewis

I am being paid. If you want a lesson it could be surround yourself with people who are willing to help you reach your goals not those who are constantly trying to throw up road blocks. Also, appreciate when people take care of you.”

John was perplexed by this way of thinking because it was not what he was used to. In his community, it was the norm for people not to help others to the degree where it made their life easy. The people considered suffering a valuable part of the growing experience. “If things are gotten easily, appreciation is nearly impossible.”

Meanwhile Edsel was doing all sorts of coursework. He learned about plumbing, electrical, drywall as well as the history of building and ancient Indian adobes. He wondered how he would apply his knowledge of Indian adobes, but diligently did his coursework without question.

He was concerned that his coursework provided very little hands on experience with power tools and dealing with contractors, but trusted the system.

Finally, Edsel was done with his coursework and returned to his lot of land. He noticed that John had completed his house and went to talk with him.

“How did it go?” asked Edsel.

“It seemed to work out. The house is very nice and, more importantly, the building inspector approved it.” John said. “How was your experience?”

“As you can see, I haven’t even started on the house, but I have lots of knowledge that will please the building inspector.” Edsel said. “I’m a little concerned about the $200,000 bill that my secondary building instructor gave me, but they have very nice low interest programs to pay that back.”

Again, John began to feel anxiety. It seemed like he avoided a lot of unnecessary time and expense by choosing Jim’s program, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was missing something. So, he asked Edsel.

“Are you glad you did it this way?”

15

www.schoolfromscratch.com

“Obviously, I would like the house to be completed. But, I think once it is, I will have more education to live a richer, fuller life.”

John asked “Do you think your education regarding Indian adobes will ever be of any use to you?”

“What I learned from both of my instructors is that gearing my education towards only building the house will lead to a shallow and dull life.” Edsel replied. “This is the way most people do it.”

“My instructor told me,” John said. “that it is hard to think about anything else until the house is built properly and approved by the building inspector. He gave me countless examples of people we mutually knew who could think of nothing else than getting their house built and approved by the building inspector. He went on to point out until this was completely taken care of these people were socially useless because they were consumed with this project. He also went on to say that much of the information disseminated by the secondary building instructor was never brought up again in the home owner’s life. He said that his focus to build the house properly, in the shortest amount of time seemed the most logical to him. He, then, went on to praise Pocahontas and Rainbow as people with a noble commitment to their students.”

“Are you sure Jim knows what he’s doing?” asked Edsel.

“I know that my house is built, approved by the building inspector and that I have no debt from it. That’s about all I know. Jim’s ideas, while seemingly crazy to others, make sense to me.”

Edsel completed his house two years later and was very pleased with the results. John’s paranoia that he was going about it the wrong way gradually subsided over time and eventually he was glad that he did not take on the extra time or debt.

John and Edsel now get together with a variety of friends. The one’s that have not completed their house are still completely consumed with it to the point where they can barely think or talk about anything else.

Those who have completed their house prefer to talk about kids, politics and sex.

16

Barry Lewis

CONTACT My ultimate goal is to get in front of a camera with some of the higher ups in the education industry to compare and contrast my ideas against the current system. By doing this, I feel my ideas will become significantly clearer because I can discuss, in a longer format, the nuances of my plan.

If you are interested in seeing this or know someone who can help facilitate this, email me at: comments@schoolfromscratch.com

www.schoolfromscratch.com