273. What is the BEST way to educate your children? Is homeschooling right for everyone? | Hannah Frankman

Summary

Episode Summary: What is the BEST Way to Educate Your Children? Is Homeschooling Right for Everyone? | Hannah Frankman

Podcast: Simple Farmhouse Life
Host: Lisa Bass
Guest: Hannah Frankman
Release Date: January 21, 2025
Episode: 273

In this insightful episode of Simple Farmhouse Life, host Lisa Bass delves deep into the topic of homeschooling with special guest Hannah Frankman. Drawing from her personal experiences and professional expertise, Hannah explores the nuances of homeschooling, its benefits, challenges, and how it compares to traditional public schooling. This comprehensive discussion offers valuable perspectives for parents considering alternative education models for their children.

---

Introduction to Homeschooling with Hannah Frankman

The episode begins with Lisa introducing Hannah Frankman, who has been homeschooling her children and has dedicated her career to advocating for child-centric education models.

Hannah Frankman [03:40]: "I grew up homeschooled from first grade all the way through high school, didn't go to college, I skipped the college path to go work in the startup world."

---

Hannah’s Homeschooling Journey and Its Impact

Hannah shares her personal journey of being homeschooled and how it shaped her self-direction and adaptability in the workforce. She highlights the contrast between her homeschooling experience and the traditional public school system.

Hannah Frankman [07:43]: "Homeschoolers have had a lot more practice being self-directed than kids who have been in a classroom for seven hours a day for 13 years being told what to do at every turn."

---

Homeschooling vs. Public Schooling: Key Differences

The discussion shifts to comparing homeschooling with public schooling, focusing on aspects like self-motivation, curiosity, and the ability to interact with a diverse range of individuals beyond the same-age peer group.

Hannah Frankman [22:25]: "When we talk about homeschoolers not being socialized, we're very concerned that they're not spending enough time with their peers. But homeschool kids are interacting with the real world."

---

Socialization in Homeschooling: A Broader Perspective

Hannah challenges the conventional notion that homeschoolers lack socialization by emphasizing the importance of interacting with various age groups and the broader community.

Hannah Frankman [27:43]: "The question isn't, does your kid have 25 friends their age? The question is, are you also interacting this child with the world?"

---

Critique of the Public School System’s History and Structure

Hannah provides a historical overview of the public school system, tracing its roots to the Prussian model designed for industrial workforce preparation and cultural assimilation. She critiques its outdated structure and lack of innovation in teaching methodologies.

Hannah Frankman [41:14]: "The public education system is a failed experiment. We rank 36th in the world for literacy despite spending $15,500 per child per year."

---

Challenges Within the Public School System

The conversation delves into specific issues plaguing public schools, such as standardized testing, inadequate teacher support, and the inability to cater to individual student needs. Hannah points out how these systemic problems lead to poor academic outcomes.

Hannah Frankman [47:22]: "The teachers are handed a classroom of 30 kids and not all of those kids are at the same academic level. The system sets teachers up to fail from the beginning."

---

Embracing Technology and AI in Education

Hannah discusses the potential of AI-driven learning tools to revolutionize education by providing personalized learning experiences that traditional classrooms cannot offer. However, she expresses skepticism about the education system's willingness to adopt such innovations.

Hannah Frankman [48:58]: "How much did the education system change when the Internet came online? Not very much. I anticipate the same with AI."

---

Choosing the Right Education Model for Your Child

Hannah emphasizes that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to education. She advises parents to consider their child's unique needs, interests, and the compatibility of the school's culture with their family's values when selecting an education model.

Hannah Frankman [53:10]: "Trust your gut. You know your kid better than anybody. If your kid feels excited about where they are and the learning environment, that's what's going to support them."

---

The Importance of Lifelong Learning

Concluding the discussion, Hannah underscores the goal of education should be to foster lifelong learners who continuously seek knowledge and adapt to the ever-changing world, rather than merely preparing them for standardized tests.

Hannah Frankman [59:36]: "The entire goal is to create students who forever just want to continue learning new things and are able to adapt to your changing world."

---

Additional Resources and Continued Learning

Hannah invites listeners to explore her podcast, The Hannah Frankman Podcast, where she engages with various experts in the education field. She encourages parents to follow her on social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram for more insights.

Hannah Frankman [60:39]: "You can find my podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and follow me on Twitter and Instagram for more educational content."

---

This episode offers a profound exploration of homeschooling and alternative education models, providing parents with the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions tailored to their children's unique needs. Hannah Frankman's expertise and passion for child-centric education make this conversation a valuable resource for anyone interested in the future of education.

Transcript

[Lisa]

If you're going through menopause, perimenopause, and you just can't seem to find comfort in your body anymore, or if you're done with menopause but you're still feeling like a wet sock on a busy highway, then you have to try Hormone Harmony. Hormone Harmony is not just a supplement for women going through perimenopause, menopause or post menopause. It's become a phenomenon. Women cannot stop talking about it on social media. A bottle of Hormone Harmony is sold every 24 seconds. Happy Mammoth, the company that created Hormone Harmony, is dedicated to making women's lives easier. And that means using only science backed ingredients that have been proven to work for women. They make no compromises when it comes to quality and it shows. I looked through all of the ingredients on the back of the bottle, several that I recognize that I've over the years pieced together for myself when certain hormone situations arise. Ingredients that I've trusted for years all put together in one supplement. It contains science backed herbal extracts called adaptogens which help the body to adapt to any stressors like chaot, hormonal changes that happen naturally throughout a woman's life. Hormone Harmony isn't just for menopause. Any woman with symptoms of hormonal imbalances can take it. But it's perfect for those horrible symptoms that put a woman's life on hold. Hot flashes, night sweats, racing thoughts, low mood, poor sleep. Hormone Harmony can help with all of those things. For a limited time, you can get 15% off your entire first order at Happy Mammoth.com with code Farmhouse at checkout. That's Happy Mammoth.com with code farmhouse.

[Hannah Frankman]

In general, I'm a very big advocate for child centric education models. So something that truly puts the child at the center of the education. It's not about what's the best thing for the teacher. What's the most convenient thing when you have a classroom of 30 kids? Like, what's the easiest way to educate a child? It's what is actually best for the kid. And that's the most important guiding principle in how the education is presented. And there's lots of different models that run with this in mind. But this is one of the first things I look for in a school is like, okay, is the kid truly at the center? Like, is the child's experience truly what this thing is about?

[Lisa]

My name is Lisa, mother of eight and creator of the blog and YouTube channel Farmhouse on Boom. On this podcast I like to talk about simplifying your life so you can live out your priorities. I help you learn how to cook from scratch and decorate on a budget through this podcast and my courses, Simple.

[Co-host]

Sourdough and the Simple Sewing Series.

