Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #537 The Chesterton Schools: the Transformative Power of a Classical Education with Founder Dale Ahlquist

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#537 The Chesterton Schools: the Transformative Power of a Classical Education with Founder Dale Ahlquist · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm excited and grateful to be with Dale Alquist.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: He's the president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, gk Chesterton.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: He was the creator and host of the EWTN television series the Apostle of Common Sense, which I love.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: He's the author of six books.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: He's the co-founder of the First Chesterton Academy we're going to be talking about that today a classic Catholic high school in Minneapolis, minnesota, which gave birth to the growing Chesterton Schools Network and now includes almost 70 schools in the US and four other countries.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: This is an important time in history.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: The last time you were on Dale, we were talking about localism.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: You wrote a new book and it was really a whole way of looking at life, bringing in all the neighborhoods and this kind of supporting local.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: When you see this global outreach pushing down on us right now, it's amazing how Catholic social teaching, like other gems in the Church, can be the answer to the world.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And of course by the world I mean the city of man, a world which seems like it rejected God.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And let me just add this In the foreword to your book you quote Chesterton.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: You talk about social reform and of course mankind always needs to be reformed huh.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And the Church always needs to be reformed, huh.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: And the church always needs to be reformed, society, culture, nations too.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: But how are we going to be reformed if we don't understand humanity, if we don't understand ourselves?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: And you know, dale, the the lack of education and understanding of who we are among young people today.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: It makes them so easy to be manipulated, doesn't it?
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And enter the Chesterton schools and thank goodness there's men like you out there, men and women that are out there.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: You know they identify this, don't they?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And we're trying to do something about it.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: And it's an injustice, I think, being done to the young.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And thank you so much for your starting the Chesterton schools and bringing this forward.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: You're?
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: starting the Chesterton Schools and bringing this forward.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Sure, I mean your introduction.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Jack reminds me of what Chesterton said in an introduction to one of his own books what's Wrong with the World, he says man has always lost his way, but now he's lost his address, and I think that's part of the problem.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, we know we're out there flailing and people are not happy with where they are at, but they don't even know where they're supposed to be, and part of the growth of our own schools network has been because we are showing them where the home address is, and it is ultimately the goal of every journey is home.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: That's what we're trying to get.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Whenever, you know, when I go off to California or London, I'm trying to get to Minneapolis, minnesota, where I left from.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, john.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Paul Dale would call that.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: You know the big, timeless questions, right, the answer to the questions who am I?
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: What's the meaning and purpose of life, even today?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Why are we created, male and female?
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: You know what is love?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: What is true, good and beautiful, all of those things you know.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I just was reading in the Epoch Times really a good article by Walter Larson talking about how humanities has shrunk in colleges and universities.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons he talks about is the indoctrination going on and young people are starting to understand this indoctrination and say, well, what's the point of even going into humanities?
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: But we're really missing something, aren't we, when we step away from humanities.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there was all this recent emphasis on STEM and science, technology and mathematics, and whatever the E stands for, I think it's economics probably right yeah that would make sense, something soulless like that.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: And all these things are indeed soulless.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: They're all technical you know where to plug something in and all quantitative and calculating, and completely unfulfilling.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Because all those disciplines have to be tied to meaning and if they aren't, at a certain point they're going to be very frustrating, to be very frustrating.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: And I think the completeness of an education is, yes, you give math and science its due and the calculating part of the brain its due, but you give equal emphasis to the human things, to art, to literature, to philosophy, to theology, because if we don't answer the questions posed in those disciplines, there's absolutely going to be no fulfillment in the discipline, the other disciplines at the other end of the school and and you know, our whole approach at chesterton academy is that is is the absolute opposite of the way the world is regarding education right now, that if a student starts showing any inclination towards the arts, towards drama, towards music, they shuffle him off in that direction and they don't give him the math and science training that he needs to complete his brain, complete his brain, but they do the opposite.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Problem at the other end If a student is showing that aptitude in the math and the sciences.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: They don't give him the completeness he needs in the humanities and in the arts and Dale, just from a practical standpoint.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, we see so many young people today at the John Paul II Renewal Center that we speak to that have learned how to make a living, but they don't know what it means to be a human being and their relationships are terrible, their marriages are breaking up and they don't know why.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: They don't know why.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, one of the main problems is we don't teach philosophy.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: We obviously, as Catholic educators, have to teach theology.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: We are absolutely remiss in our duties if we don't teach students a deep understanding of their faith.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: But, as we learned from Thomas Aquinas, you have to have faith and reason and they don't contradict each other.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And by not studying philosophy, by not studying logic and the meaning of things and a clear and ordered thinking, our philosophy tends to be I mean, our theology tends to be ungrounded.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: And so what we've seen, you know, just look at the history of the world.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Look at what happened at the Protestant Reformation there was an attack on reason.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Luther was attacking reason.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: And then what happened at the Enlightenment, a couple hundred years later?
