“World View” is a term recently popularized by philosophers and media pundits who debate spiritual and political matters.

It refers to the lens through which people see (and therefore interpret) the world around them.

All information and observations must pass through this lens and be colored by one’s World View.

Similarly, there is another “View” I would like to propose for consideration, and I’m calling this the “Money View.”

In my nearly two decades of dealing with people and their finances I have slowly awakened to the fact that how people are doing financially is often a direct result of their “Money View.”

Just as with World Views, there are several very different Money Views, each with its own ramifications. These include, but are probably not limited to, the following:

1.  Money as a Mystery – in which people seem to have no clue how money is made (or retained) and therefore think that others who are successful financially are somehow “lucky”

2. Money as a Master – in which one’s entire life is lived out in bondage to the need for more money, or at least the drudgery of scraping by. This is often accompanied by terms such as, “I have to go to work,” or “Another day, another dollar.”

3. Money as a Monster – this is the condition whereby financial pressures become so large they dominate a person’s thoughts and affect him emotionally. Often at this stage relationships are damaged and health is compromised.

4. Money as a Major – in which a person applies most of his focus and fascination on how to acquire more. In this situation money is an idol.

5. Money as a Motivator – this is the condition whereby money is used to push one to higher achievement and greater contribution. This can be for both selfish or selfless reasons. Beware.

6. Money as a Manipulator – whereby a person uses his or her money to get what he or she wants out of other people. It is here where phrases such as “Money is Power” apply.

7. Money as a Minimizer – the condition in which the presence of money diminishes one’s ambition. This is where complacency and mediocrity reside.

8. Money as a Maximizer – where one is driven to utilize his or her money to make a greater contribution and maximize his or her potential. This is usually much more selfless and altruistic than #5 above.

9. Money as a Monument – where money is used as a status symbol, to build a reputation, or as an attempt to establish an immortal family legacy.

10. Money as a Menace – wherein the money one has is a destructive force in one’s life, either by feeding addictions or by causing fights or by dominating one’s time and energy with the care and maintenance required to sustain it.

In considering this list, it may be helpful to ask yourself some questions, such as:

1. Which “Money View” best represents where you are right now?

2. Which of these “Money Views” have you encountered previously in your life?

3. Notice that several of these “Money Views” are quite negative. What are you doing to make sure you are living under a positive and productive one? Which one would you choose?

4. What are you doing to grow in your financial understanding and education?

In each of the above views we see that money is always used as a Means. The key question in money matters is therefore, “As a means for what?”

This is why the Bible again and again treats money as a heart issue.

Money in itself is not evil, but the heart is desperately wicked, who can know it? Money becomes a dangerous or productive tool, depending upon the heart that wields it.

Make sure you choose your “Money View” deliberately and intentionally, don’t simply let it choose you.

Pursue some financial education to enable you to be in charge of money instead of it being in charge of you. And guard your heart when it comes to money, in plenty or in want.

That’s my view.

*******************************

Chris Brady co-authored the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Weekly, USA Today, and Money Magazine best-seller Launching a Leadership Revolution.

He is also in the World’s Top 30 Leadership Gurus and among the Top 100 Authors to Follow on Twitter. He has spoken to audiences of thousands around the world about leadership, freedom, and success.

Mr. Brady contributes regularly to Networking Times magazine, and has been featured in special publications of Success and Success at Home. He also blogs regularly at Chris Brady.

He is an avid motorized adventurer, pilot, world traveler, humorist, community builder, soccer fan, and dad.

Connect With Chris:

In the American founding era, most of the leading thinkers were rationalists.

This means that they believed in reason as a top method of determining truth.

Note that the general concept of reason has changed since then.

When most people think of reason today, they tend to mix it with the ideas of logic, science and determinism.

In the American colonial and early republican era, this was not the case.

The term “science” was often used to mean general thinking and the idea of learning, and in this sense it coincided with the rational perspective.

But today’s technical science, based on a general consensus of experts along with the empirical use of the scientific method, is quite the opposite of the rationalist viewpoint.

And logic, which is actually a branch of mathematics (rather than philosophy), is very different than reason.

Reason, in the original sense, is the use of one’s own mind to test and analyze the words of the experts, the ancients, and all authority.

In the founding generation, reason was a check and balance on the smug groupthink[i] of the upper classes and elites.

Most of the leading founders usually used the term “right reason” rather than simple “reason,” since this first phrase carried the connotation that all right-thinking people would come to the same conclusions if they had the benefit of adequate information.

