# 2026 Conference # HG Bishop Basil: You are Encouraged to Homeschool “Education is the first need of the community after bread” St Habib Girgis ##### The Encouragement of the Scriptures - Deuteronomy 6:6-8 - “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. - Fr Louka Sidarous says about Fr Bishoy Kamel that he was living at a higher standard than what he was saying - Most of the time we teach at a higher standard than what we are living - Be an example to your children, because they are going to see you more and see more of you - 2 Timothy 3:13-15 - But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned *them,* and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. - 2 Timothy 1:3 - “when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.” - Go and spend time with grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, etc. with the flexibility of homeschooling ##### The Encouragement of the Church - Baptismal Commandment - ”Sow in them beautiful qualities; righteousness, praise, purity, obedience, love, holiness, compassion, charity, justice, godliness, patience, goodness, honesty and every good work that pleases God so that **your souls and your children’s souls may live**.” - It is for our own souls that we sow these qualities in our children (as well as for their souls) - The way that we are teaching in Homeschooling is the way we sow these qualities - ”You have received this gift according to the Law, and the priests of God and the Church have witnessed on you the… Teach them…” etc. - Why didn’t St Paul tell parents to love their children (Colossians 3)? Because that is natural! So he commands them not to provoke their children to wrath! ##### The Encouragement of the Saints - In the evenings, the family would gather to read scripture and reflect on the lives of the saints and martyrs… the family lived from the feast of one saint to another” - Life of HHPK - The lives of the saints and the martyrs in the Synaxarion - Teach them all holiness - Teach them how to defend their faith - Teach them to be strong in morals and principles - Pilgrimage to the saints in the local area on their feast days ##### The Encouragement of the Liturgical Life - The ability to live more in the Liturgical Life - The Lectionary of the Church - Lectionary of the Great Fast is like a catechism for the whole Church - Goes through the Sermon on the Mount part by part - Being able to attend the Feasts that are during school days/school weeks - Theophany, Ascension, Minor Feasts, Pascha - Praying from the Agpeya - Like a school that has a morning routine (pledge of allegiance, etc.) - A Homeschool family can purposefully start their day with the Agpeya - “O God you are my God, early I will seek you” (Psalm 62) - Fr Bishoy Kamel + Tasony Angele story - ”Is that why you don’t make me breakfast in the morning??” - Bells in the Monastery instruct the monks to do something (e.g. prayer) - The hussle and bussle of the home and all the sounds, are like the bells of the monastery ##### The Encouragement of the Natural Life - The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament declares His handiwork - With the freedom of homeschool, go out and learn from nature - God’s book; God’s beauty - Incorporate the Natural Life - Physical nature - Going out for a walk - Learning the names of the plants - Plant a vegetable; Eat the vegetable - God created nature beautiful and organized and good, so that we can see His beauty and goodness - Having meals together - Sacred time for a family - Incorporate the subjects in the chores of the day # Andrew Pudewa Lecture #1: Cultivating Language Arts - Preschool through High School For PPT pdf, email , ##### Introduction - Language Arts: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing - Schools focus on Reading and Writing because it is assessable, and less so on Listening and Speaking - Listening —> Speaking - A child’s spoken vocabulary is entirely dependent on what they have heard - As they get older, they might read a word (sound it out), guess how to pronounce it and maybe infer its meaning - Listening —> Reading - Children cannot read and understand words they haven’t already heard - Speaking <—> Reading - When children start reading, they have to verbalize (and then hear what they said) and that’s how they learn - Speaking —> Writing - To write something, you must first have an idea - Ideas can pre-exist as memories or imagination (“write about your trip”), or about the present physical reality (“write about this room”) - Ideas can pre-exist in words (“write about the tower of Babel” - you learned this from words, not from senses), or in sensory impressions (“write about your dog” - you have to recall the memories or emotions or experiences) - You have to “speak” the idea into existence - Reading <—> Writing - Read what you wrote and edit/proofread/modify - To cultivate one of the four language arts, you actually need to improve all of them ##### Preschool Age 3.5-5.5 +- 1 year - Listening - Music - Tonal Sensitivity and Patterns - Attentiveness (attentive to what I’m familiar with or what I expect e.g. in a piece I’ve heard several times) - Joy (when what you expect to happen, happens - joy!) - Stories and Reading Aloud - Repetition is the key - When a kid wants to keep readng the same book day after day - Each day they are understanding a little bit more from it - Affection for it and familiarity to it - Sparks of joy when they expect something to happen and it happens - One day they will stop getting something new out of it, they know it well enough, they will move on - Conversations - Children will overhear conversations of the adults - Youngest child usually has the best vocabulary understanding because he grew up in a more language rich environment (with all his siblings and parents) - Minimal Technology - **Visually** hyper-stimulating (so less attentive to the auditory) - 100% Negative - Speaking - Teach them simple poems and songs (e.g. nursery rhymes) - Moving words from passive vocabulary (I’ve heard it, I know what it means) to active vocabulary (I say that word, I use it, I own it) - The Restoration of Christian Culture by John Senior - “You have to grow up on Mother Goose to fall in love with Willy Shakespeare”) - Self-talk - Children, left to themselves, often talk to themselves - Imagine being in a place that says “sit down and don’t talk” - you’re saying “turn off your brain” - Imagination - Vocabulary and Memory —> Imagination - Reading - Pushing reading too early can actually have the opposite effect (resentment) - Zero correlation with academic success - Reading with ears - When their parent reads them a book - Overhearing higher level books - Writing - Natural - Drawing - Holding utensil - Simple spelling ##### Primary 5.5 - 8 +- 1 year - Listening - Music, stories, books - Increase attention span - They can listen for longer periods of time - They can even close their eyes while they listen - They can use books that have less pictures (i.e. not on every page) - this forces some imagining of the thing - Minimize technology - Speaking - Poetry, Prayers, Scripture - Memorized verses and prayers - Narration (Charlotte Mason - read books about her) - Give the child an opportunity to tell back from their experience (e.g. to tell you the process you went through to make the cookies, let them narrate back the story they heard - move words into active vocabulary) - Dictating Stories - Reading - Phonics for decoding - Sounding out words - Use a program you like because you will teach it better - Increase sophistication - Literature via audiobooks - Writing - Letter formation - The right way to write each letter - Simple Copywork - Builds stamina - High level ideas flowing through brain and to paper - Spelling (verbal & written) - Don’t stop doing verbal spelling (and mental math) ##### Elementary 8-11 +- 1 year - Listening - Same as Primary - Speaking - Continue narration - Memorize and Recite Poetry - Drama - Contests - Reading - Continue audiobooks - Create abundant opportunities for reading - Read aloud to your parents or siblings - Writing - Basic composition - Spelling program - Grammar, Latin ##### Middle School - Listening - Take notes from a sermon, lecture, speech, talk, etc. - Speaking - Poetry, famous speeches - Contests (4H, NHD, etc.) - Impromptu, debate - Reading - Classics - CS Lewis’ rule - Read an old book for every new book - Continue oral reading - Writing - A lot of writing - Contests - Grammar, Latin - Logic ##### High School - Integration - Speech and debate and mock trial - Research - Organization - Positive culture - Teamwork - Learning to “go deep” - Events/Tournaments - Confidence - Logic, rhetoric, socratic discussion - Not standard HS Curriculum - Thinking syllogistically - Liberal Arts = “real education” - Appreciation of great books - Discussion: listening, questioning - Learn with students - Drama and Musical Theatre - Memory - Teamwork - Polish - Confidence - Motivation - Joy - Varied Responsibilities & Roles - College (Dual Enrollment, AA Degree) - Rigor (not so hard) - External accountability - Still at home - Save $$$ - Adult “real” world - Class options - Safe/okay to drop - Confidence - Transferrable credits - Teach Younger children - Learn best! - Choose your favorite thing - Planning, responsibility - Income - Service to community - Great on resume - Start a business - ”Real world” - Integrates skills - $$$ Maybe - Family Entrepreneurial - Thinking - Resilience - Community Involvement - Internships - Campaigns - Volunteer # Andrew Pudewa #2: Fairy Tales and Stories Nature Deficit Disorder ##### Fairy Tale - There is more Truth in fairy tales than in history books - GK Chesterton - “It is far more reasonable for a frog to turn into a prince, than for an egg to turn into a chicken” - GK Chesterton - “We don’t read children fairy tales so that they know dragons exist; they already know dragons exist! We read to them so they know that dragons can be slain.” - Facts from Fairy Tales - Properly ordered, King to love his people, and the people love their king. - Kingdom = kin domain (the domain where your kin is) - Starts as a family that gets bigger and bigger and the patriarch of the family becomes the king - Trolls and Witches and Dragons and Evil should be **slain** (not tolerated) - Frogs can turn out to be princes… and princes may turn out to be frogs! Seeing behind the surface of things - Forests (i.e. dark alleys) can be dangerous places… - Evil disguises itself and innocence is fundamentally beautiful - True love is possible - You can live happily ever after (i.e. forever) if you do the right things - Modern renditions twist and warp these things (e.g. Disney) ##### Four Types of Stories 80% of time on Whole Stories. 