The Gentle Year

When Education Becomes Anti-Thinking and Anti-American with Ted Lamb

• Knikki Hernandez • Season 2 • Episode 3

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What if the biggest problem in education today isn’t failing schools—but a system that no longer teaches kids how to think?

In this episode of The Gentle Year, Knikki sits down with veteran educator, former school board member, and historian Ted Lamb for a candid conversation about truth, critical thinking, and what we’ve lost in modern education. With nearly three decades in the classroom and experience teaching across continents, Ted challenges the idea that compliance equals learning—and explains why primary sources, real thinking, and intellectual struggle matter more than standardized answers.

Together, they explore why kids’ “brains hurting” might actually be a sign of real learning, how standardized testing reshaped classrooms, and what parents can do—starting at home—to raise thoughtful, resilient learners in a world flooded with information.

This conversation isn’t about politics. It’s about responsibility, curiosity, and why loving learning may be the most important education a child ever receives.



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Hey everyone, welcome back to The Gentle Year. We are here with Teddy Lamb. He is a father, a teacher, a former school board member. He has taught on three different continents, and he is also in the special education classroom, excuse me, and alternative education classroom as well. And we are going to have a very enriching discussion today, but I want to give Teddy the mic to introduce himself and tell us a little bit about what he does and how he does it. Go ahead, Teddy, the mic is yours.

Yes, and thank you for having me this afternoon, or morning, or evening, whenever someone watches this. So yes, my name is Ted Lamb. I'm a career teacher. I've been teaching now for 27 years. I've taught on three continents.

00:00:50

My undergraduate degree is from Oklahoma Christian University of Science and Arts, which was social studies education, secondary. Then my master's is in special education. I spent four years in South Korea teaching English as a second language. I spent some time, while I was a sophomore in college, on the Vienna Studies Program, so I got to spend some time in Europe teaching English there as well. We have two and a half children. I say that from the standpoint of we have two children, a boy and a girl, and then we quasi-adopted a child as well. He came and lived with us, and so I say two and a half, but I count all three of them as ours. Let's see, I love history. I love American government.

00:01:50

In fact, in my classroom we don't even know what a textbook looks like; it's all primary sources. I'm also trained in the principle approach of education, which, to make a long story short, is basically the philosophies and the ways that we first educated in this nation from about 1607, roughly, to the 1930s before things started getting hijacked, if you will. So that's a little bit about me.

That's really interesting. Thank you for that. I appreciate it so much. So I'm going to ask some pretty simple questions just to get us started here, but how old are your children?

So one is 25, and the other is 22, and then 21.

Oh, wow. Okay, so they are fully grown.

Yes, fully grown and out in the world.

Wow, what are they doing these days?

00:02:49

I have one that went and got an associate's degree in horticulture, and so she is actually a manager with a horticultural company. And then the two boys, I think one has finally figured out a little bit what he wants to do, as far as he's always loved shipping and water, and so he's in the maritime industry. And then I have another one that he is just, he's figuring out what he wants to do. He's getting closer, but he's figuring out what he wants to do. Some of us are just little vagabonds wandering around the world, and that's kind of what he's doing right now as far as careers, but it's okay. I tell him that you don't go from 22 to 56.

No, I'm 38 and I'm barely still figuring it out myself.

00:03:47

Right, exactly. So that's what they're doing. And actually, all three of them have been homeschooled. Our two that we have never took a step into a public school system. And part of the reason for that is because I grew—well, I didn't grow up kind of like—we all have dysfunctional families. I guess that's the best way of saying it, right? And so I kept bouncing between Ohio and Tennessee as a child, but my high school years I attended in Ohio, Bellevue High School in Bellevue, Ohio. That's pretty much right up there on the Great Lakes. If anybody are amusement park enthusiasts, they would know the name Cedar Point, so that's kind of where I lived. I graduated high school there, went off to college, and that's four years.

00:04:52

Then I went to South Korea and taught—that's another four years. We came back, and I started substituting in my old high school. Now, granted, this is eight, nine years later, and huge differences had already occurred. And I just thought to myself, if this is happening in the Midwest America, small-town, Friday-night-football mindset, if things had already started to change in an environment like that, then I could only imagine what was going on broadly. So that's when we decided at that time that maybe public school would not be the best option for our children. Jenna, our daughter, the oldest, she was born in South Korea, and so she was only a few months old when we came back.