[Lisa]

I also help people reach their goals from home through my business courses, create your blog dream and YouTube success academy.

[Co-host]

I will leave links to these resources.

[Lisa]

In the show notes in description box below.

[Co-host]

Now let's get into the show. Welcome back to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. Today we're talking about homeschooling again. I've been talking about that more lately. A lot of you are curious to hear more about that, especially maybe you're in the earlier phases and of motherhood and you're thinking about possibly homeschooling. Or maybe you're already, you know, you have kids, school age, and you're thinking about changing what you're currently doing. Or maybe you're just strictly curious. I was listening. I forget what podcast it was, but I came across Hannah Frankman on another podcast interview and she had such fascinating points about the history of education and then her personal education journey because she was homeschooled her entire life, which it's interesting to hear from that perspective. And I wanted to bring her on this show because I thought a lot of you would find this interesting also. All right, let's jump into the interview. Hannah, welcome to the show. You are Hannah from Rebel Educator. Tell us a bit about that and we'll get into homeschooling, one of our favorite topics. But I don't talk about it as much as I should on the show and I get a lot of requests for it. So I'm excited to have you on. So, yeah, give us a brief rundown of your story.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, so I Homeschooling is one of my favorite topics, so this is going to be great. I am a product of everything that I talk about. I grew up homeschooled from first grade all the way through high school, didn't go to college, sk skipped the college path to go work in the startup world. I wanted to see if it was possible to be, quote, successful and like, actually make a living without having a college degree because everybody told me I couldn't do that. And I was a little bit of a contrarian at 18. So skipped college, went and started working in the startup world. Turns out you actually don't need a college degree to make a living working in business. And I realized while I was working professionally that I had a very different background from most of the people I was working with growing up homeschooled. I interact with a lot of homeschoolers. I didn't really realize how different it was to be homeschooled versus just having the background of and the like the life context of having gone to public school for all of your childhood and adolescence. So started writing about my education experience and ended up over the years spending more and more time talking about my education and then became more interested in alternative education more broadly. And now a lot of what I do in the day to day is writing about different forms of education. Everything from homeschooling to different types of alternative and innovative schools. Anything that puts the child at the center of the education as opposed to what's convenient for a system or a teacher or a classroom or an entire institution. So I've gone down a lot of rabbit holes over the past few years in terms of education, but homeschooling is always the one that's nearest and dearest to my heart because that's what started the whole thing for me.

[Co-host]

Yeah. Oh man, so many things I like thoughts coming to mind of stuff I wanted to like Rose, I wanted to go down in that. First you mentioned that maybe you grew up homeschooled and therefore you didn't have like I, I grew up in school and so I have kind of the context of I have a 16 year old all the way down to a 1 year old. So I've seen. And they've always been homeschooled their entire lives. So I, I kind of know like a teenager as a homeschooler and then I have the context of being not being homeschooled and going to school and I of course have my opinions about strong ones as well. But what were some of the key things maybe you noticed when you got to college or no, no, sorry, you didn't go to college, you were in the startup world. Some of the key things you noticed with people that you were working on projects and of course these are people who are already out on their own, so maybe they're already in a bit of a different position than somebody that you maybe would have met in college. What are some of the key things maybe you noticed?

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, I mean, it took me a while to start noticing because I had been so homeschooled for so long that I didn't realize how different my frame of reference was to the people I was interacting with in the rest of the world. And it took people making comments about how they thought I had a lot of kind of kooky ideas, not in a bad way, just very different from what they would have expected in like, you know, looking at a problem and coming up with a solution or different ways that things could be handled. Because I had been homeschooled, that's what they attributed it to. And that's what made me stop and think, wait a second, am I actually that different because I was homeschooled now that I'm an adult? And I think, I think there are a lot of different things that I can. That are very. Were very prominent in how I engage with the world as a young adult and that are still very core parts of my personality that I can trace back to being homeschooled. And one of the obvious ones that I think a lot of people talk about when they're talking about homeschoolers going to college or entering the workforce is that homeschoolers have had a lot more practice being self directed than kids who have been in a classroom for seven hours a day for 13 years being told what to do at every turn.

[Co-host]

Right.

[Hannah Frankman]

And I do think there's something to that where it was very easy for me to transition from sitting at home being self directed about what I was going to study that day to working for an employer, but being very self directed about what I was going to work on. Like I was. It was very easy for me to be a self starter because I've been practicing that for years. As opposed to the stories you hear about kids who come out of public school and they go to college and it's such a rough transition because all of a sudden nobody's telling them how to spend their time during the day and they have to figure out how to, you know, if you have a paper due at the end of the month, how do you budget your time to get that done? Like, that's a new skill often. And for me, it was just sort of second nature because I've been doing it for so long. There also was, when I was growing up homeschooled, I grew up in a household where questions and curiosity were very, very encouraged. So whenever I was interested in something, my parents would encourage me to ask more questions about it and go down whatever rabbit hole I was being compelled to explore. And I would spend lots of time reading books or when I got older and I started using the computer and like, using things like Wikipedia, going down Internet rabbit holes, learning about different things. And I think I had a much higher curiosity drive than the average person I was interacting with in the regular world who had been publicly schooled. I think that was a really big one right yeah. And I think as a young person going into the professional world, I think it's less relevant now that I'm a more established adult. But early on, like, I was much less afraid of like people who are, quote, authority figures or people who are farther along in their careers than I was because I never spent the majority of my time in an age segregated space where people who are older than me are like, ooh, scary. Like we're not supposed to talk to them. And I think that made a really big difference in like my sense of drive and capacity early on in my career where I was just like, I want to go talk to this person and learn how they do what they do so I can do it too. So I'm just going to go do that. Like, I didn't have any sense of like perceived barriers around who I could talk to and who I couldn't talk to because I'd never been in an environment that had foisted that upon me.

[Co-host]

Yeah, I think, man, again, so many things. So you mentioned college and people having a hard time like figuring out, okay, now I have an open block of time, what do I do? For me personally, that wasn't super hard. I actually did go to college and looking back, like it wasn't necessary for my life or anything like that. Like, I'm not saying I would recommend it, but I did. And I actually like totally understood how to do college. Like I, I got it. Like I had the, the classes, the assignments and I, I knew how to direct my time personality wise. I'm a self starter. What I struggled with was after college I got married right away, got pregnant right away, and so I was a stay at home mom or you know, stay at home wife until I had the baby. Because I was like, why get a job now I'm about to have a baby and figuring out what to do with a wide open day with nothing. Like I didn't have a clue what to do. I didn't know, you know, where to even start managing my home, cooking, baking, learning new things by myself. I had no clue, like college was like, okay, I'm still in a class curriculum. Yes, I have free time with which to figure out how to study for the test, how to prepare for whatever. But I totally see what you're saying in that respect because as a person who is a self starter, it's funny to me that I was so unable to figure out like what to do with a wide open day.

