501 | Worst Education Advice

The Minimalists speak with educator Isaac Morehouse about fixing our broken education system, asking family members to stop buying excess stuff, arguing with the people we love, and much more. Discussed in this episode: What can we do about our systemically broken education system? (02:00) What's the worst education advice you've ever heard? (19:23) Right Here, Right Now: A special screening of the Food for Humans documentary. (44:30) Listener Tip: Rules to reduce physical book clutter. (46:10) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn, and joining me here at Earthing Studios in West Hollywood, California, is my good friend TK Coleman. Yo, yo, yo. Today, we're joined by Isaac Morehouse. Isaac is the CEO of OpenEd, which is an organization that is working to open up all education options to all learners. He is also the author of a brand-new book called Open Education. We've got a lot to talk about today. We'll get to our callers on page two. We have a bunch of them. But since Isaac is here in the studio, I thought we'd move our More About Less segment from page three all the way up here to page one, because I have a passage here that feels

• 1:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  like the perfect way to start this episode. As always, you can listen to the full two-hour maximal edition of this episode, where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description. Big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free, because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. And if you'd like to have your question featured on our show, give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording to [email protected]. Now, let's dive into this free, public, minimal episode. All right, more about less. Isaac, this is a segment that we typically do on page

• 2:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  three. It's an article, or a quote, or a book, something we read as a jump-off point for discussion. What I have here in front of me is from one of my favorite philosophers, thinkers. His name is Jed McKenna, and the book is Jed Talks, Volume Three. It's part of a trilogy, although you don't have to read the first two to get this. And there's an essay in that book about our broken education system. The essay itself is called "Over the Moon," and I tweezed out three paragraphs that I wanted to talk to you about. TK, take it away.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  I sometimes wonder how things might be different if all those countless thousands of hours of life we flush away in school were put to some worthwhile use, like actual exploration, and discovery, and growth, instead of having our lovely little brains scooped out and replaced with steaming piles of dog crap. In a mature society, children would be guided into their own adulthood. But in our childish society, the young are neutered, lobotomized, and prepared for a life as herd members bearing no resemblance to their potential. The very idea of putting our formative years to good and happy use is so radical as to

• 3:22Speaker 02

  be practically unthinkable. What if young people were encouraged to explore, and learn, and develop, instead of being herded, and molded, and homogenized? Such a revolutionary act would undermine the daycare component of the school mission, because a true education —reading, writing, reckoning—would require only a tiny fraction of the time we spend in classrooms, having our curiosity smothered and our spirits broken. Young people might put that time to use for real learning, instead of being tucked out of sight like larval hatchlings squirming in darkness.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  But really, who cares about any of that? You can't change what was done to you, and you probably can't do much for your own kids. The only thing you might be able to do is find your way back to where those two roads diverged and go the other way.

• 4:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Isaac, I wanted to start here because we often go down a path, a almost societally prescribed path, whether it is traditional public school, or then it is the college system. You go through university, and of course, then I need an advanced degree, or maybe I need to become Dr. Milburn someday. That way, I'll be sufficiently impressive to the people around me, and they'll be able to pat me on the back, or maybe even applaud me for all of my so-called achievements. And so, we traveled down this road, and we realized, oh, the happiness that was, I thought, was the destination I was headed to, isn't here. But I've already gone so far, so you know what? I can't just turn around. But often, that is the only thing to do.

• 4:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If I realize I was traveling toward this place that isn't where I wanted to go, why keep traveling there? So, I wanted to talk to you about that, maybe the system and what it prescribes to us. But maybe we just start by talking about, um, what can we do about our broken, systemically broken, education system?

• 5:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I am so relentlessly focused on what is within one's own power to control, that I, whenever there's questions about like this system, how should we improve the system? How should we fix the system? I don't know. But I can tell you some things that you might be able to do in your own life, or for your own children. That's why I love this quote until the very end, when he says, "You can't change what's done to you, and probably can't do much for your own kids." Oh, no. You can absolutely, you can absolutely do a lot for your own kids. That's the whole reason we wrote this book. You can open your kid's education, even just a little bit, even just cracking that door just a little bit more open, so that you're not in, as you said, it's kind of a conveyor belt, this idea that you get on the conveyor belt, and then you let the system, you let

• 6:00Speaker 03

  the inertia of the education system do all the work for you, whether or not you're thriving, or flourishing, or learning, and you just kind of accept that's what you have to do. You don't have to do that, and especially now, like more than at any point in human history, really since COVID. There's been this explosion in not just ability to do education differently with, you know, different technologies that are available, but with an understanding that there are, that, that different ways are possible. One of my favorite thinkers, I know I'm meandering a little bit, but I'm coming around to it. One of my favorite thinkers, Ludwig von Mises, he said that there's three preconditions to any purposeful human action. You have to have dissatisfaction