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: The attack was on faith.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: And in both cases you are leaving, you know, a half-brained populace behind you know.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: And so faith and reason have to go together.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: If you deprive yourself of one or the other, well Justin says, it leads to madness.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, and we're seeing that madness all over, aren't we?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: We're disconnected, our hearts are disconnected from what's true, good and beautiful, and when that happens, we're floundering.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: And I think you see the frustration in these young people right protesting on college campuses today without an understanding.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: When you ask them, dale, you know why exactly are you protesting.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Or a simple question that you've heard many times now.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: You know what is a woman.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: You know what is the meaning and purpose.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: You see these young people.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Your heart goes out to them.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: They're empty.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: You wonder what's going to happen to these kids as they go through life.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And this is purposeful, isn't it?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: This lack of sharing the humanity is purposeful.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: And maybe, if you don't mind, take a step back for our listeners, dale, that may need you to define what exactly is humanities.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: What do we mean when we say that are classical Catholic education?
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: What do we mean?
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: We're unfolding that now, but what would be some of the specific courses that someone might take, and I think that might help some people.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Good, as the word indicates, it's the human things, the distinctly human things.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: A machine can study another machine.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: So we're talking about art and literature, theology and philosophy, music and drama, and so these are the things that man has created to try to interpret the world.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: And so we are looking at these other interpretations of the world and, just like we study, we study theology because it's the story of salvation.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: We study history because it's the story of salvation, but literature is a retelling of that story in an imaginative way.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: You know, every novel is trying to express a truth.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: It's trying to get at some recreation of the creation, and we were made in the image of God, which means that we are creators, and I think people forget that that is.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: One of the most godlike qualities about us as humans is that we can create as our creator created us.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't think people realize.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: You know JR Tolkien and you know, and people like that have been bringing this out, like you said, into literature, into movies, into stories, and telling us the story from their own standpoint.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, what happens if we never know who?
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Dante was right, or Shakespeare, pascal?
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Going back to philosophy, aristotle Aristotle was 400 years before Jesus and I don't know if people realize, to your earlier point, dale, the beauty of Catholicism.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: People realize, to your earlier point, dale, the beauty of Catholicism, that St Thomas Aquinas resurrects Aristotle in the Middle Ages and brings him back and says, no, we got to have a foundation here.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: To your point, why is that important?
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: What's that connection that that does for the human person, dale, when you're studying philosophy, Well, to bring Aristotle up as a perfect example, when Thomas Aquinas in essence baptized Aristotle, he took some foundational thinking which is really just common sense, but it's Ah, I like that right Common sense.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: You're getting back to Chesterton with this common sense 're getting back to chesterton, uh, you know, with this common sense isn't that beautiful yeah, we're trying.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: We're just trying to have ordered thinking, and you start with a certain premise, as you do in any philosophy, but that premise has to have some sort of obvious and self-evident quality to it.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: And so, with with thomas aquinas and borrowing from Aristotle, the first question is are our senses windows on a reality outside of ourselves, and can we trust those five senses To not deceive us?