13% on Healing Stories. 7% on Broken Stories. 0% on Twisted Stories 1. Whole (Complete, Perfect) Stories - Good is good. Evil is evil. Good wins in the end. - Our souls crave thee stories because we need reminders that good wins in the end 2. Healing Stories - Good is good. Evil is evil. Good doesn’t win as you expect, but there is redemption - The Little Mermaid (original) - The Matchseller 3. Broken Stories - Good is good. Evil is evil. Evil wins. - Seeing the things we succumb to in a small but gradual way - The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde - 1984 - Lord of the Flies 4. Twisted Stories - Evil is good or glorified. Good is evil or dumb or boring. - Usually modern stories (i.e. 20th Century and after) - Clockwork Orange ##### Twisting of Archetypes - Landscape with Dragons - Michael D. O’Brien - Archetypes have representatives - Dragons - Originally, in all history, dragons represented the devil… - All of a sudden, the image of a dragon to be something cute or fun - Potentially “Puff the Magic Dragon” song - Eragon - How to train your dragon, etc. - Deep within you… are you trying to “train the dragon” or slay the dragon with the help of the king? - Vampires - Twlight - Magic (Harry Potter) - Disorder of Archetype - In Tolkien and Lewis, all the characters that do magic are “supernatural archetypes”; regular people can’t do anything - In Rowling, it’s the normal people (muggles) that can’t do magic and you don’t want to be like them - The magic in Tolkien’s world just happens - you have no idea how it happens. It doesn’t say. You, as the reader, can’t know how magic works. - In Rowling, the mechanics of how to do spells - Latin incantation, special herbs and potions, etc. - Disordered Acting Out - After Harry Potter, kids would go and search up “how to do magic” - “how to do witchcraft” (International Librarian Report) - After Twilight, girls would go to the hospital with flesh bitten out of their neck because “my bf wanted to show me how much he loves me” ##### Moral Imagination # Andrew Pudewa #3: Artificial & Real Intelligence ##### Fallacy of Knowledge The argument that we don’t need to know things (i.e. memorize facts) because we have access to them at all times is a fallacy… e.g. I don’t need to memorize when the Civil War was, because I can just ask my phone when the Civil War was and it can give me the exact date that the Civil War started and ended The fallacy is that if I know less and less, pretty soon I won’t even know that there WAS a Civil War in order to ask my phone about it! ##### Memorization - Thoth - Egyptian god that gave them “ - Mnemosyne - God of Memory… Muses - Muse = Creativity - Creativity is born of memory - If you ask someone to remember something, part of the brain fires off - If you ask someone to imagine something, the SAME part fires off - You cannot create something without having some memory - Only God’s creativity is something from nothing - All human creativity is a combination and permutation of previously known things - Decreasing Knowledge —> Decreasing Memory —> Decreasing Creativity ##### Artificial Intelligence - The basic fallacy is that we are not a distinct creation… Darwinian. We are the step of evolution that is now creating the NEXT step of evolution so that we can merge with it and elevate ourselves (i.e. to become gods) - This is Satanism… this is the same lie the devil told in the garden “you can be gods” - Uses of AI - Business World - Normal People - Older People: Glorified Search Engine - Millenials: Assistant to complete menial tasks - Young people: Companion or Consultant… asking advice - And young people BELIEVE what it tells them - AI that coached a kid on how to kill himself - Making god in our image - AI seems to be “omniscient”… and it’s “only going to get better” - AI seems to be “omnipresent”… because you always have it with you - AI seems to be “omnipotent” … is gonna be able to “create companies” and “populate the company with agents” and “be creative” and “generative AI” - We seem to be making a god in our own image… a perfect form of idolatry. - The relationship between man and machine is that man tells the machine what to do…. - Now it’s machine telling man what to do! ##### Education in Young People - There’s an idea that we have to learn to use technology when we are young in order to be able to use it when we are