[Hannah Frankman]

Don't even get me started on this because this is one of my Favorite pet peeves, not just about public school versus homeschooling, but about our culture at large and how we raise our kids. We are terrified of free time and open space and boredom. And we have this knee jerk reaction to avoid boredom at all costs. And it comes from it. We come, it comes from us, at us, from all different angles. Right. So we are hyper fixated as a culture on being super productive and always looking busy. And we start ingraining this in our children. Like projecting it onto our children at a very young age. Like the seven year old who as soon as they come home from school, they've got to go to soccer practice and they've got to go to piano lesson and they have swimming lessons. And it's so common. I talk to my friends and my family who have little kids and they're like, oh, we can't do anything on Tuesday because our kids have swim lesson and then they have piano after school. I'm like, when do your kids play? Like they don't have any free time. But we're so hyper fixated on looking busy. And we use this kind of as a crutch. Like if you're, if you're super busy all the time, you don't really have to stop and think about what am I doing with my life and if that's actually meaningful to me.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

Like you're busy, so you must be doing something productive. You're justifying the space you take up in the world. Like it's very, it's a very quick band aid over any like, existential fears or unexplored questions that you might have. Like if you're just busy, you don't have time to think about it because you're being productive. And this comes out all the time too. Like, I mean, think about how people approach a 9 to 5 that they don't actually care about. Right. Like you go to the office and you're not super. Like you're not intrinsically motivated to do anything more than the bare minimum to keep your job, but you want to look busy all the time because then nobody's going to bother you and people are going to think you're valuable and worth paying. Like there's this sort of. As a culture, we equate busyness to worthiness.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

But we also were scared of boredom. Like kids are kids come and bother. Like your kid will come bother you and go home. I'm bored. And it's like, oh no, that's a problem. We have to find something for you to do because Heaven forbid you might get up to some mischief if you're bored. And I think this is a tragedy that we don't give our kids any space to be bored and to have openness. Because if. If you're busy all the time, you never learn how to stop and go, okay, if. If no one else is telling me what to do, what do I actually want to do?

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

How do I creatively want to solve my problem of boredom, which is where some of kids best ideas come from, is as an antidote to their own boredom. But also you're never giving them a chance to discover what it is that they want to do with themselves when they have no constraints on their time and how they're spending it, but also what they even like. Like, if you always are prescribing activities for them, how are they going to know what they actually would like and would choose if they have space and time? And then to your point, like kids eventually reach a point in their lives where they have nothing scheduled for them and they're so lost because they spent their entire childhood being told what to do all the time. And that's crazy to me.

[Co-host]

It is. And I do want to point out that you are not immune from this if you're homeschooled. Like, I'm around so many homeschoolers. I'm a homeschooler myself, so obviously most of the people I interact with are also homeschoolers. And we can fill our schedules because of the uncomfortable nature of having open blocks of time just as much as anybody else. There's so many programs are homeschoolers and it feels uncomfortable, at least for most. I don't know if it's most people, but for a lot of personalities, it feels uncomfortable to have a whole day that you have to figure out what to do with. And if you just plug them in, it's almost like you're make making your own school in a way to a lot of things. You have to face that.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, it's. But I don't think it's inherently uncomfortable. I think it's uncomfortable because it's foreign and because it's a skill that was never cultivated.

[Co-host]

Right.

[Hannah Frankman]

Like, I don't think the average person is born with a fear of being. No, absolutely not into you. Because it's always treated as a problem.

[Co-host]

Yeah. Yes.

[Hannah Frankman]

Like you're bored and somebody tries to fix it for you.

[Co-host]

You're absolutely not being bored.

[Hannah Frankman]

Is being born bored is bad? I have to avoid it.

[Co-host]

Yes. Because up to a certain age, when you don't start, you know, you start preschool, you start soccer at like 3 or 4. They do just kind of toddle around and get into things. Like, yes, they need a lot of comfort from you, but they are totally comfortable with their whole day being there's nothing going on. That's like what defines being a baby and a toddler. And then at some point we're taught, you know, that's not what we do. I'm curious, what was your homeschool structure like as a kid? Because obviously your mom, even in within the homeschool realm, did things a little bit more alternative.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, when I was, it kind of shifted as, as I went through the different sort of epochs of the, of my, like, maturing process. So when I was in elementary school, my mom was very loosely following the Waldorf school curriculums because she thought they were very beautiful. She loved the, the emphasis on art and on natural materials and on exploring the physical world around you. And so we were very loosely following sort of year by year, what kids in Waldorf schools are focused on learning. But it was very loose, it was very informal, and it didn't take very long because truly school does not take that much time to move through all the materials, especially if you're home and you're just with your mom and she can work through materials with you. Like, it doesn't really take that long to get through first grade math. And so you can't even do that.

[Co-host]

Much or they'll burnout. Like you literally can't if you wanted to.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah. So we would spend like maybe a couple hours a day doing school related things. And that was a very broad umbrella. Like, school related things could be learning how to bake bread or something. Like, it wasn't always sitting down with a book and, or a worksheet and learning about, you know, working on your spelling or something. And then the bulk of my time was spent free playing. And there was no real structure to it. Like, I had a younger sister, so she and I would play a lot together. We didn't really have a lot of neighbors for most of my childhood. Like, we lived pretty rurally. There weren't other kids around for us to play with. So we were part of a homeschool group. And we'd meet up with them once a week and we take classes with them and there'd be lots of like, group playtime. But the bulk, like our average day was we'd do some school and then we'd play and we'd spend a lot of time playing outside we'd go for long nature walks, we'd, you know, play inside. We played make believe, all different sorts of imaginary games. It was amazing. It was the most wonderful childhood. I had the best time. And if I was ever bored, my mom would say, what are you gonna do about it? And that was about it. And we'd be bored until we came up with something to do. And that was a good life lesson.

