Transcript: Chapter House: Why the Western Canon Belongs to Your Child

Marty Bent [0:01] Josh and Hannah, welcome to the show.

Chapter House [0:03] Hi, thanks Marty. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Marty Bent [0:07] Really excited for this. It's been a couple of years since we last saw each other in person. I think it was what Austin two years ago at the natalism conference.

Chapter House [0:15] Yeah, it's been a minute. Yeah, l last year I think it was what last March. Mm-hmm.

Marty Bent [0:21] yeah, it was time flies. Well, let's jump into it. I know we had the intro, but I I think just starting the conversation, take me back to the moment when this stopped being a frustration in your own home and homeschooling and became a company you felt compelled to build. Like why why chapter house? What compelled you to to go from being frustrated to building it?

Chapter House [0:23] Yeah. Mm. That's a great question. so we've been frustrated for a while. so Hannah primarily uses the Charlotte Mason method in homeschooling. We adapt it a bit. but you know, really the gist of it is you read a lot of old books with your children. And there are a lot of these books that you just can't find. Or should I say, you either find an old copy, you find a a new print-on-demand copy, and those tend to be pretty poor in general. Or you use a digital copy like an old PDF and you read it off an iPad or a Kindle, which is not what we're trying to cultivate in our house.

Chapter House ⋮ so I had this longstanding dream of making beautiful hardcover editions of these old texts that were no longer in wide circulation. And just so happens I went to a a place in Wyoming a couple of years ago, met a publisher, we got to talking, asked if they ever considered doing homeschool material, and it just kicked off from there. And so and that's really just how chapter house was born. It's that simple.

Marty Bent [1:46] And what was wrong with the additions that were available to you that you were able to find? What were what were some of the common problems with them other than they were just PDFs that you had to put on a Kindle?

Chapter House [1:56] Mm-hmm. well the print on demands, I don't know if you want to comment on this at all, but Yeah, so a lot of the print on demand copies, they're they're fine. They're perfectly fine, but the paper's thin or you know, there might be errors, typesettings difficult to read, the glue binding comes apart. And so, you know, if you've got multiple kids that you're planning to homeschool using the same materials and it starts you know, having issues with the first one, then you're like, well, I guess I'll be buying this again. So the the type's often blurry, the the paper's often thin. And so it's a it's they're kinda hard to read.

Marty Bent [2:36] Yeah. Sounds like a fiat problem. The high velocity trash economy brought in books. And was there a moment where one of your children reacted to an old story and made you realize that these books still work?

Chapter House [2:38] Very much. Very much. well, my daughter, she she's five now, newly five, and she has lots of moments where she makes connections that you're just you know, I they blow me away. For example, we w were talking about the story of Icarus and I asked her what she learned from it and she gave me, you know, several little girl answers, and then she said, and you should always listen to your daddy. Well she she's also currently obsessed with Beowulf. Yeah, she has requested it was hilarious a few weeks ago. You could like see the wheels turning in her head. Daddy makes books. I like pink. And so she goes to Josh and says, Daddy, I would like a pink Beowulf, please. So I have to see if I can do a one-off of that one. Yeah. Hot pink covered Beowulf. Coming soon.

Marty Bent [3:41] And then Hannah, you were you were a teacher for a while, right if I I recall correctly, s teaching Spanish. You spent thirteen years in the classroom.

Chapter House [3:45] Yeah. Yes. Yes. I taught history and Spanish for thirteen years.

Marty Bent [3:53] And so what what did the transition to home schooling force you to unlearn about education?

Chapter House [3:58] gosh. Well that's that's a really good question. mainly that you don't have to plan every single second of every single day. Like you you have to have a plan, of course, but it it's not like it is in the public school where you know you're working bell to bell and you you know you only have, you know, this X amount of time to complete this thing, you know, it's it's much more relaxed. It's much more like you get into a flow and then things will naturally move from one to another. It I it's a it's a really different sort of world when you're at home and but it also takes a really different sort of discipline.

Chapter House ⋮ You know, when you go into a public school, you know, okay, the bell rings at 750, that's when I'm here, then the bell rings again at 920 and this is when we go to this thing. And so, you know, it's just it's a different type of planning and you have to be a lot more flexible with yourself so that you don't burn out, honestly. And and I have found myself, especially this year, in in a state of like coming close to burning out because I was thinking too much like a public school teacher instead of thinking like a a mom who's trying to educate her children.

Chapter House ⋮ there was a couple things I remember that That were an adaptation for you. One was, I mean, really the whole gist was you you kind of had to go back to first principles on everything. And and I think you had two great realizations or great two great rabbit trails you followed. One was you know, figuring out how to teach our oldest to read. You you took a very, very, very deep dive on that. learning all these different methods and you know, weighing them out and testing them. And then also, I think for you one of the big unlocks was realizing that Textbook isn't necessarily the way to go on things.

Chapter House ⋮ And learning to teach from literature. Yes, yes. I've always loved books, and books are always important. And I had a realization a few weeks ago. I'm preparing to speak in Nashville in a in a few weeks at an event that we're going to have there. And I realized that I was kind of a Charlotte Mason schooler even when I was in public school because I taught high school, but I still read.

Chapter House [6:14] my students and we still sang songs and I took them outside as often as I could get away with it. You know, it's like, okay, we're learning nature vocabulary. Let's go and find these items. And so I was like, man, I've been doing this a lot longer than I realized. But yeah, when we actually decided to homeschool before I even left the public school classroom. Josh here was doing the the kindergarten homeschooling for our oldest son until COVID. Pretty terribly on my no you weren't doing terrible all. COVID shut the world down and I came home and then our our situation changed and I just never went back.

Chapter House ⋮ so yeah I it's it's been really interesting to to think back to those early days and how differently I look at things now than I did when I started. Especially with regards to like grammar. You don't need to spend an hour a day talking about nouns. You know, the parts of speech, there there really aren't that many. You know, you can you can learn those things fairly quickly if you take the right approach. so yeah.

Marty Bent [7:22] Yeah, I guess that gets into the core problem of like curriculum designers with like big big education for lack of a better tech that have really tried to design a a regimented curriculum and give these standardized tests versus a teacher who's actually interacting with the children on a day to day basis.

Chapter House [7:25] Mm-hmm. Sure. Sure. Well, and it was really miraculous to me. You know, I taught Spanish primarily, and I would have students come to me who were juniors in high school and I would say, okay, today we're gonna talk about nouns. What's a noun? Crickets. They didn't know, you know, they've been hearing that word so much for so long that they've just kind of tuned it out, you know. So when you when you try to make things have an impact. And if you don't belabor the point, you don't beat them over the head with it. I don't know. I think it might sink in a little bit better.

Chapter House ⋮ Yeah, and I you know, speaking on the standardized tests, you know, it it's one those things that I support in theory, right? Because, you know, we've known for a long time that the high the public school system is graduating a lot of students who just cannot read. And so we need to build a filter for that. But then oftentimes that gets distorted by you might call fiat incentives. And The what you end up with is a situation like we did a we just did a Substack post about this, about how there are many students entering college who they can decode a sentence, right? They can understand the syntax of the words, but they can't quite put together what it means.

Chapter House ⋮ Like for instance, if if something's said in sarcasm or there's a simile used, or you know, some sort of over-the-top reference, they just don't get it. They they read everything literally, right? There's no real thinking behind the it's all just processing. It's all very spreadsheet brain thinking, as our friend Ashley likes to say.

Marty Bent [9:14] Yeah. No, it makes me feel very fortunate. The high school I went to was a private Catholic school. And they basically told us day one, freshman year, like you're gonna be here for four years and our curriculum was basically it basically revolved around being able to co like reading comprehension and writing. Like can you read something, comprehend it and then write competently about it, on the back end. And that's through the four years we we had six years of language.

Chapter House [9:37] Mm-hmm.