• 6:45Speaker 03

  with the status quo. You have to have a belief in something better and you have to have, or sorry, a vision of something better and a belief in your ability to get there. And that's anything from me, like I'm thirsty, I'm dissatisfied with the status quo. I see a glass of water here and I believe in my ability to pick it up and drink it. Those are all preconditions to taking that action. Many, many parents, probably almost all, have had dissatisfaction with the education status quo for quite a while. Like, there's very few parents who are like, yes, my kid, I'm perfectly happy and thrilled with everything about their education experience. But they didn't have a vision of anything better or a belief in the ability to get there. COVID happened and all of

• 7:27Speaker 03

  these families were stuck at home and they would do like online version of their school. And that resulted in a few things. One was they realized, whoa, what they're actually doing and learning in school is not that much. It's not that good. And like, if they didn't learn this, nothing really that bad would happen. And they also learned, I kind of like having my kids home more. I like having them around. Especially the parents who were able to work from home themselves realized, I don't, that babysitter component, a lot of parents realized they didn't need it all day, every day. Maybe they want their kids to go somewhere and be with other kids a couple of times a week, but they don't want them out all the time and the kids don't like it. And they

• 8:10Speaker 03

  really, they start, oh, we started baking together. We started doing things together. The number of parents I talked to were like, it was actually really magical during COVID when my kids were home from school and we were all together. And they had that experience and they suddenly realized.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Wait a second, all this heavy lifting that I thought the conveyor belt education system was doing wasn't doing any of it because my kid didn't go for three months and they were fine. They didn't fall behind. They were actually happier than ever. They learned in all kinds of different ways. Like that has happened. And I think that's that moment is what I'm trying to help capture and trying to give people more of those moments and those recognitions of like, think about the times when you were watching your child learn and grow in a way that was joyful for them and for you. You can create more of those and they're not going to like fall behind or have something bad happen to them if you pull them out of that conveyor belt.

• 9:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  DK, how did this passage resonate with you?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Oh, I loved it, man, because I think it highlights a very important principle that guides my reasoning about everything. And that is, there are no places in this world that are so sacred that they couldn't become hiding places from where you need to be. So the church itself can be a hiding place from God if you are called to be out on the streets, helping the poor. But outwardly, it looks very sacred and no one will question you or assume that about you if you place yourself inside those buildings. In a similar way, school can be a place for hiding. It can be a place where you hide from education in a very socially acceptable way. If you drop out of school and you're spending your time at the malls or in the movies or hanging out on

• 9:45Speaker 02

  the street corner, everyone will question what you do because you're hanging out in spaces that just look sketchy to all of us. But you can do that in a school because a school is not a substitute for a soul. A school can't give you a mind, right? And so I think this essay sort of challenges this tendency that we have to just shuffle our kids into school, use it to buy time, use it to fit in, use it to tell ourselves a sweet sounding story that everything is going to be okay because we're going to learn all the things we need to learn to do all the things we need to do. And I like what you had to say about what happened with COVID. Many people learned that a lot of the arguments they were giving for why they can't do it just weren't as

• 10:26Speaker 02

  powerful in light of their new experiences. And a lot of the stories they were being told about the ideals of what school represents weren't being lived out in the actual execution of it. And so, you know, you can say all this stuff about how it should be, but how it actually is, they were getting a better education at their homes. And so when it comes to that last quote, So I was thinking about the first part of that, where he talks about how you could, you know, doing something for yourself. When these kinds of discussions come up, I'm very sensitive to the objection, but it doesn't work for everybody. But everybody can't do that. And my attitude around that has changed over the years. And one of the things I've learned to say is, hey, that may be true for you.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  I honor your right to tell your story however you need to tell it. But can you do me a favor? If there's someone out there who recognizes that this possibility is there for them, can you make sure that you don't get in their way? Can you make sure that your story about what you don't think is realistic for everybody not be the story that hinders anybody from trying something new? I think that's an important thing to keep in mind on these topics.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I know in my own personal experience, my daughter was super anxious in public school when she was there. We unschool her now. And she does have a place where she goes a couple of days a week to spend time with other kids. And really, that's almost like a jump off point to develop those relationships outside of that area as well. So you have friends that you go to the pool with, or you go on hikes with, or you go riding horses with, or you go to their home, or there's sleepovers, all of these different things that a young girl who's 12 and her friends tend to do. And so, yes, the socialization aspect is one thing that we often bring up about. This is the best thing about public schooling. Is that the best thing about public schooling, Isaac?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  I mean, what do you mean by socialization?

