Remarkable Young Americans And Education – From Building On The American Heritage Series: How old were early American heroes? Is there a Biblical precedence for adolescence? What should the goal of education in America be? Tune in to hear the amazing accomplishments of young Americans and discover a tested paradigm for future generations!

Air Date: 09/01/2022

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

Listen:

Download: Click Here

Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and politics, WallBuilders Live with David Barton and Rick Green. Today’s program is Remarkable Young Americans. You’re going to be blown away by some of the stories you hear today of what Americans have done at a very young age, and it’ll help to encourage the next generation to do the same. Here we are. We’re going to go straight to the set for Building on the American Heritage Series.

BUILDING ON THE AMERICAN HERITAGE SERIES

Rick:

Alright, David, our topic today is about education and the youth of the Founding Fathers, they seem to be at a younger age and have a totally different expectation of how the young people would learn.

David:

Well, for actually not just Founding Fathers, I mean, you can go to the first 350 years of American education and you’ll find that the product we created with youth is totally different than what we have today. I mean, there’s so many great examples that you can point to of that. Being a cowboy myself, living a ranch, Pony Express is really intriguing for me.

I love the fact and I try to think about what it would have been like because you had folks riding from St. Joe, Missouri all the way to San Francisco, that’s half the nation, and you do it 10 days on horseback. You make that and it’s dangerous.

Pony Express Riders

Rick:

And that’s solo too, right?

David:

The solo, individuals, you’re having to fight along the way from bandits or Indian attacks or whatever to get the mail through. And no Pony Express rider was over 18 years old, they were all 17 and…

Rick:

So these were what we would say today are kids?

David:

You bet. Today we do Pony Express pictures. How’s that guy look to you?

Rick:

About 35.

David:

Yeah, that’s about two Pony Express riders because they were a lot younger. A great example of a Pony Express rider is this guy right here, his name is Bronco Charlie. Now see the picture, Bronco Charlie? 

Bronco Charlie

Bronco Charlie, 11-years-old was a Pony Express rider. 11-years-old, he’s on a horse riding from St. Joe, Missouri all the way to San Francisco. And by the way, he was already an accomplished Broncbuster at the age of 8. So here’s a guy riding horses and breaking horses at 8-years-old. 11-years-old, he’s an accomplished Indian fighter and bandit fighter and facing daily death rides. You know, what an amazing thing.

Rick:

Obviously, back then they didn’t consider themselves to be…

David:

Oh, there was no such thing as adolescence. I mean, you were being trained for an adult from the time you were born, there’s no biblical precedent for adolescence. That’s a modern innovation we’ve come up with. You are born to be productive. You’re born to do something to your life and make a difference to your life. And the sooner you get started, the better it is.

Now you take Maria Mitchell. Maria Mitchell, in the 1820s is the first woman in America to discover a comet with the telescope. She actually set up an observatory where in her observatory she trained women for science and trained them with astronomy and telescopes. How do you use telescope?

Rick:

You said, 1820, so she’s in 1820s…

Maria Mitchell

David:

Grab this. When she was 11-years-old, she was a teaching assistant in astronomy at the age of 11. At the age of 12-years-old, she calculated the time of forthcoming eclipse. And at the age of 18, she was running her own school for women and astronomy and sciences, etc.

We wouldn’t even think of that today. Maybe after five PhDs, maybe when you’re 35, you can do. No. She’s doing the school on her own at the age of 18.

While, military-wise, take civil war, great example, civil war, the newspapers from hometown would cover the hometown heroes, just as they do today with the war on terror, anything else; hey, here’s our local guy, he’s in Afghanistan or he’s in Iraq or wherever he is. Back then, papers did the same thing. 

So if you go to the Indiana Register for February 10th of 1864, they’re covering the hometown heroes, and they talk about one of the hometown heroes, a guy named John Clem, and they said, little John Clem and they report that he was a hero of the Battle of Chickamauga.

