August 3, 2020
they knew I was good at it and really loved it. they would come to me for tutoring for help. And I really got started in this from when I was like eight years old and, , the company started the company. Cause I saw that there were all these parents who all these parents did not have, , the continence that their kids would be really good at math. And they wanted them to be, , everybody knows that when your kids do well in math Bureau of labor statistics tells you that you're paying could rise an average of 70% above average, if you have a math degree, for example. people know the value and , parents really want to be sure they have a way to do it. And I felt like I was meeting that need by starting the company, but it really is because I'm passionate about it. And I don't want to see people missing out on the joy of math that I've experienced my whole life. What a great thing. It's many people don't experience that. I'm just trying to bring more happiness to the world. Cool. Yeah. When I was a, when I was young, well, first of all, I love math. Math is my favorite subject. , when I was young, , on long drives my, my mom and my dad, they would like quiz me on multiplication tables. And , , I, , I, I was quick, right. And the better you get, the more confidence you are and the better you become. And, , , in, in college I was in calculus, I took calc one, calc two, calc, three differential equations, linear algebra, , and , I attribute that to learning the multiplication table really well because it, it compounds, ? did you find that to be the case at all? Like what, what, what grade did, , , you said you were eight years old when you fell, when you loved math? Well, I started when I was four or five and I would drag my mom to the library to get math books. And that's when I really first started, obviously it's really simple stuff, just simple additions, subtraction. Can you think of anything that your, your mom or your dad did that helped you kind of build that confidence or gain that interest? Yeah. , that's interesting, you mentioned that I do remember four years old, there was a felt, this is consistent with Montessori principles. It's cool. My mom wasn't Montessori trained, but she created a felt board from scratch, took a piece of cardboard, got some felt stapled it. it was tight. And then she got some coarse paper colored paper, and she would, she and I would cut out the numbers and the arithmetic symbols, and we would put the numbers up on the felt board and it was much fun to play with that and feel the felt, and put the numbers up there. And then I would, , there'll be a problem for a plus two and I'd have to find a six or upside down night and stick it there. we had a great time and that that's a memory that just sticks with me in terms of math. Isn't just a process that you do by yourself. It's something you can collaborate with other people with. That's one thing that tells me another is that it's not all abstract and sitting in a book, my mom followed whether knowingly or unknowingly the Montessori principle of learning from gracefully and gradually from concrete to abstract and, and that worked. And, and I think back on the, the smell of the, felt, the feel of the, felt, the movement of the numbers onto the felt and off the felt, and they'd fall off sometimes. And how do we get them to stay on there? And, , all that was part of the joy of learning. And I wanted to be sure that in the curriculum that I wrote, that we had these body elements, this attachment, it's not, , it's a, spinosa kind of thing where you just have the body and the mind are intertwined and learn together. And when we address both and not try to isolate them, we end up with this much more solid web and foundation that like learning the multiplication tables that we can use, no matter what it is, we're trying to learn that same pattern fits. Have you been to a public or private school, , in the last few years? Of course. And, and , how have things changed? , what makes you think they've changed? They haven't changed public and private schools by and large are run the same way. They've been run for 140 years when industrialization in the U S , made it necessary for desirable for parents to send their kids off to a public school. there's a huge movement throughout the world where public schools came about more as a bureaucracy, more than the Thomas Mann ideal of having our kids educated. we've been stuck with this model, which obviously is out of date today by and large in public schools today. If their expect, look, I don't want to say it's exactly the same. I've seen some improvement, but I was going to say is there's, , by and large 45 minute classes or 55 minute classes, kids are expected to learn a certain amount of material in that timeframe with varying different backgrounds, bearing different varying, varying different learning styles. Yet they're all expected to learn the same thing in the same amount of time in a classroom in that short period of time. that doesn't, , if one child were able to actually do that, that'd be a lot. But what w what schools are starting to experiment with? One of the things we've observed, this is public and private schools. I'm not talking about Montessori schools. That's another thing when the public and private schools, they are now experimenting with longer classes, like two hour classes. they can really do some deep dives. I think that's a great thing. They're doing it partly for efficiency, that