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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

572. Navigating Education, Ideology, and Children | Answer the Call

Published November 17, 2025
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About This Episode

Michaela hosts a call-in episode with her father, where they answer listener questions about homeschooling, the corruption of K-12 education, ideological capture of schools, art education, and the limits of changing IQ. They discuss how parents can socialize homeschooled children, evaluate and supplement institutional schooling, inoculate kids against woke ideology through broad political and historical education, and the importance of teachers explaining why subjects matter. The episode closes with a reflection on IQ as largely stable, the difficulty of increasing it directly, and the greater importance of building character, wisdom, and motivation through challenging experiences.

Topics Covered

Alternative education Parenting and child development Education system Woke ideology Critical thinking Art and creativity Personal Development Character development IQ and intelligence Homeschooling

Disclaimer: We provide independent summaries of podcasts and are not affiliated with or endorsed in any way by any podcast or creator. All podcast names and content are the property of their respective owners. The views and opinions expressed within the podcasts belong solely to the original hosts and guests and do not reflect the views or positions of Summapod.

Quick Takeaways

  • Homeschooling can work extremely well academically and socially if parents deliberately provide opportunities for peer interaction and gradually hand responsibility to the child.
  • K-12 schooling is characterized as largely "child warehousing" and likely corrupt, making parental discernment and use of alternative models increasingly necessary.
  • To protect children from ideological capture, parents should give them a broad, serious political and historical education and teach them to argue both sides of issues.
  • Teachers often fail because they cannot explain why a subject matters; effective teaching requires setting a strong motivational frame and dramatizing genuine engagement with the material.
  • Parents can screen schools for ideological capture by looking for equity-focused language and progressive slogans in posters, policies, and websites.
  • New educational forms, including alternative schools and AI-based individualized tutors, may radically change how children learn and at what pace.
  • IQ is highly stable and very hard to increase, though it can be suppressed by malnutrition, abuse, and poor environments; physical health and nutrition best protect cognitive ability over time.
  • Mentorship and challenging experiences are more directly connected to character and wisdom than to raw intelligence, which is better viewed as a responsibility than as a virtue.

Podcast Notes

Framing the crisis in modern education

Education vs. child warehousing

Critique of K-12 schooling[1:16]
• He asks whether current systems are really education or "child warehousing" and answers that it is mostly child warehousing.
• States that the K-12 education system has likely become irredeemably corrupt.

Parental concern about ideology and moral clarity

Woke cultural dominance and children[1:49]
• Raises the question of how to raise children with strong critical thinking and moral clarity when wokeness has become cultural hegemony.

Teachers lacking understanding of their own subjects

Shallow knowledge undermines motivation[2:00]
• Says most people who are educating have no idea what literature is for, or what subjects like poetry, writing, or math are really for.
• Argues that if teachers don't know the deeper purpose of their subject, they cannot properly motivate or teach students.
Role of the teacher in dramatizing importance[2:06]
• States that a key part of teaching is setting the motivational frame and dramatizing engagement: "This grips me. This is important. It's vital. Here's why."
• Describes the world "manifesting itself in accordance with your interest" when a topic grips you.

Show introduction and topic setup

Michaela introduces the format

Description of 'Answer the Call'[2:15]
• Michaela explains she is back with her dad for "Answer the Call," where they take live questions from listeners, mainly answered by her dad.
Episode theme[2:28]
• She says the topic is navigating the modern education system and notes that it should matter to everyone and "should be spicy."

Caller Joshua: Homeschooling, bias, and socialization

Joshua describes his homeschooling situation

Background on his son and homeschooling[2:45]
• Joshua from Florida has been homeschooling his older son since 2020; the boy is almost 10.
• He is very happy with the results but worries he is biased because he is so close to the situation.
Request to steel-man traditional schooling[2:58]
• Joshua asks them to steel-man the case for sending his son to a traditional school, either now or later, to better do a cost-benefit analysis focused on his son's interests.

Assessing the child's engagement and progress

Evidence from the child's behavior[3:27]
• Jordan notes that Joshua already implied the boy is an avid and satisfied participant in homeschooling, which counts as objective evidence of success.
• He suggests corroborating that evidence with other observers, such as Joshua's wife.