Marty Bent [9:43] No, what that we were mandated to take. I took Latin for four years, Spanish, I actually took seven, Spanish for three. but that teaches you like the structure of languages, particularly diving into to Latin and some Greek, and then basically reading comprehension and being able to write competently. And I feel like just those skills alone. I guess I am a writer to a certain extent with the newsletter, but I think my career path trended towards economics and finance and having that. Reading comprehension and writing ability, I think, was the the fundamental basis that that set me up for success.

Chapter House [10:17] Mm-hmm. Absolutely. The three R' still matter. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you can read and comprehend and comprehend well and then communicate which what you've read, that's like 70 to 80% of what you need, right? Because at that point you can educate yourself. of course, like mathematics, you know, plays a big role in that, you know, sciences and things. But you know, read really the reading and writing is the fundamental. And if if you can do that, then you unlock pretty much anything you really want to know if you have the passion and drive to do it.

Marty Bent [10:49] Yeah. And I think we're gonna come back to this in a bit, but before we get into like the the whole idea of what is education for, is really wrapping up the origin story of Chapter House and why you two believe this need to be a publishing company rather than simply a reading list or home school blog. Like w why start a whole publisher publishing company around this?

Chapter House [11:10] Well, really, it was just about having excellent quality books on the shelves that are something that will inspire children and families. You know, they're the books are beautiful. My children love them. they'd heard the stories before, but now like they're like, Where are the chapter house books? You know, they want that that gorgeous edition in their hands. They want to be read to out of that, they want to see the pictures. They they love the old illustrations, they love the new illustrations. And you know, for me, having these unabridged volumes as well, that was also important. There's one book in particular in the first set called A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tells for Children.

Chapter House ⋮ It's actually two books in one. And that book, our version of that is the only one on the market like it because we preserved all of the art in the color. And we also did not cut the introductions, which were written by the same woman who wrote America the Beautiful. Katherine Lee Bates. Yeah. So, you know, a matter of historic preservation almost in that way. so Yeah, and we well, we both grew up with things like the Harvard classics and these readers digest editions of things and they were cloth bound or leather bound and you know, they they look very important. And and I think that was part of what encouraged us to want to read them is because You know, they they looked and felt important.

Chapter House ⋮ So it was something you wanted to reach out and understand, right? It challenged you to rise up. And I want to do the same thing with these books. You know, when you feel one of these books in your hands, you know, you feel like you're actually like, you know, you're you're carrying something important, right? Like it feels important, it feels expensive, and it kind of is, but you know, and the the paper looks good, everything feel feels nice. And so many children's books are what we would call twaddle. You know, just kind of junk, right? cheap materials, the arts tends to be terrible anymore. you know, the subject matter, the language is very thin.

Chapter House ⋮ And we're watching the reading, the the literacy rates d plummeting, the reading rate plummeting. I think part of that is is because so much of what's coming out is just junk.

Marty Bent [13:24] Yeah. As somebody who's got three young children and been exposed to this junk, I think I can concur. I d we don't need a pout powd fish book for Christmas, Halloween, Easter with very rudimentary like

Chapter House [13:38] Right. Or they're glorified toy ads. It's like here's this Paw Patrol book. Even if you've never heard of the Paw Patrol, you know, grandma gets you this book and then you read it and then you you're like, this is a TV show? Well, I wanna watch that. You know, it's it's not a good cycle to get into.

Marty Bent [13:56] Yeah. No, and I I think

Chapter House [13:57] Hey, excuse me just a second. I my children are being very loud. Hold on.

Marty Bent [14:01] Okay. Logan. As I say, I I have this problem too. I my wife and boys are down at the beach right now at her parents' house, so I get some some respite here at the home office.

Chapter House [14:24] Here yeah, I got I got you. sorry, I got you here. Yeah, sorry. We've we've had lots of distractions. The cat's like trying to get in my lap while I'm talking to you and the kids are being really loud and Okay. Well

Marty Bent [14:36] We're a pet friendly show. If the if the cat needs to join the lap, it's okay. We've we've had a dog snore on this show. How how long did Dave Collins dog snore for, Logan?

Chapter House [14:43] that's really funny.

Marty Bent [14:48] Ha ha.

Chapter House [14:48] All right. Okay. thanks. Thanks for that, Maria. Yeah, thank you.

Marty Bent [14:53] No, that's fine. It was actually a good cutoff point 'cause we were gonna transition into what is education for? And so your bow page asks, What is education for? and answers that its purpose is to form good human beings. What does a good human being mean to you?

Chapter House [14:58] Awesome. Perfect. Yeah. Ooh, that's a that's a good one. So just just to take a like a step out a little bit, you know, if you if you read the ancients, you read like Plato, Aristotle, St. John Chrysentom, or Saint John Chrysostom. I'm not quite sure how you pronounce which which way you pronounce it. but you know, the they all agreed on one thing is that the primary purpose of education wasn't facts and figures and reasoning, it was forming virtue, it was forming character. you know, with with the thought that, well, the other stuff's secondary to that. And so, you know, to answer in a very broad way, what does that look like?

Chapter House ⋮ Well, it looks like understanding virtue and what virtue is, and having an understanding of the good. And, you know, having and not just having an intellectual understanding, but having you know, a r a truly felt and maybe at least a secondhand experience understanding of those things. I mean, ideally. and ideally that comes through some kind of grounding in the real world. That's why, you know, Charlotte Mason's really big on the nature study and going out to the real world. , who's a Catholic think Catholic thinker along the same lines, also had a very similar philosophy of you have to be connected to the real world in a real way.

Chapter House ⋮ but you read stories like the Iliad and Odyssey, and you read Shakespeare, and you know, there's lots of bad stuff going on in those, and lots of things you wouldn't want your kids to emulate. But there's lot of virtue too. And I think being able to see, you know, through these ancient stories that been passed down generation to generation, you know, then they actually they absorb it, you know, and we're big on not using didactic thinking in this, where you know, you get to the end of a story and you just tell them what the lesson is. Things are so much better if you you know, anyone who's ever worked a job knows it's always good to let your boss think something's his idea.

Chapter House ⋮ Right, same with your kids, right? You present them the story and they reach their own conclusions that you kind of gently guide them to. And then, you know, but then they think it's their idea. And when that happens, it sinks in so much more deeply.

Marty Bent [17:18] And I mean on that note, which what f virtues do you think or would you consider are foundational?

Chapter House [17:23] Mm mm, that's a good one. wisdom, you know, I would say would be one for sure. maybe the perhaps the most important one. courage. You know, courage is a very important one. One I think often sadly is lacking in younger people today. And I won't even I won't exclude myself from that, but you know, you can have all the knowledge in the world, and if you don't have the courage to act, then you know what's it all for? Right. You know, you look at some of the, you know, the great innovators of our time and the one thing they all had was courage, right? They had an idea that might maybe seem crazy, but they thought to pursue it anyway.

Chapter House ⋮ I don't know, what what what are some that you would want to add to that? Well, those are the the two main ones that I don't know. I would I would add like loyalty. Yeah, honor. Yeah, honor for sure. Absolutely loyalty and honor. I think those two things pair, you know. Hand in hand, because if you're loyal and you have honor, like you're going to have honor, it's a natural byproduct. Right. Yeah, I mean you look at like the Iliad, right? And you know, the big reason why Achilles was sulking on a beach is because, you know, he felt his honor had been violated, right?

Chapter House ⋮ And so, you know, what if, you know, Mendelayus or Agamemnon, you know, had acted a little bit differently, right? You know, w would things have turned out better. Yeah. You know, so yeah, I I would say those would be like the main ones I would be you know, I want my kids to pick up.

Marty Bent [18:54] And then I mean on that note, how do you distinguish virtue from obedience or social conformity?

Chapter House [18:59] Ooh. I it's an intrinsic thing when it's one thing to tell your children you should be filling the blank. And it's another thing to watch them display that unbidden. Right. And you know, of course you have to talk about these things as they come up naturally, but it can't be a lesson. You can't do a lesson on why you should be nice to your little brother and sister. You know, we have three children and our oldest, like he was a born drill sergeant. But you know, the more that we talk to him about you should really be nice to your brother and sister, it it goes nowhere.

