Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.70 - Inside Great Hearts: Dr. Amber Dyer Shares the Secret to Raising Standout Kids | Great Hearts Academy | Virtue Formation | Faith-Based Education

Transcript

Ep.70 - Inside Great Hearts: Dr. Amber Dyer Shares the Secret to Raising Standout Kids | Great Hearts Academy | Virtue Formation | Faith-Based Education · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

0:00
When you meet a great hearts graduate, we're saying yes to
0:04
graduating the kinds of young adults who are going to look you
0:07
in the eye and look into your soul and see your heart and see
0:12
you. And we're saying yes to the
0:14
ability for our students to read thousands and thousands and
0:18
thousands of pages of writing. Their reading list is equivalent
0:24
to what I did in my PhD program at the University of Dallas.
0:29
And a little bit more than that. Here today with the executive
0:35
headmaster of Great Hearts in Irving, Doctor Amber Dyer.
0:39
Thanks for joining, Doctor Amber.
0:40
Well. Thank you for having me.
0:42
It's a joy to be with you today. Want to give a brief intro about
0:47
your school which is quite impressive?
0:49
The largest classical upper school in America.
0:52
Almost 1000 students it sounds like.
0:54
So it's a charter school, so it's tuition free.
0:57
Families speak 59 different languages at your school and yet
1:01
you lead the National Classical Academy education movement as a
1:05
flagship Academy. So, for example, your most
1:09
recent class, 10% National Merit and College Board honors, 100%
1:13
college acceptance, highest SAT averages of all great hearts
1:17
because this charter network has has many schools, but I love
1:20
this. Most importantly, our highest
1:23
aim is to graduate young people whose lives have been radically
1:26
transformed by the truth, goodness and beauty contained in
1:30
the Western classical tradition. That's beautiful.
1:34
How do you how do you accomplish all that?
1:36
That's pretty impressive. I accomplish none of it.
1:40
I hire really good people and we in partner with some of the most
1:44
amazing families in the world and we're supported by our
1:48
wonderful national network of of colleagues and leaders in in
1:53
this beautiful work. And so I give all credit to to
1:57
the many fine people who have joined us in in this endeavor.
2:03
But it just a little, a little story about great hearts.
2:06
We, we do have several schools nationally, over 50 schools
2:10
nationally and they're all excellent.
2:12
You know, you can, you can walk into a great Hearts Academy in
2:15
Phoenix or you can walk into our academies in San Antonio or
2:20
Arlington or Fort Worth and you're going to see very
2:24
comparable work to what we have at Great Hearts serving Upper
2:27
school going on in any one of those schools.
2:29
And so, so our, but, but as, as you've noted already on on in my
2:36
introduction, although great hearts academies are college
2:40
prep schools. And although we do impressive
2:43
things with our graduates with their college ambitions and
2:46
their SAT scores and, and all of the Academy academies are
2:51
achieving those, those deviations far above our, our
2:54
public school and in many cases many of our private school
2:57
counterparts. Although that is the case, our
3:00
highest vision for the young people at our academies is that
3:04
they would have hearts that are transformed by the truth and
3:08
beauty of the Western classical tradition.
3:12
And thus we are not called just great brains, but we're called
3:16
great hearts. So we do that in a variety of
3:19
ways. First of all, we, as I already
3:22
noted, we hire really, really good people, teachers, faculty,
3:27
administrators who are aligned with our mission and with our
3:32
vision, who believe in the transformative power of a
3:37
liberal education, who see that education is something that's
3:42
far more than something that has just a merely utilitarian
3:46
endeavor. You know, in other words, get
3:49
them those, those math scores so they can get a job, so they can
3:53
make money, so they can buy things.
3:56
So faculty who would be aligned with our vision that say, let's
4:00
teach numbers and Calculus 2 so that we can explore the wonder
4:05
of the world and the the truth of the universe that that has
4:12
come to us through the tradition.
4:14
And you know, they'll get the SAT scores too.
4:17
But faculty were aligned with that, with that soul formation
4:21
vision that that we have as as an organization.
4:25
And then also an incredible classical liberal arts
4:30
curriculum. So great hearts curriculum is
4:32
like no other. I can speak as both a parent and
4:37
also as one of the great hearts school leaders about that
4:40
because I had the great joy of getting to to to lead my own
4:46
children and and love my own children through all the way
4:50
from kindergarten. Now my oldest is, is 1/10 grader
4:54
and see the way that we that we use the best curriculum.