In this view, no king, priest, aristocrat or expert can rely simply on some claim to a “divine right” of expertise to be correct—each individual citizen can test everything said by the elites simply by taking the time to obtain all needed information and then think it through.

Forrest McDonald wrote in the introduction to Empire and Nation, a collection of writings by American founders John Dickinson and Richard Henry Lee:

“In the historical view, men have such rights as they have won over the years; in the rationalist view, men are born with certain rights, whether they are honored in a particular society or not.”

Using reason, leading American founder John Dickinson wrote:

“Ought not the people therefore to watch? to search into causes? to investigate designs? And have they not a right of JUDGING from the evidence before them, on no slighter points than their liberty and happiness?”[ii]

It is always up to the people to maintain their freedom, and one of the first steps is to think—independently as they see fit—regardless of the assurances, promises and statistics of experts and elites.

Throughout history, the experts have nearly always worked for the elites, and the regular people have held reason as their first line of defense.

When the regular people put expertise, tradition, authority or official promises above their own reason, they have always lost their freedoms and prosperity.

Dickinson put it this way:

“Indeed, nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty.”[iii]

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

“We know more than we know we know.” -Michael Polanyi

Feeling overwhelmed by cultural, political, and economic forces beyond your control?

Dismayed that we’re rapidly losing freedom?

Want to make a greater difference?

If so, your power and answers lie in the right hemisphere of your brain, waiting to be activated.

If you’re stuck in left-brain mode, you’re getting left behind.

Read on to learn how to become a more effective social leader, prosper financially, and move the cause of liberty.

1 Brain 2 Brains, Left Brain Right Brain

In 1981, neuropsychologist and neurbiologist Roger Sperry won a Nobel Prize “for his discoveries concerning the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres.”

Before Dr. Sperry’s “split-brain experiments,” it was commonly thought that the left hemisphere of the brain was more important than the right.

Dr. Sperry shattered this false view and revealed stunning new insights into how the brain works. As he put it,

“The so-called subordinate or minor hemisphere, which we had formerly supposed to be illiterate and mentally retarded and thought by some authorities to not even be conscious, was found to be in fact the superior cerebral member when it came to performing certain kinds of mental tasks.”

The left brain is linear, logical, objective, verbal, and conceptual. The right brain, visual and perceptual, reasons holistically, recognizes patterns, and interprets emotions and nonverbal expressions.

The left brain is scientific, the right is intuitive, artistic, creative, imaginative. The left brain craves order, the right feeds on chaos.

The left brain demands everything to be literal, while the right brain is electrified by symbols, metaphors, art, and abstractions.

The left brain sees a sentence like “Her heart soared to the heavens” and smirks, “What a load of crap.”

The right brain gushes, “Wow! Cool! Can I soar, too?”

“Good poets make extensive use of ‘right-brain language.’ Forget that sensible, linear, factual, left-brain speech. The language of the right brain is a horse of a different color. A riot of imagery, a cascade of connections, sensations, and associations. The right brain speaks in metaphors, juxtapositions, and similes, using a whole range of poetic devices to express the inexpressible and describe the indescribable.” -Robin Frederick

Clearly, both hemispheres are vital to success in any endeavor. Unfortunately, our society and educational system have traditionally placed way more emphasis on the left.

However, we’re engulfed in monumental shifts.

To navigate these shifts and leverage them to your advantage requires a much higher degree and depth of right-brain thinking than most people are used to.

“Employers are already saying that a degree is not enough, and that many graduates do not have the qualities they are looking for: the ability to communicate, work in teams, adapt to change, to innovate and be creative.

“This is not surprising…The traditional academic curriculum is not designed to promote creativity. Complaining that the system does not produce creative people is like complaining that a car doesn’t fly…it was never intended to.

“The stark message is that the answer to the future is not simply to increase the amount of education, but to educate people differently.” -Professor Ken Robinson of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, a group of neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators committed to educational reform

For social leaders in particular, cultivating your right brain is vital for at least the following reasons:

1. To make more money.
2. To increase your innovation and problem-solving skills.
3. To move the cause of liberty.

Right-Brain Economics

In his phenomenal bestseller A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, Daniel Pink draws from mountains of research to explain that we’re moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

“We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we’re progressing yet again–to a society of creators and empathizers, of pattern recognizers and meaning makers.”

Pink cites three primary reasons for this cataclysmic shift:

Abundance

“Our left brains have made us rich…But abundance has produced an ironic result: The very triumph of [left-brain] thinking has lessened its significance. The prosperity it has unleashed has placed a premium on less rational, more [right-brain] sensibilities–beauty, spirituality, emotion.”