• 12:18Speaker 03

  Like, think about an environment where you are restricted to being only with people of your exact age, regardless of interests, ability, differences, mentally, emotionally, physically, only people that are your exact age. And every 50 minutes, a timer goes off. And whatever activity you're doing, no matter how engaged or disengaged you are, you stop doing it then and go on to the next activity. Think about what is the, what are the opportunities for socialization in a system like that? Like, I mean, we see it. We see, public school is the only place that most people have ever witnessed physical violence in their life. Like, for most of us, that's not a normal part of daily work and life.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  But almost all of us saw it if we went to school, at least once, right? That's, that's the kind of environment. Like, you could say, you know, the best thing about prison is the socialization.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  And that is, there is a type of socialization that happens there, right? So like, when you think about the incentives and the, the things you are being conditioned to, because real learning, the majority of what we learn comes from observing patterns around us, what kind of things get rewarded and what kind of things get disincentivized or punished. It doesn't have to be overt punishment, but just social, social disapprobation, et cetera. When you look at what school is, it's really a like 12-year apprenticeship for being a teacher. That's it. Cause the only career you learn, you learn how teachers do their job and how they create the world that they inhabit. That's it. You don't learn any other kind of career.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  So if you're gonna be a teacher, that's, that's a good way to learn how to be a teacher. If you're gonna be anything else, it's, it's terrible because all the things that are incentivized and rewarded are things that matter to teachers and nothing else. So like, and, and the social structure takes that on. So when you, when you think about your kids having socialization, I like to think like horizontal and vertical, right? And people say this about college too. It's great for networking. Horizontally, yes, you meet a bunch of people your same age and stage in life, and that's a horizontal network. A vertical network, and you see this with homeschoolers all the time, they are so comfortable talking with every age group. They will hang out with kids two years younger than them, which is horribly embarrassing if you go to public school, or 10 years younger than them, they will hang out with adults

• 14:43Speaker 03

  and they can kick it with a group of their parents' friends and have good conversations. That's called being human, right? Like, that's what all humans have done for most of human history, but this really narrow, since the early 1900s, factory school system has aged segregated people so much that they are only comfortable in these high-pressure cooker, social status game situations of peers of their exact same age that they're always competing with to see who's top dog. Like, you can call that socialization if you want, it's not the kind that I want for my kids.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  You know, one interesting thing about socialization too, is that we tend not to question things that just show up as the way it is, but when it comes to this, you know, the horizontal networking component you talked about and the age segregation, it's a historical anomaly. For the overwhelming majority of human history, we simply have not done life in this way. And we've only had a relatively small amount of time to experiment with this way of doing things and the effects that it has on our consciousness. And so this isn't some kind of unquestionable way of socializing. And this isn't a radical idea. This is a call to consider the way human beings have evolved throughout history. It reminds me of when we did our Sunday Symposium and we were talking about social media and digital clutter.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  And someone said, I understand taking a break, but don't you think you have a moral responsibility to have an impact? And I wish Josh was there because he would have questioned the moral responsibility to have an impact. I accepted that premise. And I said, yes, but I question this very, very recent notion that impact is best measured in terms of the number of people that you reach. How are you reaching them? Just because I go from a million likes to a billion likes doesn't mean my influence is getting better. You know, and so I think there are certain things we just take as obvious in our generation. But when you look at history, you read books that were written before you were born. You say, this is a very strange thing. And I think part of this is due to what I call

• 16:43Speaker 02

  the deification of discomfort. We base a lot of opinions on looking at other people's lives and saying, hmm, that makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm very concerned. And you see this happen to homeschool children a lot. Someone who wasn't homeschool-

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Happened to me growing up all the time.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, they look at your life and you just seem weird to them, right? Now, the existence of a concern is not evidence of a discrepancy. But when I look at someone else's life and they seem weird to me and I feel concerned, it's easy to project that internal subjective experience into a real problem that needs to be solved. And it could just be, no, you're uncomfortable with something. That person's doing well. They're happy with their lives. And so when we deify our discomfort, we say, well, we need to do something about this. We need to properly socialize this child without ever thinking about the fact that- Maybe I'm the one who could benefit from some proper socialization. Maybe this child is growing up in an environment that's not just consistent with how human beings

• 17:41Speaker 02

  have done it throughout history, but that's preparing them for a life where they're not going to have that one to two years of depression when they're not living around somebody that's their age, where they're not uncomfortable with having friends that are 10 years older and 10 years younger than them.

• 17:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I do find that point to be really interesting because where my daughter is unschooled a couple of days a week, she's 12, but she could be next to a 16-year-old and a 16-year-old, and you realize that the public school system is the only time that you're segregated into these groups. I can imagine back in my corporate days when I was turning 28, they didn't go sit me with all the other 28-year-olds at the time and say, "All right, here's the cubicle farm where all the 28-year-olds sit," although I now realize we're kind of doing that here in the studio of the millennials on the couch, the Gen Xers are at the desk, and the Gen Z guys on the board over here. So that's accidental, but by and large has nothing to do with their age, right? And it has much more to do with their interests and their competencies. I think this is a

• 18:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  great entree for this. Actually, it's a great appetizer for this episode. We have so many callers I want to get to in a moment, but before we get to those callers, I think it's time for the lightning round. This is where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week. We attempt to answer these questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim, we call them. It's a little pithy aphorism. Now, don't worry, we prepared our aphorisms many weeks in advance, Isaac, so you don't have to be pithy on the fly. Although if you have something, that's great. By the way, you can find this episode's maxims over at minimalmaxims.com. You can find every minimal maxim ever there. You can also find the show notes over at theminimalists.com, which is where you can sign up for our email

• 19:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  newsletter. We'll deliver those minimal maxims to your inbox every Monday for free. The question of the week this week is, what is the worst education advice you've ever heard? What is the worst education advice you've ever heard? Now, before we get to our pithy answers, let's see what some of our listeners had to say. Kyle said, "The worst education advice is, 'Public school is for everyone.'"