Chapter House ⋮ But then, you know, we'll we'll have a situation where he gets the chance to display what is actually going on in his heart, which is the the part that we as parents we can't form that. We like to think that we can, but we can't. That is something that comes from our creator. And and and we feed it. But I you know, one of the things I watch for is, you know, how do they behaving the playground, right? So we you know, we go to a church where you know, as soon as the service is over, the kids are outside running around playing and you know, how do they interact out there?

Chapter House ⋮ You know, like if there's a kid being bullied and one of my kids steps in and intervenes, you know, there was an event we were at last year where we just kept hearing from other parents about, you know, how good natured our boys were. I don't say that to brag, but it's one of those things like that's the sort of thing I would look for, right? Like, do you do the right thing when I'm not lording over you? You know, has it has that sunk in?

Marty Bent [20:37] Yeah. That's something I think about a lot about with my boys. Too not my oldest is is six and beginning to see anyway, we're giving them some independence. You got older cousins and so they can we go to the beach in the summer and we're this summer we've allowed the ten year old cousins to walk the younger cousins to to the ice cream to the ice cream parlor and like get ice cream by themselves and it's funny,

Chapter House [20:41] Mm-hmm.

Marty Bent [21:02] running into people that we we know in town say like, I saw your boys at the ice cream parlor last night. I like, Were they doing anything bad? They're like, No. But it's as little things, like giving them that independence too and hoping that when they go out there, they're not being little jerks.

Chapter House [21:09] Yeah. Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah, and that and that's a something I always like to try to connect, especially with our oldest, is you know, the the more virtuously you behave, the more freedom you get. And that's true when you're a child. It's also true of a society, right? You know, I can't remember which founding father it was, but you know, this nation is only suitable for virtuous people. Right. And I think, you know, as you see a nation pivot away from virtue, then it tends to pivot toward tyranny. Right, because what choice as you know what choice does a responsible government have if the people aren't behaving virtuously? You have to, you know, crack down on things. You have to watch every little thing. And you know, so you know, if we do want freedom, you know, if our children want freedom, if we as a people want freedom, then we have to embrace virtue ourselves. We have to be the primary our own primary governors, right?

Marty Bent [22:07] Yeah. And I think that's why a company like Chapter House is very important. So it's like how do you seed that virtue and how do you have individual children come to understand that virtue is important naturally without forcing it upon them? And you draw the distinction between being educated and being prepared. What does a child lose when education is organized primarily around credentials, careers, and economic productivity?

Chapter House [22:33] Mmm. That's a good question. So I you know, I I would I would go back to what I ref ref referred to before about spreadsheet thinking. you know, just putting every when you just quantify every little thing, right? Like, you know, for instance, we just had this conversation about virtue. How do you quantify virtue? You know, how do you put that in a spreadsheet? How do you put you know chart that out on a line graph? And you just can't. And I think one of the big mistakes we make. In modern education, especially public education, you know, is this focus on statistics and and things that can be quantified?

Chapter House ⋮ I think there's a place for that, right? We do need to have some sort of an you know objective analysis, but it misses a lot of just the greater things. Like for instance, I mean I talked about how so many young college students now read everything literally, right? They don't understand that you're you're making a joke or you're making you know, some sort of absurd suggestion or you know, you know, you're being a little outlandish for one reason or another and they just they don't get that. It's this very mechanical sort of thinking. Well, because a lot of the reading that's done in the public schools now is nonfiction.

Chapter House ⋮ There was a pivot to that several years ago, you know, with with all the STEM initiatives. It was like we're going to we're gonna pivot away from fiction. We're gonna read more nonfiction and and when all you do is read nonfiction, then you fall into that sort of spreadsheet way of thinking. for for me, you know, Charlotte Mason said that at the end of an education, it's not necessarily how much a child knows, it's how much he cares and about how many sorts of things does does he care. and when you when you raise children that they only see the value in education by like what sort of things they can put on a spreadsheet at the end of it.

Chapter House ⋮ I'll give you a perfect example. I taught, I taught high school Spanish for 13 years and I had students, like the good students, you know, the college-bound students, who would tell me this was toward the end of my career. This was when I this was one of those moments where I was like, I have to get out of here. Because I had students tell me, well, your class doesn't have a a standardized test at the end of it.

Chapter House [24:51] So I don't care as much about it as I do about my math class or my English class, say. And so, you know, if in all of our educational endeavors, students are learning to rank the subjects by, well, this one is important because it has a test and this one is not, then we've missed the mark somewhere entirely. Because the the point of education is not necessarily to, you know, well, I I made a really good grade and I Pass this test and now, you know, on to the next thing. It's, you know, wow, I I know a lot about this subject or I care a lot about this subject.

Chapter House ⋮ And I will continue to pursue education even when there isn't a grade attached to it anymore. Because there comes a point in your life where school ends. And if you never take the time or initiative to learn anything else the rest of your life, then then what have we done? What what is the point of education at that point? you know, at that point, like what have we done? So so I think we tie it back into Bitcoin and and the discussion of money because you know, so much of this you could call fiat education because the standardized test is not the knowledge, it is a selective representation of of knowledge, right?

Chapter House ⋮ And same thing, you can make the same argument for a tech textbook. y you know, just like, you know, with money, you know, a twenty dollar bill has no intrinsic value. Right. Like n like a piece of gold or a bar of silver or you know, a Bitcoin has, right? It doesn't have any sort of intrinsic value. It's just the value that, you know, the government or the Federal Reserve says it has. Right. So I you know, you could say, okay, well, the fiat money, well, it's a fiat education, because you know, you can have these students who come out with perfect straight A's and great ACTs or great SATs, and then just get out of the world and it turns out they're kind of morons, you know, in a lot in a lot of fundamental ways.

Marty Bent [26:44] Yeah. Yeah. Kids need to learn how to learn, right? That's I think one of the the more important aspects that's being overlooked right now. And going back to like reading comprehension and articulation of that comprehension. I think that's one of the fundamental building blocks of learning how to learn.

Chapter House [26:49] Yeah.

Marty Bent [27:04] Yeah. And it's a it's it's like a similar and and it's funny too, 'cause I I think the public school system that exists in the United States today, it's I mean it's based off the Prussian system that was essentially trying to create cogs in a machine for the industrial age. And that's just been played forward for for over a century now. And I think that cog model, number one, it's it's very inhumane where humans are not cogs in a machine, or at least they shouldn't be. They're not things that can be molded into a certain gear to put throw into the economic machine. And number two, like just the whole model doesn't make sense in the modern day with the way the economy works, the the tools that we have at our fingertips. And so you're you're not only throwing students into a system that is trying to turn turn them into cogs into a machine, but it's trying to turn them into cogs and a machine that doesn't exist anymore.

Chapter House [27:58] Mm-hmm. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, for the past what, twenty years or so, you know, all you heard in the public school system is STEM, STIM, STEM. Gotta learn how to, I don't know, trace circuits and and program computers. Yeah, gotta learn how to program the computer, right? And now we have these LLMs that do that for you. And companies are laying off software engineers left and right. And you know what we're being left with is, you know, so much of that technical work can be done by the computer itself. And the the skills that are actually valuable are those humanity skills that we left behind. You know, being able to clearly communicate to the machine what you need, what you want, but also, you know, having the critical thinking skills to know when that machine is lying to you or hallucinating.

Marty Bent [28:44] Yeah. I mean this ties directly into your motto, which is virtues at miraculum, virtue and wonder. And I think we've touched on it a bit, but like really tying the knot here and connecting them very concretely. Like why do these two ideas need one another?