Asia

“If standardized, routine [left-brain] work such as many kinds of financial analysis, radiology, and computer programming can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber optic links, that’s where the work will go.”

Automation

“Last century, machines proved they could replace human backs. This century, new technologies are proving they can replace human left brains.”

To adapt to these forces, Pink offers six requisite senses for thriving in the Conceptual Age–all of which are right-brain aptitudes:

1. Design. Making things beautiful and functional.
2. Story. Appealing to logic and emotion.
3. Symphony. Connecting dots, seeing the full picture.
4. Empathy. As Daniel Goleman demonstrated in Emotional Intelligence, emotional abilities impact our careers much more than our IQ.
5. Play. “Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the last 300 years of industrial society–our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value.” -Pat Kane, Author of The Play Ethic
6. Meaning. “Meaning. Purpose. Deep life experience. Use whatever word or phrase you like, but know that consumer desire for these qualities is on the rise. Remember your Abraham Maslow and your Viktor Frankl. Bet your business on it.” -Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes

Pink challenges individuals and businesses to ask themselves three questions:

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it faster?
3. Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance?

He then concludes:

“Individuals and organizations that focus their efforts on doing what foreign knowledge workers can’t do cheaper and computers do faster, as well as on meeting the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual demands of a prosperous time, will thrive. Those who ignore these three questions will struggle.”

Get Out of the Box

Change has never been more fundamental, rapid, and disruptive.

More than ever, today’s leaders must learn to recognize, trust, and follow their intuition to connect dots, predict trends, and adapt to new realities.

And where does intuition come from? You guessed it: the right brain.

Roy H. Williams, author of the legendary Monday Morning Memo and founder of Wizard Academy, explains:

“Intellect is linear, putting facts in columns and rows, while intuition is nonlinear, putting all the facts in a big bowl, then stirring them together like soup, watching to see what might ‘connect.’

“…Great leaders have intuition. Explorers have intuition. Inventors have intuition. It is intuition that tells them how to go where none has ever been.”

Accessing and cultivating intuition is how social leaders can successfully navigate change, overcome challenges, and solve problems.

To create different results, we need new ways of thinking, and left-brain thinking isn’t going to get us there.

(By the way, if you want to test your intuition, read this article and connect the dots between Oliver’s thesis and what I’m saying here.)

Fight for the Right

In his eye-opening — and highly intuitive — lecture “The Freedom Crisis,” Oliver DeMille declares that one of the serious flaws of freedom-lovers is that we tend to think and communicate very literally.

The problem with this, as Oliver says, is that

“Literal talk is not what sways the thinking populace. The thinking populace is swayed by symbol, celebrity, and poetry — poetry in the broad sense.”

Literal language is divisive. It repels people with whom we share common beliefs and goals. Symbolism and poetics, on the other hand, speak to universalities. They unite and inspire.

To change hearts and minds and win the freedom war requires us to be artful rather than forceful. In other words, passionate freedom-lovers must take a more right-brain approach to their struggle.

Oliver goes on to explain the difference between sensus solum and sensus plenior.

Sensus solum translates as “one meaning,” while sensus plenior means “multiple, or fuller meanings.”

Sensus solum — or literal — thinking has dominated mainstream education for decades. It trains the masses to think in terms of black or white, right or wrong.

Sensus solum thinkers read things to find the correct answer. It is rigid and, by definition, limited.

In contrast, sensus plenior education — of which poetry is an integral component — explores depth, nuance, multiple perspectives, and holistic thinking. It fosters creativity and innovation.

Bottom line: sensus solum is left-brain thinking, sensus plenior is right-brain thinking.

Which is needed to promote freedom?

Trick question — we don’t need either/or, we need both.

Just as those who cultivate both left and right brain aptitudes will have greater success economically, so will they have greater impact on the freedom movement.

Still, since sensus solum is the dominant perspective most of us have been trained in, it is vital that we cultivate the ability to think in terms of sensus plenior — which means specific and consistent right-brain training.

Get the Right Stuff

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein

This isn’t “touchy-feely, artsy-fartsy” stuff — the realities of right-brain thinking are tangible, practical, relevant, and vital.

Nurturing your right brain makes you more creative, imaginative and innovative, and better equipped to solve problems, overcome challenges, and make better decisions.

It helps you recognize, predict, and capitalize on trends. It helps you communicate more effectively and universally.

In short, it makes you a better entrepreneur and leader.

And it’s the right thing to do. Uh-huh.