00:05:54

And I was, like I said, I was looking around and like, oh no, this is not what I remember. So wow, that is really interesting. Well, thank you for sharing that. And so in terms of homeschooling, was it a situation where you're like, okay, I need a job, I have to teach, I'm going to go into the school system, but I don't want my kids to be a part of that? Is that how that worked for you?

More or less. My wife, who we celebrated 30 years this past year, we decided that no matter what, one of us was always going to be home with them. In other words, we just made the decision that we weren't going to have our children with a babysitter for eight or nine hours of the day because we didn't have any family nearby, if you will.

00:06:47

So with that, we tried to look at the private school to see if we could do it, but that was just too expensive at that point.

Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, there you go. We kind of lost you there for one second. Could you finish your last sentence for us, please?

Yeah, I was saying that Marie, my wife, she's also a trained teacher. And so we decided that we would go into the homeschool realm, and that's what we did.

That's really interesting. And so you said you were on the school board as well. What was your reason for joining the school board? Because typically when people join the school board, I'm assuming that they want to be a part of that. They want to be on the school board because they're fighting for something.

00:07:42

It's not just a position in name only. It's not just a title. Some school board members, I would imagine, have very active roles within the education system. And I'm curious to know, what was the reason you decided to join the school board?

Well, it's interesting how that turned around. I was actually running in one election cycle for a city council position. And then on the next section, I got asked, why don't you run for school board, because of a natural fit? And I thought that because we homeschool, that's kind of like the dirty secret or the anathema, if you will—the hypocritical thing to do. I'm going to join the school board but homeschool my own children.

00:08:39

Yeah, tell everybody else how to teach and do their thing while I do my own kind of thing.

Right. But based on where we live and being a public school teacher, people said that this might actually turn some heads, that a public school teacher actually homeschools and they know the ins and outs of the system. So I ran, and I won, and I did two terms.

Yeah, well, congratulations to you for that.

Thank you. And it really opened my eyes up quite a bit. I went into it thinking that—I mean, I've been in the classroom 16 years. I'm like, this will be a piece of cake. They won't be able to get anything over on me, and it'll be smooth sailing. Oh no. At the end of eight years, I believe I got a PhD in education the hard way.

00:09:44

The things that I learned that go on in public school, even at the local level, were pretty amazing. And in many ways, it's actually disturbing too, with how we govern ourselves in education. It is pretty disappointing, to say the least.

Yeah, that's interesting. Now, do you have any specific little sayings that you use with parents or when you're teaching? Because I remember you said that you applied the principled approach, and we'll get into that in just a second. But are there any affirmations that you sort of live by or principles that you like to bring into the way that you educate your own children, and also that those affirmations may carry into the classroom as well with the students that you're working with?

00:10:40

Yes, and a lot of this actually has been developed off the principled approach. But a couple of things that I keep in mind—and first and foremost—these children are not my children, meaning I'm not their parent. I'm not their best friend. I'm not their parent; I am their teacher. I also live by faith, and scripture is very clear about who is responsible for the education of children, and it's parents. So I may be paid in a paid position, but ultimately, it is my responsibility to keep those parents informed of what their child is doing. And also, I think it's very important that it is not my place to try to supplant what, say, a parent is trying to teach their child, all in the name of a standardized curriculum.

00:11:46

Yeah, that's interesting. So, yeah, and you're right; the Bible does teach that. It talks about how we should, as parents, bring up the children in the way that they should walk. We should teach them, we should educate them, we should bring them up in the admonition of the Lord. So there really is a weighty responsibility that parents do have, biblically anyway, and that's a very interesting topic.

So how do you separate your faith-based beliefs in the classroom when you're teaching history? Because I would imagine there would be a lot of parents that are more secularly oriented that don't necessarily want to look at things from a Bible-based perspective. And you can probably see I'm already smiling, and so the question was coming. I'm going to be completely honest with you.

00:12:32

I don't, for a couple of reasons. One, I don't think in scripture—nowhere do you find in scripture that, as a follower of Christ, we are to wear different hats. We are to be the same in all regards. Now, what does that mean? That means that it is my responsibility as a teacher to teach truthfully.