Chapter House [29:00] Mm, that's a great question. So, you know, we we've gone through virtue already and the importance of character formation. wonder, I think, is the offset to that, because you know, if you just grow up in this environment where it's like, you know, be good, be good, you know, do these things, then I think I don't think you become a well-rounded person. I think that's just sort of very flat angle. It's easy to kind of lose the meaning of it. And I think that's why so many kids, for instance, who Grow up in a religious tradition, often will abandon that religious tradition because th they need something more.

Chapter House ⋮ They need a reason for that. And that's really where wonder comes in. And, you know, developing a sense of how amazing the world is and can be. You know, I'll give you a real world example of this. So we had this terrible ice storm back in February. And one of the things that the ice storm did, there was this giant old tree on a hill behind our house. That toppled over, took out a power line when it did it. And anyway, so like we we got that cut up and it left this giant crater in the ground. Like this tree was just enormous. So it left this giant crater.

Chapter House ⋮ And our seven-year-old boy, he's been he has spent the past few months exploring that crater. And he is constantly pulling stuff from it and like bringing it back to the house. There was one day he he haul like he he somehow he got this cart I had, and this this rock. He brought in probably weighed like at least 50 pounds. At least. He he somehow figured out how to roll it down the hill and load it into this cart and haul the cart all the way to our house. And this is probably about a hundred yards from where that tree is to like the bottom of the hill where the tree is to all the way over here.

Chapter House ⋮ And so and he was just amazed at this rock he brought, right? He's just been amazed at this big hole in the ground. And then and then you go back to that story. Think of all the virtues he displayed while exploring that. crater, right? I mean, you took a certain amount of bravery because it's like it's about like three feet down into that thing. It's you know, you have to jump into it. It's a huge crater. And then digging all this stuff and then the figure all that innov all this these innovative ways to get this rock that's as big as he is to the house.

Chapter House ⋮ Yeah. You know, and so you see all those like sort of things kicking together. And I think that's a great example of how virtue and wonder interplay, right? Because like if there is no wonder, if there is nothing more out there, you know, and for the longest time

Chapter House [31:23] You know, the w Western thinking's been heavily colored by this materialist thinking, right? This sort of Darwinian, Freudian thinking of, you know, everything has to, you know, be put you know, be able to put in a spreadsheet. Everything has to, you know, everything's material. There's nothing there's nothing incredible. There are no miracles. There's nothing i interesting out there. Everything's just atoms and rocks and there's an explanation for everything. Yeah. And you know, without that wonder. You know, I mean like you take someone like Elon Musk, you know, you love him or hate him, he's done a lot of really cool things. And part of the reason he's done those cool things, well, one is virtue, right?

Chapter House ⋮ The guy works insanely hard, you know, often sleeps in his factories, you know, just works constantly. you know, he's you know he has issues like we all do, but he does have that specific virtue, right? He's very, very driven. He's tenacious. But then he also ha Elon Musk also has that wonder. Right? He's constantly talking about Mars. Let's go to Mars. Let's see what's on Mars. Let's how are we gonna do it? What would it be like to live on Mars? Right? Like, does living on Mars make a lot of sense? Not really. You know, like would I rather live on Mars than say Hawaii?

Chapter House ⋮ Well, no. but but that's the wonder taking place, right? Like, what would it be like if we could live on Mars? Like, let's get to Mars. And so every and he's done all this wild stuff, all in the service of trying to get humanity to Mars.

Marty Bent [32:41] Yeah. Well that I mean you you explain what virtue is without wonder and it just you don't want to be a drill sergeant and y you need to have that that strive for something greater. But what's the opposite? What's what's how does virtue counterbalance and balance wonder? Like what's a what is a a child that has a ton of wonder but no virtue? What does that end up in?

Chapter House [32:51] Yeah. I mean that that's a great question. You know, I would say just a dreamer, right? Or or a criminal. You know. I mean maybe. But like, you know, I'm I'm thinking, okay, okay, so here's a great example. I knew a guy I went to high school with him, he's super smart. You know, he he would read the textbooks for fun and memorize them, right? Just an insanely smart dude. And the last I knew last I heard a few years ago, he he was still living with his parents, right? He like in his thirties living with his parents. So we didn't do anything with with all that genius, right?

Chapter House ⋮ And so I think what happens when you have the wonder without virtue is is you're basically just a dreamer. I've certainly been guilty of this in a lot of ways, right? where like you you have all these great ideas, these great things you want to do, but you you don't have the tenacity, right? You don't have the courage to go out and try the idea. You don't have the work ethic to, you know, to figure these things out. So you end up just kind of drifting through life. Or you you end up robbing banks because you have you have the wonder but you have no guiding principles.

Chapter House ⋮ You know, you don't have anything to stop. Okay, great example, great example. I was just I just saw a Twitter thread on the movie Point Break. Have you ever seen Point Break? I haven't. Okay. It's about these dudes who like they're thrill seekers and they're like surfers and they they jump out of airplanes all this stuff and then they rob banks to fund all this, right? And it's part of like their thrill seeking, right? They they just live their lives. There's surf bums who rob banks. And so I think that's a great example of wonder without virtue. Sounds like it.

Marty Bent [34:38] Hold what's his name in that? Johnny Johnny Ohio?

Chapter House [34:43] Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Man, I I I gotta rewatch that. I it's been so long. Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. It's classic. wow.

Marty Bent [34:46] I'm gonna get I'm gonna get yelled at for butchering that now. But you mentioned your Christian faith and you say your vision is inseparable from that faith. So how does Christian conviction shape the books you select in your understanding of childhood?

Chapter House [34:56] Mm-hmm. Ooh. That's a great, great question. So, and it's kind of complex to answer, but but I'll do my best. So, one of my big influences is a Catholic writer. I'm not a Catholic, by the way, but he's still been a great influence. A gentleman by the name of Dr. John Sr. And Dr. John Sr. he died in 99. but he he grabbed my attention because I heard about this program called the Integrated Humanities Program. It was at the University of Kansas from 1970 to about 1980. And it was it was him and two other professors. And they set up what was sort of a remedial humanities program.

Chapter House ⋮ They would read the classics, they would learn a little bit of Latin and Greek. but they'd do other stuff like and they and the students never quite knew what they were walking into, right? Like they might come in and they might just start singing folk songs, or they would have like a night class, they go out and like look at the stars, or they would, I don't know, they would have like a whole class on like square dancing. Right. It was all this stuff that like at one point in time every educated person was expected to do or to know. And they just never experienced it.

Chapter House ⋮ Well, very strange things started happening. and it's what ended up getting the program shut down. But the students started becoming Catholic. And I don't mean just like a little Catholic, you know, like they'll say a woman's a little pregnant. I mean like I'm talking like rosary bead counting, Latin mass chanting, you know, hardcore Catholics. One guy became an archbishop. another one of his students founded a monastery in Kansas. And so and that really piqued my imagination, you know, and and my curiosity. you know, my because at the time I was thinking really heavily about, you know, how do we save the West? How do we kind of push back against this sort of color revolution we've been seeing over the past decade or arguably longer?

Chapter House ⋮ You know, what is what is the cure? What is the solution? And so I that really drew me into. The writings of Dr. John Sr. And and his philosophy on all this was that, you know, the key to forming a good person is to t what he called tilling the soil, right? Like, you know, not even so much planting the seeds, it's just getting the soil in proper preparation, so they're ready to sort of receive the message. And you know, Dr. Sr. tied all this back to he he tied all this sort of like Western canon.

Chapter House [37:27] All the work of Western civilization back to a central point, which is Christ, right? And so for Dr. , you know, for him it was the Catholic Church. we have a slightly different view on that, but a lot of respect for Dr. Sr. and our Catholic friends. But that's that's kind of like I know that's a little long winded and maybe not terribly coherent, but that's sort of how it all ties together. Is like I believe that if you look at all these things, they're ultimately a product of Christian. thought and and or influence Christian thought. And and this is, you know, I know there's a lot of parents who have objections to some of the titles we've picked.