5:00
They're the best that's been thought, written, said and lived
5:04
throughout the last 3000 years, starting in kindergarten where
5:09
students are, they're learning Latin, they're memorizing
5:12
beautiful poems the length of a Russian novel.
5:15
They're they're, they're being read to beautiful stories that
5:21
ennoble them and, and and give it just just speak to our human
5:27
dignity and the dignity that we believe is in every single child
5:30
who's who's in our who's in our Academy.
5:34
They starting with kindergarten, the moving all the way through
5:37
the high school years with that gorgeous curriculum.
5:40
That's, that's the second, you know, that's the second part of
5:43
it, I think. But but then the third part of
5:46
it is that we do we, we go with the grain in terms of how
5:52
children learn. And so in the, in the, in the
5:56
lower grades and grammar school grades, we are, we are still
6:01
leaning into a, a highly Socratic model of education, but
6:06
it's not one that would say that all views or all ideas are
6:11
somehow equally valid. We actually do believe that
6:15
truth and goodness and beauty can be found and that they can
6:20
be found within the tradition and within our our conversation
6:23
within our community. So by the time a scholar
6:26
graduates from Great Hearts, he or she just in high school will
6:30
encounter over 1000 hours of Socratic Humane letters
6:34
conversations guided, guided by a teacher who does not think
6:39
that truth is relative, but who believes that truth can be found
6:43
within this tradition and who guides that conversation with
6:47
our with our young people. Our, our scholars are reading
6:52
almost the complete works of CS Lewis and Jr.
6:55
Tolkien when they're in middle school and seven different
6:58
Shakespeare plays throughout their time here at Great Hearts,
7:01
they'll perform in a couple of those Shakespeare plays as well.
7:04
They'll learn Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, they'll read
7:08
a couple of different novels of, of Dostoevsky.
7:12
They'll read the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, they'll
7:16
they'll encounter the Communist Manifesto and they'll not be
7:20
told what to what to think about these things, but they will come
7:24
to in conversation with their colleagues.
7:27
They'll come to say some things that they might that that we
7:30
could agree upon are true as we, as we look at this great
7:34
tradition together. And so it's not just the
7:38
curriculum, but it's also the pedagogy that allows us to
7:43
really lean into the formation of, of the human person for for
7:49
each great heart student that is, is going to look a little
7:53
bit different. Because as I say to our
7:55
students, often, we, we all have a small S story and a big S
8:01
story. We have the story that we live
8:04
the small S story. That's our individual human
8:08
journey. But then we also have this
8:11
larger big S human story, the story into which we live.
8:15
So the story we live and the and the story we live into and you
8:20
know, in here here at our here at our Academy and Irving, as
8:24
with other great hearts academies nationally, we are
8:28
we're we're acutely aware of those two different stories.
8:32
And that story we live into is is has is a, is a story that
8:37
needs to be retold that that wonderful story of, of the
8:40
Western tradition. Amazing, what a privilege for
8:43
your students and if they can all speak as articulately and
8:46
persuasively as you can, then your job will be successful.
8:49
Oh, they far exceed me. They far exceed me.
8:55
So there's no entrance requirement?
8:57
I was kind of surprised to to hear that.
8:58
So why isn't every public school like Great Hearts then?
9:03
Well, that's a great question. We we want to know the answer to
9:08
that too. Good doctor, but what we we are
9:12
seeing is that 25 years or so ago when great hearts first took
9:18
this beautiful private school curriculum and model and are are
9:25
very brave and wonderful founders.
9:28
Doctor J I'm sorry, Doctor Dan Scoggin, Mr. J Heiler when they
9:32
put this before the Arizona Charter Board and, and, and
9:37
we're able to, you know, show the, the public school system,
9:41
the public charter school system in Arizona.
9:45
What a fine educational model it is that that up until this time
9:50
had really only been accessible for families who would be able
9:54
to pay tuition dollars. My understanding is there were
9:57
only about 300 children nationally who had access to
10:03
this model of education, this, this classical education and,
10:10
and it, it, we've now grown to the, the most recent number I've
10:14
seen is over 600,000 young people who are attending
10:20
classical private schools and charter schools.