old. - There is an inverse correlation between amount of technology in schools and basic skills - [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/07/the-computer-delusion/376899/](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/07/the-computer-delusion/376899/) - Founder of Sun Microsystems went to a school that did not have computers/technology and when asked, he said: “In 5th Grade I had to knit a pair of socks… if you can knit a pair of socks, you can do anything.” - If you have a mathematical mind and a mind that hasn’t learned math, and you give both a calculator, who will use the calculator better? - How is one able to use technology effectively? By having a wide range of general knowledge - Critical Thinking == Judgment == Needs General Knowledge - Schools - Schools went paperless - Then they will go teacher-less and use AIs (maybe even holograms) as teachers… that know everything, can personalize to each student, etc. ##### Four Basic Needs of Humanity (and Especially Children) - To Know - Technology has eclipsed our need to know… but also what is good or true or beautiful? - Undermining beauty (i.e. art is subjective, music is subjective, etc.) leads to an undermining of morality, leads to an undermining of truth - We NEED to know… our past, our place - Against the Machine: Paul Kingsworth says what led to our destruction as humanity is: Self, Science, Screens, Sex and what will bring us back is: Past, Place, People, Prayer - To Harmonize - Humans work together to glorify God and for the good of the rest of the world - (Requires skills and knowledge) - Prayer, Music, Dance, Cooperation - To Rule - Kids create their world to control - Giving them responsibilities (i.e. chores) - How to make lunch - How to clean up, etc. - \#1 Predictor of Success in adulthood is chores in childhood - USA was the first real experiment in self-government… but doing that requires the individuals to SELF-govern. - Glory - Affirmation and Appreciation for going above and beyond, for kindness, # Andrew Pudewa #4: However Imperfectly ##### 7 Lessons Learned from 30 Years of Teaching 1. It is hard not to do to your children what your parents did to you - The problems with education in the USA and its development - Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling - John Taylor Gatto - The Underground History of American Education - John Taylor Gatto - Was what was done to us, the best thing that we want to do to our children? - What were people learning and teaching before the “modern thing” in the late 19th Century? 2. Process must be attended to more than product - What a child is experiencing is more important than the artifacts they produce - You can’t take business lingo and apply it to children… “the proof is in the pudding” - My 11 year old needs to get into a good college… versus… what does she like? What is she good at? Etc. - Don’t become attached to the ARTIFACT of learning - it doesn’t represent well the EXPERIENCE that the child had doing it - How you learned something is more important than what you learned - Schools have disjointed courses about random things that don’t connect - Understanding is Highly Overrated - Anything worth understanding, you probably will never understand it FULLY - Doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing - It’s good to learn along with your children 3. All kids are different - Educational system was created to standardize all kids - Now there are “individual styles” and things, but the majority of the system is still centered on “every kid should be able to do the same things at the same age.” 4. Progressive (“New”) does not mean Progress - Schools have “new” things every year, but there is no Progress… - New things are provided by who? Money! - Bill Gates… more computers in schools! - John D. Rockefeller… industry/factories - There’s no money in going back… there’s only money in what is “new” 5. College and Career Readiness - Think about the qualities you want when hiring (or even when accepting a student into a college) - Integrity - Teachability - Honesty - Loyalty - Etc. - None of these are taught in modern schools… but these are acquired from the home and church! 6. Teaching is about YOU not THEM - Teaching is the overflow of the soul of the teacher into the student - Take care of yourself - If you are tired, hungry, etc. you will not be a good teacher - Educate yourself - If you are not filled intellectually, you cannot fill others 7. Be Diligent - Diligent from Latin “diligere” - meaning “love” - Love creates diligence 1. The power of a smile - if you smile at someone long enough, they WILL smile back. A smile communicates “it is good to be with you” - “I am happy to be here with you, right now.” 2. Emotional Gas Tank - making corrections is an emotional drain… give positive comments BEFORE giving negative. Even at a 10:1 ratio - 1 Point Focus - Focus on the one point you want to fix - ”Straighten your back and move your chair and turn your leg and fix your bow and that note was wrong.” - No…. “Let’s fix that note”