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And in general, we should be able to say yes, obviously our senses can be deceived, but for the most part, we are looking out at a world that is really there and that this reality exists outside of ourselves.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: We didn't make it inside of our head, we are observing it, and that's a gigantic difference from the self-eating philosophies that says well, it's, you know, everybody has their own reality, and this is mine.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a recipe for insanity, right?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: That's how the insane person thinks that they're the only real person in the universe.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: And you know, nothing else is real.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: The only real person in the universe and nothing else is real.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: But by having this common sense philosophy that leads to other good conclusions, and that's why we teach philosophy.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: And when high school students are cheated out of philosophy, they step into the world unable to order their thinking and they're flailing around because they don't have basic answers about meaning.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Articulated Chesterton says.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Jack, he says the one thing that's never taught in any of our public schools is this that there's a whole truth of things and that in knowing it and speaking it, we are happy.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: So important.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: We don't teach the whole truth.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: And because we don't study the whole truth, we don't know the whole truth, neither can we articulate it, and therefore we are unhappy.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: And that's what our students today what you were talking about earlier they're protesting, they don't even know what they're protesting because they can't even articulate it, and that's a recipe for depression yes, it's so important you know when, when, when people are listening to this that that our hearts and and our reason, our reason itself, was made for the truth.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Right, we seek the truth, don't.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Don't we do this when we're young people.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: That was the.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I think you were alluding to that story earlier with Chesterton, where he said I went around.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: There's two ways to find your way home Stay there or go around the whole world and do it right.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I took that long, circular route, but it was always seeking the truth, dale, I remember this as a young person.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I think we're robbing young people of this and what you're doing with the Chesterton schools is you're bringing them back into the story of awe and wonder, like, what is the truth and how beautiful this is, and that your senses to your point you just made your senses are being able to look through this veil and say what is behind.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: That Isn't that what the sky, you know, the beauty of the sky, and the sun and the stars do, but also great poetry, you know, when we start to read great stories and literature, it does the same thing.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And here's the last thing I'll say right now, and I'm just saying what you said it makes the heart happy, doesn't it?
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I am happy and I know ooh, I think this is true.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: This must be true.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Something's happening inside me, right?
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: I see this in young people, dale, when you tell them the truth.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, the transcendental is what we teach in classical education truth, goodness and beauty.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: They're all connected and they're all under attack in the world today.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Just think you know the truth is under attack, goodness virtue is under attack and we live in a very ugly world.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Our arts have you?
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Arts have decayed tremendously.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: We see a lot of ugliness.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Our architecture is ugly.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Our churches are ugly because they are not the work of happy people.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Cheston says the modern world is ugly because no one loves the modern world.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: You know, when we stand up, I'm going to bring this all the way down to a very practical level that people understand.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: We stand up, I'm going to bring this all the way down to a very practical level that people understand.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: We stand up at school board meetings and, to your point, they're showing actual pornography to these young people, talk about beauty and then profaning the beauty, and they're robbing children of their innocence.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And what you're doing I could just hear it in your voice You're giving that, you're feeding that innocent mind something with real meat so that as they move out into the world, as they move past this age of innocence, obviously we're going to and already by high school we've already passed this and we're in the world already to continue to feed them so that they can walk into a school or a class and go, yes them, so that they can walk into a school or a class and go, yes.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I'm finding something here that I don't see in the world and it's doing something to my heart, isn't it?
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, our school.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: We emphasize beauty because we emphasize the arts, so they all learn how to draw and paint.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: By their senior year they take four years of art.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: By the senior year they're copying oil masterpieces.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: They all learn how to sing.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: They sing great choral music and they sing for four years and they learn the chants, and, and then we emphasize drama as well.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: So you, if you put on a good play, a meaningful play, you have this unique connection with the audience.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: You're you're making the word into flesh, as it were.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: And and arts are nothing if they don't communicate.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: And that's what we're trying to do is show that art is not just a self-expression or selfish act.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: It's a communal act and a selfless act.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: You're trying to have the observer share in the beauty and praise God for what they've seen.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, with the Chesterton schools.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: Is that just high school?
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, our Chesterton schools are just 9 through 12.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Are most of the schools being fed by Catholic schools.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Would you say what's the feeding ground for the farm team coming into it?
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: A lot of them would come from decent Catholic K-8 schools, but some of them come from other private schools from the public schools and some homeschools, I think, are a big feeder because when children get to be ninth grade, especially young men, the mom at home feels a little bit overmatched and they're ready to deeper education.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: That, that is, is, you know, found because of the teachers who prepare for this.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: And also you know things like choir and drama.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: You know you can't do all of that, accomplish all that, at the kitchen table.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Now how about if somebody wants to play sports?