And because of that, what happened is General Rosecrans elevated him to a sergeant because of bravery he demonstrated in battle. Then General Thomas came to him and said, no, no, I need him on my staff, and raised him to a lieutenant. So he’s been promoted on the battlefield for bravery and heroism, made a sergeant, now he’s been promoted to a lieutenancy on General Thomas’ staff. And the last line in the newspaper is John Clem is but 12-years-old.

A Different Paradigm

Rick:

12-years-old already upgraded to lieutenant!

David:

12-years old, he’s a hero. Yeah, already a lieutenant in the military at 12-years-old. And there’s example after example after example. You take John Moran, the first Black American to be a successful missionary to Native Americans, 13-years-old.

Was evangelizing among the Cherokee Indians, learn the language, going tribe to tribe, sharing Christ, 13-years-old. This is incredible achievement. But there was a different thinking mentality back then, a different system of education, different philosophy.

We didn’t train our kids to waste as many years as you can in adolescence. Hey, God put you here for a purpose, and you need to get on with that purpose and find what that purpose. So if it’s Pony Express, if it’s military, if it’s science, if it’s theology, if it’s missionary, it doesn’t matter what it is. That’s what we wanted to happen. 

And that’s such a different paradigm from what we have today. But history and Bible proves that it’s a very successful and very doable paradigm that our kids can do a whole lot more than what we think they can, and we’ve got to be the ones to kind of push them in that direction.

Rick:

Okay, David, time to pick up some questions from across the nation on youth.

Progressive Education

David:

Sounds good.

Guest 1:

Why do schools in America switch from 8th grades to 12th?

Rick:

Okay, we got to keep my kids from watching this one. I don’t want them complaining about we have 12, and they only had 8.

David:

There is a big difference in the objective of education then and now, and the objective was to get an amount of knowledge, not how long you were in school. See, what happened was from the founding era, and actually the first public school law in America was passed in 1647. From that time up until the 1920s, we said the objective is to teach you how to think, because if you can learn to think, you can learn knowledge.

In the 1920s, with Dewey and so many progressive that redid education, we not only went into compulsory education saying, you have to attend, and we not only went to saying how many years you’re going to be there, we also went into teaching students no longer how to think, but how to learn. And so the difference became not use your brain. 

The difference became listen to your teacher, your teacher knows everything. And so we changed from the type of testing we did into the 1920s before we started doing multiple choice, true false, fill in the blank. In other words, the teacher will tell you what you need to know, you just spit it back to… That’s not training you how to think.

Can you Answer Questions for a 4th Grader?

Great example: well, just read it, what does it say at the top?

Rick:

So it’s a fourth grade, and it’s on geography.

David:

And it’s from Chicago, 1862, it’s public schools because kids have got 35 minutes to take this test. So we’re talking all kids in Chicago, public school kids, not your elite kids, not your advanced kids, this is public school kids, this is the type of knowledge we had in fourth grade in 1862. Read some of the questions.

Rick:

See, how many degrees wide are the temperate zones?

David:

Fourth grade.

Rick:

What is a watershed? Name the principal animals of the frigid zones. I’m failing already, man.

David:

I was just thinking I wonder how many today could pass the fourth grade test from 1862?

John Trumble

Rick:

What portion of the people on the globe were pagans? What portion are Christians?

David:

That’s fourth grade question.

Rick:

Fourth grade. What’s fourth grade now, I guess that’s 10, 11 years old.

David:

But see, the difference was then that you didn’t start guaranteed at five or six or whatever. See, one of the founding fathers, a great example, John Trumble. John Trumble had finished reading through the Bible from cover to cover when he was 4-years-old.

And that was not an uncommon feat. Lots of kids did that. But today we’d say, I don’t care how smart you are at 4, you can’t start until you’re 6.

Rick:

And I’m guessing that’s probably at home, they’re learning to read at home?