Importance of peers and broader social contract

Socialization outside the family[3:50]
• Jordan immediately asks whether the boy has peers and friends and whether he participates in things that are part of the broader social contract outside the family.
• He calls extracurriculars "the only potential benefit" of going into the "dismal school system": meeting age peers and learning to conduct himself in the broader social world.
• He emphasizes that a parent's role is to encourage the child to become maximally socially desirable-not obsessed with popularity, but the kind of person others rely on and open doors to.
Alternative sources of socialization[4:18]
• Jordan lists sports, clubs, friendship groups, and church as examples of social organizations that can substitute for school in providing social experience.

Joshua's challenge managing social opportunities

Full-time coordination burden on parent[5:16]
• Joshua says his son is doing well socially but that it's like a full-time job for him to arrange access to a co-op, temple, chess club, and different camps.
• He accepts that this is his job but wants eventually to "get out of the business" of being in the middle of setting everything up, since his son is almost 10.
Helping the child take initiative[4:11]
• Joshua mentions his son has a phone number without internet access; he wants to push him out of the nest by having him call kids and go to their houses, with parental guidance on logistics.
• Jordan approves of this approach, saying, "yeah, do that," and frames it as turning responsibility over to the child.

Evaluating social and academic development

No red flags in Joshua's setup[5:21]
• Jordan notes that Joshua reports the child is thriving in social communities, but that organizing them is an extra demand on his time; he wants to devolve that responsibility to the boy, which Jordan calls appropriate.
Assessing academic progress[6:50]
• Jordan asks how Joshua knows his son is progressing educationally at least as fast as in an ordinary school, which he calls "a pretty damn low bar."
• Joshua answers that he knows exactly what his son can do in the subjects they cover and that, unprompted, the boy spends free time watching YouTube science videos and reading biology books.
• The boy has no internet access, so he asks his father for specific videos, indicating initiative and intrinsic interest.

Balancing responsibility and support in parenting

Turning responsibility over to children[7:40]
• Jordan says you should turn over to kids "all that they can handle, but no more than that," calling it the best compliment you can give them.
• He frames this as telling the child: you can do this, and because you can, you should, and he as a parent will not take that responsibility away.
• He adds that freeing the parent from scheduling duties lets them focus on things only they can do with the child.
Transition from homeschool to broader world[8:27]
• Jordan says the key issue is whether the boy can transition from the homeschooled environment to the broader world, and Joshua appears to be facilitating that over years, since the boy is only 10.
School may not ease the real-world transition[8:37]
• Michaela notes that school does not necessarily help kids transition to the real world and "might make it a lot harder."

Personal anecdotes about boredom in school

Jordan's boredom and punishment for reading[8:47]
• Jordan recalls sitting in grade four getting in trouble for reading at his desk because the teacher's reading was so poor he was bored.
• He also remembers counting dots in ceiling tiles to cope with "staggering boredom."
Michaela's parallel experiences[8:57]
• Michaela says she also got in trouble for reading behind, and mimics a teacher angrily telling her to "Read it again!"
• They mock the attitude of a teacher who "hates children and learning."
Spelling books and rote exercises[9:38]
• Jordan describes spelling books with 15 pages of exercises that were "brutal" for someone who already knew how to read, leading him to become very fast at them just to comply.

Time efficiency of homeschooling vs. school

School as childcare under an education facade[10:12]
• Michaela estimates it takes about two hours a day or less to homeschool and teaches kids, compared to much longer school days.
• She says if you think of school as childcare with an education facade, it makes more sense; if you insist it is primarily education, it doesn't really make sense.

Caller Jake: Homeschooling vs. reforming institutions; corruption and new models

Jake's question about abandoning vs. reforming schools

Tension between homeschooling and saving institutions[12:00]
• Jake from Wisconsin notes the rise of homeschooling and the sense that schooling isn't best for children, and contrasts this with a previous statement Jordan made that institutions should not be abandoned.