kids don't spend as much time traveling between classes, but whatever the reason, , , it's, it's, it's a, it's a, a good change and schools are finding better outcomes with that, but there's such a long way to go. And just having kids from the same grade in the same classroom, studying the same thing at the same time, not using all the different learning styles, , the, the whole philosophy that teachers, they call them teachers that by itself, health is an issue because students are there to learn. Students are natural learners. They don't need teachers. They're their own best teacher. Well, they definitely definitely benefit from are having guides, which is the Montessori term for a teacher where they're guided, but the kids are in charge of their own learning. And the minute we take that away from them, they become demotivated, bored, frustrated, and we want, and then we say, all kids have to be forced to learn. That's the system that's drawn that into them. Kids are natural learners. We want to enable that, let that flourish and grow, which is why I love Montessori much because , people ask me, what's, , what can you distill Montessori down? And I said, what? I think I can Aretha Franklin Montessori. It's all about respect and everything really caters to that. It's the S the furniture in the classroom. It's, it's the language that P that guides Montessori guides use. , it's the behavior that they model. It's the freedom that they model that they'd respect for the environment. , every everything you look at with Montessori deals with respect for the child and children will feel respected, perform better. And if they're guided well with good solid principles, they outperform their peers. in public private school. I think public and private schools have a long way to go. They've made some changes, but these changes are incremental. I think we need some larger than incremental changes, , on a shorter timeframe before kids can really benefit from having what we treasure about America, which is being what you want to be, and having the freedom to do that. And we don't, we don't do that in the public schools we have as cookie cutter education, where kids are supposed to graduate with exactly the same set of knowledge. I mean, how boring is that kids have all these different types of passions. We're not even trying to understand what those passions are. In fact, we're saying don't pursue any passions until you've mastered your math and English and science and biology and chemistry and physics and sociology and history, all the subjects that kids are required to take, I would argue all the child needs is basic understanding of math, language, grammar, and philosophy, philosophy, no science let's teach three-year-olds philosophy, not science, actually, maybe piano, but not science, because I get an eyebrow raise from you on that, which is great. I love saying something controversial to you gets him engage on this. the reason I say that is the goal is for kids to have the ability to seek truth and value it over their ego. When those two are in conflict. And to use that, to pursue their passion, to make the world a better place. Those are the two key principles that I believe that should be part of our part and parcel of our educational system. That's the driving that I'd love to see that as a driving force. And I don't think it's terribly controversial. Maybe it is some people might, , there's always somebody find a controversial, but by and large, I think most people could buy into that. what does that mean? It means we don't really want to teach kids knowledge. Well, , there's values, abilities, and knowledge. The public schools focus on knowledge. They have some abilities. No, not much. And they're certainly not about values. I want to know that's in the home. That's in church, that's in civic art, but all schools don't talk about values. I think we have a flipped. I think schools number one job is to implement those two value systems of valuing truth over ego when there's a conflict, but valuing truth and, and pursuing your passions, knowing and pursuing your passion. you can make the world a better place. If we just focused on those two things, look how schools would change. Now we tell kids, okay, from three years old, they know right from wrong. They know truth and line. It's no wonder why when they're free. we can start with philosophy and start with, how do we know something is true and have kids think about how they're thinking from the earliest stage and the ability Whoa, right? The ability then would be, what abilities do you need to support those values? That's the next question that teachers guides, administrators who put that aside, I may ask them themselves. what's the ability would be, well, we need the ability to prove something as true. We need the ability to something is false. How else do you establish truth? And in order to prove something is false, we need some knowledge. We need to know what are possible fallacies. there's, what does that homina mean? this is now knowledge, but the only reason this knowledge is there is to support an ability that supports the values. , if you think about it, by the way, I'm quoting my teenage son who said this to me, he said, dad, , I don't get it. I said, what's that? He said, school has a certain number of subjects and the beach to your point, science, biology, chemistry. He said, , in chemistry, they teach, , details about all these formulas and stuff. He said, , why do they teach