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: You know, do they.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: What do they do in a case like that?
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I've had people say Jack, you know what happens if you know my son wants, you know whatever that that might be.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I you know, in order to keep the tuition down, we do all the cheap sports.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: But most, most sports aren't that expensive.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So we can do basketball and baseball and soccer maybe volleyball soccer.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: You know it's.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: It's an expensive game, like football, that it'd be prohibited from from a small school.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: But if they want to contact sport, they can play rugby.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: All you need is a ball in a field.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: They can start hitting each other in the head and have the same effect as a football.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, it would, yes, it would.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: So tell us how you started this.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: You know what was the idea.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: What were you seeing in the world I mean, we've unpacked, I'm sure, some of that already here but what were you seeing?
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: You know, where were you at in your life and what were you seeing?
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: That you said, hey, something's got to change.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And how did you come up with this?
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I know that you said you were the co-founder, so somebody was with you, a day or two.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, as a fellow parishioner, we both were sending our children to the parish school, which is a K-8 school, and it was a fine school, just a good.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: It had a good academic program and, you know, very strong Catholic profile to it and the kids were really learning the faith.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: But, you know, eighth grade was coming up and we realized, okay, where are we going to send our kids to high school?
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: And we were looking around at the options and we just were not happy with anything we were seeing.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: We ended up really wanting, you know three things that we were looking for A school that was very unapologetically and thoroughly Catholic.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: We wanted the faith taught.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: We also wanted a rigorous, academic, interdisciplinary and integrated curriculum classical.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: And then we wanted it to be affordable.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: You know that's what parents with a lot of children.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: They need to be able to afford their education.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And so how long ago was that Dale?
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: 17 years ago is when we opened the first school, and it took us about a year and a half from the time we started to put it together to the time we opened the first school, and it took us about a year and a half from the time we started to put it together to the time we opened.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Were you an educator, Dale, at that time.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: No, no what was your background, and this is important then, because people always feel like I can't do this, I can't help.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: It's not always true, is it?
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: This is vitally important.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: You don't have to be an educator to start a school.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: You have to know what it is you're going to be wanting your children to learn, and you have to love your children.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Those are the main things you need.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: I created the original curriculum.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: I was just going to ask you that.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Can you unpack that?
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: You don't have to do it right now.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: You might want to finish the whole story here, but I'd like to get back to how you ended up doing that.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Sure, well, I mean, the point is we decided that we had to start a school ourselves because we couldn't find it anywhere and we knew it was going to start very small.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: But we knew there were other people like-minded that were looking for the same thing for their children.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: And you know, as I said, I put together a curriculum that was very integrated, so that what we were teaching in one subject would was connected to what we were teaching in another subject.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: But what was I doing at the time?
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I was a lobbyist.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, and I and before that I was in real estate development and property development.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: So my background was first in the professional realm and then in the public interest realm right And-.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Were you reading Chesterton at that time I was reading.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Chesterton the whole time.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, I started with Chesterton 43 years ago.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: And, yeah, clearly he was not only forming my thinking, but he's the one who also brought me to the catholic church.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: You know, I was, I was evangelical, and so chester led the way for my conversion and he's also a convert.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Isn't that he was also covered absolutely?
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: and so I, you know, I knew that the faith had to be at the center of of anything that we did.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: The incarnation had to inform every other truth that we taught.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: But the main thing, you know, the problem I saw, we saw in the public schools, is that all the subjects are all separated from each other, they're not connected, they're not relevant to each other, and we needed everything relevant to, first of all, one truth the incarnation.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: But they also had to be connected to each other, and so that students are taught to think in a fragmented way, yeah, what?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: a beautiful way.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a simple, beautiful way to state that, right that when I learned science, I you know, I you know, people think you know, I think from the last, especially since covid, right, there's a science, there's a science, but there's not a, but there's not a, you know, it's something just called science.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: It's, you know, it's a study of what's true, what's good out there, what's true.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: How does this thing work?