• 19:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wow. I, I mean, I don't know that I've heard that as advice, but I think that's almost like the implicit advice of, of the system is it is available to everyone at least. What do you, what do you think about that advice?

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, you can, you can tease out these implicit sort of things that people don't have to say without saying by figuring out what you get questioned for doing. If you pull your kid out of school, people will ask you why, and you kind of feel this need to give a justification to yourself and to others. If you just send your kid to public school, no one will ask you to justify that.

• 20:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 03

  So you can tell that's the implicit advice of society is to just enroll.

• 20:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And is that if you are a part of any group that is the majority outside of like Republican, Democrat, pop politics, you set that aside for a moment, but outside of that, it seems that if you're part of a, a group that is a majority or a super majority, it's just going to be taken for granted that you're doing the quote unquote right thing. Isaac, you have four kids, is that right?

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Eight to 20?

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Okay.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 20:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Have any of them gone to public school?

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Yes. Uh, the oldest went to public school twice, once for like-

• 21:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Like two days in a row?

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Once for like three months and then we moved and then he went for, uh, about half of a school year when we moved and he wanted to run in the track team and he went, he was like 16. Often this happens with homeschoolers, they get to a certain age in their teens and they're like, I think I might want to go to school. And so I sat down and we got a, got a whiteboard out and I was like, all right, what do you want? And he's like, I want to be able to make money and want to be able to spend time with friends. And when he's listing all the things he wants, and then I listed like, you know, homeschool, unschool, private school, public school, and we kind of went down and like, where do you get the most of what you want?

• 21:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  And he decided for that semester, he was going to do public school.

• 21:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hmm.

• 21:40Speaker 03

  And so he did it and, um, he liked it okay, but at the end of it, he was like, eh, I'm just going to drop out and go work. So he just worked full time.

• 21:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wow.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  And like, he doesn't, I don't have a high school diploma either, but he doesn't have a high school diploma or anything. He just did, you know, what he, he'd learned from lots of jobs and things like that. But, but that was important for my wife and I, cause I've spent most of my career, like just ripping on mainstream education and, you know, the conveyor belt mentality. And people used to ask me when I launched Praxis, the, the college alternative, well, are your kids going to go to college? And I would be like-

• 22:12Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's up to them, not me. Like, my hope is that by the time they're that age, they don't need me making decisions for them.

• 22:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. And if they have a sufficiently compelling reason to go to college.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 22:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it's not a knee jerk reaction of, oh yeah, this is where the conveyor belt has taken me.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I found when I pulled my daughter out of public school in first grade, because she was having really bad anxiety attacks there, stomach was hurting every day. She was like, and it was trying to figure, okay, how do we want to spend these hours? When she was 10, she started her first business. It's a dog walking business. It's called Paul's Pretty Awesome Walking Service. And she's made thousands of dollars as a 10, 11, 12 year old now, walking dogs at $5 a pop. But I feel like it's a job she would do for free anyway. Right. Often she's like babysitting people's dogs, dog sitting at someone's house. And she just gets to play with their dog for five hours and then they give her money to play with the dogs and then she's done. And that is, has been in an education in and of itself because she's

• 23:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  learning at least the fundamentals of, of starting a business. Let me get back to some of these listeners though. Jackie said, "The worst education advice I ever received was borrow as much as you can for student loans." Nope. What a nightmare after graduation. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. What are we getting ourselves into with these student loans, TK?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  An illusion. You know, if you were to go to a bank and say, and pull out your business plan, it can be very well written. You can have a viable model and say, hey, I want to take out a loan. And you're 18, you're 19, you haven't proven yourself. They're going to say, no, we're not giving you any money. We don't trust you. And none of us would balk at that. We would say, yeah, this is an 18 year old. They haven't proven themselves. And but, but what if, what if they promise that for the next four or five years, they're going to work, work really hard and mom and dad's going to hold them accountable. The bank isn't giving you a loan. And that is the truth. I often say, Don't just pay attention to what people advise. Pay attention to what they admire because that's where they reveal the truth. The advice they give you is a reflection of a few different things. What they want to be held responsible for?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  What they think you can handle? What they're willing to, you know, have revealed about them later on? If this doesn't go right? There are a whole bunch of factors involved and people give you advice. So you gotta be careful about the advice. What do you admire when you're not looking? When an audience isn't watching? What fires you up? What makes you respect people? And when banks give away money? When they give loans? They look for evidence of credibility, evidence of work ethic. They look for evidence of experience. But when it comes to giving you loans for school? They're giving it to you because they trust that they're gonna get it back. Because even if you don't pay them back? Somebody else is gonna take care of them. And so you're buying into this illusion of it being an investment? Not that it can't be an investment, but you're buying into the illusion that it is an investment

• 25:05Speaker 02

  just because somebody's giving you money and telling you a story. But you will discover that it's not an investment at all if you're not able to turn that into value creation? And you can tell yourself a story about it's not about the money? But they won't buy that story when they send you the bill. That's the story that they tell you, but you'll never be able to sell them.