that? , he said, I did the math. There's an infinite amount of knowledge in the world by and large. And the school picks and subjects to teach. Well, I divided by infinity and I got zero. He said that to me is the value of a high school education. It's worth nothing. How old is he? He's 18 now. Okay. Okay. I was to say, I was going to say he was like 13 when he said, there's no way. He said that when he was 13. Yeah. He takes after his mom's smart kid. Yeah. how's it good? I mean, this was, this was great. And he's right. , if we start with three and four year olds and say, look, let's let's value, truth. How do we find it? How do we know when something's not true proof by contradiction or, , , any of these induction deduction, they're fancy words, but something that kids can easily learn. And certainly basic logic. We can start teaching when kids were four or five years old, modus ponens modus, tollens, I'm using the Latin terms, but there it's just if then clauses and predicate logic. this stuff we're good at it because we're humans. And let's teach it to kids early on. Here's what will happen. now kids will have this value system of seeking truth and following their passion, they're there. They have the abilities to know what's true. They have the abilities to then look critically at things and decide if, when they're excited about something, if they want to pursue it, and they have the ability then to gain new knowledge about whatever that is. picture kids from age three and four, to signing and pursuing their passions with a little bit, not much more than a half hour, they have enough math and language arts to get them on their way. And some piano because of multisensory using all the senses. Studies have shown many studies that playing the piano from an early age, develops brain connections that laugh, that lasts a lifetime. Why aren't we leveraging that today? Having kids play the piano. It's hard to do. You've got to think here, listen, play, move your feet. Every part of your brain, single neuron that's connected to any part of your body is working. When you play the piano, it ought to be the same way when you're learning math and language arts. And that's what we do with our curriculum. That's why our curriculum is designed that way. let's get kids pursuing it. Now look ahead to when they're age 17 and 18, and they're graduating from high school where they've had 15 years of pursuing their passion, whatever it is they're doing, when they're graduating from high school, nobody's going to ask them, gee, if you thought about what you're going to do in college, they know they'd known for five or 10 years or 15 years, what it is. And they could have changed their model along the way, but wherever they are, they're going to be better. The most people in the field today, because they've had a chance to pursue it. They've given their freedom and a respectful environment to pursue that Yeah. Great. a lot of people ask that and I imagine, , Larry, can you distill down what Montessori is? And, and that's when I had the Aretha Franklin moment and said, Oh, it's respect. RESPECT. , , Like what does it mean to be a Montessori school? Well, in the United States, Montessori is not trademarked or copyrighted. She was very open. , she got started in 1907 with her first school called ahead. If they, she do you literally mean Aretha Franklin? Maria Montessori, Oh, Aretha Franklin wrote this, wrote this song called . This was named after a person, Maria Montessori, Maria Montessori. There's a person, right? Italy's first female physician. She was born in 1870. She opened her first children's school. She then devoted her life to education. Now in 1907 in Italy, the public schools he had to pay to be in the public schools. They weren't really public. Like we think of them today where anybody can go. They only took in basically the rich kids of privilege. If you were physically or mentally handicapped, disabled in any way, shape, manner, or form, not of the appropriate race or religion you work at and at the public school. Maria Montessori took these quote unquote misfits, put them into her Casa Del Rio, beanie, and a BBD school. It's a school for kids. And, , it's all the Italian. I know. And after six months, her kids started out performing the rich kids, but she got a lot of attention for that. She was also sharing and transparent. she didn't want her name copyrighted. She wanted the world to have access, , to her methods, her philosophy. what, what is that philosophy? And since then, by the way, hundreds of millions of kids have learned using Montessori philosophy and techniques. Now in the United States, we have about 5,500 Montessori schools. What that means is, well, what that means is schools, there were 5,500 schools that call themselves Montessori. And that doesn't mean that they are actually doing Montessori. Although fortunately, nearly all of them are, there are certain bodies that now will certify you either school and or as a teacher, as having gotten Montessori training. the premier one of these or the orthodoxy of those Montessori certification institutes is AMI associates. associates hall, , Montessori Internacional. this is an Italian organization run by Montessori descendants, AMI. they certify certain materials that can be used like Nene house Montessori makes very expensive, gorgeous, , high, highest quality Montessori manipulatives that class in classrooms who are wealthy can afford. And, , they, they hold sway over a certain