Chapter House: Why the Western Canon Belongs to Your Child
Transcript — TFTC
Article: https://www.tftc.io/chapter-house-western-canon-homeschool-living-books
Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/chapter-house-western-canon-homeschool-living-books-transcript
Published: 2026-08-05
Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors.
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[0:01] Marty Bent: Josh and Hannah, welcome to the show.

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

[0:07] Marty Bent: 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.

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

[0:21] Marty Bent: 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?

[0:23] Chapter House: 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.

[1:46] Marty Bent: 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?

[1:56] Chapter House: 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.

[2:36] Marty Bent: 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?

[2:38] Chapter House: 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.

[3:41] Marty Bent: 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.

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

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

[3:58] Chapter House: 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.

[6:14] Chapter House: 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.

[7:22] Marty Bent: 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.

[7:25] Chapter House: 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.

[9:14] Marty Bent: 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.

[9:37] Chapter House: Mm-hmm.

[9:43] Marty Bent: 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.

[10:17] Chapter House: 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.

[10:49] Marty Bent: 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?

[11:10] Chapter House: 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.

[13:24] Marty Bent: 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

[13:38] Chapter House: 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.

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

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

[14:01] Marty Bent: 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.

[14:24] Chapter House: 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

[14:36] Marty Bent: 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?

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

[14:48] Marty Bent: Ha ha.

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

[14:53] Marty Bent: 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?

[14:58] Chapter House: 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?

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

[17:23] Chapter House: 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.

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

[18:59] Chapter House: 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.

[20:37] Marty Bent: 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,

[20:41] Chapter House: Mm-hmm.

[21:02] Marty Bent: 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.

[21:09] Chapter House: 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?

[22:07] Marty Bent: 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?

[22:33] Chapter House: 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?

[24:51] Chapter House: 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.

[26:44] Marty Bent: 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.

[26:49] Chapter House: Yeah.

[27:04] Marty Bent: 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.

[27:58] Chapter House: 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.

[28:44] Marty Bent: 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?

[29:00] Chapter House: 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.

[31:23] Chapter House: 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?

[32:41] Marty Bent: 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?

[32:51] Chapter House: 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?

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

[34:43] Chapter House: 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.

[34:46] Marty Bent: 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?

[34:56] Chapter House: 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.

[37:27] Chapter House: 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.

[39:47] Chapter House: 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?

[41:07] Marty Bent: Yeah.

[41:14] Chapter House: 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.

[41:49] Marty Bent: 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.

[42:07] Chapter House: 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.

[42:20] Marty Bent: 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?

[42:41] Chapter House: 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.

[44:58] Chapter House: 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.

[46:32] Marty Bent: 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?

[46:40] Chapter House: 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.

[49:10] Chapter House: 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.

[50:25] Marty Bent: 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.

[50:39] Chapter House: 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.

[52:52] Marty Bent: 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.

[52:58] Chapter House: 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.

[54:57] Marty Bent: 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

[55:04] Chapter House: 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.

[55:52] Marty Bent: 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?

[56:14] Chapter House: 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.

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

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

[56:42] Marty Bent: 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?

[56:46] Chapter House: 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?

[59:25] Chapter House: 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?

[1:01:25] Marty Bent: 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?

[1:01:50] Chapter House: 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.

[1:03:51] Chapter House: 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.

[1:03:59] Marty Bent: 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?

[1:04:12] Chapter House: 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.

[1:06:33] Chapter House: 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.

[1:06:58] Marty Bent: 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?

[1:07:34] Chapter House: 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.

[1:09:55] Chapter House: 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.

[1:12:05] Chapter House: 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.

[1:14:18] Chapter House: 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.

[1:14:31] Marty Bent: 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?

[1:14:33] Chapter House: 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.

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

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

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