Conservative conundrum on institutions

Dangers of destroying intermediary institutions[12:57]
• Jordan calls this the conservative conundrum: it's a mistake to destroy all intermediary institutions, which he says is generally the radical's dream.
What to do when institutions are corrupt[13:06]
• He says the question becomes what to do when institutions have become corrupt, and asserts that K-12 education has become likely irredeemably corrupt.

Emerging alternative education models

Acton Academy and other variants[14:08]
• They mention Acton Academy as an example of developing institutions that are intelligent variants of traditional education.
• Michaela notes that Acton might be an option and mentions doing a TED talk with Matt Boudreau.
U.S. capacity for institutional revitalization[13:27]
• Jordan says America is remarkable in its ability to revitalize institutions through relatively radical conceptual and entrepreneurial trends.
• He asserts this is happening on the educational landscape and cites Peterson Academy as his own effort at the higher end of education.
Catherine Burblesing's UK school[14:14]
• He points to Catherine Burblesing's school in the UK as an "absolute bloody miracle": a very authority-based, structured environment making tremendous demands on kids.
• He says children there are thriving and learning at a rate he has never seen, even compared to high-level graduate seminars.

Need for discernment about institutions

Separating wheat from chaff in education[15:34]
• Jordan argues that as institutions become corrupt, increasing discernment is necessary to separate wheat from chaff in institutional structures.
• He contrasts his K-12 experience, where teachers at least were not actively trying to "dement" him, with the current situation where incompetence is magnified by "insane ideological corruption."
Burden on parents when trust is damaged[15:36]
• He acknowledges it's a lot to ask of parents to assess the quality of an entire education system, but when institutional trust is damaged, they must take responsibility themselves.
• He urges parents to be more perspicacious in assessing children's educational opportunities.

Impact of new technologies and AI tutoring

Using large language models as research tools[16:09]
• Jordan says he has been using large language models as research tools since they came out and finds them "insanely informative."
AI for personalized language learning[16:09]
• He notes you can ask an LLM to set up a training program for a foreign language and it will communicate at your level.
Speculation about AI tutors for children[15:59]
• Jordan predicts that it may not be long before children have privatized AI educational tutors that know exactly what they know and teach them at the edge of their zone of proximal development.
• Michaela says such AI schools already exist in Texas and where she lives, structured around about two hours of AI learning per day plus entrepreneurship, ventures, and public speaking.
• She notes these models are partly based on suggestions from Elon Musk about children's education.
Evidence from low-cost devices in poorer countries[17:29]
• Jordan cites Bjorn Lomborg's claim that introducing low-cost computational devices (such as iPads) for about an hour a day in third-world countries produced a three-year improvement in learning in one year.

Practical evaluation of schools for ideology

Touring schools and reading their signals[18:07]
• Michaela suggests parents who cannot or will not homeschool can tour schools and easily pick up whether they are overrun with ideological teachers.
• She recommends looking at posters, student art, and whether terms like "equity" appear; if equity is visible, she considers it a red flag.
• She advises checking school websites and policies on equity, noting that if such language is present, it's usually prominently displayed because staff are proud of it.
• If these ideological cues are absent, she infers the school might be more conservative or at least less ideological.
Prediction that AI learning will dominate[18:44]
• Michaela concludes that she thinks everyone is going to be learning by AI.

Caller Oaxana: Raising critical, morally grounded children amid woke hegemony

Oaxana's background and concern

Immigrant homeschooling in the Bay Area[20:10]
• Oaxana from California immigrated to the Bay Area 12 years ago and homeschools her two sons, aged 10 and 12.
Fear of teenage rebellion into woke ideology[20:28]
• She asks how to raise children with strong critical thinking and moral clarity in a Bay Area environment where wokeness has become cultural hegemony.
• She worries they will rebel against family beliefs during their teenage years and wants them to become intellectually open and morally grounded adults.

Current family conversational practices

Reflective dinner conversations[20:51]
• In response to Jordan's question, she explains that at dinner they reflect on the day, talk about positive events, and also discuss the downs.
• She uses a Socratic method, asking questions to hear how her sons think out loud.