David:

They were learning to read at home. They were learning to read in variety… As a matter of fact, let me take you to this. Open that and tell me what you got there.

How Many Kids Understood Greek?

Rick:

I’m afraid to break it, but what is it? I see testament, maybe I can make that one out.

David:

Go to the middle, what do you see in the middle? Anything you understand?

Rick:

Not a word.

David:

It looks like Greek to you.

Rick:

It looks like Greek because I’m guessing it is.

David:

It is. That is a Greek New Testament. Now, here’s the deal. At the age of 13-years-old in America, most kids could translate the Greek New Testament into English.

A Freshman Project

Rick:

13-years-old!

David:

13-years-old, translated from Greek into English. Now, not only could they, but if you went to any of the major universities and if you went to Harvard or Dickinson or if you went to William and Mary, if you went to Yale, if you went to Princeton, if you went to Brown, if you went to any of these universities, your entrance exam was you had to prove that you could translate from Greek and English.

Rick:

Before you could even get in?

David:

Get in. And you had to be trilingual to get to the university. And by the way, the average age, very common age at which they went to university then was 13-years-old; very common to be in university at 13. But your entrance exam is you have to show that you’re fluent in Latin and Greek and English, the three. Your freshman project is you take that Greek New Testament, you make a translation into English, particularly the book of John, that’s your freshman project. You’re 13-years-old when you’re doing this.

Rick:

And this is 200 years ago, 250 years ago and that’s a 1750s?

Who is the Center of Education?

David:

Knowledge was the objective, not how many years you were in school. And we used a different process to achieve knowledge and it’s teach you how to think. Today we teach you how to learn, don’t think, we’ll do the thinking for you. We say the kids are the center of education, it’s not, the teachers are center of education. And that’s a whole difference.

Rick:

The system has become more important than the students themselves.

David:

This is a spelling book. It’s called Webster’s Blue Back speller for obvious reasons. This is the 1908 version, it was introduced in 1782.

For the next 150 years till about the 1930s or 40s, this is the spelling book every kid used. And it says, by the way, Elementary Spelling Books, so these are your beginning spelling words. So you want to take shots on these spelling words?

Rick:

You’re not, you’re going to put me on…

David:

I’m going to put you on the spot.

Vocabulary

Rick:

Great. I don’t have to spell them. I can’t even say them, let alone spell them.

David:

That’s why I gave it to you, because I don’t know how to pronounce it.

Rick:

Yeah. Thanks. Let’s see. Oligarchy, I know that one. Etiology?

David:

Probably etiology, but I’m not even sure.

Rick:

Etiology, okay. Yes, forget it.

David:

See, and that’s elementary spelling. That’s every kid in America doing that for 150 years. Now, could we even introduce that into postgraduate work today? Probably not.

Colorado

Rick:

Well, and the fact that they used it for that long, it was fairly successful. Why did we get away from it then?

David:

Well, see, we got in that progressive thing in the 20s where we changed the whole focus of education. So today we keep tweaking the edges. Hey, it’s time to blow up the system and go back to what worked. Here’s Colorado. This is the exit questions for 8th grade work in Colorado. Let me just read some of the questions they’ve got on government. 

And this is 8th grade stuff. You’re an attorney, I do constitutional work all the time. I’ve been involved in a bunch of cases of US supreme Court. You do all this litigation work. Here’s just some good old basic civics questions for 8th graders in Colorado, 1925. “Give the qualifications as given in the Constitution for president, senator, and rep? In other words…

Rick:

So they got to list the ages?

David:

All the ages, how many years old, how years they have to live, and say we had to know that in 8th grade. Now, most attorneys could not do that today. “Name some powers denied the states by the Constitution, and conversely, powers denied the Federal by the states.” So list those powers. “If a man be accused of crime in one state and is found in another state, how may he be brought to trial in the other state?”

Robert Troop Pain

Rick:

8th grade, they’re going through this?