10:24
So that the public classical sector has really, really grown
10:29
since that time, since great hearts sort of launched this,
10:35
this classical revival within our public education system.
10:39
And what we're finding, I'm finding at least interesting
10:43
here in the Dallas Fort Worth area is that as our, as our
10:47
population, even with a lot of people moving to Dallas for jobs
10:53
and for economic reasons, it's the, the politicians tell us
10:58
it's a great place for business. And they're the, the state
11:01
population has really increased significantly.
11:04
We saw a little bit of a birth rate decline in the US We called
11:08
the birth Cliff in 2008 and 2009 where there's just fewer kids,
11:13
fewer people having babies. We've never quite recovered from
11:16
that from the financial crisis of O8O9.
11:20
So it's never the birth rate has never to for from the research
11:24
I've done, it's never really stabilized.
11:26
And so that has hit us in Texas as well, I think because several
11:33
of the public schools within our area have been closing their
11:38
doors because of lack of enrollment.
11:41
So it's either because there are maybe fewer kids or because
11:46
families are opting for schools like Great Hearts.
11:51
I can tell you that we still have a waiting list or for
11:55
spaces at our Academy. So to your question of why are
11:58
not all public schools doing this, well, I could say that,
12:03
you know, my answer to that would be, well, I hope, I hope
12:06
eventually that they will take notice because parents are
12:10
taking notice. Parents became, I think, acutely
12:15
aware of what their kids were learning during the pandemic.
12:19
They saw, they heard, you know, they, they, they got to sit over
12:23
the shoulder of their children as their children were on Zoom
12:26
doing remote learning and so forth.
12:28
And we are you, we are we're seeing in the national data that
12:33
there has been an increasing discontent with public education
12:40
nationally. And then I don't want to
12:42
disparage what my hard, my hard working friends who are we're
12:50
working at non classical public schools are doing because those
12:54
teachers and those administrators are heroes.
12:57
They are, they're, they're doing really hard human work at those,
13:03
at those other public schools. With that still being said,
13:08
there's this incredible model for liberal learning that we
13:13
have found at great hearts over the past, you know, over 20
13:16
years, that is bringing up the not only the intellectual
13:24
formation of young people of all different levels, but it is also
13:31
shaping their hearts. And, and ultimately, our goal is
13:35
that they would walk out of our academies fully alive, having
13:41
their hearts formed in the way of virtue.
13:44
And that this education would allow them to encounter their
13:49
adulthood having fully formed souls as they as they endeavor
13:55
to to start their careers, to go into college to to form families
14:01
and not just be virtuous citizens, but truly to have
14:06
happy lives that are formed by virtue.
14:10
I recently read George Washington's Farewell Address,
14:13
which highly recommend. Maybe I'll read it, and one
14:16
thing I was kind of surprised to hear is how much he emphasizes
14:20
the necessary role of religion in a free society, especially,
14:26
well, explicitly the US. So you're talking about pursuing
14:30
virtue, having a great heart. What?
14:32
What role does religion play in that, especially given it
14:35
obviously it is a public charter school?
14:38
Yeah, that is such a great question because we welcome and
14:41
embrace all families from all different faiths or some of our
14:47
families don't have a faith tradition in their home.
14:50
And, and, and we want those kids, all of those kids, all of
14:54
the families at our academies to be given the feast of the best.
15:00
So, you know, we, we, I've, I've mentioned our, our reading
15:05
lists, our, our, that is for our humane letters courses.
15:08
But we also offer all of our, all of our students take, they
15:14
take biology, chemistry, physics one, physics 2.
15:18
They take, they all take calculus 1, Calculus 2.
15:21
We have a one track modeled both for our curriculum, yeah, and
15:26
for our, for our, our pedagogy. So with all of that in mind, you
15:32
know, it was, it was really kind of a new thing, as I used to say
15:36
to my university students before I before I left the the very
15:40
easy work of of being a college professor to being to running to
15:46
the largest classical schools in in the world.
15:50
But as I used to always say to my students when we were
15:52
studying the Enlightenment, the idea that the human being has no
15:56
soul, that it's a kind of a a recent idea in the the in modern
16:02
Western thought, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews, the
16:07
Christians, those are the four pillars upon which classical
16:10
liberal education finds it's the West has its historical roots.