So how does that go into the classroom? Well, as a history teacher, I had alluded to this earlier. I don't use textbooks. I teach from primary sources. So with that, let's say, for example, if I'm doing a lesson off of the Declaration of Independence, I'm using the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson's words. So it's not me that's apostolizing, if you will. It's not me that's just throwing God out there.

00:13:34

No, I'm using exactly what Jefferson said. Jefferson said that we are born with inalienable rights. When you look up the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary—and that's another topic too—he defines words as they were used in that period, okay? And so when Jefferson says we are all endowed, well, endowed is actually an inheritance. When you look it up in that dictionary, it's an inheritance. Jefferson is saying we are given an inheritance by our Creator, which is God.

Now, some might say, oh, you're crossing lines with that. No, I'm teaching exactly what was meant, what was done in that time period by using those primary documents. So the issue of, you know, am I teaching or kind of putting on a different hat—when we do that, then that is where it's wrong.

00:14:40

You know, standardized curriculum or secular curriculum can be just as false as saying something else; it is too.

Yeah, that's interesting, and there are so many different lenses that we could look through the world through. And I appreciate all the different lenses. And I definitely, when I teach—and I know you do the same—I try to respect everybody's point of view and perspectives and where they're coming from because, man, they are diverse.

And I will say this: I've seen teachers get fired for less, you know, for teaching things that the curriculum doesn't state specifically or things that a parent, a particular parent, didn't like, or perhaps the administration didn't like either. And, you know, of course, we all know how administration is going to react.

00:15:30

They're going to throw the teacher under the bus before there's any level of accountability on the student or parent ends. We all know that's what happens in the education system as teachers. But, you know, I've seen teachers get fired for things like teaching things that are kind of off the beaten path, that are not a part of the prescribed curriculum, that are maybe religious in nature. Or I've seen teachers get fired for not wanting to call a child by their quote-unquote preferred pronouns and things of that nature.

So, you know, I've seen that happen. And even my own self, I've taken—I've not taken huge, huge risks—but I have taken some risks in the classroom. And even now, I'm teaching a lesson on Venezuela and what has been going on over there for many decades.

00:16:16

And, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day, and they said, you know, you could get fired for that, right? And, you know, I laughed—not because that's not true—but I laughed because, you know, there's another teacher in my department who's also teaching the same lesson that I am and is using the same resources. So I guess they could— I laughed because I'm thinking in my head, well, I guess they'll just have to fire us both then.

Because I'm not doing anything against the curriculum. This is a historical event. This is something that is a part of my Spanish classroom. It's a culture thing. It hits on all these different SOLs, you know?

00:16:51

And so I sometimes think to myself, man, I really have to be careful with what I say. We can't have any political debates, we can't do this, we can't do that. I just have to give them information and then essentially allow the students to decide for themselves what they're going to do with that information.

So do you have any thoughts on that before I ask you something a little bit more personal?

Yeah, oh, absolutely, I have thoughts on that. First off, therein lies the problem with education today. Unfortunately—and I'm glad you said SOLs because that is one thing that I'm completely against—and here's why.

00:17:44

What we have done is put in an SOL system. All we've done is create a gravy train for companies like Pearson. Pearson is a major textbook and test provider. And at one time—and this was several years ago—Pearson was not even an American company. It's in England. And they get paid something like $1.3 billion at that time from us just to provide the test and so forth.

I would say to any parent that's listening, you would want your children to be educated, to be able to think critically. I mean, we use that term all the time—critical thinkers, right? But the problem with that is, on an SOL test, what you have is a question and then A, B, C, D. There's no critical thinking in it. Or what I love is in Virginia, we say, oh, we provide rigor.

00:18:33

We put it all online, and rigor now is, oh, a question might actually be two answers instead of one. That's not rigor. It's still A, B, C, D. There is no teaching of the curriculum for students to actually be able to engage and to think about what is being done. So the education system as a whole—we're losing it. And we've lost it to money, big money.

And we've lost it to philosophies that are actually toxic and anti-American. These philosophies of what we do when it comes to textbooks, teacher licensing, even things like true-and-false questions, matching, if you will—all of this started in the 1930s under a gentleman by the name of John Dewey. And we think of him, if you're a teacher of some sort, as, oh, the father of American education.