[Lisa]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

When I moved into middle school, we started to get more, like there was more, more tech involved in my education. So we started using online programs more and like video series and stuff like that. And then when I was in high school, most of my schooling was digital and I was very academically inclined. Like, I just loved academic learning. And so I ended up having pretty full school days when I was in high school because there was just a lot I wanted to do. So I was watching recorded video lectures from like the teaching company and series on YouTube and things like that. And like trying to find. I was reading the great books when I was in high school and stuff because I thought that sounded like fun. Like I was just kind of a nerd. But it was very self directed. Like my parents were mostly. My mom always called herself a facilitator. So like she was there to make sure I had everything that I needed and I was meeting state requirements. But beyond that, like, she pretty much let me be in the driver's seat when I was in middle school and high school. So I was the one deciding what it was I wanted to study and how I was going to budget my time and what I was going to work on every day, which was amazing. I was sad when I was a senior and realized that I should do something more like socially productive than just sit around and listen to lecture series every day. When I was like the following year when there was a big part of me that just kind of wanted to keep doing that. But it was awesome. It was, it was very fun and it was very curiosity driven. Like I knew there were things that I was supposed to be learning to meet the sort of state requirements. And at that point I didn't know if I was going to go to college or not. So I wanted to make sure I had all the things I needed academically if I was going to apply for university. So there were some guardrails in that sense. But a lot of it was just me going, I really want to know how like human anatomy works. And it feels like it would probably be really cool if I like watch some cadaver dissections on YouTube. So I, like, really understand what they're talking about when they're talking about fascia. So I'm gonna go do that. Or, like, I'm really curious about, like, I just think the beach is so cool, and I want to learn more about what else is going on out there. And so I'm gonna study oceanography, and then I'm, like, really curious about all the studies that have been done on. On dolphin intelligence and whale intelligence. I'm, like, gonna go down a rabbit hole with this because I think it's really cool. Like, I was just all over the place, and it was so much fun. So it was very emergent. Like, there wasn't really a plan at the beginning of how it was all going to evolve. I think a lot of it was very tailored to me and my interests and, like, how I learned. Like, my younger sister's homeschooling experience was very different because she was a very different student.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

But mine was really great for me. I had the best time.

[Co-host]

Yeah. And that. That's something to point out because it sounds like you're a very curious person. Like, you naturally want all of these certain things. And not all children, of course, are like that. I do think that at some point an interest will emerge and a lot of kids will go more deep, maybe, on one thing. And I think that homeschooling provides space for that. Now, you mentioned that you lived rurally, you got together with other students or other homeschool students maybe once a week or so. And that's obviously one of the biggest questions that everybody who talks about homeschooling ever gets, ever. So let's talk a little bit about that. Is not being socialized actually a bad thing?

[Hannah Frankman]

No, I think we use the term socialization in way too narrow of a context. When we talk about homeschoolers not being socialized. We're very concerned that they're not spending enough time with their peers and like, their very immediate peers, like the. Their grade level peers, the kids that they'd be in a classroom with, which is a very artificial form of socialization, like, this did not exist a hundred years ago. Nobody was socialized only with kids of their own birth year until very recently in human history, like, for most of the history of education, kids were learning in schooling environments where they were interacting with kids older than them and younger than them. And they were part of a community where they were interacting with, you know, people of childbearing age and, like, the elderly and little kids. And it was a very broad sweep of of sort of interacting with all the different stages of the human experience and being comfortable doing that. And I think there's something very antisocial about only socializing your kids with kids of the same age group. And then all adults are authority figures. And younger kids are like, right, not worth bothering with because it's not cool to hang out with them. Like you're teaching kids bad social habits by only teaching them to interact with each other in this very hyper competitive environment, which is you don't have a lot of distinguishing factors between yourself and other kids of your exact age group. And so you start getting hyper competitive about very petty things to sort of establish a social order. And, you know, a, a very exaggerated culture of bullying starts to emerge from that. And like a very sort of exaggerated social hierarchy that wouldn't really exist in the real world starts to emerge. And it's really detrimental for kids in a lot of way because their sort of social interactions start to morph into these sort of ways that they wouldn't normally develop because they're trying to fit into this very artificial and sometimes very toxic environment that they find themselves in. Especially if you're like lower in the, like, heap of the pecking order of how the social hierarchy is developing. Kids are not being socialized for the real world doing that. They're being socialized like conventionally. But is that even a good thing? And even if your homeschool kids aren't interacting with 20 different kids of their birth year, they're probably being very well socialized in other capacities. Like if you can take your kids out into the real world with you and take them to the library on a Tuesday afternoon and they can interact with the librarians and the other patrons or they're going to the grocery store with you on a Monday morning. They're interacting with the real world like they're being socialized. Unless you're keeping your kids at home and not interacting with anyone else besides you all day, every day, your kids are being socialized. And they're probably being socialized in a way that's actually much more real world beneficial than anything that they're getting in a classroom where they're sort of being cloistered away from the real world and not allowed to interact with it during normal business hours, which is a very strange idea. So I think the entire thing is kind of inverted when people say, oh, your kids aren't being socialized. It's not like, no, your kids aren't being socialized. I'm sorry, but I think, I think the homeschool kids are like, they're interacting with the real world. Like, isn't that the best real world training they could be getting?

[Co-host]

Yeah, I think it's interesting that when it comes to education, when it comes to people interacting with other humans and socializing, we don't step back and think, what's the goal of this? And we just take for granted what has been the thing since we've been alive. So like you said, this is a new way to do this. It's been around for maybe a hundred years, but because that's how it's always been, it's just the assumption, like, if they don't hang out with 25 other kids their age on a regular basis, you are doing them a disservice, not really questioning, well, is that necessary? Is it absolutely necessary? And of course, kids who go to school can interact with the real world. I know I've people, this is the pushback. And I'm sure as a somebody who talks about homeschool, you've heard the same exact thing. Well, I take my kids to the library and we talk to librarian after school. But. And so I know that, you know, kids who go to school can interact with the real world, but saying that, like, the homeschoolers are missing out because they don't have 25 friends their exact age, the assumption is that that is important. And yeah, you and I are questioning, is it though, is that really necessary?

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, it's. It's assuming that interacting with 25 other kids of the exact same birth year is important, but also assuming that that is sufficient. Because I think to what you just said, it's like, well, my kids do go to the library after school. It's like, great. They're getting a broad array of different types of social experiences. That's amazing. But if they weren't going and having that experience too, just being in public school all day would not be sufficient to get them the type of experience that they're having by going to the library.

[Co-host]

So the question isn't, does your kid have 25 friends their age? The question is, are you also interacting this child with the world? You know, I guess that's kind of what you're saying.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, exactly. Because at the end of the day, you're preparing them to live a life as an adult. Having some experience in the adult world is probably going to be really helpful for them.

[Co-host]

Yeah. And so much of what you said, I've never thought about, like, the way that we distinguish ourselves when we're all the same Age because we're all pretty much on the same level. And then certain kids get left behind for one reason or the other. They're not. They're not particularly gorgeous or they're not particularly good at sports. There's bad things on both ends of that. Whether you are the popular one or the one who is getting picked on. There is this nature of being around this many kids that makes this, you know, just ripe for the, like, for happening. So.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, and then it gets segregated even more because then you put the gifted kids all together and like, the kids who need additional education, like, support altogether. And so then there's even fewer defining features between them. And like, you have. It gets very, like, warped. The types of things that you have to start using as the differentiators and the. The social order. It's like, well, your nose is too big, so, like, we're gonna pick on you. Or like, something stupid like that that in the real world nobody cares about. But, like, it's the only thing the kids can find. Like, I got picked on for being a redhead at one point because it was like, yeah, we're.