Chapter House ⋮ Like for instance, you know, we have you know Greek myths and it talks about the Greek gods. And we have another book on Norse mythology. it was Saint was it Saint Basil the Great? Yeah Saint Basil the Great had this wonderful homily on the importance of pagan literature and he actually recommended his students to read what he called the vulgar literature before they read scripture because it would help prepare the mind. And and one of the things I've been finding as I've finally been able to properly read these books, you know, I say properly, and of course we've read we've read them hundreds of times going through editing and all that, but there's very much a difference between you're reading something to prepare a manuscript, you're reading it off an iPad, you know, to your kids, and you're actually sitting down with a physical book and reading it.

Chapter House ⋮ This actually isn't the best example. So a better example would be say, okay, so I have this on the in the days of giants by Abby Brown. This is a great little book, a very weird little book, in our s in our chapter two collection. And this is a collection of Norse mythology. And one of the things I've picked up on while reading this stuff, you know, this and the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Greek myths, is how capricious these pagan gods were. So, Just not to get too derailed, but you we're so we're Orthodox Christians, and one of our beliefs is that you know all these pagan gods are real and effectively effectively they're demons.

Chapter House ⋮ and you read this stuff and you can't you realize how true that is. Like for instance, Odin, the you know, the the the king of the the Norse gods, right? He was like the top god, sort of like they're like the Norse version of Zeus. Zeus was a bad character too. Like Odin wasn't quite as nasty as Zeus could be.

Chapter House [39:47] But Odin would sometimes say, you know what? I'm tired of being God. I'm going to throw on a disguise. I'm going on vacation. Or, you know, Zeus would do terrible things to women. You know, if you read the Iliad, you know, the gods are constantly changing sides and just messing with people, right? Like I'm gonna take you and teleport you here just to cause trouble. Or like, you know, I liked you yesterday. I don't like you today. I'm gonna make sure you lose today. Christ doesn't do that. Christ never does that. You know, God the Father, the Holy Spirit, they don't do these things, right?

Chapter House ⋮ They are constant. They are extremely consistent. You know, Christ always loves you even when he's disappointed in you, right? He always loves you. He's always there. You know, the God of the Bible never takes a vacation. He doesn't take a day off. He He doesn't assault human women. and so when you read these pagan stories, for me at least, I think for our children, it really just kind of emphasizes what. Christ did for us. Because when Christ died on the cross, you know, these these beings, these entities basically were shut down. They were shut down, and every and this is a historical fact. I know this sounds a little nutty, but this is true.

Chapter House ⋮ Everywhere Christian missionaries went, and every time they brought Christ to a new place, all the old pagan rituals stopped working. Like those old gods just went away, they were banished. And and that's what one of the reasons why Christianity spread so quickly, because

Marty Bent [41:07] Yeah.

Chapter House [41:14] we used to sacrifice a goat and do this dance and it would rain and there our crops would be. And that doesn't work anymore. well, Christ, well, hey, well, I prayed to God, you know, I I prayed to I prayed to Christ and it rained. So I guess that's what we're doing now, right? They they converted for practical experience. And so, you know, you read about these old gods, these whatever these things were, and and it makes you realize just how incredibly blessed we are to have Christ and You know what he did for us in ridding us of such an ugly, capricious world.

Marty Bent [41:49] Yeah, I mean and that the end of that story sort of ties with the gospel this le this week, which was sowing seeds, right? And you know, you said you the focus of Father Senior was to w till the soil, but I thought it was I was connecting it to the the homily this week at Mass.

Chapter House [42:07] Mm. Yeah. We had the same one, funny enough. So yeah. yeah, you have to have good fertile tilled soil to even, you know, have anywhere to drop those seeds. Right.

Marty Bent [42:20] Well, I mean let's get like really into the meat of it, like around virtue and courage and these old books. And like I I mean, I think we started this part of the conversation, but really digging into it. Why is courage better taught through Horatius at the bridge, Beowulf facing the dragon, or Odysseus trying to return home than through an explicit lesson about courage?

Chapter House [42:41] I mean, to me, those are explicit lessons about courage. they may not be dressed up, you know, with a a a heading at the top that says today's lesson is about courage and a worksheet at the end to fill out. But, you know, how can you not be inspired to be brave when you hear about Beowulf showing up and saying, You got a problem, yo, I'll solve it. You know, I mean, how how can you not be inspired to be brave? And it's funny enough, like we just got to the part where Beowulf takes on Grendel and you know pulls his arm off, not to spoil a really old and nails it to the wall.

Chapter House ⋮ And then you know the next day my middle child comes up to me and says, Mom, is Beowulf a saint? So you know he's already thinking along those lines. You know, these men who do great deeds, like they are, you know, they're saints of the church. So it it's really interesting to me to wa watching him make those connections Between things that like we I never said, hey, you know, the saints of the church had courage. He's just picked up on that, that that's a through line, hearing the different saints' lives. So, I don't know, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, I mean, I think it goes to like living versus dead texts.

Chapter House ⋮ you know, a dead text would be something like a textbook, and it just tells you, hey, you know, be brave. Like, okay, what do I do with that? Yeah, right. Like, re does reading the dictionary do it? Like, is that enough? You know, I I don't know. Like, for me, it's it's seeing these things in action and and giving it time to settle into your mind. and then being able to act from that when the opportunity arises. And I think it also helps when you see characters that are not Mary Sue's, they're not Perfect. They're flawed in many ways. You know, you take someone like Achilles, who certainly had his fair share of flaws.

Chapter House ⋮ But you know, when the time came, you know, he was bold, he was brave, all this stuff, right? So I I think you need three-dimensional characters. And again, you know, to kind of go back to scripture, it you know, that's one of the things, you know, I've you know, I've become a believer and I really started reading scripture that that convinced me of the truth of it, was that you look at these.

Chapter House [44:58] these characters throughout the Bible and they have flaws, right? Moses had a temper. Abraham kept trying to sell out his wife because he was scared. yeah, well, like something that just dawned on me literally last week was that, you know, when Jesus was arrested, that the the disciples fled because they weren't a hundred percent certain. It's like may okay, well maybe he wasn't the Christ. May maybe like, you know, that they were like, we're gonna run away, we're gonna Play out because you know we're we're not we're doubting right now, and it had never occurred to me that that was why they fled, you know.

Chapter House ⋮ so anyway, yeah, just seeing the flaws, but then the the return to belief of of these people, you know, right? The the redemption and the the greatness they did, you know, like Saint Peter. you know, he denied Christ three times, you know, and and like okay, well, why wasn't he like Judas? Well, because Judas, you know, he could not accept. God's forgiveness, but Peter could. And that was the difference, but you know, that's why one's a saint and one's in hell. you know, but like but see, but like it's it works so much better when you when you see an example of someone who just is not perfect, who has fear, who has anger, who has lusts, you know, like King David or you know, or Solomon, right?

Chapter House ⋮ And and they have these real flaws, then it it lets you know that you too. Can aspire to this sort of greatness, even if you have your own weaknesses and your own problems, as we all do.

Marty Bent [46:32] Yeah. I mean and we touched you you touched on on in the beginning of the discussion, like you really don't wanna finish a story and then be like, All right, here's the lesson but like how d how do you explain the moral or let the child live with the story and then like pull that out and and be there for them?

Chapter House [46:40] Mm-hmm. Yeah. We we don't I we try our best not to explain things. So we practice something called narration, which is common in Charlotte Mason circles, but also in the classical world. So you read something to a child and then you ask them to tell the story back to you. And you know, if they get something glaringly wrong, you might fix it. But otherwise you just let them tell you what they got out of it and and That comes from a place of respecting them as a person. So for example, you know, if Josh and I read the same book, you know, he'll get different things out of it than I will, just as it would be, you know, Marty, if we read a book, all three of us, and we talked about it, you know, we would all get different ideas from it.