00:19:34

He's held up very, very high. But what you don't know is he actually was one of the ones that was pro-communist. He actually brought over the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School were those that were actually pro-socialist and communist. They were so bad that Hitler kicked them out of Germany. And guess where they came? Here—and welcomed in. John Dewey was at Columbia or one of the Ivy Leagues, and they redid everything to put in things like matching, true-and-false, so that now the student isn't required to critically think about what they've learned.

And so, yes, today teachers get in trouble if they deviate from the curriculum. Why? Because everyone knows you want your school to be accredited.

00:20:26

The only way it can be accredited is you have to do the SOL curriculum, which, by the way, even the Commonwealth of Virginia says that the SOL curriculum is not a curriculum. But your local school board says that's the curriculum we follow. But Virginia says it's not a curriculum. So which is it?

So basically, what is happening here: your 12th grader, your 11th grader, is coming up on graduation, and because they can't pass Algebra One, let's say, right, they don't get a diploma. But yet your child doesn't get a diploma because the local school board says we follow that SOL curriculum. Virginia says it's not a curriculum. So your child suffers because of—we say—all in the name of transparency and accountability, this is what we do.

00:21:17

No, no. Money has gotten involved with it. We stay within those parameters of we only teach what's on that SOL guide, and that's it. And the biggest losers are the students because they don't know how to critically think. They don't know how to make change. They don't even know five times eight. But yeah, we want them to feel well about what pronoun they want to use, which, by the way, is a violation of First Amendment rights for any teacher.

Again, when I said that I don't believe that we wear hats to be truthful, that's the same thing too with a parent. I'm not going to lie to a parent about what their child is going by at school. I mean, it's irrelevant what the law is going to say on that.

00:22:03
But yeah, you said a lot there in that question with multi-facets and so. That's really interesting. I mean, you really said a mouthful there, and I'm trying to decide. I've got four questions written on my paper right now, and I'm like, okay, which road do we go down, because there are so many different things. So I guess I'll just start at the top, and we can just kind of work our way down.

The first question is more about the classroom setting and also your own children. So what's the biggest struggle you've seen in trying to teach your own kids about history, and what is the biggest struggle of the kids in your classroom when you try to teach them history?

00:22:39
Okay, so—and remember, you also had the question that you said was going to be more personal before I went off on that rant.

Yes, and that was the one that was a little bit more personal because I wanted to know what's the struggle that you've seen as a parent, and then what's the struggle you've seen as a teacher in terms of teaching history.

Yeah. So also, too, I have on Facebook and Substack—oh, we lost you there for a second. Oh, there we go. Could you start over again? Because we lost you there for like maybe three seconds or so.

Yeah, I have started outside of school on Facebook History Moments with Ted, which is all history, mostly primary sources, and it's kind of now turned into an LLC. I also develop curriculum, and I teach homeschool students on the outside.

00:23:39
But I do it by principled approach. And when I am at complete liberty with them—meaning I can bring in and institute the concept of God in the center of everything, right—these kids, they do amazing. They absolutely do amazing, and they learn beyond their years.

Now, I also bring the principled approach into my public school classroom. Why? Because I have found that when you get away from the SOL material—meaning, do I teach the SOL material? Yes. But when I go deeper and when I bring in structure—oh, I lost you there. I'm asking, could you go back again? You said when you bring in structure; it kind of cut off a little bit.

Yes. When I bring in structure into the classroom, because that's what principled approach does as well—

00:24:39
And we actually make a classroom constitution. And I'm actually planning curriculum around primary sources. And I'm getting these kids to think. This is the first time these kids have had to think about something. I mean, I'll give you an example if I can.

So usually, you know, in the past, you might say, oh, who wrote the Declaration of Independence? Oh, maybe Thomas Jefferson. Okay. But now, when you get into a question like, why did he write the Declaration of Independence? Oh yeah, that's nothing. Yeah, that's huge.

So I do put the principled approach into my public school classroom. But the thing is, if I could do it 100% of the way, kids would be phenomenal. Parents would be actually happy, and we would be in a better position as a nation. Absolutely.

00:25:38
So I do see differences between what I see with homeschooled children, my own, versus public school. And there's no difference between the kids, really. It's just that, you know, public school decides we want to just do knowledge, rote memorization for a test so that the school can be accredited and so that we can still get money and sound good, when we're not educating anything at all anymore. We're not.