[Co-host]

Now that's like, fine. But yeah, when you're.

[Hannah Frankman]

When you're a kid, yeah, it's like, nobody cares.

[Co-host]

It's brutal.

[Hannah Frankman]

But, like, they're looking for the thing that makes you obviously different so that they can distinguish you.

[Co-host]

Right. They have to. Yeah. Because, yeah, we're not based on age or a lot of different factors.

[Lisa]

There are so many things in life we just never get around to taking up that hobby, cleaning out the garage, you know, the little things that don't really make a huge difference in our lives yet. There's one thing that most of us have probably been neglecting that can have a huge impact on our family's future. It's life insurance. And with Select Quote, getting covered with the right policy for you is easier and more affordable than you may think. Cook and I have had life insurance for man probably about 10 years now. I think it was sometime around having our fourth child. We realized at that time where we were in life. If something would have happened to one of us, we wouldn't have been okay financially. Select Quote is one of America's leading insurance brokers with nearly 40 years of experience helping over 2 million customers find over $700 billion in coverage since 1985. Other life insurance brokers offer impersonal one size fits all policies that may cost you more and cover you less, while select quotes licensed insurance agents work for you to tailor a life insurance policy for your individual needs in as little as 15 minutes. And if you've ever worried about getting coverage with pre existing health conditions, Select Quote partners with carriers that provide policies for a variety of health conditions. High blood pressure, no problem. Diabetes? That's fine too. Even if you have heart disease, Select Quote partners with carriers that can cover those conditions and others. Or if you don't have any major health issues, they work with carriers that can get you same day coverage with no medical exam required. Head to select'.com and a licensed insurance agent will call you right away with the right policy for your life and your budget. Get the right life insurance for you for [e-mail] farmhouse go to SelectQuote.com farmhouse today to get started. That's SelectQuote.comhouse part of our goal as parents is training our kids for the real world. I remember when I was a kid I started my first job at $3 an hour. So that just tells you how much stuff has changed. And I used it all to buy CDs back then. Wasn't really super interested in saving that money for my future. There's a place for budgeting for future goals and then also allowing yourself to spend some fun money. And we want our kids to be knowledgeable about all of that. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns Early. Acorns early is the smart money app and debit card for kids that helps kids learn the value of money. Parents can use the Acorns early app to track their kids chores and pay allowance automatically, while kids can set savings goals, take interactive learning courses about all things money and spend what they've earned with their very own debit card. Ready to help your kids learn the value of money? Just head to acornserly.com farmhouse or download the Acorns early app to get started. Sign up now and your first month is on us. Terms and conditions apply. Monthly subscription fee starting from $5 per month unless canceled.

[Co-host]

So let's talk a little bit about public school. And of course this will ruffle feathers like things tend to do. Why is public school so broken? And what's the history of that? Like briefly so loaded question.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, there's, there's a lot here. So like I already said, public school is a very modern invention. It doesn't feel modern because in living memory for most people it's all like your family has ever known.

[Co-host]

Yeah, since we've been alive, since our grandparents have been alive, life. Well for the most part, but it's.

[Hannah Frankman]

Actually in the scheme of human History. It's extremely modern, and it's an. It's an experiment. And it was developed in the late 1800s. The bulk of it was developed in the late 1800s. It was sort of nationally rolled out in the early 1900s. And it was developed off of the Prussian model, which, when you go and talk about this on the Internet, people love to come back and go, that's just a conspiracy theory. That's not true. But if you go back and you dig into the history of the education system, it's absolutely true. And the Prussians built their public education system to serve the purpose of assimilating their citizens, because the Prussians had a large body of their population who were not originally Prussian, who were. Had been conquered in war and such. And they were. They needed a way to homogenize the culture. And so they created an education system that was going to basically give every student a very standard Prussian education. And it also was a model that was intended to train future military leaders and future military, like, soldiers. And so it was a model that was intended for social cohesion. And Horace Mann, who's kind of the. The granddaddy of American education, went to Prussia to study their schools because he was trying to design an education system that was going to homogenize American culture. Because in the, like, 1880s, there were tons of immigrants. There were. I mean, he was in Massachusetts and. Which was sort of a particular melting pot at the time. For there were the Irish Catholics and the Italians, and they didn't get along. And there were, you know, freed slaves who had moved up from the south and who were trying, like, not really fully integrating into the culture. And there were all of these different social groups, and there was a lot of social tension. And he intentionally wanted to design an education system that was going to create social continuity. And the goal was to also prepare a generation to work in a rapidly industrializing world, because the world was changing very quickly. And, you know, for all of American history prior to this point, the majority of young people grew up in their small communities. There were lots of farmers. There was lots of very small business enterprises. But the world was changing to a much larger scale of industry and employment. It was the Industrial Revolution. And so there was a need for young workers to be able to fit inside of the cogs of big industrial machines. So they need to be trained for different types of, like, specific types of work. So it was, like, truly a social experiment to see, can we train up a generation of kids where we can sort of engineer, like, okay, we're going to have this many people who are good at this job and this many people who are good at this job and kind of funnel them into the different areas that this industrial economy needs. And that was the basis of the American education system, was training kids to be good industrial workers who were very patriotic and who were assimilated into the culture of being American, even if their parents were immigrants and who were not too distracted by like, this is. This is actually in the literature of the people who created our education system, like, weren't too distracted by like, poetry or like, lofty sort of artistic ambitions. Because, quote, like, we have enough of those already is basically what they were saying. Like, we don't really need more poets. We need more industrial workers. So we're going to like, give everybody the basic skills they need to go do that. And that's where education system started. And that was the basis of it is like, train people who are obedient and who are socially cohesive and aren't going to ask too many questions. And that's basically the model we've been running ever since. And over time, the, you know, the education was like public schools became a national phenomenon. It was like, very standard across the whole country, what people were learning and like, the progression through the education system. The Department of Education was founded in the 1970s. It was, it added an additional nationalization layer over schools that were still in large part, like, funded and controlled by the states. There's been, you know, in the early 2000s, there was the no Child Left behind movement that was again, like, adding additional layers of like, national incentive structures for trying to put a band aid on the problem of failing public school performance. There's a lot we can get into about the specifics all this, and I'm happy to go down any rabbit holes that you are curious about, but it was a system that was designed to produce workers basically, who were going to be socially cohesive and not cause any problems. And the bulk of the innovations that have happened since have not been academic. In spite of decades of research that's been done on how kids learn. Like, none of that's gotten integrated into how schools actually teach kids. There haven't been a lot of innovations to like, what's actually in the curriculum. The bulk of the changes that have happened since have been different incentive structures that have been put in place to make it to incentivize, like, school performance, basically, like, heavier and heavier emphasis on testing and like state testing and national testing to. And funding that's tied to test scores. So like, teachers are incentivized to get their kids to perform well on tests or they're going to lose their funding as an attempt to, like, get the national test scores to rise. Very few innovations in terms of how we're actually teaching kids and what we're teaching them for. Even though the world that public schools were designed for no longer exists.