Chapter House ⋮ So you let the child tell you what what they got from it, and then you leave it at that. And you layer things on year after year, you know, reading after reading. And Over time, then they'll start making connections between the stories themselves. So, you know, for example, my oldest, he came to me one, he loves to come to me when I'm cooking dinner. I don't know why he does this to me. You know, it'll be a like pivotal moment where if I don't do this, dinner is ruined. Hey mom, I've been thinking, really, right now. So he read the the Harry Potter series in the spring for the first time, but we were also reading Oliver Twist.

Chapter House ⋮ For school. He was reading Harry Potter for fun, Oliver Twister school. And so he comes to me one night and he says, Mom, I've been thinking, Harry Potter and Oliver Twist, you know, they're both orphans. And then he goes on to tell me all the similarities that he sees between their stories. And I was just like, Wow, I'm gonna have to sit down and take notes because this is just blowing me away. So, you know, that's what we do. We we let the child sit with his story where they are, and then you just keep going. You just keep plowing, and then you know, eventually.

Chapter House ⋮ the the soil will be good and worked and then those seeds will start to bloom. And and you give them all these different stories and they make all these like all these connections between them, right? And like, you know, all these connections that our kids have made between, you know, these stories and of course other ones they've read. for our oldest, he's read a lot of Harry Potter, which not my favorite, but at least he's reading. but you know he's made a lot of connections between Harry Potter and scripture, for instance. And he'll make connections between that and and some of these stories as well.

Chapter House ⋮ so like didn't he

Chapter House [49:10] W was it was it Harris that pointed out that Ron Hermione and Ron were like three parts of the tripartite soul? Yeah, yeah. We we we have lots of talks about the the tripartite soul and you know, which characters in the Harry Potter series fit where in that model. It it's really interesting, you know. Well, and that was a case where like I introduced that concept and then he just started going with it and plugging things in and like We have three children, and so they'll regularly have discussions about which one of them is the brain, which one is the heart, which one is the stomach.

Chapter House ⋮ And you know, it kind of changes a little bit day to day. So and the thing you'll see if you if you stick with this sort of method for long enough is just all these connections they make that you know maybe you've never even considered, but you know, and that that shows you that they're not just reading, they're not just decoding, they're actually thinking, they're actually pr truly processing. What they've read. You're actually engaging the mind. You're engaging those parts of the mind. And that's sort of the opposite of what we've seen from this sort of spreadsheet education where it just, I know the facts, I know the figures, I can do, I can do code, I can tell you why your engine's making that sound, I can tell you why the code isn't compiling correctly.

Chapter House ⋮ and those are all good things, of course, but you you know, we're we're trying to go for a deeper sense of comprehension.

Marty Bent [50:25] Mm-hmm. And I mean, you guys have made some decisions that o others would say, like, why are you doing this? One like deliberately choosing an ASOP edition that does not append an explicit moral to every fable. why is explaining the lessons sometimes the fastest way to weaken it? I mean, we just covered that, but again, reinforcing this in the the actual physical copies of the book too.

Chapter House [50:39] Mm-hmm. Yeah, well I'll I'll give you an example. So we read this story about I think it's a crow, crow or raven. It may depend on which version of ASOP you're looking at. Crossover I'll pull up. And with with the the jug with the water in the bottom of it. And he's trying to figure out how to get the water out. So he drops the pebbles in until the water level rises so that he can drink from the jug. And so we read that very short story and I say, Okay, well, you know what everybody learned from that. And my oldest, you know, if the if the moral had been spelled out, it would have been one thing.

Chapter House ⋮ But my oldest said, well, what I learned from that is that you really need to stay calm in a in a dangerous situation. Okay. That's not the moral that would have been spelled out at the bottom, but that was what he took from it. And I'm sure, you know, if you're a a thirsty bird, you might be on the verge of death. I don't know, it wasn't explicitly stated that he was, but still. You know, and that that's the virtue of not just spelling everything out, like letting them take from it what is needed in their life at that time. You know, and that's you know, where we you have to leave room for the Holy Spirit.

Chapter House ⋮ Yeah. Well, and don't don't box them in. Right. You know, when you when you spoon feed them the lesson, well, first of all, you don't let them engage that part of their brain, that critical thing part of their brain. It's they're just again just absorbing what they're being given. They're just being spoon fed. That's I I really think that's the gist of so much of our education these days is they're getting spoon fed. Yeah. And then and but then you're also boxing them in, right? You're not leaving room for the Holy Spirit or their imagination to say, hey, you know what, it could be this or it could be this.

Chapter House ⋮ It could also be this, right? you know, I again I I keep going back to scripture. There's so many Bible verses where someone will read it one way, someone else will read it another way, and maybe they're both true. And maybe there's maybe there's multiple and that that's sort the beauty of the Bible is there's so many different layers. Right. Right. It's like an onion. You know, which layer of the onion is the real onion? Well, it's all the real onion. It's just different layers of the onion. So

Marty Bent [52:52] Yeah. I mean Josh, you mentioned earlier that it's important that children understand flawed heroes rather than impossible models of perfection, which flawed heroes have prompted the richest conversations in your home.

Chapter House [52:58] Mm-hmm. gosh. well I'll I'll tell you a favorite one of mine. my kids don't know quite as much about this one yet. You'll you'll understand why why in a second. But so one of my favorite saints is Saint Mary of Egypt. And I really think she's a saint for this age. So Saint Mary of Egypt was, for lack of a better word, a nymphomaniac. And she was just going out, just committing all sorts of terrible sins and just having a great time of it. And she went on a pilgrimage kind of as a gag. And she tried to go into this church and she couldn't get inside the church.

Chapter House ⋮ Like I'm not quite sure how that worked. I don't know if like she was like, there's a force field, or she just kept trying to go in and getting redirected, but she couldn't get inside this church. And finally, she cries out to this icon of of the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary, and and Mary tells her, like, hey, you need to go, you need to go to the desert and you need to repent. And so She she's finally let in the church. She she goes to confession. She communes. Then she goes out in the desert. She spends the rest of her life living in the desert and and just repenting and praying and all this stuff.

Chapter House ⋮ And, you know, and so she's founded by this monk named St. Zosimus, who she recounts her entire life story to him. And she dies this sort of beautiful death, and you know, but before she does, she walks on water to to go visit him one last time. And and she she's this wonderful saint who lived this very sinful life, but you know, but because she she made that choice to repent, she made that decision, then you know, she's counted amongst the saints. And I think that's a beautiful story because I think there's so many people these days who, you know, they fall into this sort of stuff and it shows there is a path, right?

Chapter House ⋮ There is a path to holiness from that.

Marty Bent [54:57] Yeah. And again I think it's very humanizing, right? Like there is no such thing as a perfect hero other than Jesus, right? And it's it's it's okay to be flawed, it's natural. It's

Chapter House [55:04] Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I I think there's certain people who take advantage of that these days, right? Like the you know, they'll bring up like Thomas Jefferson or George Washington and someone would be like, Well, they own slaves, they did this, they did that. And it's like, okay, well, you know what? I can take literally any you know, hero from history and I can point out all their flaws. You know, I can point out all the flaws of Martin Luther King Jr., I can point out all the flaws of Martin Luther. you know, I could I could point out like I could t take literally anyone apart that you wanted me to, you know. but that's not the point. The point is, y you know, when we rise from that default state, right, we rise beyond, you know, we we do something greater than ourselves. Right. That's why we remember these people in history.

Marty Bent [55:52] Yeah. And that gets to I mean, y your selection standard is that a book should be beautiful, it should be true and worth reading aloud. And obviously as we covered, a lot of these stories are myths, ancient myths, and obviously they're not true, but what is it what does it mean to be true? Like what what is the truth embedded in these myths?

Chapter House [56:14] Before we answer that, let me try to fix my camera because my computer keeps telling me it's dying. So no. I'm telling you, this is nothing but technical stuff today. We're having all all the issues. All right, hopefully it doesn't die when I unplug this. Let's see. And it did. there it goes. Okay, cool. Now we're back on the charger. All right, that looks pretty good. All right.