David:

That’s 8th grade. This is technical stuff that you get in law school. This is 8th grade knowledge in Colorado, rural stuff.

Rick:

And that was only, I guess, 85 years ago, 1925, so we had not yet begun our slide down in…?

David:

Now, this is the early part of progressive is introducing the new concepts that dominated by the 30s and took over by the 40s. So we’re really into it. One other example I’ll use here, this is a book by Robert Troop Pain. This is out of the founding era. I mentioned these guys often 13 years old in college, whatever. This is a list of the debates that he had in college. 

Now we’re thinking 13-years-old. So they called them forensics. Here’s the stuff they had to debate. “Is there more to be gained and more to be lost by new translation scriptures for common use?” 

I’m sorry, I don’t know a clear answer to that. Well, that’s the point. There’s not a clear answer. Develop your arguments, put out a cogent reasoning, and then go after each other, point out the weaknesses.

Gaining Knowledge

Here’s another forensic. “Is it more dangerous to believe too much or to believe too little?” A 13-year-old forensic. Another forensic. “The conduct of the patriot to destroy the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773, is that conduct to be praised or condemned? 13-years-old. So we were teaching kids how to think, not how to learn. And there’s a vast difference.

So yeah, there is a difference in education. They could do it in eight years back then, it takes us 12. We’re not getting anywhere close to what they got in eight years because the focus is different, not how many years are in school, it’s how much knowledge you gain when you’re in school. 

And you couldn’t get out of school until you could demonstrate you have that knowledge. Now in 8th grade, you might be 12-years-old, you might be 22-years-old, but you had to have the knowledge before you got out.

Rick:

And some may start later than others, rather than having this cookie cutter where we’re going to put everybody through the same thing at the same age?

David:

The compulsory education system of the 1920s that said you’re going to go to school for this many years and you’re going to start when you’re this age and you’re going to move to the next level… Now, we moved to the next grade when the knowledge was right for moving to the next grade, so you might go through two grades in a year.

Reading in Early America

Rick:

Okay, let’s get another question on education.

Guest 2:

Was education in the founding era only for the elite?

Rick:

Good question. So did everybody get the kind of education you’ve been talking about or was it only for select few?

David:

Let me answer a question by asking a question. When’s the last time you’ve seen a comet?

Rick:

Never.

David:

Never? You’ve never seen a comet?

Rick:

Never.

Secular Education

David:

John Adam said you’re more likely to find a comet in America than you are to find someone who can’t read in America. So how thorough was their education?

Rick:

Essentially, everybody then have that ability to read.

David:

Now let’s take that and compare that to where we are today. Because in America prior to 1000 1962 and by the way, 62 is when the court said no more religion education; we don’t want voluntary prayer; we don’t want voluntary scriptures. It’s going to be secular. 

We want secular education. So prior to 62, 63, America was number one in the world in literacy. We had the highest literacy rate, we had more people who could read than in the nation per capita, percentage-wise in other nation of the world.

Education back in the founding era, everybody got an education, everybody can read. If you look at The Federalist Papers, I mean, the Federalist Papers, that’s the greatest commentary ever written in the US constitution. The Federalist Papers we study in law schools today, that’s postgraduate stuff. The Federalist Papers were letters to the editors in New York Newspapers of 1788 for the New York farmers.

Teacher Centered Indoctrination

Rick:

And that’s tough reading. I want to tell you, I have a hard time getting through the Federalist Papers, it’s hard to reading. And that was for your average New York farmers?

David:

That was the average letter to the editor for a New York farmer in 1788.

Rick:

If we were number one in the world and compared to what the founders said, how did you mess up your education system that bad?

David:

That’s part of that thing where we’ve changed the whole purpose of education. It’s no longer gaining knowledge. It is now teacher centered indoctrination. And we don’t teach kids how to think, we teach them how to learn. And that’s not the way God designed us. God designed us to use our brain.

AMERICAN HISTORY

Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. 

And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well.

I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. 

In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman; friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.wallbuilders.com.

David:

We’re told in the scriptures that we love God with their heart, soul, body, mind. We don’t use the mind much. We don’t train the mind much. We train the memory, some to regurgitate back whatever the teacher tells us.

The Fear of the Lord

But we just changed the whole philosophy of education. And by the way, the scripture says in Proverbs 27, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. If you want to know something, if you want to be smarter, you start with the fear of the Lord.

Rick:

So we took that out…

David:

And now we’ve said, oh, you can’t do that in schools. Which is interesting that if you look at schools that still use the fear of the Lord, whether they’re home-schooled or Christian-schooled or parochial-school or whatever, they average two to four grade levels higher than public schools for a whole lot less money. They are at the average of pre-1962 numbers. In those schools, they still have some acknowledgement of God, you still got really high education…

Rick:

So it’s not just a ceremonial thing to acknowledge God, it has an impact on the result of the education?

David:

It’s only a ceremonial thing if God is like Buddha or anybody else that is dead and gone. If God is still alive and active in the earth, and if He tells you that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, not spiritual knowledge, of knowledge, if He tells you that and He’s still alive, then it’s still going to work. And that’s what we demonstrate today with statistics.

the Bible as the Textbook

So you look back from the founding era, I mean, the Bible was the textbook from which everyone learned to read. The fear of the Lord is part of education. And by the way, you’re more likely to see a comet than you are to find any person in America that cannot read.

Rick:

Okay, time for another question from the audience.

David:

Sounds good.

Guest 3:

I’ve heard some of the Founding Fathers were very young, even the signers, did they start their careers earlier than we do today?

Rick:

I guess that’s true. I think there was a 26-year-old on the Constitution, that’s pretty young.

David:

That is fairly young. But it goes back to the philosophy of education. We were after, again, the attainment of knowledge, of being able to think and how early the kids start thinking. Well, if you got kids, they start thinking really early.

The Adams Family

One of the things that’s been shown is that by the time a child is 5-years-old, he’s gained 50% of all the knowledge he’ll ever gain in his life. By the time he’s 6-years-old, he’s gained 60% of all the knowledge and then after that, it slows down a lot.

You look at what John Adams said to Abigail. John Adams was overseas in the revolution, Abigail was home raising the young kids and the guidance he gives her and remember, when you talk to your kids, don’t use that baby talk stuff because you like teaching them several languages.

He said, you start talking to them as adults, you use regular words, you use big vocabulary words because they can comprehend it. Good example of that is this blue back speller we had a minute ago.

That thing written and I know Noah Webster’s a founding father, he fought in the American revolution, he was the legislator, he’s judge. He’s the guy who said, hey, if we don’t take what we know as Founding Fathers and pass it on the next generation, America won’t survive. And that’s why he started writing textbooks. And in that period of time, he just turned out a bunch of textbooks.

Rick:

Not just for the purpose of knowledge, but to literally pass to the next generation?

David:

He turned out textbooks on history, on government, on banking, on meteorology, on animal husbandry, on manners. I mean, you name it, he’s writing textbooks on it. So you take this one.

Students Love Challenge

And back then we had no teachers colleges to teach teachers. So what they would do is in the front of the book, he would include guidance for the teachers and said, now whoever is teaching this, you need to know this. And he would say, I acknowledge that the words in this work seem to be somewhat difficult.

He says, but you have to remember that students love a challenge. He said, if you ever go down to the level where they are, they will drop. And you’ll have to go down again, and they will drop. He says, you hold the standard up here, they will come up to that standard. They love a challenge. Hence the words that we use for 150 years in elementary education…

Rick:

And that’s the opposite of what we do now because we do bring it down.

David:

It’s the opposite of what we do now. Specifically question about the Founding Fathers, yes. You have folks like William Livingston, who’s a signer of the Constitution, who when he was 14 years old, was already a missionary among the Mohawk Indians. Mohawk is considered the most ferocious tribe in America at the age of 14. You have individuals like James Ire

dell who ratified the Constitution. George Washington put him on the Supreme Court when he was 17 years old. He was the chief financial officer in his section of North Carolina, running all the finances of the state. 17-years-old, the chief economist in there.

You take Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson, born in the founding era, and he became a president, 7th president. He was a prisoner of war at the age of 11.

The Average American Revolution Soldier

Rick:

11-year-old, a prisoner of war?

David:

You’re fighting in the war. As a matter of fact, let me grab something here. I want to show you something them real quick. This is an original musket from the American Revolution. Now, I am slightly taller than you are and you’re a whole lot taller than the soldier in the American Revolution.

Rick:

No kidding. I’m finally taller than one, so I like this story. Where are we going?

David:

Well, the average soldier in the American Revolution literally were 5ft. So this is what he has to work with. Take that and have a look at it.

Rick:

That is not light.

David:

That is not light. Now, your kids, what age are your kids?

An 8-Years-Old Minuteman

Rick:

14 down to 8.

David:

You got an 8-year-old, how tall is he?

Rick:

Let’s see, with ball cap on, he’s probably about right there.

David:

He’s about there. And we’re taller in this generation by far than they were then. So let’s put an eight year old down about here. Now we’re…

Rick:

And holding a gun this heavy?

David:

John Quincy Adams, when he was 8-years-old, musk it out with a Massachusetts Minuteman, going after the British, at 8-years-old. Look at the size of that gun and look at him. Yeah, Founding Fathers started early because we had a different philosophy by which we did things. 

Journals

Now, the other interesting thing about John Quincy Adams is just consider at 8-years-old, he’s out with the Massachusetts minuteman with the musket going after stuff. Let me point you back behind here. You see that stack of books? Now, that’s the diary, the memoirs of John Quincy Adams.

Rick:

That’s a big diary.

David:

Yeah. He started when he was 11-years-old writing a diary. He kept it for the next 68 years of his life till he died at the age of 79. Now, in that time, he is an American diplomat in five different countries, He’s a Secretary of state, he’s the US Senator, he’s a state senator, he is a US. 

Congressman, He is a President of the United States, all in there. And in his diary, as he would write in it for each day, it’s not a little thing like got up at 4:30 and went to work at 5:30. He would have 8, 10, 12 pages a day of everything he did, what he thought, what was going on.

Interesting thing, it starts when he’s 11-years-old. Now, why would it start then? Because at the age of 11, he got a congressional diplomatic appointment overseas to Europe as wait, an official diplomatic appointment at 11-years-old.

Rick:

At 11-years-old. See, I was trying to think, why would an 11-year-old be doing a journal in the first place? Or even be willing to take the time at 11-year-old?

A Congressional Appointment at Age 14

David:

Well, see, that was the other thing we taught in America was every student should keep a journal. So every kid did that. I mean, that’s just part of who we were. Ladies did that.

Guys did that. You’re writing, you’re thinking, you’re using your brain, you’re communicating, you’re putting stuff together. So at 11, he gets his first appointment. At the age of 14, he gets his second congressional appointment. 

They sent a 14-year-old John Quincy Adams to the court of Catherine the Great in Russia, and he was secretary of the ambassador because the ambassador in Russia didn’t know French and needed somebody in Russia who could speak French. So they sent John Quincy Adams, 14-years-old.

Rick:

14-years-old, so we got to think in today’s terminology, that’s a freshman in high school.

David:

That’s a freshman in high school who has been sent to the court of Catherine the Great on his own. And by the way, when he left from England to go to Russia, he crossed, I think it was eight different countries at that time, he did it all by himself at the age of 14, negotiated all the money, negotiated all the languages, rode the stage coaches and the horses all the way over to Russia. 