[Co-host]

Oh, totally different world. My question is, was there a lot of pushback when it first was introduced? Like, how long before people just accepted it as the status quo?

[Hannah Frankman]

So around the turn of the 20th century, it was very in vogue to have opinions about education in America. It was a thing that was changing. I think there was a general sentiment that. That more education is good and we want our kids to be prepared for the world that they're going to be this changing world that they're going to be entering into. And so people were, in general, very bullish, I think, on a public education system. And lots of people had lots of opinions about how it should look and what it's. In the same way, it was like one of the hot topics of the day in the same way, like, immigration is a big topic of 2025. Like, it was the sort of thing that everybody had an opinion on.

[Co-host]

Okay.

[Hannah Frankman]

There wasn't a ton of social pushback that I'm aware of. I'm sure there were lots of people who had opinions about it, but it wasn't something, like, to my knowledge, it was something that was, like, fairly. There was a lot of debate internally amongst the people who are building the education system, like, what should this be and how should we do this? But it was like a pretty fast sweep of expansion where I think there was a sense that the world is really changing and we really need a better way of educating our kids. And, like, it's a good value proposition too. Right? Like, we're gonna. The state is gonna fund schools and all the kids can go for free. Like it sounds, right?

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

And amazing. It sounds like a good idea.

[Co-host]

And with anything like that's brand new, it takes us a while to question it and to become skeptical. So, like, one example recently, of course, is social media. When it first came out, there was no question everybody was getting an account. It wasn't like, I don't know, like, I'm not sure if this would be a good idea to put everything I ever do and my children and just everything online. And then as the years progress, people are blurring their kids out, putting them in less and less, deleting apps off their phone, changing the preference, like, just Taking off all of the, the, you know, the notifications and just it, as time goes like it only we only could see the upside in the beginning. And I'm wondering if that's kind of how that felt at the time.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, I think like, in my mind, the public education system is a failed experiment. And all you have to do is go look at the academic outcomes of like, we rank 36th in the world for literacy. We're one of the wealthiest, most highly developed countries in the world and we can't even teach our kids how to read at the same level that 35 other countries can. Like, we're spending so much. We spend $15,500 per, per child per year on public school.

[Co-host]

It's been close to that.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, you, you don't have to spend that much if you're doing yourself loss of salary.

[Co-host]

Like for a mom that's staying home to homeschool their kids, obviously you could have gone out and gotten a job. So obviously it is more than that when you factor that in.

[Hannah Frankman]

But there are other workarounds that are significantly cheaper. Right. Like people have people build micro schools that are significantly cheaper than that, where you're pooling resources and you have 10 kids and a living room or a church or something like that, and you're pooling resources to pay a teacher and pay for any overhead of that the school requires for supplies and stuff. But you're not. It doesn't take 15, $500 per child per year, especially when you're doing it at scale. So you have.

[Co-host]

Yeah, like 30 kids.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah. Like that's so much money to run like a second grade classroom. It's ridiculous.

[Co-host]

And that's true. Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

If you include higher education and continuing education. We spend 6% of our GDP in America on education, but we still have abysmal outcomes. One in five Americans are functionally illiterate.

[Co-host]

Really? What exactly does that mean?

[Hannah Frankman]

Like, 54% of Americans can't read at a sixth grade level. Half of Americans can't pass like a sixth grade reading test being functionally illiterate. There's a whole, there's a, there's a, like a spectrum of different stages of literacy that you can. Then some of. Sometimes there's different ways of measuring it. Sometimes it's measured by grade level. Sometimes it's measured by like different sort of tiers of, of liter of reading capacity. So many adults in this country can't even read. Which is the best basic, like the base thing that school is supposed to teach you are the three Rs reading, writing and arithmetic and we can't even do that. I think I want to say it's like 30% of 8th grader. Only 30% of 8th graders in America can do math at grade level. The numbers are horrific. And like if, if this was a privately funded thing, like everybody would fire the public schools because they're not doing their job. But because it's so nationalized and so bureaucratic, it's difficult to change. But it's also so socially accepted that that's where you send your kids for them to be okay that nobody even questions it. It's kind of crazy.

[Co-host]

You know, where does it go wrong? Because I know there's a lot of very good intentioned people in the school system who are doing their best. Is it just the way it's structured? Like it's an impossible task because you're so focused on managing the class? Where does that break down?

[Hannah Frankman]

I think it breaks down on multiple levels. The whole. I don't fault teachers for, for the bulk of this. Like it's, it's not their fault. They're delta losing hand and saying they're.

[Co-host]

Just doing their job.

[Hannah Frankman]

Go win with this. And they're like, we'll try. Yeah, it's, it's not their fault. And most of them have know nothing besides the public school system. Right. Like they went through it, they went to college to study to be a teacher immediately after and then immediately upon graduating from college, they go work in a classroom. So it' that's all the context they've ever known. But the system is designed to, not intentionally, but the way it's designed effectively just sets teachers up to fail from the beginning because they're handed a classroom of 30 kids and not all of those kids are at the same academic level. Even if they're, you know, out of all the kids in their district, they're like the closest to being in the same academic level. They're still not. Like some of the kids are going to know things that other kids don't. Some of the kids are going to be more behind. And so from the very first day, the teacher, like the entire system is set up for failure because the way kids learn is sort of on an incremental trajectory where they have to learn one thing at a time in order to unlock the next piece of knowledge. And this is particularly true in subjects like math where it's very linear. You have to learn addition and subtraction in order to learn multiplication and division. You have to learn multiplication and division in order to get into things like decimals and fractions. And a passing grade technically in most schools is like 60 to 70%. So you can learn like what that functionally means is you can learn 60 to 70% of the material, be missing 30 to 40%, but still have passed and move on to the next level with huge holes in your knowledge. And so the more you progress through a subject in math is a good example of this because of how linear it is. You're doing, you know, pre algebra, but you never actually really understood how fractions work. And so you can't do all the pre algebra work because anytime a fraction comes up, you don't know how to handle it or you handle it incorrectly. And so you're building this structure on a porous foundation that's just full of holes. And so the whole thing eventually is going to like settle at a weird angle or come down altogether. And that's not the teacher's fault. But they don't have a choice because they have to keep the classroom moving. If they always wait for the last kid to catch up, they won't move through all the materials. And they have to move through all the materials because they have to prep the kids for the tests that are coming up throughout the year because that's how the teachers are being measured. That's how the school's being measured.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

And so the whole thing structurally, like the teachers don't have a choice.