10 Specific Ways to Cultivate Your Right Brain

1. Attend Wizard Academy courses.

2. Take art, music, acting, and/or dancing classes. Starve your inhibitions, gorge your imagination.

3. Visit art museums and galleries.

4. Practice writing short stories. One valuable and quick technique is to do what I’ve done on this blog. Another is “mini-sagas”–stories consisting of no more than 50 words.

5. Keep a notepad and pen on your nightstand and write down your dreams. Dreams are your right brain communicating to your left; it has no language functions, so it communicates through symbols. Record not only what you visualized, but also how it felt. Try to interpret the symbolism and apply your interpretations to practical things in your life. Compare your dreams over time to recognize patterns.

6. Read more fiction, fantasy, poetry, and humor.

7. Listen to more classical music.

8. Play more. Seriously. Video games, sports, board games, concerts, leisure time. Intuition kicks in more often and more clearly when you have no deadlines or objectives. Simply play. If you think this sounds silly, consider that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was a huge proponent of play.

9. Meditate at least 15 minutes every day.

10. Read and listen to these books, articles, and speeches:

• A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink
• Free the Beagle: A Journey to Destinae by Roy H. Williams
• “The Freedom Crisis” by Oliver DeMille
• Drawing on the Artist Within: An Inspirational & Practical Guide to Increasing Your Creative Powers by Betty Edwards
• Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ by Daniel Goleman
• Accidental Magic: The Wizard’s Techniques for Writing Words Worth 1,000 Pictures by Wizard Academy
• “CEO Libraries Reveal Keys to Success”
• “A Liberal Take on Hiring”
• “What Would Plato Do?”
• “Think Your Liberal Arts Degree Won’t Get You a Real Job?”
• “The Liberal Arts & Business”

Once in a while a truly great book comes along that you just can’t wait to tell everyone else to read. Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich is that kind of book.

I started reading in the afternoon and couldn’t put it down until I finished.

My first thought when I completed the last page was, “I wish I had written this!” My second thought was, “I need to read this again.”

Those who have read and studied A Thomas Jefferson Education (TJEd) or Leadership Education will find this book especially enjoyable. It covers a lot of TJEd themes, but with its own interesting twist.

As I read it I kept saying, “Yes! Absolutely! Right on!” I haven’t seen a book so totally capture the vision of Leadership Education in home school in a long time.

But I’ll let this outstanding book speak for itself. Here are some quotes from this fabulous little book:

“In many schools across the world, children en masse get dropped off and enter buildings where they become the recipient of linear ‘teaching’ and tests. They go home, do homework, and start over again the next day—all for the goal of preparing them for the next level of school and meeting broad and dubiously constructed standards.”

A better “…type of learning answers such questions as: ‘What do I love doing?’ ‘What is my dream?’ ‘What gives me energy?’ ‘What are my unique strengths?’ and even ‘What is my role in a group?’”

“There are two reasons to learn something: either because you need it or because you love it.”

“Twenty-five critical skills are seldom taught, tested or graded….adapting, analyzing and managing risks…being a leader…gathering evidence, identifying and using boards of mentors and advisors…managing projects, negotiating, planning long term…”

“Don’t worry about preparing students for jobs from an Agatha Christie novel…”

“One computer + one spreadsheet software program = math curricula.”

“Five subjects a day? Really?”

“Maturing solves a lot of problems.”

“Grouping students by the same age is just a bad idea.”

“Tests don’t work. Get over it. Move on.”

“The future is portfolios, not transcripts.”

“Outdoors beats indoors.”

“The predominant academic milieu should be walking. When walking, children can talk. They can think.”

“Under-schedule to take advantage of the richness of life.”

“But it will not be the governments, or their school systems, or other of their institutions that will drive real innovation in reconstructing childhood education. It will be as it already is, the homeschoolers and the unschoolers.”

These are just a sample of the many wise things in Unschooling Rules. As I said, this book fits right in with the TJEd model of leadership education and home school. I highly recommend it book for every parent, teacher and administrator involved in modern education. It is a manual for great learning.

My friend Jeff Sandefer wrote in the forward to this excellent book:

“Each child has a spark of genius waiting to be discovered, ignited, and fed. And the goal of schools shouldn’t be to manufacture ‘productive citizens’ to fill some corporate cubicle; it should be to inspire each child to find a ‘calling’ that will change the world. The jobs for the future are no longer Manager, Director, or Analyst, but Entrepreneur, Creator, and even Revolutionary.”

This is a great book for our time — whether you home school or not. Five stars! I hope you’ll read it right away. If you are new to TJEd, read this great book right along with A Thomas Jefferson Education.

