Show Overview

Michael Maser interviews Caprice Thorsen about her new book: Instead of Schooling: Educating for Creativity, Resilience, & Happiness.

Caprice shares her journey of 17 years of self-directed education and home educating her two daughters, Sage and Kayli. She wrote this book to empower parents to educate their children so that they discover who they are, what their gifts and talents are, and how to live a joyful life.
Michael and Caprice talk about the dark history of schooling, 

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Get the transcript of the full show. 

Connect with Michael Maser and Books We Mentioned

Find Michael Maser and his book Learn Your Way on his website: Dreaming Dragon Consulting.
The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto
Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto: another classic that will change how you view school forever. 
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil
The Deepest Acceptance by Jeff Foster

Show Highlights

3:30: Michael share a brief review of Caprice's book Instead of Schooling. 
5:00: Caprice tells her story of why she wrote this book and who she hopes to help. Most parents think that the only option for education is school - whether that's public school or private school, and they don't have the distinction between schooling and learning.
7:10: As Caprice watcher her daughters grow, she observed their innate wisdom. That they already had everything inside of them to be the perfect version of themselves. And it wasn't about filling them with information. It was about being a guide and giving them the space and the guidance. You know it's not just leaving them to their own devices because it's a big world and they don't know what options are available.
9:30: Michael shares one of his favorite quotes from the book where Caprice says, "Your child has everything inside to grow into an amazing adult like the acorn will grow into an oak tree. Your child has the wisdom, resources, intelligence, and gifts to follow their soul's calling out.”
9:50: Caprice tells about her "successful" executive coaching clients who felt empty inside and she didn't want this to happen to her kids. 
13:30: We are born to create and happiness is our natural state. 
14:45: We've got a lot of really, really well schooled people running the show. And, in my opinion, they're not doing the greatest job. We need some fresh insights. We need people to approach these problems from a new perspective.
22:00: Caprice was really careful not to make teachers the bad guys. Because they're not, they're stuck in the system as well. But if you're a teacher, and you have to march kids through this boring, irrelevant curriculum, you have to resort to coercion.
24:00: Parents think that, by pressuring their kids to compete and to win this game of schooling that they're doing something good for their kids. And I really wanted to wake them up to know that's very damaging to kids. 
30:45: Another of Michael's favorite quotes from the book:  “I believe that the goal of education is empowered, awakened individuals who use their minds, creativity and energy to co-create a free and fair society and healthy biosphere.”
34:45: The book will change how you view human nature and how we are designed to learn. And so once you understand how humans really learn, you will see how absurd schooling is.
40:20: There is no falling behind because learning is not a competition. It's been set up to be a competition which leads to the hyper-competitive society that we live in now. But if you can say - look - learning is not competition and your kid has everything that they need to be a successful person in life. And it's not your job to teach them anything. You just need to guide them.
44:00: There are no basics to master.
47:30: We have been trained to believe that there is this external world out there that we have no control over. But we try to control it.