Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you

with your most important job being a dad. These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy,

by practical wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

We're doing it wrong.

When you think of your own school days, what do you think of?

What do the school days of your own

children look like? Certainly very different than what school was ever intended or imagined to be.

The root word of school, Scola, in Greek, refers to the idea of leisure. It's supposed to be a place

of reflection, a safe space for learning and exploration,

a lifelong hobby, a place for relief and nourishment. Instead, we've turned school into something

like a dysfunctional boot camp. Our modern schools and approach to education is more like

the Spartan Agoge, the brutal training ground for soldiers,

except without any of the practical benefits of creating a strong and resilient citizenry.

We have standardized tests, we have arbitrary benchmarks, we have frazzled underpaid teachers,

we overwhelm them with groggy, tired children forced to wake up far too early. Then we wonder why they

come to resent school, why it doesn't inspire them, and why they hardly learn anything. This pandemic has

been a gift in that it has forced us to re-examine what education is and should be. Some of us have been at

home with our kids, taking over their schooling. Others have

seen through remote learning what their kids' days actually look like and what they're being taught.

As a society, we've also had to come to terms with all the other responsibilities we've shouldered schools with,

daycare, social services, even feeding hungry kids. It's clear. We've not

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