If you’re already familiar with TJEd, Unschooling Rules provides another excellent witness of what really works for truly quality education. This book belongs on every shelf, and its ideas need to be in every mind!

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Why can’t the freedom movement seem to get any traction?

Why have we lost battle after battle for at least the past century?

It’s because we tend to make the good the enemy of the perfect, the pragmatic the enemy of the ideal.

To be clear, it’s because the most passionate among us have adopted a rigid, dogmatic, uncompromising “either-or” stance in the fight.

Rather than winning hearts and minds in the trenches inch-by-inch, we drop rhetorical nuclear bombs and make enemies of potential supporters.

There’s one critical distinction that explains this tendency and, if understood, can overcome it and make all the difference to our success:

Do we view the fight for freedom as an election-cycle battle, or as a 100-year war?

These vastly different mindsets generate completely different strategies and tactics and produce completely different results.

If we view the fight as an election-cycle battle, the battlegrounds are primarily political and governmental.

The tactics include:

• Public, energetic, and angry marches and demonstrations
• Passionate, vitriolic, and partisan commentary that preaches to the crowd and riles the base but fails to win new supporters
• Literal, logical, and personal argumentation
• Directing energy primarily at getting individual political candidates elected

But in a 100-year war, the battlegrounds are cultural and educational, and the short-term tactics above shift to the following long-term strategies:

• Personal, lifelong, classical education in the quiet of our homes
• Respectful, thoughtful, open-minded discussion with people across the whole spectrum of belief, with the intention of winning hearts and minds, rather than simply spewing passion or proving how smart and “right” we are
• Symbolic, metaphorical, and artful story-telling and persuasion
• Directing energy toward reforming education, building families and communities, and becoming successful entrepreneurs (see the three choices in FreedomShift by Oliver DeMille)

In a 100-year war, we moderate our passion and smarten our strategy.

We heal the roots of our demise, rather than hacking at the symptomatic leaves.

We work from love, rather than anger.

We reform from the outside-in and bottom-up, rather than the top-down. In other words, we focus on fixing ourselves, rather than Washington.

We understand that studying Montesquieu in our homes is far more effective than waving banners in the streets.

We spend our time and energy teaching the rising generation the depths of freedom and political philosophy, rather than debating opponents in chat rooms and on radio and TV shows.

We build successful small businesses, rather than complaining about losing jobs overseas.

In a 100-year war, idealism and pragmatism aren’t mutually exclusive. We’re more concerned with direction than destination.

In other words, we don’t reject particular policies because they’re not ultimate, black-and-white ideals.

Rather, we judge them based on whether or not they take us closer to the ideal, however slight the progress.

In a 100-year war, we learn and teach principles, rather than fight candidates.

To be perfectly clear, we don’t waste time forwarding mass emails about the status of Obama’s birth certificate.

Most importantly, in a 100-year war, independent freedom lovers create an inclusive tent, rather than an exclusive club.

For example, many conservatives denigrate environmentalists, or as they’re disdainfully labeled, “tree-huggers.”

But many of these environment-conscious, thoughtful people are also highly-conscious and passionate about local, organic food production and sustainable agriculture — which is a primary battleground for freedom.

So rather than building on common beliefs and bringing these people into the tent of freedom, many conservatives banish them with narrow-minded labels.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is also a favorite target of many conservative commentators.

But wise freedom-lovers would do well to harness their energy.

The truth is that they raise a critical point that most conservatives fail to see: Vast inequities in wealth distribution and power are, in fact, killing America — every bit as much, if not more so, than governmental wealth redistribution from rich to poor.

The government does favor those with capital over those with little or none, big businesses over small businesses, which creates these unfair and unsustainable inequities.

We don’t have to occupy Wall Street with them, but we can at least be wise enough to recognize where we agree in order to work together toward a more free, just, and sustainable society.

We can start winning more friends and creating fewer enemies. We can be pragmatic coalition-builders, rather than dogmatic clique-builders.

I’m as passionate about freedom as anyone — freedom is my mission.

But passion alone isn’t going to win the fight for freedom.

The war will be won through wisdom.

The result of our intermingled modern educational and class systems is too often that the modern citizen feels, as G.K. Chesterton put it, “I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all.”

Lesson One: A major lesson of our modern schooling is that we are all somewhere on the social scale, we should give way to those above us on the scale and look down to those below us.

Lesson Two: Another lesson is that the teacher, the authority, the official, etc. is above us all, and we should always, always, bow to those above us.[i]

Lesson Three: Too many young people also learn that there is nothing worth fighting for—“Always walk away. No matter what!”