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I came into a story, I came into a universe and I want to know what it's like.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm doing.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: And then I want to link that to this awe and wonder that we were talking about earlier, don't I?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Right so science, you know, properly taught, is you're studying the mind of God because you're studying creation, right so you're studying God's handiwork.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, that has to be the perspective.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: You're not studying this thing that's simply there on its own, this thing called nature.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: No, you're studying creation, which is a completely different thing, you look?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: at the world and say this is God's creation.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: This isn't just something that we stumbled upon called nature.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And you know what's interesting is mathematics.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: We could do the same thing, can't we?
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in fact, mathematics is directly connected to philosophy, If you think about it.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: It's learning how to think logically, how to solve problems, but in philosophy we just do it on a bigger and more human scale.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: But you're still teaching yourself to think logically and to find the solution to a problem.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's meaningful when you study math under those conditions.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's meaningful when you study math under those conditions.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, how wonderful.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: As far as the schools, now that you're yourself, is there still about 70?
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: That's what I read in the beginning.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this fall there's 61 open.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: There's between 10 and 15 that will be opening within the next 10 months.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I know people that are in my area and I'm in the Chicago Western suburbs now Chicago people that are looking at the Chesterton schools.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: As far as you talked about affordability, how do you make it affordable?
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know what are you doing, because this is an unfair system.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: We're under right Again in Illinois.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: We're in the belly of the beast, but you so are you're.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: You're still in minnesota right, yeah, yeah, not exactly a no.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Congratulations on on the vice presidential, uh pick.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot for that.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: No, I can tell you this there's a lot.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: I wonder if he had a humanities background.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: By the way, yeah, I don't know what he taught, uh, but but taught.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: But it was the modern approach to education.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: I can tell you that the one great thing about the public schools is they've inspired a lot of people to start their own schools.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: So, I will say this in terms of making it affordable, is that there's a lot of ways to save money and there's a lot of ways to to avoid spending more than is necessary.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: And we we give the folks who are starting schools the templates on on how not only to to save money, but how to raise money and everything.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: But you know, just just to start with it, because of demographics being the way they are, there are a lot of empty classrooms, a lot of empty school buildings out there because we've stopped having babies, and so there are buildings that can be head, that can be found and rented, and schools, these new schools, don't have to start by building anything.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: There's space available to rent and usually quite accessible.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: So that's one of the first ways you save money.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: And then you just, you just stay away from technology.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: That's the other thing.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: You don't, you don't have to have any screens in the classroom at all.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: You have books in the classroom.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: The, the science experiments are all done with using very basic principles.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: You know boiling water and knives.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: You know boiling water and knives.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: You don't need to have an electron microscope, right, and so we save money on not having all the latest technology, because that is more of a distraction than a learning tool, and keep the computers out of the classroom.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Isn't that something?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: See, people, you know the modern progressives would hear this and you know the cackles would be going up, you know.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: But the reality is, as we go forward here, we're finding more and more right.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Every day I'm reading reports because we're working with parents and families, right, right.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: And so you know we're talking to them about what cell phones do to them, what technology, social media, all those things do to them.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: But then we think, well, you got to have it for education.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Now, right, you got to have it for education, so explain that.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: So, in other words, the textbooks that we're going to use, or whatever.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And I guess you know if I'm a teacher and I want to bring a new concept in, all I got to do is go print off whatever I need, right?
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Or how do we handle those kind of things.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we use a thing called books and they're very undistracting.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: A screen is a complete distraction in the classroom, but a book is actually a way of focusing and people can tangibly underline things.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what I do.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Are you finding, then, Dale, that people are still writing these textbooks good, solid textbooks?
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Are you finding those?
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Do you got to work for them today, Because we know that there's some bad ones out there, don't we Well?
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: yeah, most of the textbooks are bad, but there are things like Classical Academic Press.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: We use several of their textbooks.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Wait, let me write this down Most of the books that we read are classic literature you know, and the philosophers you know, and so you don't have to get a special publisher for those no, no.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: But there are certain you know I'm still not completely satisfied with the science textbooks that we are using.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I think we could do better and we'll probably have to create them ourselves.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Interesting, interesting, but I would suppose you know, I guess it just depends.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: The same thing you said about classrooms being empty right, we can go out and rent some empty classrooms.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I suppose there's some teachers out there that you could find too right that are either, you know, probably just tired of the public school system.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I know plenty of teachers like that.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: They're looking for an alternative.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: When we opened the school Jack, we had more applications for teachers than we had for students, because they were so excited about being a teacher.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: How beautiful is that.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Are you finding that across the country, or is it certain spots more than others?