• 25:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Isaac, any other thoughts on money in education?

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Oh, man. This, this college question, I could go off on for a really long time. No, I think just learning to step back and assess these things as they actually are? Instead of bringing in all of the preconceived cultural narrative around them with you. So to TK's point, if you assess this like any other loan or investment? Oh, okay, you want $80,000, $100,000. What do you plan to do with it? What's the, what's the payback time period? How long will it take you to earn that? Compared to what? Right? Compared to the other alternatives, how long will it take you? Because if you just say, in a vacuum, I can go to college and I can get a job? Could you have gotten that job without a degree? When you ask that question? Because people will say, well, I need the degree because I need the job.

• 26:10Speaker 03

  And the job, and I need a higher paying job. Degrees get higher paying jobs. Therefore, I need to go get a degree. It's worth it.

• 26:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is true on average, though, right?

• 26:17Speaker 03

  Totally true on average. But if you ask, what job are you trying to get? And could you get that job any other way? People don't know the answer to either question. So why would you go take out a loan to get a job that you don't even, you don't know what it is and you don't know if it requires a degree? And the thing is with the rare exception of jobs that legally require a degree, like lawyer, doctor, public accountant, the vast majority of jobs, even when they say on the job posting, degree required, they don't mean it.

• 26:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is true that I don't want to go to a dentist who learned how to do dentistry on YouTube.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  I would go to one who learned by being an apprentice to a dentist who did a thousand procedures and helped with them over one who studied it for four years.

• 27:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sure.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  I definitely would. Like if you can prove to me, we don't need to get into occupational licensing and all that stuff, but like there, there is a role for expertise for sure. And if college is one of the ways to get that expertise or the best way, set that aside. There are areas where the, you know, legal things require you to get a degree, fine. But for the vast majority, young people just don't even know. I mean, I've, I've heard people, we used to get this with Praxis all the time. Well, that job said degree required, so they, they don't apply. And I would say, well, the person who posted that job posting, what do you think they mean by that? Why do they, do they say degree required? What are they actually looking for? Exactly. They're using it as a proxy because most people who post job postings don't post job postings

• 27:46Speaker 03

  all day for a living and they haven't thought deeply about how to find the actual thing they want. That you, if you've ever looked for a house, you know this, you make your list of your 10 things you want when you buy a house and then you go start looking at actual houses, you will never end up buying a house that checks all 10 boxes. You'll, you'll buy one that checks six of them and then it has two other things you didn't even know you wanted, right?

• 28:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  That's how it works with jobs too. So if you can signal your value in a way that is more powerful than a degree, which is a very low bar, like the minute you send a one minute pitch video, you have signaled something that is more valuable than a degree.

• 28:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  That's how low the bar is.

• 28:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But this isn't just like.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Theoretical opinions. This isn't just like, hey, it's kind of how I see the world working. This is the kind of work that we did together for about six or seven years.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  I have literally helped thousands of people get jobs that said degree required without a degree.

• 28:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And in fact, everyone who's working in this room right now was hired here. We work together. Not because of a degree. I never checked a degree. I don't even know if they have high school diplomas nor do I care. I tried to drop out of high school, but my guidance counselor wouldn't let me. It's a funny story. Which I didn't realize. They're like, no, it's the prison analogy again. But Savvy D sent a two-minute video in and we were impressed by it. We had a sit-down conversation with him. Jordan edited a podcast years ago, it's back in 2017, 2018, somewhere in there, and edited a podcast for us. We're like, he did the best work. Out of the 50 people who applied for this role, Jordan was hands down the best at that role.

• 29:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And Professor Sean, I've known him since he was, I think, 19 years old and he was always a super talented writer. And I call him professor even though he's not a, he helps teach a writing class with me, which by the way, I think launches this week, if you're listening to this right now, howtowritebetter.org. I teach a writing class once a year and he helps me out with that class as well. Even though he doesn't have a formal degree to teach writing, he's one of the best writers I know. Even if he doesn't have a piece of pa, well, he has a lot of pieces of paper to prove it. He has published, I think, eight novels at this point. So he doesn't have the one piece of paper. He has many pieces of paper that prove he's highly competent at what he does.

• 30:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And however, I do think that, yes, if you're an employer and you're trying to hire a bunch of people quickly, maybe that is one filter that does help them. But as you said, there are often ways around that filter if you can simply prove that you can add value. One last thing I'll say about, about the money side of this. As the minimalist, we're often talking about buying something and asking questions to be more intentional about the purchases. You go to Macy's down the street and you want to buy a pair of pants. We have a list of five questions you ask yourself before buying. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And in fact, you can download it as a wallpaper and put it on your phone just so you're asking some of those questions. One of those questions is, can I afford it?