Jordan's suggestions for building critical thinkers

Discussing current affairs and ideology explicitly[21:32]
• Jordan asks whether she introduces current affairs as discussion topics, e.g., asking the boys to find an issue that seems hot and then discuss what they think.
• He suggests that, since she's concerned about woke ideology, she needs to provide them with an understanding of that ideology, broken down into key points for discussion and contrast.
Teaching the full range of political thought[21:08]
• He says she should teach them the axioms of political thought across the whole spectrum, from libertarian to Marxist, so they know the landscape.
• He argues that once they know the full landscape, nothing they encounter later will come as a shock.

Personal example of balanced political exposure

Influential librarian in his youth[21:30]
• Jordan recalls a librarian in his hometown, Sandy Notley, who was married to a socialist member of the legislature.
• She introduced him to classic literature (Orwell, Huxley, Solzhenitsyn) and also had him read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."
• When he asked her why she did that, she said she thought he would be intelligent enough to see through it, but she still wanted him exposed to the whole range of political thought.
• He calls that kind of broad exposure an inoculation.

Leveraging Eastern European experience with socialism

Skepticism based on lived or familial experience[22:13]
• Jordan notes that many Eastern Europeans, or their families, were badly hurt by socialist worldviews and often have well-warranted skepticism toward them.
• He says Oaxana appears sophisticated and in a good position to educate her sons politically.
• His core advice is to start educating them politically so they become sophisticated thinkers and are ready when shallow woke ideas come their way.

Michaela's practical suggestions for political education

Using Tuttle Twins materials[22:36]
• Michaela, whose kids are younger (a seven-year-old and two small children), mentions the Tuttle Twins books as a tool she uses.
• She describes Tuttle Twins as libertarian-leaning educational books and graphic novels that teach political perspective, history, and economics in a fun way.
• She notes there are graphic novels suitable from around age six and history/political books appropriate for ages like 10 and 12.
• She admits the material is biased in the way she is already biased, but she is comfortable with that because she thinks it's true.

Broader strategy: educate, fortify, and steel-man

Cultural and historical education as inoculation[23:40]
• Jordan defines political education as part of a broader cultural and historical education; he says the way to fortify children against ideology is to educate them in tradition and critical thinking.
Acknowledging the valid roots of progressive ideas[23:35]
• He stresses the need to steel-man opposing arguments: the progressive ethos has roots in compassion and concern for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic distribution.
• He says the truly oppressed and marginalized deserve consideration, but kids must also see how compassion can be weaponized and corrupted while masquerading as virtue.

Michaela's experience with progressive schools and critical reading

Exposure to alternative and art schools[23:55]
• Michaela recounts attending an alternative middle school, a public art high school, and an art university that were "super progressive" before progressivism became widespread.
Reading both sides on feminism[24:08]
• She says that because of how she was raised-without being ideologically pressured-she approached feminism by reading many pro-feminist and anti-feminist books.
• She then decided for herself what felt more true, suggesting that giving kids the tools to do that is protective.

Teaching kids to argue both sides and monitoring peers

Arguing both sides as critical thinking practice[24:19]
• Jordan notes that part of teaching critical thinking is having students argue both sides of a position.
Monitoring children's friendships[24:29]
• Michaela suggests monitoring who children's friends are, and being wary if another family is heavily interceding or ideological.
• Jordan counters that since parents can't monitor kids constantly, especially older teens, the best long-term strategy is to fortify them so they can defend themselves intellectually.
• Michaela jokes that she had some "pretty stupid friends" and wandered into snake pits for a long time, presenting teenage missteps as nearly universal.

Caller Amy: Art education and solving student disengagement

Amy's observation of disengagement

Contrast between core classes and art room[30:18]
• Amy from Connecticut is an art educator who sees many students disengaged and unmotivated in school, but notes that in the art room it's different due to more creativity.
Question about transforming education[30:07]
• She cites prior work by Sir Ken Robinson and Jordan's claim that art is the bedrock of culture, and asks how to transform education and address disengagement.

Jordan's critique of teachers who lack purpose

Teachers who can't explain why a subject matters[30:59]
• Jordan says that in his own schooling, including university, many teachers had no idea why what they taught was good for anything.
• He recalls repeatedly asking math teachers why he needed to know specific material, and they couldn't answer, so he saw no reason to be interested.
• He acknowledges some arrogance in a 12- or 13-year-old demanding justification, but still insists educators must set the motivational frame.