In fairness, these lessons come naturally with the advancing of society—but so does national decline. And these things—false lessons and national decline—historically come together.

Surely there is a time to follow authority, to humbly give way to others, to walk away from a fight. All of these lessons are part of a good education, along with the reality that there is a time to stand against authority (e.g. King George, Stalin, etc.), to reject elitism, and to fight for something that matters (against slavery, against Hitler, etc.).

A combination of these lessons is part of any balanced education. An emphasis on just one side of these lessons is mere brainwashing.

As Chesterton said, Joan of Arc “…did not praise fighting, but fought.” The same is true of Washington, Lincoln, and Gandhi. Gandhi taught that violence is not the way, but strength and standing for what is right is essential. Can you imagine Gandhi caving in to the upper class? He would bow, but in the bowing he would stand even stronger for what is right.

To really educate, we must teach all sides of the issues—not simply the behaviors of class society, dependence on authority and walking away from any threat of force. There are things worth fighting for. Each citizen must think deeply and independently. Experts should be listened to, but not worshipped.

Alvin Toffler put it this way:

“Built on the factory model, mass education taught basic reading, writing, and arithmetic, a bit of history and other subjects. This was the ‘overt curriculum.’ But beneath it lay an invisible or ‘covert curriculum’ that was far more basic. It consisted—and still does in most industrial nations—of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work. Factory labor demanded workers who show…up on time…take orders from a management hierarchy without questioning…[a]nd perform…brutally repetitious operations.”[ii]

This societal focus naturally influences our citizenry.

***********************************

Kevin Mogavero is a co-founder of “Six Degrees of Leadership,” a personal development company that empowers people to live their purpose and passion by building “Social Capital.”

A graduate of West Point Academy, Kevin served six years as an officer in the U.S. Army Field Artillery. He held a combat arms leadership role for his entire career, except one staff position, during which he obtained a Master’s Degree in Leadership and Management. He also served in Iraq during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Since the military, Kevin has worked for Honeywell as an earned-value analyst in the aerospace department, in Phoenix Arizona.

He started testing his leadership skills in the entrepreneurial world by starting several companies, to include a real estate company and a business mailing-address company. Kevin loves to serve people who have a yearning to create a better life for themselves and others. He is passionate about teaching people the importance of something that most take for granted: relationships.

Kevin lives in Phoenix with his wife and two daughters. Read and subscribe to Kevin’s Warrior Blog here.

Home Schools, the New Private Schools, and Other Non-Traditional Learning

The current national commentary on American education is split by a major paradox.

On the one hand, nearly all the experts are convinced that our schools must find a way to effectively and consistently teach the values and skills of innovation and initiative.

If we fail in this, everyone seems to agree, the competitiveness of U.S. workers and the economy will continue to fall behind other nations.

As Gary Shapiro wrote:

“Our nation is looking into the abyss. With a blinding focus on the present, our government is neglecting a future that demands thoughtful action.

“The only valid government action is that which invests in our children. This requires hard choices…

“America is in crisis. What is required is a commitment to innovation and growth. We can and must succeed.

“With popular and political resolve, we can reverse America’s decline…. America must become the world’s innovative engine once again; we cannot fail.”

And education is the key.

On the other hand, many of the top education decision-makers seem committed to only making changes when there is a consensus among educators, parents, experts and administrators.

They adamantly criticize any who take bold, innovative initiate to improve the situation.

In the meantime, they wait timidly, albeit loudly, for a consensus which never comes.

Because of this view, the innovative success of many parents in home schools, teachers in small private schools and other non-traditional educational offerings go unnoticed or undervalued by the national press.

The reality is, as Orrin Woodward put it: “If everyone agrees with what you’re doing, it isn’t innovative.”

The growing Global Achievement Gap in our schools, as outlined by Tony Wagner’s book of this title, presents an ominous warning for Americans.

We can change things if we choose, Wagner says, by adopting the following values and skills in our school curriculum: critical thinking, agility, adaptability, initiative, curiosity, imagination and entrepreneurialism, among others.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan quoted Wagner in Foreign Affairs:

“…there is a happy ‘convergence between the skills most needed in the global knowledge economy and those most needed to keep our economy safe and vibrant.’”

He also foreshadowed the decades ahead by quoting President Obama:

“The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow.”

It is difficult to imagine our public schools meeting these lofty needs if our teachers are expected to be anything but entrepreneurial, innovative and agile, when they in fact work in an environment that discourages and at times punishes precisely such behaviors.

It is even more impossible to make the needed changes to our education system if we must wait for everyone to agree on a consensus of action.