• 30:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Obviously, if you have to take out a loan, you can't afford a thing by definition. If you have to finance a thing, you can't afford it. And that is not a knock on anything. I have a mortgage on my house. That means I couldn't afford to pay the full amount of money for that house. So I had to finance it. Now, a mortgage is the only thing I will finance. I'm not going to finance a car. I'm certainly not going to finance a shirt. And there are ways, if you want to go a traditional college route. Anthony O'Neal has a book about this debt-free degree. You can still get a college degree and not go into five or six figures worth of debt and penalize your future self for years or decades to come by simply being more intentional about the way that you're spending that money, the school you're choosing.

• 31:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The other question I ask, though, is, is this the best use of this money? Because if I'm going down to Macy's to spend $150 on these jeans, okay, I don't have a problem with that. But what if my rent's due and I don't have, I can't afford both? Uh-oh. Well, now I have a decision to make. Yes, maybe strictly speaking, I can't afford these jeans. I have the $150 in my hand, but if I buy these, now I can't afford my rent. This is not the best use of that money. And I think quite often, when you sit down, you say, okay, if I had $80,000 in the bank right now, if I had $310,000 in the bank right now, would I hand that over to this university

• 32:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  immediately in order to spend the next several years getting my education here? Karen said, "The worst education advice is, the teacher is always right."

• 32:23Speaker 03

  No, that's great. I think we've all seen probably some of those things that go viral where it'll show up, a teacher correcting someone when they actually had the right answer. You know, I can't think off the top of my head of specific one, but it's not, the problem isn't, like, teachers are great. Teaching is great. There will always be a need for teaching. I think it's a wonderful skill in high demand. In fact, I would argue, any teacher who is a good teacher is dramatically underselling themselves by staying in the public school system. And we've seen that with the explosion of microschools. A lot of teachers have left and been like, "I could teach 10 kids for like five grand each and make 50 grand a year with just teaching 10 kids in a microschool, however I want, and make more than my entry level." So it's not a knock on teachers. It's not about needing to know everything. It's not like, "Oh, the teacher's wrong.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Gotcha." It's the way the system is set up. That bakes in that there is a right and a wrong answer and that the teacher is the final arbiter of that. And, and they, there has to be as long as you have testing. And if you don't have testing, how are you going to decide if this government money is being spent well? And you, you see the cascade of effects where like you understand how this emerges, but you put teachers in a position where they kind of have to always be right in their classroom, not just about behavioral issues, but it's like, well, I have to get a grade and I want my grade to be good. So how do I get a good grade? And the teacher, it's up to them to tell you, this is how you get a good grade. There is one way. And it's like, well, I wouldn't want to be in that position as a, as a teacher, right?

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Like I'd much more have a more Socratic approach and like, hey, there's lots of different ways to do this. Doesn't mean there's not feedback. This can be done better and worse. There are some things that are binary, like arithmetic has correct answers and incorrect answers, but so many things don't. And I think the incentive structure of this system is more to blame than the teachers themselves.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  And by the way, it's easy to underestimate just how quickly you can fall into a position of, of supporting this way of thinking, even though you don't wish to support it. So when you're in leadership, you can underestimate just how much people who are already conditioned to have so much respect for you that they never challenge you. And so even if you're the kind of teacher that says like, hey, ask me anything. If you disagree, there's space to express that. Let's talk about it. If something doesn't make sense, you might have to say that every day several times before your students even start to consider that as a possibility because they've had so much conditioning that might make them think, no, that's not true. You're setting me up. You're tricking me. I'm going to get punished. This isn't going to go well.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  And they may come from a home that's constantly reinforcing that. So it's not about teachers walking in the classroom being like, I'm always right. It's about just underestimating where our students already are and like needing to do the hard work of cultivating that capacity to question.

• 35:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That over the moon essay you were reading earlier from Jed McKenna, it actually starts with young Jed, like I think six years old, and he's basically interrogating the teacher about gravity. And like, well, why does this work? And how does the, the moon pulls the tide? He goes, well, how, how come I'm not lighter at certain times of the moon phase? And he starts asking these questions that a curious kid is, he was genuinely curious. He wanted to know, and he said, maybe these were stupid questions, but show me why they're stupid questions at least. And eventually the teacher kicks him out of the classroom. I had a similar thing happen to me in elementary school and it stuck with me to this day. We were looking at shapes and it was like, which one's a square? Which one's a triangle? Which one's a rectangle? Which one's a circle?

• 35:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I wrote down that none of them were a square. And the, the teacher, she said, well, no, that's wrong. This one is a square. And I said, well, no, it's two inches by two and one eighths inches. That's a rectangle. And I'm like eight year, yeah, I'm not even eight, I'm maybe seven years old, right?

• 36:06Speaker 03

  So you were born a perfectionist.

• 36:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, OCD, basically. And she got so frustrated. She's like, well, it's just wrong. That one's a square. And I'm like, but it's not a square. And so, yes, the teacher is not always right. Luciana said, "The worst education advice I've ever heard was that I absolutely needed to go to college right out of high school, even if I had no idea what I wanted to do." I think that's maybe the doubly dangerous thing because yes, if you know at age 18, I want to become a dentist and I know that in this country, in order to become a dentist, I needed to get that degree, or I want to become an accountant. And that's something I'm passionate about. Our accountant at the minimalist is super passionate about his accounting business.