16:16
All of those traditions believed their peoples believe that
16:21
they're, that there was something outside of themselves
16:25
as we don't look into just ourselves as the well of, of
16:31
truth and wisdom, but we would look to outside ourselves.
16:35
And so we, you know, so we do read, you know, the Iliad and
16:39
the Odyssey and you're, you're going to read about Zeus and
16:42
Athena and in the role of the gods in, in guiding and in
16:50
shaping the youth and the warriors alike in those in those
16:56
works. We see it in the Aeneid as well.
17:00
The gods come alongside the humans and they and they, you
17:04
know, help inform their, their way.
17:07
When we encounter the book of Exodus, for example, in the Old
17:10
Testament, which is part of the Western tradition, we see Yahweh
17:14
coming aside alongside his people.
17:16
And then, and then when we, when we see, when we are introduced
17:22
to Christ in the New Testament and some of the more recent
17:27
works of the Western tradition, we also see a world that is
17:31
permeated by, by a vision of, of love and forgiveness.
17:37
And, and also, you know, with that, that dimension of the
17:43
universe that is outside of you and me and our human form
17:48
intervening and helping the humans along the way.
17:50
And so as as a public school, we don't deny our students of
17:55
thousands of years of the Western tradition.
17:58
And so, so we do read those books of the Greeks, of the
18:01
Romans, of the Hebrews and the Christians.
18:04
But as a public school, we are a sectarian.
18:07
And, and I think that that is a, a differentiation between being
18:11
secular, being totally secular is hands off.
18:14
Nothing to see here, nothing to see here of 1500 years of
18:18
Western tradition, you know, but being a sectarian simply means
18:23
that our faculty are not going to we're, you know, we're, we're
18:27
very mindful of the Establishment Clause.
18:31
And so we're not going to, we're not going to tell students, you
18:34
know, this is, this is how you have to worship.
18:38
We're not going to try to establish a state religion.
18:41
That's, that's something that we don't, we simply don't do as a
18:43
public school. But will our students have the
18:48
opportunity to to, to read the Iliad and have Socratic
18:54
conversation about that and think about, think about a
18:57
culture that was so permeated by a belief in, in the invisible
19:05
presences, that which is outside the human.
19:09
A culture that was in that way, perhaps maybe more humble than
19:12
we might be today. Knowing that, you know, knowing
19:16
that their people were contingent creatures and perhaps
19:20
not the center of the universe. You know that there were that
19:23
there were that there bigger things than you or I that that
19:28
guide and direct us and and perhaps to whom we are
19:31
accountable. Will our students have those
19:33
conversations every day? You better believe it.
19:36
They're probably talking about the Iliad right now down down
19:40
the hallway from me and considering some of these
19:43
consent, some of these kinds of big, big life questions that
19:49
that we don't we don't shy away from at great hearts.
19:53
What work of the New Testament is in your curriculum?
19:56
We we read in in senior HL, we read the Gospel of John in the
20:06
Gospel of Luke, we look at and that the gospel of Mark.
20:10
So we're reading those, you know, wonderful parables, the
20:15
the Sermon on the Mount and and you know, and that is that is in
20:19
correspondence as well, of course, with looking at Western
20:24
democracy. You know, what is our human, how
20:27
our human anthropology has been so shaped by the Greek, Roman,
20:32
Hebrew and Christian tradition. It really is a distinct human
20:36
anthropology that that we find in the West.
20:38
You know, our what, what, what, what rolls off our tongues in
20:42
terms of our, you know, our understanding as Westerners
20:46
about the human dignity of of every single person and what
20:50
rolls off our tongues in terms of our understanding of what
20:54
that dignity would be regardless of a person's race, class,
21:01
whether that person has disabilities or not.
21:03
Here at great hearts, we we make this education available to all
21:06
all people. You know, we kind of we can
21:08
sometimes take that for granted in the West.
21:12
We might not know exactly why it is that the West that that
21:17
United States has been shaped by some of these foundational ideas
21:24
about what a human person, what a human person is to begin to
21:28
begin with, and what the inherent rights that person
21:32
ought to be. Even if they weren't always,
21:35
even if those rights were not always fully realized or or
21:40
understood. We do have these these primary
21:44
sources that the guide and lead us into into those those human
21:49
freedoms that that we enjoy and that we that we you know that we
21:54
seek to behold in the the persons in our midst.
