Tag: Apprenticeship

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All Roads Do Not Have to Lead to College

As parents and homeschoolers, we too fall victim to the assumption that we should teach and raise our children to get good grades, go to college and then get a good job.  However, none of us should automatically follow that path without intentional consideration and planning centered around the interests and personalities of our children.

Let’s look at a few key aspects about college. First, the statistics related to kids leaving their faith once entering college is stifling and should make any parent hesitate and reconsider.  According to Campus Renewal, their recent studies indicated that up to 70% of students leave their faith during the first year transitioning into college. Wow!  Now, your first thought might be that of Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go and even when he is old he will not depart from it.”  A powerful reminder of our role as parents and full of truth.  However, should we consciously put our children in that environment knowing these statistics?

Two, college is not cheap and as a result, loan debt has become a BIG problem.  According to a recent article in Forbes, students graduating college in 2016 owed an average of $37,172 for school loans. That’s a difficult way to start life as a self-sustaining “grown up” looking to successfully contribute to their community.  Of the $21 trillion U.S. debt, over $1.4 trillion of it is related to school loan debt.

Third, a college degree does not automatically lead to a good paying job.  The average starting salary for new college grads has increased slightly to just under $50K a year.  However, as good as that may sound, once we understand the Practical Poverty Level taught by Josh Tolley in his powerful book, “Evangelpreneur,” we know that average starting salary is not encouraging news.

For more on this subject, listen to Episode 23 of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. Isaac Morehouse is the founder of Praxis, a unique apprenticeship program for young high school and college graduates, which places students in real-world, paid internships in growing companies. This experience gives these young apprentices a head start in business and valuable work and entrepreneurship experience.

Rather than putting all the focus on traditional college, an alternative route to post high-school education that often gets overlooked is trade school.  Learning a skilled trade can offer opportunities in becoming an electrician, carpenter, plumber, welder, aircraft mechanic, HVAC tech, dental hygienist among a variety of other well-paying and fulfilling careers.  Many of these paths often surpass the starting salaries of jobs taken by those graduating with four-year degrees.

For homeschool families, these skilled trades can be explored at a young age and the process can be incorporated into your daily schooling routine.  Perhaps a family member, friend or local businessperson in your community would be willing to teach the skill or offer an apprenticeship to a young man or woman interested in learning their trade.

At the end of the day, as parents, we need to realize that one size does not fit all when it comes to higher education.  Just because the masses go down one road does not mean we all need to follow.  Understand your child’s personality and value their interests.  Allow them to explore different paths.  You just never know, it could lead to an amazing career.

For a deep dive on this subject, Backstage Pass Members get access to our full interview with Josh Tolley, of Purple Monkey Garage, where he talks about the importance of entrepreneurship training in our homeschools. Click here for Josh’s full Interview.

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Photos by Ryan Jacobson and Pang Yuhao, Unsplash.com

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“The Eighth Wonder Of the World”

For a few thousand years, the apprentice/journeyman system was responsible for many of the most impressive minds and creative works in human history. Under this system, young men and women would sit at the feet of, and work alongside their parents, teachers, rabbis, and mentors. This system was sufficient to breed the great philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, poets, authors, playwrights, architects, composers, musicians, painters, sculptors, clockmakers, and mechanical engineers of antiquity. Under this system we got the Sistine Chapel, Romeo and Juliet, The Roman Aqueducts, the Antikathyra mechanism, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Solomon’s Temple, and Beethoven’s “9th Symphony.”

Some of these great works have endured for millennia, but my iPhone 7 Plus has stopped working after 9 months. Every few days it tells me that there is no SIM card in it, and I now have to look for the little lightning bolt when I plug it in or I will wake up with a dead battery.


100 Year Old Self-Playing Violin – “The Eighth Wonder Of the World”

The Hupfeld Phonoliszt Violina Orchestrion was built in 1914. At the time it was built, it was such an impressive technological feat it was called “The Eighth Wonder of the World”. It is a completely mechanical player piano with three self-playing Violins. Not only is it a mechanical marvel, but it is a beautiful piece of art, which still functions today. While it would be a great stretch for any man or company to build one of these today, what makes this machine even more impressive is that it is one of many. The Hupfeld company built several of these, and many other companies were building incredibly complex orchestrions at the same time. Many of these machines played dozens of instruments and could play any number of songs by simply changing their paper rolls, and many of these still function. They were designed and built by men who had studied and labored under masters for many years.

Over the past several generations we have increasingly abandoned an education model that works. Apprenticeship has been relabeled as “child labor”, and now there are laws and international task forces to squash it. Please don’t scold me about children sewing soccer balls or mining heavy metals. Humans have found ways to pervert and abuse every good thing since the fall of man. I am not campaigning for the rise of sweatshops or human slavery, just calling for a return to mentorship. Life and work as education. We have traded a proven model of education in favor of industrialized, standardized, state-run, one-size-fits-all schooling, and the experiment has failed.

As we film Schoolhouse Rocked I become more and more excited about the revolution we see in education. I am excited about the renaissance of classical education, the rediscovered value of family business and family economy, the rise of lifeschooling and mentorship, an emphasis on truth, goodness, and beauty, a valuing of living books, scholé, morning time, and family worship. While I am excited about each of these ideas for their own merits, I am more excited that in every case, the failed model of industrialize education is being challenged and invalidated, and families are taking back the responsibility of training up their children in methods that work. Long live the apprentice!