[Co-host]

Right.

[Hannah Frankman]

And I do think this is something like as the capacity of AI expands, there are lots of AI driven learning tools that are able to use the flat out AI or even just machine learning to tailor curricula to a kid's test scores. So like if you're doing a lesson and then a quiz, and at the end of the quiz the software can see that you got like two out of 20 questions wrong. It can tailor the next lesson to make sure that those questions get addressed. And you don't learn anything that requires mastery of those things until you've proven via a quiz that you've mastered them. So it can very quickly do what a teacher can't, which is update the actual learning material, like the lesson and the tests around exactly where a kid is. So that type of software allows for the type of curricular advancement through or like a child's advancement through a curriculum that, that a teacher in front of a classroom can't do if they're working with more than a couple of kids at a time. And so if you integrate something like that into a classroom, it changes everything. But the model that we've been running forever, where you just have a teacher in front of the classroom manually doing all this with the kids. They don't. There's. There's nothing they can do.

[Co-host]

Right. That makes sense. So do you think they will start to change the system now that AI is so like, you know, it's cutting edge, but it's going to be in everything.

[Hannah Frankman]

How much did the education system change when the Internet came online and all of a sudden resources were available at the click of a button? Not very much. And I anticipate the same thing will also be true with AI if, if we continue on the same path that we're on, little things will change, but the system itself won't. Even though it could and even though it would solve the bulk of the problems if it did.

[Lisa]

Yeah, we all get some big ideas when it comes to New Year's. The things that we couldn't get accomplished all last year. Well, this year it's gonna be different. Everyone wants to go to the gym more, but actually dragging yourself out of bed in the pitch black every morning is a whole other story. But what if you could make your resolutions automatic? Well, they can't help you get to the gym, but Acorns makes it easy to start saving and investing automatically. I apply the same thing in my kitchen. I make sure I have all of the supplies and the setup that I need so that I can throw together a meal really easily, so that it can become automatic. Anytime you can take the thought out of a new habit, you can actually accomplish it. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns makes it easy to start automatically saving and investing so your money has a chance to grow for you, your kids, and your retirement. You don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that fits you and your money goals. You don't need to be rich. Acorns lets you invest with the spare money you've got right now. You can start with $5 or even just your spare change. You don't need a ton of time. You can create your Acorns account and start investing in just five minutes. It's easy to just live the day to day and forget about your future. But you will be so happy that you took this small step today to make something that might be overwhelming, easy and automatic. And that's why I believe Acorns is such an important step for your New Year's goals. Head to acorns.com farmhouse or download the Acorns app to start saving and investing for your future. Today paid non client endorsement compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns Tier one compensation provided investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC Registered Investment Advisor. View Important [e-mail] Farmhouse if you have young kids like me, a new year isn't just another year. It's another chance to go on that epic family trip, another round of the best themed birthday parties, and dare I say it, another year closer to getting them a phone. But with the power of phones today, I'm extremely nervous about it. 45 of teens say social media makes them feel sad or depressed. Even as an adult I know what endless scrolling does for my brain, for my creativity. It's just not something I want my kids to already have to deal with. With Gab, there's a less nerve wracking way. Gab is the leader in safe phones and watches for kids, teens and tweens. With no social media apps, no Internet browser and GPS tracking, Gab devices were built specifically to keep kids and teens safely connected. Gab phones have all the tech features kids at actually want, like the Gab Music app which lets kids stream clean music. For older kids there's the Gab Phone 4 Pro with hundreds of vetted third party apps that can only be installed at parents discretion. Kids also get unlimited talk and text with Gab messenger, the first messaging and video calling app designed with kids safety as the top priority. Gab's exclusive app has a parent companion app for easy controls. It doesn't just keep parents informed. Gab messenger blocks high risk messages and and content with nudity from ever reaching your child's phone in the first place. In fact, Gabs phones and watches are built with the smart filtration that proactively blocks harmful content before it ever reaches your kid. Just last night Luke and I went out on a date night and we used to leave one of our phones with them. But we have so much more peace of mind now being able to leave them the Gab phone and it's great because it's very easy to use. They can take photos with it so they really enjoy it. Plus we can reach them easily which is the main priority. It's what we needed a phone for. I can't recommend Gab enough. It's the most responsible way that I've found for parents and kids to embrace technology together. Right Now Gab is offering 25 off any device with no contract required. Just go to gab.comsfl to get started. That's gabgabb.comsfl gab.com SFL terms and conditions.

[Co-host]

APPLY what school models? I know you talk about more than just homeschooling. How does one choose a school for their kids?

[Hannah Frankman]

I'm very, I don't really have like a singular model that I think is the best. People ask me this all the time and I think it's very child dependent. And I think that's important context to how I answer this question. Because like, I truly don't think every child should be in any schooling model I've ever seen. I think a lot of it hinges on the kid. I think a lot of it hinges on the, the nuances of the options who are act that are actually available to you. Like maybe for a child, Montessori is objectively the best option, but they just don't jive with the local Montessori classroom and teacher. Like, it's just not a fit. Even though they do very well in a different Montessori school. And a lot of it hinges on the family. So I think there's different sort of verticals that you have to think through to start to figure out like discern which of the options in front of you is actually the best. So there's like the very logistical things of what's in your area or available online, what can you actually afford? What logistically is going to work with the rest of your family's schedule and logistics? Like maybe one of your kids would do best in a Waldorf school, but the waldorf school is 30 minutes away in the opposite direction of where your other kids. Exactly.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Hannah Frankman]