Why art matters more than decoration

Common misunderstanding of art education[30:46]
• Jordan criticizes many art teachers for treating art as mere decoration and not being able to tell students why it is important.
Art as imagination, skill, taste, and beauty[31:59]
• He explains that art is the realm of the imagination, where creative ideas come from and where you develop skill and taste.
• Art helps you make your environment beautiful, signal sophistication to others, and learn to see beauty in the world so it can guide you upward.
• He contrasts being guided upward by beauty with being guided downward into suffering and something approximating hell.

Motivational framing as an educator's core task

Engaging young students' latent openness[31:52]
• Jordan notes that 13- and 14-year-olds and new university students often have a facade of cynicism, but it's shallow; they don't know enough to be truly cynical.
• He says their question "Why should I care?" is reasonable, because learning takes effort, so educators must honestly answer why the effort is worth it.
Life-worthwhileness and beauty as answers[32:08]
• He asks what makes life worthwhile amid suffering and answers that beauty is one such thing; without it, the world becomes hideous, ugly, and chaotic.

Human motivation and the value of goals

People work toward valued goals[31:43]
• Jordan says humans are inclined to work toward a goal when they perceive value in it; that's how our nervous systems are set up.
• Therefore, teachers must frame education within a story that shows the goal is worth the effort, rather than taking student motivation for granted.
Teachers must know why they teach[32:34]
• He asserts that to set the motivational frame, educators must themselves know why they are pursuing their specialization and why others should care.
• He criticizes educators who do not know what literature, poetry, memorization, writing, or math are for, and who see art as decoration; he says such shallow knowledge cannot motivate students.

Need for better teachers and systemic issues

Raising standards for teachers[32:52]
• Michaela argues that, practically, people need to be pickier about teachers because most teachers are not good.
• She doubts it's just a training problem and questions how parents can secure quality education in public or private schools if teachers are weak.
School as child warehousing and selection effects[33:13]
• Jordan connects this to earlier remarks: if school primarily functions as child warehousing, then teacher recruitment is not aimed at "the cream of the crop."
• He says you do come across some good teachers and remember them forever, but he personally can recall only about two school teachers and none from university.
• He notes this scarcity of good teaching as part of why they created Peterson Academy.
Example of poor math instruction[33:51]
• Michaela recalls a calculus teacher telling her to memorize equations without being able to explain how they were derived.
• She argues that if she understood how equations were created, she could retain them; otherwise she would memorize and quickly forget after an exam.
• Jordan says teachers who teach that way learned by memorization themselves and mistakenly believe that's how learning works.
Value of explaining "why" in math and stats[33:51]
• Michaela praises their math professor at Peterson Academy who explains why students need trigonometry, calling such explanation essential.
• She says she couldn't really do statistics until she understood why everything was structured as it was.
• She describes largely teaching herself statistics from textbooks and online resources like Khan Academy, eventually acing the final but receiving a poor course grade due to missed earlier work.

Great teachers as moral exemplars and dramatizers

Great teaching as moral commitment to a topic[34:08]
• Jordan says great teachers act out a moral commitment to their topic and that books already impart information more efficiently than lectures.
• He argues the teacher's main role is to set the motivational frame and dramatize being engaged with the material.
The lecture theater as a stage[35:09]
• He notes it's called a lecture theater because the teacher is acting out a commitment to the enterprise, showing students that "this grips me" and "this will change your life."
• He says properly taught material can "protect you from the pit" and orient you upward, but the teacher must convey the reality and seriousness of that claim.