Marty Bent [56:23] It's all good.

Chapter House [56:39] All right. w where were we at again? What what was our question again?

Marty Bent [56:42] So your your selection standard is that a book should be beautiful, which I think is very important. It should be true and worth reading aloud. What does true mean? Obviously we've been talking about a lot of these books are myths, ancient myths that that aren't seeped in exact history. How do you how do you derive truth from myths?

Chapter House [56:46] Mm-hmm. Mm. That's a great question. So yeah, I mean, w there was a lot of deliberation of which books to include. And we we came up with four box sets, three books apiece, so twelve books total. And you know, so that we kind of came to the question of well, how do you sum up the Western canon in 12 books? and so some things are obvious, right? Like Shakespeare, Homer, you know, Aesop, I think were all obvious things. And then some other ones for us were obvious. you know, for instance, Fifty Famous Stories Retold. That's a very popular book in Charlotte Mason's circles. but then, you know, how do you get to true?

Chapter House ⋮ And you know, and how do you kind of tease apart truth and myth? Well, see, I would argue that that myth is a little different than just fiction. you know, because myth, you know, may have happened, may not have happened, but but there's truth in it. You know, for instance, you know, oftentimes we would call know the story of the Iliad, a myth. But you know, and for a long time historians didn't think Troy existed. They thought it was a fictitious city. And then a few years ago archaeologists found Troy. So we know it was a real city. And then the question is, well, how much of the Iliad was actually true.

Chapter House ⋮ give a great illustration of that, you know, we're just celebrating America's 250th anniversary. So to tie our first president in with with another great president so one of those stories we have in Fifty Famous Stories Retold is the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. probably entirely made up by a guy named was it Mason Weems? I think that's right. Yeah. So after Washington died, he just and he's he was a Methodist minister and a traveling book peddler, and just one of those kind of early 19th century characters. And he suddenly decides you know what, I'm going to write a biography of George Washington.

Chapter House ⋮ Like a a biography you'd never read before because he probably made up most well, he he claimed he he interviewed like long-lost cousins and stuff. you know, so w whether that's true or not, who who really knows. But anyway, so the story of George Washington, the cherry tree. I think most peop most American children have heard it at one point in time. And and basically Washington's dad had a cherry tree that was kind of rare and valuable at the time. You couldn't exactly go to the Walmart and get another cherry tree and

Chapter House [59:25] George Washington had a hatchet. He's No, it would be really cool if I chop down that cherry tree, you know, because he's a l and and there's so much truth in that because it's such a little boy thing to do. It's like, there's a tree, I got a hatchet, let's try this thing out, you know. but then of course, you know, Washington cuts down the cherry tree, his dad gets really angry about it. And then George Washington's like, Well, I cannot tell a lie. I cut down the cherry tree, and then his dad forgives him and embraces him, and you know, and and so was that story true?

Chapter House ⋮ You know, there's a lot of debate about that. A lot of people say probably not true. Probably but it's more mythological in character, but there are truths in it, right? We know Washington was a man of great honesty and virtue, and also a man of action. He is di I could definitely see a young George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. also, of course, the the virtue of forgiveness. So in that you have a lot of truth. But then here's where things kinda get interesting and real the real truth comes in. So there's a young boy many years later who borrowed this book from a neighbor.

Chapter House ⋮ And just became this biography of Washington and just became obsessed with it. Just there's only a book he read, he just read to the point he ruined it. Like it ended up like getting reined on because he was reading outside and he had to work for his neighbor to replace the book. So there's a very famous story. Well, that boy was Abraham Lincoln. And after he won the election his election to the presidency, one of the first speeches he gave. He was he spent like an hour talking about that book. Cause back then, like speeches lasted all day. You know, people think Donald Trump rambles, like these guys, they went on.

Chapter House ⋮ Like, you know, it was like a speech was a day-long event. So yeah, he he spent a very large portion of the speech just talking about that book and that biography and the story of Washington and how it inspired him to to you know eventually run for president. And so I don't know, you know, people have complex feelings about Lincoln, love him or hate him though. But that that is the truth of it, is that this you know, quote unquote myth about George Washington inspired Abraham Lincoln, you know, to do what he did, right? So like whether the story was true or not, the effect of the story was very much true.

Marty Bent [1:01:25] Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. We need to get we need to get back to this. I'm very happy you guys started Chapter House. And I I I think just continuing down this vein, like why should children encounter unsanitized myths with real consequences, frightening monsters, concepts like death, and how do you sort of filter or understand when a child's ready to to hear those stories?

Chapter House [1:01:50] Well, I mean, they're going to encounter things like that. S. Lewis and Chesterton both said something very similar about letting a child encounter those things in a story so that they will know that those things can be overcome. You know? Yeah, it was I think it was Lewis who said that you know the child doesn't have to be told about the monster. He needs to hear that the monster can be slain. Right, exactly. Exactly. That you already know as a child that there are scary things in the world. You don't have to be alive very long to find out that. world can be a scary place.

Chapter House ⋮ But when you read about someone having an encounter with with a terrifying dragon and overcoming it, then you know it it gives you some hope. you also see sometimes that things don't work out, but people go on anyway. And you know, that also gives you hope, but in a different sort of way that, you know, if a if you have a terrible situation in life and things go poorly, that, you know, you you will be able to carry on. or sometimes you don't, you know, like there there's a lot of the stories in the Mar Margaret Evans Price collection we have here, Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales.

Chapter House ⋮ these are the Greek myths, and these are they're beautiful, but they're real most of them are really freaking sad. Well, you know, if you're Icarus and you make your wings out of fly too close to the sun, you know, some I I mean, and that's also a reality that has to be dealt with, you know. You know, a lot of times though, the terrible things that happen to the characters in these stories are because they ignore. warnings, they ignore good counsel. And that's such a common thing in life. You know, I I can't tell you how many loved ones I've had who have about to do something really dumb.

Chapter House ⋮ I'm like, hey, you shouldn't do that. You can't tell me what to do and then they go do the dumb thing and then predictable, terrible things happen to them, right? I mean that's that's a constant thing I think in many people's lives. and so how do you how do you end up being someone who accepts wise counsel for people who love you? Well

Chapter House [1:03:51] one way is to read these stories and read them at a young age and understand that if yeah, if you ignore good advice, bad things could happen. Mm-hmm.

Marty Bent [1:03:59] Yeah. And last story be or last question before we get into sort of some advice of starting to read these stories with your children is you describe the Western canon as a living inheritance that belongs to every child. What do you say to a parent who hears Western canon and worries about exclusion, triumphalism, and a selective view of history?

Chapter House [1:04:12] Mm-hmm. I support all those things, I think. I mean, look, look you know, we've had some people, you know, most most of the people who come across Chapter House and our Substack Virtue and Wonder say very wonderful things and nice things. Every now and then we'll have someone who be like who who they're a critic and they'll say, you're being exclusionary, you're being elitist, you're you're, you know, you're raising up this culture over the rest. And I would say, Yes, yes, we are. And because it's just a fact that Western culture is the superior culture throughout the world. And you can like that, you can not like that.

Chapter House ⋮ It's a fact. You know, for instance, I was reading something recently, I was an interview with Xi Jinping, the premier of China. Is that the proper title? and he's a big student of the classics, right? He he's read Plato and Homer and studied these things intensely, okay? Why? You know, there's Plenty of great authors in China. There's plenty of great Chinese philosophers and great thinkers over there, but he studies the Western ones. Why? Because we're the gold standard, right? The West has the gold standard of these things. You know, I get a plane right now and I could fly to anywhere in the world. I could fly to Egypt and I could sit down in a Kentucky fried chicken and eat my eat my my plate there, my biscuit, and be staring at the Egyptian pyramids.