• 36:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I don't understand that personally, but I'm glad that someone like that found that path. And to be an accountant, yes, you do have to, to have a particular piece of paper that says, I'm an accountant, right? And so I get that, but if I don't know what I'm going to do, and then I'm going to go get a hundred thousand dollars in loans or $50,000 in loans to do something that I don't know what I want to do, that can be a problem. And yes, there are success stories where I tried these things out. And yes, that's where I ended up meeting Mark Zuckerberg and that's why I got in as an early investor in Facebook. And that's why I'm a billionaire now, right? There are, there are those stories, but for every one of those confirming stories,

• 37:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  there are tens of thousands of stories where I wasted time, money, energy, or attention.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  And real quick on that, it's back to your point about asking the questions about buying the genes. This is not about, don't go to college or don't go to public school. That is not what I'm saying. It is know the reason for the things you are doing. And so many young people, when I meet them in their life, well, I'm gonna go to college because I want to be a lawyer. I'm like, do you want to be a lawyer? Oh, I think so. I'm good at arguing and debating. And people told me I should be a lawyer because they all imagine themselves in the courtroom. And I always say this, take one year, even just one summer, whatever that career is you think you want, go shadow that person for a year or summer. And I had a young person say, I'm so glad you told me that because I went to a law firm and I said, I want to shadow. I'll just do a free unpaid internship. And I realized all they do is like divorce paperwork all day.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Now, there's different kinds of lawyers, but he's like, I saw, oh, I don't want this at all. Like, so just go make sure you know why. And you can take a year and be deliberate and intentional about getting more information. You've been sheltered from the world for 12 years in these classrooms that are completely separated from the world of commerce. And then you're expected to pick a job, having seen only one job, the job of teacher, be actually performed. So go take a year and go be around the types of things you think you want to do.

• 38:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Isaac, I'd love to hear from you about what is the worst education advice you've ever heard? Because we have a bunch of questions coming up on page two. We're going to bring you into our world of minimalism and a bunch of different non-education questions. But before we, we exit the lightning round, I'd love to know from you, what is the worst education advice you've heard over the years?

• 39:10Speaker 03

  So I was, I was trying to think, 15 and I had, I had homeschooled all the way. And then when I was 14, I wanted to go to this private school that a bunch of my friends had gone to, mostly because they had a better basketball team than the homeschool basketball team. And I wanted to go, to go work with this coach.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  So I went to this private school for a year and I enjoyed it. I had a good time, but I kind of felt very constrained by the rigid schedule. I always liked to work and make money and it made it harder for me to have the flexibility I wanted. So at the end of one year, I decided I was gonna drop out and I was gonna go to community college. And so I could work three days a week, go to community college two days a week for my last two years of high school. To me, this just seemed really normal. And I told one of the teachers there who I really liked. He was always really nice to me and I learned a lot from him. And he was like furious. And he's like, you have no idea what you're doing. You're just a child. You're just a boy. You can't go to college. I'm like, well, it's Kamazie Valley Community College. It's not really,

• 40:08Speaker 03

  you know, it doesn't really count. But he legitimately was like, had this idea that there are these stages in life and I'm not ready for the like, great manly journey of community college. And I just, I never forget, and I don't hold bitterness against this guy, but like, I was so shocked by that. I'm like, all this time, I thought you were my guy. I thought you had my back. He had given me some fun opportunities during the school year. But I realized in that moment, he was thinking about, he wanted me to come back and do my next two years there because he liked having me there. I was a part of different things that he was doing. And it was like, oh, people who want to be your mentor

• 40:49Speaker 03

  sometimes cannot see beyond their vision of your future. And I'm like, if you really knew me, you would know this is exactly the right thing for me. But like, I just remember having that moment. And ever since then, I've never liked mentors.

• 41:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  How about you listeners? What's the worst education advice you've ever heard? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to our private podcast. Okay, give me something pithy TK. What's the worst education advice you've ever heard?

• 41:19Speaker 02

  They told me curiosity was a distraction. Turns out it was the whole point.

• 41:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's pithy.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh, I was supposed to be pithy like that? I just rambled.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Tell them about me. Am I ever pithy on this thing?

• 41:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, go ahead and ramble.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  You know, I think a parent's job is to create a space where their child can explore their curiosities in a way that's safe. Something that I am so grateful for my parents is that they did two things. Number one, they kept things out of the house that they believe would lead me to harm myself. Number two, they filled the house with everything imaginable within those boundaries. And so I remember talking with this kid, I brought a comic book to school because when we finished our work early, we could read a book. And I pulled out my comic book and he says, my mom doesn't let me read those. And I go, why not? And he says, well, she says they're dummy books.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  And I was like, man, that's too bad for you because it was through comic books that I developed a love for reading. And my parents never told me things like that. They told me that if I was interested in something, that would be the stuff that I would remember, that I would retain without even having to work for it. And so I think if you get too preoccupied with looking at your curiosity as a distraction and trying to consume things that you think will make you sound smart to other people, that's about as good of a strategy as getting fit by saying, I'm going to make sure that every time I show up to the gym, I look like the guy who's in shape. You're moving in the opposite direction of being fit. You want to be fit, you gotta be willing to look like you're not in shape and tell the truth so that you can get better. You want to be smart? Be willing to look like the person who isn't smart by asking the questions that just burn inside you,

• 43:01Speaker 02

  that make you want to stay up all night. Cause everything you need to know is going to be like connected to all the stuff that you want to know.