22:00
Yeah, I think you're saying that this concept of human dignity
22:03
stems from Christianity and not Pagan Greeks and Roman
22:07
philosophy. Yeah, You know, I think so.
22:12
We we are so immersed in secular humanism, as you said, you you
22:15
made that great distinction between a sectarian and secular
22:20
that we have this allergy to introducing religion into the
22:26
public square to to the extent I think that actually contradicts
22:33
the intention and even explicit wish of the founding fathers.
22:39
Again, farewell address of George Washington.
22:42
So I'm wondering if, yeah, I would love to see a
22:46
reintroduction of reverence to God in public education and the
22:53
public square, because I think that's actually part of being
22:55
American and has been for a long time, although not recently.
23:01
So I, I wonder how much thought you've put into that.
23:06
And you know, it could be the case that there's actually more
23:11
that schools like Great Heart and other schools could do to
23:14
have introduced a respect for God with not only not violating
23:20
like our founding principles, but actually fulfilling them.
23:25
Well, that's, that's a great question.
23:27
You know, I, we are, we are publicly funded.
23:30
And so, you know, we're, again, we're really mindful of this
23:33
establishment cause of religion. And so we, we, we must and you
23:37
know, we must and we do. And we're happy to, to follow
23:40
those laws with, with our doors being open to all students and,
23:45
and being, you know, being a public school.
23:47
So you know, so I so I say this with that in mind, but to your
23:51
to your to your point, though, of this great quality of I think
23:55
what you're Speaking of is a sense of PA toss.
23:59
This was this was a great thing that my mentor, the the late
24:03
Doctor Louise Cowan, taught me and and spoke of often in our in
24:10
our study of virtual's Aenea together.
24:14
You know Aeneas, if you'll remember from that great Roman
24:16
epic, he's called pious Aeneas. And one of the glorious things
24:22
that pious Aeneas does as he leaves the burning city of Troy
24:29
is that he takes his father and Kaizes, who says, son, go on, go
24:35
on without help me, let me burn here, let me die.
24:37
I'm old. I'll slow you down.
24:40
He says, no way, father. He takes his father and he puts
24:44
him on his shoulders. And he because he is pious
24:48
Aeneas. So he's he has that that
24:51
reverence, that respect for his elders.
24:55
He has that reverence, the respect for the gods of his
24:58
city. And he takes those out and he
25:01
puts his father in his shoulder and he takes him out of the
25:03
burning city of Troy. And he shows that reverence and
25:07
that respect for him. And so I, I shared that story
25:12
with you because although as a public school, you know, we have
25:17
to be incredibly respectful of the, the various different faith
25:21
traditions that are, you know, that are housed here in our, in
25:26
our community. So we, we, we believe that we do
25:30
believe that parents are children's first educators that
25:34
that it is it is them to make those decisions.
25:37
We we, we don't establish religion in public schools.
25:41
We can't, you know, the law prohibits us from that.
25:44
But what the law would not prohibit one from doing, And I
25:48
think that really even the spirit of the law would say,
25:52
yeah, Doctor Dyer and Doctor Dyer's team keep doing this in
25:56
the public school. Would it would not prohibit us
25:58
from doing is asking these foundational questions about
26:02
what it means to be a human. What is justice?
26:04
What is friendship? What is love?
26:07
And to your point, what is PA toss?
26:10
What is piety? What is the reverence and
26:12
respect and honor that a human owes to 1's ancestors, one's
26:19
fathers, one's gods, one's faith?
26:22
And, and those are certainly questions that come alive very
26:26
much within the text of the Western classical tradition.
26:31
So while we can't, we're not going to tell a student, you
26:35
know, this is the religion you must follow.
26:40
This is, you know, this is the religion that that we are
26:45
endorsing as, you know, as a public institution.
26:48
We'll never do that because of course that would be
26:51
dishonouring to the, to the laws that we've, you know, that that
26:55
we follow. Well, we would never do that.
26:59
What we will do is and provide spaces for students to through
27:06
these questions with a fantastic mentor, a guide in the classroom
27:11
and really with the best text 1 can imagine.