Phenomena, interest, and the burning bush metaphor

Phenomena as "shining forth"[35:30]
• Jordan explains that "phenomenon" comes from a root meaning "to shine forth," and says every phenomenon is a worthy target of inquiry.
• When something grips you as beautiful or interesting, that's the world shining forth in accordance with your interest.
From interest to deep reality and connection[35:51]
• He says that when a topic grips you, that grip is the revelation of a deeper reality beyond surface appearance.
• If you follow that interest and investigate deeply, you "go down the rabbit hole" to see where everything is connected, reaching the animating spirit of the world.
Moses and the burning bush as a learning model[36:12]
• He likens this process to Moses turning aside from the beaten path to investigate the burning bush, which he calls a "living phenomenon."
• By concentrating intently on that phenomenon, Moses is transformed into a leader who can speak truth to power, free slaves from complacency and irresponsibility, and specify the promised land.
• He says this is what you're doing when a topic grips you: the grip is an invitation to a deeper investigation that changes you and everything else.

Caller Carl: IQ, mentorship, and character vs. intelligence

Carl's question about developing intelligence vs. character

Background in Scouting and fatherhood[43:20]
• Carl from Alberta has four kids and years of experience as a scout leader; he is motivated by sharing challenging experiences and seeing growth.
Question about malleability of IQ[43:32]
• He recalls Jordan indicating IQ is most malleable before adulthood and asks what experiences he can provide to boys in his youth program to best develop their intelligence.
• He struggles with the idea that there isn't some path to develop intelligence, noting human progress and suggesting that on a spiritual plane, rate of progression matters more than time.
• He wants his family and community to "come along for the ride" of development and asks how to do that best.

Jordan on what can and cannot change about IQ

Ability to suppress vs. raise IQ[44:37]
• Jordan says you can certainly suppress IQ through factors like nutrition, diet, insufficient information, and abuse.
• However, he emphasizes that there is already enough information in the world that lack of information is not the current limiting factor for IQ development.
Failed attempts to increase IQ via training[44:22]
• He notes that many companies once advertised cognitive exercises to boost IQ, but research showed that while people improved on the specific tasks, gains did not generalize.
• He calls the failure of such programs a very solid finding: practice on narrow cognitive tasks does not increase general intelligence.

Nature of IQ and its stability

Definition of IQ as general ability[44:43]
• Jordan explains that IQ can be approximated by giving many multiple-choice questions on random topics, ranking scores, and correcting for age; if you're prone to get one right, you're prone to get all right.
• This general tendency is what IQ measures: a general cognitive ability that is very robust.
Head Start as a failed attempt to boost cognitive function[45:54]
• He describes the U.S. Head Start program, designed to put children from deprived environments into enriched learning earlier to give a cognitive head start.
• While Head Start children initially outperformed matched peers, the cognitive differences disappeared by grades 5 or 6.
• Head Start did yield some behavioral benefits, like fewer teenage pregnancies and higher graduation rates, likely because some children were taken out of pathological family environments.
• He calls the lack of lasting cognitive gains saddening, because the hypothesis that early head starts would multiply across time seemed so obvious.

Openness, psychedelics, and cognitive ability

Psychedelics and personality change[45:50]
• Michaela notes that psychedelics are known to increase openness to experience, and asks if they change cognitive ability.
Creativity vs. intelligence[46:00]
• Jordan distinguishes creativity from intelligence; creativity is associated with IQ but also involves making more improbable connections between ideas.
• He notes one can become so creative as to be manic and incoherent, connecting everything to everything.
Effects of psychedelics on openness and intelligence[46:22]
• He says psychedelics appear to increase openness and attraction to aesthetic experience but he has seen no evidence they enhance intelligence.

Stability of IQ over the lifespan

Twin studies and convergence over time[46:22]
• Jordan cites studies of identical twins separated at birth, tested repeatedly for IQ over time.
• Contrary to expectations that differing experiences would make their IQs diverge, IQs actually become more similar with age.
• By about age 60, separated twins' IQs are so similar it's like testing the same person twice.

Role of health, nutrition, and exercise

Metabolic demands of the brain[47:06]
• Jordan agrees with Michaela that improving diet and eliminating brain fog can move people toward their latent potential, noting the brain is a very demanding metabolic organ.
• He mentions that breastfed babies have a long-term IQ advantage, aligning with the idea that early nutrition affects brain development.
Under-nutrition, stunting, and IQ[47:34]
• He notes that in populations that didn't get enough to eat, adults were physically stunted (e.g., 5'2" instead of 6') and that this was associated with intellectual stunting.
Protecting IQ with lifestyle[47:40]
• He says the best way to protect IQ as you age is not cognitive exercises but optimizing nutrition and engaging in physical exercise.