percentage of, , the Montessori teaching and schooling that in the United States is the American Montessori society AMS, which is sort of the conservative to the Orthodox AMI and AMS, , very highly respected. There are, , a little more liberal because they're in the United States. They're not, , they're willing to try out new technologies that weren't around Maria, Maria, Montessori, Lyft, , that are available today. If they could improve on the method while AMI would not stand for that, AMS says that's okay. they, , our certification Institute we had at show learning our curriculum. Actually we, , paid a, , the Princeton center for teacher education to review our curriculum, make suggestions and pass judgment on what they thought our, , set of manipulated. This was and our approach, , that we would have confidence that we'd be delivering as much of a Montessori experience as possible without parents having to spend $30,000 to outfit a classroom, , with manipulated. , , Princeton center for teacher education is a world renowned, , , Montessori teacher training and certification Institute. And my kids were fortunate enough to go as young as six months old to that school. that's how I learned about Montessori and was just amazed by, , by it and impressed by the philosophy that she had put together. , what it means when I talk about respect, it's the environment. You walk into her classroom, all the chairs and tables are kid size. There's no place for an adult to sit. I try to sit on one of these chairs first. I'm afraid I'll break it, but because it's well-constructed, I won't, , but it's not comfortable for you to sit in it just as bad as uncomfortable as it is for a child in our home to sit on a chair with our legs are dangling or think about just getting, , a glass for a glass of water out of the cabinet to climb up on a cabinet. They have to stand on it, open the door, get the glass, fetched, the glass, , lay it down, jumped down to the floor, grab it. I mean, this is a lot of work just to get a glass of water. And then they may not even be able to reach the faucet. They may have to climb back up on the counter for that. we don't think about that and toilets, Oh my God, , little kids, we wonder why little kids are hard to train and go. They're afraid of falling in the toilet and drowning. There are tiny, the toilets gigantic. It's like a swimming pool. you go to a Montessori classroom, the toilet is tiny and it's like two inches off the ground. And kids feel respected by that. And they get total the, a lot faster. , the sinks are, , a couple of feet off the ground. They can reach the faucet at four years old. that's one form of perspective to build A certain way is what you're saying. And that certain way inspires trust. You're saying It inspires trust because they're feeling respected by their environment. Yes. Okay. Okay. Montessori is really a philosophy where the first principle is respect. I agree with that characterization, , respects takes many different forms. I talked about environment. It's also about how we talk to one another. it was Montessori teachers never looked down on a student and speak from a higher physical position. They lo they will lower their bodies, bending the knees, not bending over, but they'll actually lower their V's or sit in the chair like the childhood. their eye level is connected at the same level. That's a form of respect. It's not a form of domination where you're looking down on someone and speaking down on them. And then what they say is different. , they have all, Montessori has all these wonderful techniques for getting kids to do stuff that they may not want to do. , , one, one powerful expression that every parent can use in their home, just like it's used at all. These things can be used in the home, just like they're used in a Montessori school. if, if a child is, , quote unquote misbehaving, they're doing something it's not appropriate. Maybe they were drawing on a crayon on the ground or on a wall, the disrespect of the environment. , , and many homes that kids might get punished or parents looking angry in a Montessori classroom or in a Montessori home, the parent or guide might say, , in our home, we respect our environment. And we don't write on the walls. We do have, cause , you'd like to write paper and that's the appropriate place for you to write. And then they repositioned the child to a focus, work area where they can use their crayon to create art in a respectful way. Now later they may go back and ask, , in our home, if we've made a mess, we clean up and then there's no punishment. There's no judgment. It's a statement. And belonging to a group is one of the most powerful human motivators that exists. , you can, if you look at the political situation today and the polarization, one of the reasons that I believe the polarization exists is because people really want to belong to a group. And when they feel their ideas or the ideas of a group or attack, they become even more entrenched in that group. the same principles that work in our family and our classrooms, that type of respect, not punishing, but self-aware, and, and, and, and not being in denial of anything either but saying in our home. There's another thing I'll give you one other example of Montessori language. you have a child is crying and they're upset. And, , maybe let's say at home, you've been asking this child to clean up their room. There's dolls, underwear, the best, not on the floor. The bed's not made