27:15
And, and they, they do that and I and I see our students
27:20
graduating from from Great Hearts Irving as well as the the
27:24
Great Hearts Academy is that where we graduate students
27:27
nationally and having a deep, a deep piety towards those,
27:35
towards those, those higher things that that inform and and
27:41
show us what beauty is. Just a specific example.
27:46
So I, I wonder, would it would it in fact be against a lot to
27:50
pray during school and to, to have like a offer a time of
27:53
prayer during school? And, and I mean, you mentioned
27:55
the Establishment Clause, but, and I haven't studied it.
27:58
So I'm, I'm generally curious about it and I'm wondering if
28:02
you've studied it more. But I my understanding is that
28:06
Establishment Clause is there to protect religion, not to reduce
28:10
it. And, and in fact, if someone
28:13
would argue that, but we can't pray in school that that would
28:17
actually be going against the Establishment Clause and the
28:19
vision of the founders. Yeah, that's a good, that's a
28:23
great question. I am not, I'm probably not the
28:27
person to ask if this, you know, at this point is my
28:30
understanding is that some, you know, some of those, some of
28:34
that legal landscape is changing, right, is changing
28:37
right now. So, so we, we don't, we don't
28:41
pray publicly at at great hearts what they're within the Texas
28:48
Constitution. We, we, we do begin the the day
28:52
with Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and, and one can have a
28:55
moment of silence as well during that time.
28:58
And that's that's the limitation of where my understanding the
29:01
law is presently. But I do understand that some of
29:04
that might be changing. So you'll need to ask your next
29:07
guest about that one. Yeah.
29:09
And maybe part of what you're alluding to is even if it's not
29:12
against the law, you can still be persecuted for it.
29:15
And I think would be under the Biden administration, previous
29:19
administration, and we've seen like, Supreme Court cases of
29:23
teachers being persecuted for praying during football games
29:27
and that sort of thing. So, yeah, it's unfortunately the
29:32
Justice Department is not always there to uphold the law or the
29:36
vision of the founders. But yeah, I'm just, I would, I
29:40
wonder who the right guess would be.
29:42
But I would just be curious to think, like, to what extent are
29:44
we actually misunderstanding that vision and what can we do
29:49
to, to reintroduce PA to us? But anyways, I think, you know,
29:53
you've covered it. So another major topic what what
29:57
is What is your school's approach to screens and
30:01
technology at school? Yeah, well, Great Hearts was one
30:05
of the first schools before before we have the great
30:09
research has come out, as you know, from, you know, Jonathan
30:11
Hyde and others. And I know that you have done a
30:13
lot of work and research on this matter as well.
30:16
But before we were even seeing the the data of what what
30:21
screens are doing to young people, before we even had any
30:24
of that, you know, our founders intuited that the best education
30:28
for the best is the best education for all, as Mortimer
30:31
Adler says in the proposal. And so paper books and human
30:36
conversation have been our modalities from the very from
30:40
the very beginning in our great hearts academies.
30:42
And so we have, we have had a no, no phone, no iPad policy
30:49
from the very beginning of our schools.
30:51
And, and it's not just the curriculum, but it's also the
30:54
pedagogy, right, that it allows great hearts to be so successful
30:59
on, you know, and so much more successful, I think than than
31:02
many, other than many other public schools in terms of
31:06
academic results. And so, and, you know, now we
31:10
have now we have all of the, you know, the data that to back that
31:15
up and, and we are starting to see some of the public schools
31:20
follow the data. Other public schools besides
31:22
great hearts follow that data in terms of not having the phones
31:26
and the screens. But you know, to, to this I
31:29
just, I think one of the most delightful nights of my, of my
31:34
school year is always when we do our high school preview night.
31:37
And I bring high school parents up on this, up on the stage with
31:41
me and I interview them and I say, what is the the best part
31:45
of having your kids at great hearts in the high school?
31:50
And you know, you, you know, you think that you're going to get
31:53
answers like, oh, my kid got the acceptance to the Ivy League
31:57
school or got the full ride scholarship or the SAT scores
32:01
or, you know, you think it's going to be something like that,
32:04
but it never is. The thing that I hear again and
32:08
again and again, year after year after year is this.
32:11
I love being around the kids, I love being around my kids and
32:16
what they communicate is that like like my own children who
32:20
are also great heart scholars of family.
32:23
Dinner sometimes lasts until 10:00 PM.
32:27
What something I say to our families as they're joining the
32:29
school or they're coming in at 6th grade, which is the first
32:34
year for my school. Of course, we have many families
32:36
who are coming to us from our lower school who've been with us
32:40
from K through 5, but we have a lot of new families who come to
32:43
us in 6th grade is that we are saying no to something very,
32:48
very small so that we can say yes to something so much more.
32:54
So what are we saying yes to? And saying no to, to phones and
32:58
you know, chatting and, and being on Insta for the 8 hours
33:03
of the school day. You know, what are we saying no
33:05
to? Well, we're saying no to being
33:09
connected on social media. You know, you maybe, maybe
33:13
you're feeling, maybe you're a little bit missed out, missing
33:16
out from your ISD friends who are chatting with each other
33:18
during algebra class. You're saying no to something
33:22
there. And, and I and for a teenager
33:24
that, that can feel like something, right?
33:26
That can feel like a loss, a loss of connection during those
33:30
8 hours. We're seeing no to that.
33:32
But we're also seeing yes to significantly decreased rates of
33:37
anxiety. We're saying yes to.
33:41
Right now it's 12:00. In another hour, our high school
33:45
students are going to be out on our turf, and they're not going
33:49
to be doing this during lunch. They play volleyball, they're
33:54
playing soccer, they bring their instruments, they're playing
33:57
guitar, they're talking, they're relating, they're connecting.
34:02
We're saying yes to real human relationship.
34:06
And furthermore, when you meet a great Hearts graduate, we're
34:10
saying yes to graduating the kinds of young adults who are
34:14
going to look you in the eye and look into your soul and see your
34:18
heart and see you. And we're saying yes to the
34:21
ability for our students to read thousands and thousands and
34:25
thousands of pages of writing their reading list is equivalent
34:31
to what I did in my PhD program at the University of Dallas.
34:36
And a little bit more than that. And we're saying yes to the
34:40
ability from even from kindergarten onward for our our,
34:44
our, our own scholars. My daughter, she's in 8th grade.
34:48
She's able to, she's able not just to read literature.
34:52
That was difficult for me. I remember when I was in high
34:56
school and even when I was in my first couple years of college.
34:59
She's able to read at that level and understand it and comprehend
35:03
it, but more than that, she's able to allow that literature to
35:09
form her interior in her interiority of being because her
35:14
brain has her prefrontal cortex, of course, is not developed
35:20
fully until she's age 25 or older.
35:23
And So what she's consuming is either this fast bits of
35:29
information that, that are disconnected and, and very,
35:33
very, very, very, very much lacking depth, or else she's
35:40
training her brain like a muscle to be able to consume complex,
35:47
complex ideas, to sit in in silence, to listen to another
35:54
classmate's ideas and respond to it.
35:57
And so, so this tech free environment, or I should say low
36:02
tech environment, as I always say to our families, we're at
36:06
great hearts, we're very low tech, high human.
36:10
We're saying no to something very, very small.
36:13
So we can say yes to something so much more.
36:17
Amazing. Congratulations.
36:18
You're doing exactly the right thing and I hope more more
36:21
schools adopt what what you're doing.
36:24
I'm jealous when I hear about this education, it's incredible.
36:29
I wish I had it right. I I went to a wonderful public
36:34
school in the state of Oregon. It was a really large public
36:38
school and and I'm so grateful for my incredible teachers who I
36:44
know that they did hard work and good work, but I but our, our
36:51
students, I, I think will won't quite know until they graduate
36:56
and they come back. To it after.
36:58
College break. They don't fully grasp just how
37:03
special this kind of education is until they go and they meet
37:06
kids who went to other kinds of schools.
37:10
Yeah, amazing. Any other initiatives you're
37:13
working on? Ideas are developing.
37:15
I know that you do all the things, the outside of great
37:18
hearts, anything you want to share with those things you're
37:19
excited about. Yeah, well, I'm, I'm really
37:22
excited you I've really been focusing over these last four
37:26
years. I I have been I've pivoted away
37:30
from the university to really focus my mind and my heart on K
37:35
through 12 education. And and that's taken the form
37:38
maybe more recently of really thinking about what leadership
37:44
is and the and, and within the great classical Western
37:49
tradition. And so, so something I've been
37:52
working along with our national network is, is developing some
37:56
leadership courses that are built on the classics.
37:59
So this has been really fun for me.
38:02
I teach leaders throughout the Great Hearts network of schools.
38:07
I teach a couple different leadership classes for them.
38:10
And so I'll tell you about the the most recent one that I
38:13
taught. And I was able to do a small
38:16
seminar on this at the National Symposium for Classical
38:19
Education. But it's a class that was built
38:22
somewhat on the framework that we used at the Dallas Institute
38:27
for Humanities and Culture for principals and superintendents.
38:31
Where my mentors, Louise Cowan and her husband, Doctor Donald
38:35
Cowan, invited superintendents and public school teachers to
38:39
come to these historic old homes in downtown Dallas.
38:44
To come and read the Odyssey and Oedipus and Antigone with them.
38:49
And as well as Shakespeare's Tempest and, and to look at
38:54
these timeless texts within the classical tradition to, to look
38:59
at what principles for leaderships that might be for,
39:03
for their own educational endeavors.
39:06
And it was really fun to hear Louise, over the years that I
39:10
worked with her speak about this, this just this marvelous
39:17
encounter with these educational leaders within the Dallas,
39:22
within the Dallas community. And so we've taken that and
39:25
we've created from that rough curriculum that we that the
39:31
Cowmans used at the Dallas Institute.
39:33
We've taken that and made it into a, a scalable course for
39:36
our great hearts leaders. And so, for example, what I
39:41
mentioned Oedipus, such a, such a marvelous cautionary tale for
39:48
leaders, but also a really practical guidebook.
39:53
And so, for example, you know, within that story of Oedipus,
39:56
we, we get those, we get the principles of the, the three
40:00
Delphic oracles, the three that you know, the three teaching,
40:04
the three, three key ideas from the Delphic Oracle.
40:08
So know, know thyself. Self right and then nothing in
40:14
excess and then certainty brings ruin.
40:17
And so I walk leaders, school leaders through that play, that
40:23
wonderful play by Sophocles and we and we look at, you know,
40:27
first of all, that blindness of Oedipus.
40:30
Oedipus doesn't listen to the people around him.
40:32
He doesn't listen to Tyresius when Teresius tells him, stop,
40:37
this isn't going to be this isn't going to end well for you,
40:40
Oedipus. And, you know, when we talk in
40:42
again, in Socratic conversation with our school leaders about
40:46
what does it look like to, to listen to your team, to listen
40:50
to the parents, to get out at lunch and talk to the kids, to
40:56
be in the classrooms with your teachers and to have an really
41:00
an open door with your faculty. And to to most of all, be guided
41:05
by, you know, the truth, goodness and beauty of of the
41:09
Western classical tradition from the wisdom that we have there.
41:12
But then also to be a person, a leader who would really listen,
41:16
you know, And so we see that what happens to Oedipus when,
41:21
when he doesn't. So, you know, so that's one
41:23
example that you know, that we get from that leadership course.
41:28
And the last time that it was teaching it, I was noticing that
41:31
there are over 50,000 books on Amazon that have been written on
41:36
leadership over the years. I mean, it's a hot market, but
41:39
and I've read many, many books on leadership and it not to be
41:43
disparaging about the more contemporary books on
41:46
leadership, but what's always interesting me to me is when I
41:50
read these books, I say, huh, this is just a rehash of the
41:54
Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews and the Christians.
41:56
So like those 4 pillars of the Western consciousness and our
42:02
Western writers, you, you don't get a lot better than than
42:05
Sophocles or Homer on leadership.
42:08
So, so that's been a real joy and delight to to walk leaders
42:12
through some of those classical texts because they are, as Saint
42:16
Augustine said, ever ancient, ever new, you know, truth is
42:21
ever neat that end the the source of truth, right, is ever
42:24
ancient and ever new. That's a beautiful note to end.
42:28
I was going to ask you what's the plan for nuking the public
42:31
school system and expanding charter schools at great hearts,
42:33
but you just answered it right there forming the leaders.
42:37
But I, I really wish you all the best with your mission,
42:40
continued success, and thanks so much for the conversation,
42:43
Doctor Dyer. Yes.
42:44
Well, thank you. Thank you and I wish you all the
42:46
best as well.