Change always comes with a few courageous souls taking the lead, showing what can work, and helping others follow their innovative path.

The only way we’re going to see a burst of innovation and initiative in American education is to start paying attention to the myriad exciting educational innovations already occurring.

As Malcolm Gladwell suggests, the leadership right now in many arenas—including education—is occurring outside the mainstream, led by “Outliers” who just forget the experts and create new and better ways of doing things.

If you are one of these educational innovators—at home or in the classroom—keep taking the lead. You are the future of American success!

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver:

Read Part One Here

Must an education be limited to completing a checklist of courses in order to receive a certificate of conformance to present as evidence to a prospective employer of having met a minimum standard of proficiency in practical, productive job skills?

Is an education limited to passing through a “liberal arts” program at a name brand institution in order to gain entrance into the power circles standing guard and carefully bestowing limited access to positions of power in government, business, and law?

Or is an education limited to the fine art of intellect-building, culling knowledge from the great ideas of the past and the present, simply for the sake of knowledge?

What is an education, and what is its purpose?

The study of languages offers a portal into the exploration of at least a partial answer to such a worthy question.

Learning begins with an awakening to something previously unknown—a glimpse of the view from a different vantage point—an expanded perception of the world.

Right learning takes our perceived reality a step closer to actuality.

The true language of math trains our minds to recognize patterns, think in the abstract, and logically reason.

The true language of science increases our capacities to observe, to measure, to think in the concrete, and to make and test theories.

The true language of art teaches us to both appreciate and express beauty, symmetry, elegance, emotion, and feeling.

The study of foreign languages introduces us to human cultures and worldviews distinct from our own, allows us to recapture nuances once lost in translation, and offers a gesture of respect to others with whom we want to seek common ground and understanding.

A personal worldview may be likened to peering through a monocle.

Depending on the quality of the lens, the view can be clear and magnified or in places it may be somewhat clouded and distorted.

With only a single eye, the view is inherently limited in scope and depth.

Learning another language is much like adding another monocle, thus creating binocular vision.

It adds another vantage point that in many ways complements, enriches, and completes the original picture.

Of course, in another sense, the new monocle may also compete to be fitted to the dominant eye.

The challenger may present alternative values and goals that, by definition, are incompatible with the status quo.

A hearing will be demanded and a choice must be made.

The virtue of Hebrew is that it offers both a completing and a competing lens to consider.

Completing Features I live in a western world that is highly influenced by our Greek and Roman heritage.

The Greeks teach me the static nature of things at rest.

Things simply are.

They are fixed and inflexible, ordered, calculated, reasoned, planned, and rational.

Ideally, life is peaceful and harmonious; it is meant to be lived in moderation—a virtuous compromise centered between the vices of the extreme.

The Hebrews offer me a distinct, yet complementary, alternative.

Theirs is a verb-oriented language.

The foundation of nearly all ancient Hebrew words is a three-letter root whose basic meaning expresses movement or activity.

Other letters are then added as prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to derive the other grammatical forms: verb conjugations, nouns, adjectives, etc.

Thus, the very construction of the Hebrew language emphasizes the dynamic and active nature of things.

They are changeable and in motion.

Take, for example, a mountain, a decidedly static object to my Greek eye.

Point at it.

Declare it a noun.

“But wait…” interrupts the Hebrew. “Do you see ‘that which looms’ in the distance?”

The primitive root for mountain is a verb meaning to rise up or loom.

In the same sense, a door is that which opens wide.

Mountain and door—that which looms up and that which opens.

The nuance is dynamic, masterful, and energetic.

In contrast to the peaceful and harmonious, life is vigorous, passionate, and explosive.

Life in all its light, color, voice, sound, tone, smell, and taste is meant to be experienced, not spectated.

To my Greek mind, appearance holds highest priority.

It favors an objective, outsider’s point-of-view: observe beauty as displayed in the ideal form and symbol.

Consider, for example, the golden ratio and other optical refinements in the Parthenon and the vast architecture, sculptures, and paintings of Ancient Greece.

Hebrew, in contrast, teaches me to value impression, a subjective, experiencing, insider’s perspective: feel beauty as revealed in function—that which fulfills it purpose—that which lives in excitement and rhythm.

Rather than the architecture, the sculpture, or the painting, see the transformation of the stone, the clay, and the canvas in the master’s hand.

How is Noah’s ark to be constructed? Of what is the Tabernacle made?

Dimensions and materials are defined, but a visual image of these edifices does not come easily to mind.