• 43:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think the same thing could be said for happiness. You know, in terms of like trying to look like you're living a happy life that is ideal to other people. This is what my life is supposed to be in their eyes. And then if I, if I live up to their expectation of me, then I will be happy. Which brings me to my pithy answer here, which is happiness is not the result of getting everything you want. And I think quite often we seek out a college degree because getting that is going to make us happy. But I mean, it's not the degree it's going to make me happy. It's the job that's going to make me happy. Or it is the income that is going to make me happy. And then you get to a point where I was at age 30, where I had everything I ever wanted.

• 43:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And if you would have went back and told my 18 year old self, all of these so-called accomplishments, he would have said, wow, you must be so happy. And I always said, no, man, I'm miserable. I'm trying to find the exit ramp from this lifestyle. I got everything I ever wanted. And it turns out that everything I ever wanted isn't actually what I wanted. I wanted happiness, but happiness was not the destination. It's the byproduct of doing the things that I enjoy, the satisfaction of that and having some sort of sense of purpose in doing what I'm doing. That's almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to, but first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalists.

• 44:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This week, this Wednesday, in fact, August 13th, in Philadelphia, we're doing a screening of a new film I've been working on for two years now with Dr. Paul Saladino. He was just on the podcast a couple of episodes ago for episode 499. The food or the documentary is called Food for Humans. We've, we interviewed a bunch of really amazing experts and also just some great people who were going through this transformation of changing their diet and lifestyle to remove all of the junk. We called it Food for Humans. Originally, I was going to call it People Food because we often talk about how we, we feed our pets sometimes people food, but it's always junk food for them. But we're not feeding ourselves people food, people food either.

• 45:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're not eating food for humans. We're eating this processed junk quite often. And so it's, well, anyway, we're doing a small screening. By the time I announce this, it'll sell out really quickly. If you're anywhere in the Philadelphia area, you'd like to check it out, just head on over to food MOVIE and you can get tickets to that event if there are any still left. And then later this year, we'll likely do a small theatrical tour with that before we release the film online. I'll keep you posted on that. But if you're anywhere near Philadelphia, food MOVIE, August 13th is the official world premiere. This is an unfinished cut of the film. We're actually looking for feedback so we can incorporate it into the final cut of the film. So the director, Chris, will be there as well and soliciting your feedback if you're

• 46:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  interested. Food MOVIE. All right, much more coming up, but first, here's an insight from one of our listeners.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Hi Minimalists. I was recently listening to the episode Small Things and resonated with one of the listeners who discussed how she's been able to part with her books by renting them from the library or rereading favorite ones. I align with what TK said about his rules with books, since I have similar ones. I enjoy reading, I prefer physical books, and have been having fun building my library. That being said, I don't like to spend a lot of money on books and would prefer to rent from the library instead of buying them for full price. I started to keep a list on my phone of titles I want, and when I go to the thrift store or my local library book sale, I'll look for them. I've been able to find some great books this way. When I even found it at the thrift for a couple dollars and I was still on my library's waiting list for it. The delayed gratification

• 46:57Speaker 04

  has also helped me appreciate them more when I do find them. I also love gifting books, so if there's a book I have that I'm okay parting with and have a friend who would enjoy it, I gift it to them or sometimes make up blind dates with a book to give out to others. I have a lot of reader friends, so this has worked out well so far. I hope this helps someone. Thanks for listening.

• 47:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you're watching the video version of this, TK's covered in books right now. It's really impressive. Blind date with a book. I like that concept. I love that. I'm following that immediately. Michelle, thank you so much for that insight. If anyone else has a listener tip about this episode or any other episode, you can email a voicemail right from your phone to [email protected] so we can feature your lovely voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three with Isaac Morehouse. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 47:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that is the first 32% of episode 501. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition with Isaac Morehouse, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, how do I convince my family to stop buying excess stuff for my kids? Is it ever healthy to argue or fight in a relationship? How do I teach my kids to be generous? Plus, a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private episodes on Apple Podcasts. Spotify or your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, all the way back to episode 001. That is a full decade of archives. Big thanks to Isaac Morehouse for joining us today.

• 48:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  His new book is called Open Education. You can find him at Isaac Morehouse on X and IsaacMorehouse.com. We'll put links to all of that in the show notes as well. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter Spire, Jeff and Dave, Jordan O'More on the couch, Professor Sean next to him, and Savvy D. on the board, and the rest of our team. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.