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: There's definitely just huge enthusiasm to teach in our schools, but we're starting to, with the growth of the schools, realize, just like other schools, there's going to be a scarcity of good teachers at a certain point and we're going to have to start growing our own teachers as well.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, and I'm sure you're thinking about all those things.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: So before we let you go, dale, tell us a little bit about your role right now.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: What are you doing in there, and are you going to stay with the Chesterton schools yourself, and is there an overall board that you know?
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: How is this structured for people that are saying you know what, I need to look into that school?
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: How is it?
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Is it kind of a top-down, you know?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Hey, we're watching over you a little bit, it's just the opposite.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: So each of the schools is started independently and it's run by its own board and they have to raise their own money.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: But what we all have in common is that we're all using the same curriculum.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, good.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Templates, the same brand, so everyone stays true to that, in order to be part of the Chesterton Schools Network, and we have a board of directors for the Chesterton Society and our job is just to kind of make sure everybody is complying with it.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: And our job is just to kind of make sure everybody is complying with it.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And we even created our own accreditation system too, so that the Chester Academy brand and diploma mean the same thing everywhere.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: So colleges and universities are recognizing our students as very well-prepared students.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: What's happening today to young people, and I think I want to kind of end up like this we don't know what it means to be human anymore and humanities what you're talking about.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: We humanize ourselves, we set up civilization.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I think we have to really discuss this.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: More and more and more we're seeing a breakdown, a decline, not only in marriage and families, but in our civilization as a whole, and it all comes out of this lack of connection to God, of course, but then to a model of marriage and the family, this Imago Dei.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: And then we bring this, don't we?
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Into the culture and we make those beautiful buildings that you talked about and the beauty of art and poetry.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: We think that that's old-fashioned now.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: We don't need all that stuff, but a human being, we create it with that Genesis 2, verse 7, with that Ruah.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Aren't we that breath of God?
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Who was this creator that puts these crazy stars together?
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: And the great moon last night I don't know if you saw the moon, it was an incredible big moon.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Right, they call it a harvest moon or something.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: It's just gorgeous, yeah, super moon.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Super moon, and so these things are.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: When you look up at a moon like that, if you're outside right, it really starts to move this awe and wonder within a person, and that's what the education that you're giving does the same thing right.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: It works with nature, with science, like you said, with all of these other things, and brings you into this awe and wonder that's in the human heart.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: You know, it's so exciting for me, dale.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I just wish I would have been able to send my kids there.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: You know, of course, my kids are a little older now, they've got their own kids, and I think education has really gone downhill in the last look and I've been studying it now for a while and it's been happening for a long time but it's accelerating down right, or is that just my feeling?
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: of this, I mean it just seems like we're circling the drain right now.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah well.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Covid exposed the bad state of education, but it also inspired a lot of people to do something about it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: They're just fed up with this.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Parents want change, and so I think we're starting to see that change happening.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: The growth of our schools is a real sign of hope, and we're a grassroots movement and I think it's going to have its effect.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: It's going to have its effect.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: It's starting locally and that's the only way.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: It's the only way it works.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Jack is starting locally.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: It has to go from there.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Well, let's do this.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I want people to remember localism again.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: You just reminded me of that wonderful book.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: I shared that with a number of people.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: They they've actually started gardens this year because of your book.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: You know people like they wanted to dig in you.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: You know you were saying I just dig into the earth, you know, and, and then go support your local businesses and stuff.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: It was really, and that's what they're doing.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know it just takes a voice sometimes to do that right same thing here with education.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: You know we got to start somewhere and again, I think it's an injustice.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: What's being done to these poor kids when they're so anxious, nervous?
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I was just reading Anxious Generation, this book that's out there right now, and it just shows the state of human beings, right.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much, dale, for this.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: So where should people go if they want to learn more about the Chesterton Schools?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: If they want to reach out to somebody with questions, what would they do?
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Go to chestertonschoolscom.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: Dale, thank you so much.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Thanks for this time.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: We really appreciate it.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks everybody for joining us.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: We'll talk to you again soon, thank you.