Like there's, there's very like logistical constraints that you have to think through. And those are very real. And that's a really important part of the calculus of figuring out what's actually a good fit. But for the child itself, in general, I'm a very big advocate for child centric education models. So something that truly puts the child at the center of the education. It's not about what's the best thing for the teacher. What's the most convenient thing when you have a classroom of 30 kids. Like, what's the easiest way to educate a child and systematize it across a national education system. It's what is actually best for the kid. And that's the most important guiding principle in how the education is presented. And there's lots of different models that run with this in mind. But this is one of the first things I look for in a school. It's like, okay, is a kid truly at the center? Like it's the child's experience, truly what this thing is about. And once you've found options that sort of check that box, then it just kind of depends on the kid, right? So your child may really, really like independent, like focus, structure, like a structure that allows them to be very self directed inside of the structure but like encourages focus and like deep work and maybe your child needs that too. Like maybe your child's very unfocused and they really need a school structure that's going to help them spend time practicing these long, these long bouts of being very focused on something. And if that's your child, then maybe Montessori is the best option. Maybe your child really likes being outside all of the time and something like a forest school where the kids are out in nature all the time is going to be the best option for them. Maybe you don't have a great school locally, but there's an online school that like really caters to your kids interest. Like your kid's really interested in programming or entrepreneurship or something like that. And there's a virtual school that caters to that. I think you're looking for things that are a culture fit for your kid but that are also encouraging both your kids strengths but also supporting them in their weaknesses. A place where they really jive with the teachers and like the adults in the room, but they also really jive with the other kids. Like if your kid has a very specific set of interests and has a hard time making friends, I think it's worth going out of your way to help help find a school where other kids like them, that they'll get along with are going to, where they're going to find them and be able to connect with them. And I think a lot of it too is like, you know, if your kid's really academically advanced, like is the school going to support them? And if your kid isn't ready for things that you know, they're in second grade and they still don't really like reading that much and you don't want your kid to be pushed because you don't want them to hate reading later because they were forced to do it before they were ready. Are you, can you find a school that will support that? And then once you have your kid in a school, like are they happy? Like do they come home excited about what they're working on? Are they making friends? Do they like their teacher? And if they don't, like are you willing to say, okay, this school isn't supporting my child, I'm going to pull them out and enroll them somewhere else. Because I think that's really important too. Like, you're not always going to get it right the first time or the second time or even the third time. And I think you really can't have a sunk cost mindset about it. You know, if your kids spent a year or two in a school that's not really supporting them, at the end of the day, it's not going to hurt them that much to pull them out and put them somewhere else while they'll spend years thriving. It's worth making the leaps to find the thing that really supports your kid. But I think you have to both, you have to trust your gut. You have to trust the fact that you know your kid better than anybody. And if you're really listening to your kid and truly thinking about from their perspective, what's going to support them, like being willing to use that as the, the lens through which you're looking at different schools and then finding the one that's both the culture fit for your kid and the culture fit for your family. Like, I think, I don't think there's a singular answer. I don't think there's a single right answer for everybody. I don't even know if there's a single right answer for some families. Like, sometimes there's two or three schools you could pick, that would be great. But I think you have to really trust yourself going through the process. And I think you have to ask questions not about, okay, it's like, but what are my kids test scores going to be like? Or what are the average test scores here? Like, you know, what kinds of colleges do kids get into coming out of this school? Like, I don't think those are the right questions to ask. I think the right questions to ask are very culture based. Because at the end of the day, if your kid feels excited about where they are and they feel pumped about the learning environment, that's what's going to support them and really thriving.

[Co-host]

Yeah. And becoming lifelong learners, which to me is the ultimate goal. Because if you keep learning your entire life, then you don't need to cram it all into the 18 years. You know, we're, we're trying. That is, the entire goal is to create students who forever just want to continue learning new things and are able to.

[Hannah Frankman]

Like, if you and I stopped learning after we finished our traditional education, that was it. We wouldn't be here now because neither of us would know how Riverside works to record a podcast because it didn't exist. Yet, like, you have to be able to adapt to your changing world. Like, it's so important to be a lifelong learner.

[Co-host]

It absolutely is. I mean, everything that I use for my career right now, I learned in the last 10 years. And it's been a lot of learning between blogging and video and, you know, everything it's been. I've become a photographer. Like, it's. Yeah, it's. It's the most important skill. Like all the other skills can, you know, obviously you have to learn to read, write, and then to continue learning. That's like the entire goal of the entire thing. And a lot of different models could lend to that. But I think keeping at the forefront of your mind what the goal is is something that we don't ask often enough. So tell us where we can listen to your show, learn more from you for those who are intrigued, but maybe want to hear just more of what you have to share where we can find that. That.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah. So I host a podcast. It's called the Hannah Frankman Podcast. I release episodes every single week. I talk to all sorts of people in the education world. Researchers, professors, and, like, psychologists, people who are entrepreneurs building different types of schools, people who've graduated from unusual programs. So you can find that on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're on Instagram, you can find me there if you're on Twitter. I spend a lot of time on Twitter. That's where I post the. The. But sort of like the central hub of all the things that I'm doing.

[Co-host]

Man, I need. I haven't been on Twitter in forever. I need to.

[Hannah Frankman]

It's the best.

[Co-host]

Is it? I literally been on there. Probably spent like one hour my whole life.

[Hannah Frankman]

It's. I. I love Twitter. You can find me posting both my personal Twitter at Hannah Frankman, but that's also where Rebel Educator is hubbed. So at Rebel Educator on Twitter, you can find tons of stuff there. And my. My profiles everywhere will, like, link to everything else. So, like, whichever one's kind of your jam, go start there and then you'll be able to find whatever else you're looking for. But yeah, Twitter is great. You totally. There's a lot of really great education people who spend a lot of time writing interesting things. I think. I actually think you would find it interesting.

[Co-host]

I probably would, but since I have eight kids that I'm already.

[Hannah Frankman]

There's also that I got convinced of.

[Co-host]

All of this approximately 16 years ago and never looked back. But I do love, love speaking to people who are still thinking about but maybe doubting themselves. And that'd be a whole another whole podcast episode entirely. But I think the biggest hang up is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with all this but like I can't do it. And so you probably have some content on that on your podcast as well, I'm sure.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, that's one of my favorite ones because the education system will really hammer that in. Like teachers will go, you're not qualified. It's like, I'm sorry I went through your whole program. I think I should be.

[Co-host]

Yeah, I. That was literally what I said from day one. I was like, listen, I have 12 years. Like I graduated with a bachelor's and so if I'm not qualified, I mean, I don't think that's what really qualified me. I'm just saying, like from that logic, you know.

[Hannah Frankman]

Yeah, 100%.

[Co-host]

Yeah. Awesome. Well, we will leave links down in the show notes in the description box below. Hannah, thank you so much for joining us. This was a really interesting, eye opening and fascinating conversation.

[Hannah Frankman]

This was very fun. Thank you so much for having me.

[Lisa]

Thanks as always for listening to the Simple Farmhouse Life podcast. My husband Luke and I and our eight kids work together side by side on our little homestead and use our blog, podcast and YouTube channel to reach other homemakers, home cooks and homesteaders with practical recipes and daily family life. For everyday sourdough recipes, make sure to check out our blog, farmassonboone.com and to.

[Co-host]

Dig deeper, we do do also offer.

[Lisa]

A course called Simple Sourdough over at BitVit Ly Farmhouse Sourdough Course. That's all one word. Bit Ly Farmhouses.

[Co-host]

If you're looking to learn how we.

[Lisa]

Earn an income online, check out my free blog Success Masterclass at Bit Ly Farmhouse Blogging school and my YouTube course at bit. Lynn S.L. farmhouse YouTube course all one word.

[Advertiser]

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com kidsandfamily just go to Indeed.com kidsandfamily right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.