Compare that to the much more visually descriptive cave in Plato’s allegory, or to the gods of Homer and Hesiod.

The Greeks argue that the power of the mind is measured in its capacity to think logically, to gather and synthesize, and to reason its way to truth.

Points, lines, and planes offer visual and spatial elements for working Euclid’s geometry.

Aristotle’s logic systematically reasons to a right-minded conclusion.

To know for the Greek is to see what is.

“Seek learning” in order to furnish a proof.

Hebrew, on the other hand, proposes to me that the power of the mind be measured in its capacity for psychological understanding, its ability to analyze by dismembering and separating.

Experience, rather than observation, is the primary path to knowing.

Truth is steady, faithful, sure, constant, trustworthy, and certain; and that certainty comes through recollection.

Time, rather than being expressed spatially—timeline, point in time, from time to time—is rhythmic.

It has a beginning and an end; but it alternates between light and darkness, warmth and cold.

Again, this notion is carried in the very construction of the language.

In English, verb tenses are related to time: past, present, and future.

“He spoke. He speaks. He will speak.” In Hebrew, verb tenses are related to action.

The action is either complete or incomplete.

“The speaking is finished. The speaking is not finished.”

To know for the Hebrew is to hear and feel what becomes.

“Seek learning” to find a point.

The challenge before me is to somehow attend equally to both of these heritages; to find a synthesis between what at first glance appears to be diametrically opposed biases—similar to resolving the dual-nature of light, which at times demonstrates a wave-like structure and at other times a particle nature.

Studying Hebrew is another monocle to awaken my awareness to other possibilities, offering a distinct, but complementary, vantage point—a more accurate perception and an expanded worldview.

**********************************

Shanon Brooks is the President of Monticello College, the Director of Education and Training for Humanitarian Visions International, S.A., and a founding partner of the Center for Social Leadership. He co-authored Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens.

Shanon and his wife Julia are raising their six children in Monticello, Utah.

Connect With Shanon:

By Oliver DeMille

The current national commentary on American education is split by a major paradox.

On the one hand, nearly all the experts are convinced that our schools must find a way to effectively and consistently teach the values and skills of innovation and initiative.

If we fail in this, everyone seems to agree, the competitiveness of U.S. workers and the economy will continue to fall behind other nations.

As Gary Shapiro wrote:

“Our nation is looking into the abyss. With a blinding focus on the present, our government is neglecting a future that demands thoughtful action.

“The only valid government action is that which invests in our children. This requires hard choices…

“America is in crisis. What is required is a commitment to innovation and growth. We can and must succeed.

“With popular and political resolve, we can reverse America’s decline…. America must become the world’s innovative engine once again; we cannot fail.”

And education is the key.

On the other hand, many of the top education decision-makers seem committed to only making changes when there is a consensus among educators, parents, experts and administrators.

They adamantly criticize any who take bold, innovative initiate to improve the situation.

In the meantime, they wait timidly, albeit loudly, for a consensus which never comes.

Because of this view, the innovative success of many parents in home schools, teachers in small private schools and other non-traditional educational offerings go unnoticed or undervalued by the national press.

The reality is, as Orrin Woodward put it: “If everyone agrees with what you’re doing, it isn’t innovative.”

The growing Global Achievement Gap in our schools, as outlined by Tony Wagner’s book of this title, presents an ominous warning for Americans.

We can change things if we choose, Wagner says, by adopting the following values and skills in our school curriculum: critical thinking, agility, adaptability, initiative, curiosity, imagination and entrepreneurialism, among others.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan quoted Wagner in Foreign Affairs:

“…there is a happy ‘convergence between the skills most needed in the global knowledge economy and those most needed to keep our economy safe and vibrant.’”

He also foreshadowed the decades ahead by quoting President Obama:

“The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow.”

It is difficult to imagine our public schools meeting these lofty needs if our teachers are expected to be anything but entrepreneurial, innovative and agile, when they in fact work in an environment that discourages and at times punishes precisely such behaviors.

It is even more impossible to make the needed changes to our education system if we must wait for everyone to agree on a consensus of action.

Change always comes with a few courageous souls taking the lead, showing what can work, and helping others follow their innovative path.

The only way we’re going to see a burst of innovation and initiative in American education is to start paying attention to the myriad exciting educational innovations already occurring.

As Malcolm Gladwell suggests, the leadership right now in many arenas—including education—is occurring outside the mainstream, led by “Outliers” who just forget the experts and create new and better ways of doing things.

If you are one of these educational innovators—at home or in the classroom—keep taking the lead. You are the future of American success!

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Oliver: