Welcome to the podcast. This is episode 352. My name is Douglas Wilson, and I'm very grateful, very glad that you decided to join us. Welcome aboard. Good job. So I was recently doing some thinking about education, a particular type of education. And you can file this under my views on classical

charter schools. There are other applications to education other than just this, but I'll use this

to illustrate the point. There are classical schools that are trying to return to

standards, trying to return to rigorous academic standards. They want discipline in the hallways

and it's good so far as it goes. If you have a school in which no one is transitioning, no one is being groomed to become a sexual pervert, the woke agenda is not there. The kids have the opportunity to study Latin. There is some sort of moral order that is imposed and defended.

All of those things are in themselves good things.

But, and here's the, it's a significant but, these sorts of schools, and I would, I would apply them, I would apply these observations to classical schools, classical public schools in the K-12 realm,

and also apply it to Judeo-Christian schools, schools like Hillsdale, where you have basically cut-flower education, cut flower education.

When you look at the accomplishments of Western civilization,

which are significant, architectural, scientific, artistic, musical,

these things were accomplished by people who believed things. You will not go from, go all over Europe,

visiting all the cathedrals. You will not find any cathedral that was built by people in the service of God, however you conceive him,

her, it to be. The people who built these cathedrals, even if their theology was messed up,

it was theology that was particular. There was sap in it. There was a genuine, real faith there.

And a shared consensus that people agreed on and consequently things grew. A classical charter school

is a school with no root ball. There's no way to maintain the

nourishment you need. The flower arrangement above might be glorious, might be really good,

might be really impressive. But it's a cut flower arrangement.

And there's a difference between an arrangement in a vase and a plant in the ground.

It'd be better to have a homelier plant in the ground capable of growing over time

and a gorgeous plant that's going to die in due course.

Basically, I would encourage people to not look in the first instance at the sticker price.

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