there's toys straight around. , th th the mom or dad come in and say, , you've got to clean up your room. It's a mass, , go upstairs or we're gonna punish you, whatever, , here's how it would work in a Montessori family. , mom would say, , I see that your, your room is really a disaster area. This stuff strewn everywhere. Would you agree? He says, Charles says, yeah. And then the parent could say, , in our home, , we respect our environment. We respect our room. , , here's the deal. Here's the thing. Now, the child is overwhelmed. It's a Montessori technique for whelming. Shall we say a child, which is to say, which means we're going to do one thing. the parent might say, what, why don't you pick up your underwear? And I'll pick up your red color twice, let's start there. And that's it. We just do that. One thing, the Marines do this because they say the first thing in the morning is they make their bed and they make it look great. And they've gotten something already. And they just got up. Cause a lot of people say Marines when they come in and they say, what do I have to do this for? I have much more important things to do. And they say, no, we're going to get stuff done. And we're going to do that from the moment we wake up. It's, it's a way to underwhelm yourself when it's easy to be overwhelmed. in that, in that, , bedroom child's bedroom, now we have underwear and red toys off the ground. We've just boiled down all the stress and all the overwhelming to one simple thing. And now we can take it one more step. Okay. We finished. That gets great. Look, the look of the room looks much better. You've worked really hard to clean that up and we can maybe tackle something else. I mentioned. Last thing. One of the thing I want to mention is, , is concerning, , language, , parents struggle, I think with when and how to praise children. A lot of times we're busy. Our child will show us something. Oh, that looks great, honey. Oh, you're talented. we tell parents like, don't really by and large, don't say either of those two things ever again, they're not constructive. They indicate to the child, you're really not interested in their work. And, and, and that you don't really have time to look at it and you don't care really what you're giving them praise. Here's how you show that you care. First thing you do as a parent to show that you care about your child's work is to notice something about that work. Oh, there's a lot of blue and say things like to let them know that you respect their work and say things like, wow, I could see you put a lot of fun into the colors. There's a lot of blue here. what made you pick that particular color? , how come it wasn't red. Did you think about that? Now the kid knows you're involved in their work. You're asking questions, man. I know the answer, but now you're engaged. , another thing is when you praise them, the way to praise is not say, wow, that looks great. Love that. It's beautiful. When win a prize on our show, the praise that matters to that child is something like, wow, I see the attention you paid to the corners of that window frame. You worked really hard on this. You should be proud of yourself. Look what we're doing. , we're praising the effort. We're praising hard work. That's the, that's the lesson. The child's going to take away to develop a growth mindset, to struggle, to get what you want when we praise the outcome, or we say, you're going to win an award we're in. This is Carol Dweck. Who's a professor of psychology at Stanford university wrote a book called mindset. She differentiates between the growth mindset and the fixed mindset. A growth mindset is good, fixed mindset, not much. And the good news is because she believes in growth mindset that people have a fixed mindset. They can develop a growth mindset. How great is that? And I'll mention one thing. There's a book called the violin, his thumb, that posits that people can actually change their own DNA through changing therapy behavior. And, , they give great examples. these all tie into when a parent says to a child, , you could win it. That's beautiful art. It's go win a prize on an art show that tells that's praising the outcome. , and, and has it been child focus only on the outcome? That's when people cheat to get high test scores or cheat on the job, or, , , anywhere in life they cheat to look good is because that's what they value. They don't value the hard work and the process of achieving something meaningful that they can be proud of and follow their passion. Those are the things that hard work is what makes the world a better place, not showing how great you are with some great results and the outcome. when parents praise the process and not the outcome, they actually have kids who developed much more of a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. these are some of the Montessori things we've talked about, environment that language, , there are also techniques that go along with Montessori. Perhaps the best known is the three period lesson it's in line with our concept of going from concrete to abstract. when you have a child who's learning something new, let's say we're introducing a new Grimer symbol, , for a proper noun or to a geometric shape, like a hexagon, whatever it is, we would say, this is the same assembled for a proper noun. And then we put that's the first step of the three period lesson, the first period. And we say to the child, , you, you may explore this and play with it. , yeah, investigate. We