Beyond IQ: character, wisdom, and moral development

Character vs. intelligence as goals of mentorship[47:51]
• Jordan suggests that Carl's real focus should be less on raising IQ and more on character development and wisdom through challenging experiences.
• He notes that IQ correlates most strongly with how fast you learn something; you can still learn more slowly and learn it well.
No correlation between IQ and core moral traits[48:12]
• Jordan defines conscientiousness (industriousness and orderliness) and agreeableness (compassion and politeness) as moral trait dimensions.
• He states there is essentially zero correlation between conscientiousness and IQ.
• He says agreeableness is more complex because both high compassion and competitive, critical disagreeableness can have virtues, but there is also no correlation between agreeableness and intelligence.
Intelligence as responsibility, not virtue[48:45]
• Jordan emphasizes that intelligence is not a virtue but a responsibility and a gift that, if misused, can be very destructive.
• He refers to Lucifer as the mythological spirit of intellect gone wrong, associated with pride.
• He points out that many intelligent people are proud of their intelligence, which he calls a very bad idea because they didn't earn it and are likely not as smart as they think, especially "in the greater scheme of...God."

Lessons Learned

Actionable insights and wisdom you can apply to your business, career, and personal life.

1

Gradually transferring responsibility to children for their own social lives and schedules both respects their capabilities and prepares them to function independently in the broader world.

Reflection Questions:

  • • In what areas of my child's life am I still doing things for them that they are actually capable of handling themselves?
  • • How could I structure the next year so that my child takes over one or two specific responsibilities (like scheduling activities or initiating playdates) in a supported way?
  • • What is one concrete responsibility I can deliberately hand off to my child this week, along with a clear message that I trust them to handle it?
2

Given the corruption and ideological capture of many schools, parents must actively and critically evaluate educational environments rather than assuming institutions are trustworthy by default.

Reflection Questions:

  • • How well do I actually understand the culture, values, and hidden assumptions of the school or programs my children attend?
  • • What specific signals (posters, language on the website, classroom materials, teacher comments) could I look for to assess whether an institution aligns with my family's values?
  • • When will I schedule a visit or conversation with my child's school or program to ask pointed questions about curriculum, ideology, and educational philosophy?
3

To inoculate children against shallow ideology, expose them to the full spectrum of serious political and philosophical ideas and train them to argue both sides with fairness and rigor.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Which political or cultural viewpoints have I avoided engaging with deeply, and how might that gap leave me or my children vulnerable to one-sided narratives?
  • • How could I build a simple practice-such as family discussions or reading pairs of opposing books-that helps us explore and steel-man multiple perspectives on important issues?
  • • What is one controversial topic I could choose this month to study from at least two opposing, high-quality sources together with my child or peers?
4

Effective teaching in any domain requires clearly articulating why the subject matters, setting a compelling motivational frame, and modeling genuine engagement rather than relying on rote memorization.

Reflection Questions:

  • • In the topics I teach or lead (at work, home, or elsewhere), have I clearly explained why they matter and how they change people's lives for the better?
  • • How might my communication change if I saw myself less as an information deliverer and more as someone dramatizing a meaningful pursuit that could protect others from mistakes and open new possibilities?
  • • What is one subject I'm responsible for teaching where I could rework my introduction to focus on its real-world value and beauty rather than just its technical details?
5

Because IQ is highly stable and difficult to increase directly, it is more fruitful to focus on protecting brain health and deliberately developing character, wisdom, and practical skills through challenging experiences.

Reflection Questions:

  • • Which aspects of my physical health and daily habits (sleep, nutrition, exercise) might be undermining my or my children's ability to think clearly and learn efficiently?
  • • How could I design or seek out challenging experiences-like demanding projects, outdoor adventures, or leadership roles-that stretch character and resilience, not just intellect?
  • • What is one lifestyle change or developmental challenge I can commit to in the next month that would likely improve long-term cognitive functioning or character growth?

Episode Summary - Notes by Morgan

572. Navigating Education, Ideology, and Children | Answer the Call
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