Chapter House ⋮ I mean literally, literally, there's a KFC set up where you can sit there and eat your meal and look at the pyramids. I could fly to Japan right now, Japan, and again walk into a KFC. I promise you I'm not being sponsored by KFC, but my my point being is that Western culture is everywhere. I can go to Russia and buy a pair of blue jeans. a thoroughly American thing. you know, I mean when the when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, the things that the Soviets are the most excited about were blue jeans and Coca-Cola. Like we can finally have those things.

Chapter House ⋮ and they're all products of Western culture. so you know, you can you can lob you know lob all sorts of nasty, you know, phrases at us or descriptions of that. And we we have no hate in our heart. but

Chapter House [1:06:33] we do believe yeah, I mean West it's not a belief, it's just the fact that Western civilization is the best civilization and there is so much to draw from it. And unfortunately there's a lot of people who would love to bury it and love to kill it. And to to me that would be you know, apocalyptic. That would be absolutely disastrous, not just for the United States and not just for Europe, but for the entire world.

Marty Bent [1:06:58] I completely agree there. and I'm that again, that's why I'm very happy that you guys have started Chapter House and are beginning to reintegrate these these timeless stories into into the curriculum of the home, I guess you could say. And like on that note, how should families who don't have a reading sort of cadence or a tradition or but just simply There's there's a bunch of parents out there listening to this saying, Dang, I need to do this more. How do you get started? What books to start with? Does that pair with the particular age of your children? Where do you start?

Chapter House [1:07:34] Yeah. I mean, really any of our box sets are appropriate to begin with. They are organized roughly by age, but it's not really the age that matters most. It's the length of the story. So the first box set, the green one, chapter one, the books that are in that set, the stories are shorter. So if you have younger children with shorter attention spans, that might be where you want to begin. And then as the the box sets progress, unfortunately we don't have through box set three and four yet because they're still at the printer. So as they progress, the stories get longer, they get a little meatier, you know, maybe a little bit more complex.

Chapter House ⋮ So, you know, look at the age of your children and you know, if you're like us, then you have a pretty wide spread, then you, you know, you might want to just pick one and start, you know, and and that's the funny thing with my child my own children. I have a almost 13 year old, a seven year old, and a newly turned five year old. And our reading list is all over the place. You know, we have books that are definitely geared more toward the older of our children. And then we also have books that are, you know, kind of geared toward the younger of our children.

Chapter House ⋮ And they all sit and listen to them happily and tell me the things that they learn from them. So I really don't think there's a bad place to start. Just start. That's the main thing. You must read to your children. You must. And and do and develop a habit of it. And it was actually a great time for this question because we've been traveling for the past couple of weeks. And so we've completely fallen out of habits. got got mixed up watching the World Cup. And you know, yeah, exactly. And and so we've kind of fallen this habit for the for the time being. I mean, as easy to happen in summer anyway.

Chapter House ⋮ But yeah, set aside 20 minutes a night. You can do 20 minutes. And you know, the green set is perfectly fine. These are kind of shorter books. Yeah, and like she said, when we get to chapter four, I finally saw a picture of of what those books are gonna look like. I saw the the proofs from the printer and RLN's story, which you know the books in chapter four is like this thick. It's like 700 pages. It's like two it's like two inches thick. It's gonna be a hoss. That might be a little intimidating for the for the newer readers, but you know, if your children

Chapter House [1:09:55] I've been watching a lot of screens, and maybe maybe you've been looking at a lot of screens and like like us, your attention span is totally fried. then what you do is you get you one of these like little thin books here, 50 famous stories, or you can get a child's book of myths. This is actually a great one because it has all the pretty pictures, and the stories are short. and you can easily or if you really need a short story, you know, get the Aesop's fables, and those take about two minutes to read. and then just yeah, just spend, you know, set a timer.

Chapter House ⋮ You know, maybe a little bit toward the end of the day and just set aside that short amount of time, even ten minutes. Yeah. You know, and just read one of these little short stories. And just every day, you know, I just saw a tweet from Joshua Phillips, who's a big fan of Chapter House. He's talking about how many books he reads a year and all he he reads one hour a day. He just sets aside one hour a day to read. So, you know, take your kids, you know, even if you don't homeschool, and just set aside that twenty minutes a day and just just Read one story or a couple of very short ones.

Chapter House ⋮ And if you have younger children that their attention span isn't great, we do a lot of Legos or Mnetiles. That my my kids also have the the blocks that are magnetic that look like Minecraft blocks. And so they haul those things into our little den area and they sit in the floor and they build things and I read to them and it works beautifully. They that's another thing that I think people get hung up on because the public school model is you have to be perfectly still, paying, you know, rapt attention, not looking anywhere else. But I mean, honestly, how many of us totally checked out while we were appearing to be doing the right thing?

Chapter House ⋮ guilty. Another another one I would add to that, and this is one of the places where the public school system really fails young boys. If if you're reading to a boy And he gets up and starts like dancing around or doing karate kicks. Yeah, keep reading. Just keep keep at it. You would be amazed at how much they're still listening. But you know, I this is especially so true for young boys because you know they need that movement. they they need that action.

Chapter House [1:12:05] like it's not good for them to just sit still all day. And and this is how you end up with kids in the public school who have to go on Ritalin or you know whatever the meth whatever meth methamphetamine they're pushing that day, because they're not designed to sit there and be perfectly still and and absorb information. No. they need some movement. And and you can't expect a child, especially a young child, to sit for an hour and read. That that's way too much to ask of them in the beginning. unless they've built up the habit. Now my daughter, she's a bookworm. She came out a bookworm.

Chapter House ⋮ And I I mean, I'll never forget Josh a few years ago, he had started a new job and at the at the end of the day she was waiting for him. She was like a year and a half old. I mean she was not very old at all. With a stack of books in one hand and her T-set in the other. She was like, All right, Daddy, it is time for you to play with me and read to me. So she she loves books and she will happily sit for 45 minutes to an hour, even at five. But that is her personality. And that that's the muscle that she has built up since she was little because that's what she enjoys.

Chapter House ⋮ Now, our boys, that's a bit of a different story. They are also boys. And, you know, boys are a lot more physically active than girls are sometimes anyway. So Yeah, and you know, children, one thing we've learned having three children is that they're born persons and they're sort of born with their own personality. Our oldest never liked books. Even when he was a baby, he would literally punch them out of my hand. you know, the the middle child that he he's a bit more, you know, book he likes books a lot more. He's not one necessarily to bring you a book, but he comes to the books for sure.

Chapter House ⋮ And of course my little girl loves them. But yeah, so you just you have to kind of tailor things to to them and you have to find stuff they like reading. And if something isn't working, try something else. You know, that's why we include three different books in each box set, you know. Or, you know, and just because something doesn't work the first time doesn't mean it won't work the next time. Or maybe, you know, you pause, you give it six months, you go back to it. You know, it it's it's a it's a a puzzle that you have to put together for your particular situation.

Chapter House [1:14:18] But and it's easy to become frustrated because we all want things to be perfect instantly and it's just not going to be necessarily that way. And that does not mean that you are a failure.

Marty Bent [1:14:31] Well, this has been incredible. Thank you both for for coming on, obviously, and then also for for starting Chapter House. I think it's a very important endeavor, and I'm happy to see that it exists. So thank you for bringing it into into our reality here. What can anybody who's listening to this has become motivated? What can they do, number one, to help you, number two, find the books?

Chapter House [1:14:33] Thank you. Thank you, Marty. Mm. Yes, buy books, chapter.house is the domain. No.com. It's just chapter.house. That's where you can find the books. we are on Twitter, X, wherever Elon's calling it today. ch house books is is the handle there. And then also our substack that we we publish pretty twice a week, pretty de you know very dedicated to publishing it twice a week. that is virtueandwonder.com. Virtueandwonder.com.

Marty Bent [1:15:27] Awesome. Well, Josh and Hannah, thank you for your time today and hopefully we can do this again at some point in the future.

Chapter House [1:15:32] Sure. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Marty.

Marty Bent [1:15:35] Alright, peace of love freaks.