And it was freezing cold when he got to Russia. But they need a French translator in Russia, and so he’s officially sent by Congress. He got to be pretty good at French. 

A Different Philosophy

And by the way, that’s the other interesting thing about his diary is when you read it on Sundays, it’s really scary because he also does a whole lot of extra Bible work. And he does a lot of Bible work anyway. He actually believed you should read through the Bible from cover to cover, once every year he did that. 

On Sundays, he’ll say, well, as I look at Romans 8 in the Greek, looks like the French translation is pretty good; it’s actually better than the Germans did, but the Russian is not bad. He reads the Bible in seven, eight languages every Sunday.

Rick:

And this is not with a software program that’s pulling them all up for you, he’s doing it with…?

David:

No. And so the question, were the Founding Fathers doing things were much younger? Yes, because we had a different expectation, different philosophy of education.

They definitely are capable of doing that. It’s been proven for hundreds of years. We’ve moved into a different philosophy now, but they really believe that you could use your mind that you could do things at an early age, and they did.

Rick:

So what’s the lesson we should take from that in terms of how to challenge our next generation? I mentioned I’ve got them from 8-14, I want to challenge them to be like that.

A Low Bar

David:

One of the things is we have so goofed up our culture today that we place no expectation on kids. Matter of fact, we want them to linger in adolescence as long as they can. We don’t want you to be a responsible adult and really be productive. If we can keep you in a youth group, and if we can keep you enjoying, doing nothing for several years, we’re going to prolong as much as possible, go to college and have a good time, party while you…

Rick:

And you find yourself for five, six, seven years?

David:

That’s right. It’s a whole different approach from what we used to have, and literally the expectation of the government today for every young person is kids, here’s what we want in you. We want you to not kill someone and pay taxes. If you cannot kill someone and pay taxes, you’re a perfect citizen of the United States.

Rick:

That’s a pretty low bar.

David:

That’s a low bar.  Our society is so mediocre. What we have to do as parents and as adults, as grandparents, whatever else, encourage kids, like Webster said, yeah, these are some challenges, but kids will come up with the challenges, raise the expectations, make it a challenge, kids will do it.

John Trumbull

Rick:

I’ve noticed lately, talking to a lot of families where 17 and 18 year olds are already got a way head start in college, some of them finishing at 19. This is mostly in the home school community, but are we starting to see some trends to come back to this?

Remarkable Young Americans – From Building On The American Heritage Series

David:

We’re using that to prove that, see, you can do it a lot younger. You can be done with college by the time… If you’re Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Rush, Founder Father, signer of the Declaration, the top physician in America, the “Father of American medicine” graduated from Princeton when he was 14-years-old, graduated from Princeton when he was 14-years-old.

Now, other Founding Fathers Fischer Ames, framer of the Bill of Rights to the First Amendment in the House, etc, he started college when he was 13-years-old. And we think, oh, that’s way too young. No. No. That was really typical.

Mentioned earlier, John Trumbull finished reading to the Bible when he was 4-years-old. When he was 6-years-old, he beat his minister in a Greek contest. When he was 7.5-years-old, he passed the entrance exam to Yale University, and his parents said, we’re going to hold you up till everybody else goes. 

So they held him out until he was 13, 13 they held him out. So we’re proving with home schoolers and with others that you can’t do a whole lot more than what culture expects to be. It’s really possible. I mean, that’s what we did for thousands of years. That’s what America did for hundreds of years. And we’re starting to get away from that paradigm that has forced us into mediocrity and failure. 

And we’re getting back down to saying, hey, young people really are productive, they are sharp. Look at all the things they’re doing at a much younger age than what we thought in our generation can be done. And that’s a really healthy thing for the country.

Rick:

Well, that was Building on the American Heritage Series. You can get the entire box set of 13 programs at our website wallbuilders.com. Hope you enjoyed this particular program on remarkable young Americans. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.