don't say much more about it. We want to let them discover when they're done. They have closure on that. That ends the first period. And we go to the second period, which is, can you show me a proper now, now we've strewn it amongst a whole bunch of other grammar symbols, and maybe the other shapes too. And if they pick the right one, the one that is a proper. Now we, then I have closure on the second period. And we go to the third period and we ask, hold it up and say, what's this call. And if they, they know what they'll say, that's a proper. Now that's a symbol for a proper. Now, now we've completed the three period lesson. The beauty of this three period lesson is that we may go back to this tomorrow. And tomorrow's a new day and kids are in computers. It's not like you program them. And they going to remember something forever. We may say, , what's this as a review. And they say a verb, or they say, I don't know, we're sorry, attacks. what we do when they miss this, the second or third period, we go back to the first period as if nothing ever happened. We don't say what. Well, we don't do say things like we just talked about this yesterday, or don't you remember? Or this is, , , , , with that is, , instead we go back to the first period as if we're introducing it for the first time we say, Oh, this is a property. Now, can you show me a proper now? And if they show you a verb, then you just act like nothing ever is first time, this is a proper. Now, can you show me a property down? What's this call. Now when Schiller learning, we introduced, , a slight variation to that. When we first introduced something to get the multisensory thing going, we have them read the word back to us, say the word back. if we say this is a proper noun, we can say repeat after me proper now, and the kids, mouth, the words they say, the words I guess, their body and their voice involved. When we get to period three, it's much easier for them to then say it. these are different techniques. Montessori uses to support our philosophy. And we use all of these and show her learning. And we encourage parents, whether they use our curriculum or not to learn more about Montessori philosophy and use it in the home. Even if their kids aren't going to Montessori school, , I've talked to a lot of college admissions counselors, , and, , college admissions directors, , Stu Chanel at MIT and, , Duke university and Allegheny college. And on a lot of folks and who run the admissions departments at these universities. , I learned two things, , by synthesizing my discussions with many of them. , that really interesting. The first is that if a child has been to Montessori school, their application floats right to the top. The schools love Montessori kids because they are open-minded thinkers who have the abilities to learn new things quickly and assimilate things quickly and synthesize things. The second group of, , , applications that rise to the top are those of homeschoolers studies have shown that homeschoolers have much higher, , sense of civic duty. They're more responsible by and large. you could find exceptions along the way, but by and large, they do. when someone, a child comes and applies to a school and they've been both homeschool and they've attended a Montessori school and they were young boy at college, can't wait to get their hands on that person. They've got grit, they're going to finish their college in four years, they're going to go out and be productive in the real world. They're going to be a credit to the university, and they'll probably make enough money to want to give back as an alumnus. That's the trifecta. And that's what schools are looking for when they admitted students. , , having these techniques in the family, , using them during the child's developmental years, really can, can do wonders for that child's life for the rest of their lives. That's incredible. I don't have kids, but when I do, they're going to a Montessori school seriously. Yep. Good. You can do a lot worse. It's a huge problem. , public schools are a huge problem. Your guys testing is a huge problem. , I think even the curriculum that teachers have as a huge problem, , being results and outcome focused as a huge problem, huge that's the biggest problem. we talked about Montessori principles. You could, we could literally take this that bit about when you were talking about, , , the Montessori principles. And, , you could say at the end of the video, you can just put something that you record, you do a voiceover over it, , attach it to file, , run it, run it as a Facebook ad. at the end, say, click here to learn the top three things that, , the Montessori Bumble, blah, blah, blah. And then you get their email. You remark it to them through email, you remarket to them through using Facebook, , based on how much of the video they've watched. And now you've got a full fledged strategy. , I don't know, to be honest with you, I don't even know what you sell. , I know you have like CDs and like little things, but I don't, I don't know what it is that you sell. Like, how do you make your money? we provide math and language arts curriculum for three to 13 year olds. Okay. this is like a homeschool. Hmm it's for homeschoolers, Montessori based, , the kids come in, , the curriculum comes in kits. we have to, , we have a math one and math two and a fractions kit, and we have a language arts, a and B kit, two kits there. And the kit comes with books, songs, and manipulatives.