Yeah, that's something that I grapple with as a teacher every single day. And I go slow, you know, I go very slow in my classroom because I really want kids—I'm a word person, so I love words. I love it when you explained endowed and how that meant inherited, you know, inheritance and all those kinds of things. I love words.

00:26:28
I have my own personal dictionary that I work on. I'm actually going to work on it after our podcast today, where I take, you know, a few words and I look up the etymology and the evolution of the word, and then I look up the modern, you know, the current definition in Webster's dictionary. I do all of that, and I put it all in my dictionary underneath the word. But I use the words in sentences after I have copied down the definitions.

So some of these words, they have multiple definitions, and the definitions may not always be worlds apart. Sometimes the definitions of words—there's just a subtle, very subtle difference. Like the most recent word I did was level, and level had different definitions.

00:27:11
Level could mean, like, level the playing field, you know, where you're making things equal. Level could also mean, like leveling up, you know, where you're increasing someone's capacity or ability to do something. It could also mean level as in you're leveling with someone, like if I say, “Level with me right now,” you know, tell me the truth. It could have those different meanings.

And I thought that was super interesting. So I'm using the word in sentences in different ways, with different nuances and things like that, and it really brings me a lot of clarity and a sense of understanding—a deep understanding of concepts, language, what people are actually saying when they're communicating. And I feel bad sometimes because I'm like, kids really don't have that.

00:27:58
And just as an example of that, the other day we were again talking about the situation in Venezuela, and I gave them some words that we were going to define. And one of the words was government. We also did desperate. We did revelation. And one of the words that we talked about was revelation.

And I had asked—you'll like this—I had asked the kids, I said, okay, I know that you guys know that revelación means revelation. But what does revelation mean? I know you know the translation, but what does revelation mean? What's the actual meaning of it?

And I had them talk to their partners. I do lots of turn-and-talks and whatnot, lots of discussion in my class and stuff. And anyway, once the timer went off, I asked the kids.

00:28:40
I said, okay, what does revelation mean? What definition did you come up with? And they didn't have anything. And one of the girls raises her hand and she says, the only thing I know about the word revelation is that it's the name of one of the books in the Bible, but I don't know what it means.

And I was like—oh, that's a great place to start. So we talked about it. Revelation reveals the idea of learning or discovering something significant or important that you didn't know before.

And then, as far as history goes, the example that I used with them was historical. So I didn't use a specific event. But I looked at them. I looked at the kids.

00:29:17
And I said, you guys know that the history that's taught in school isn't the whole story, right? You do know that, right? And they were like, yeah, we knew that. And they all did. They genuinely knew that the history that they're taught in school is kind of just a watered-down version of events that have truly happened to people in this world.

And I said, so if you were to take a history class, like yours, Ted—you know, History Moments with Ted—if you were to take a history class, or if you were to read a history book that actually discusses and shares information with you that the school doesn't specifically teach about these events, and you learn so much about what actually happened and what actually occurred rather than just names and dates and things of that nature—

00:30:02
I said, what would you experience in that moment once you took that class and your eyes were opened about what really, truly happened? And they were like, we would have many revelations. And I was like, that's exactly right.

So they finally got the idea and the definition of the word revelation in a way that caused them to nod their head. And you, as a teacher, you know the significance of a head nod from a kid. When a kid nods their head—especially when they're thinking and you've said something to them that resonated—it's a powerful moment. It means the wheel is turning. It means they are truly thinking.

00:30:45
So I would love to learn more about the principled approach that you use.

Yeah, so the principled approach is basically what it does is—oh, we lost you there. Go ahead.

The principled approach is a philosophy of education that we had since the beginning of our nation, like I said, from 1607 all the way up to the 1930s, in which students developed a biblical worldview. And so what we do in that is everyone has a notebook. Um, in fact, give me a second.

No, you're all good. Yeah, he's looking for the notebook, guys, that he has. And by the way, for those of you who are listening to the podcast, we've cut out just a couple of times on the show, and I'm sorry for that.

00:31:41
It's raining—it hasn't rained where I am in literally months. So I don't know if the cloud cover or the rain is what's causing this, or if it's on Ted's side. I don't know, but we're going to get through this and try to get you as much insight as possible. So I just wanted to let you guys know that that's what's been going on.

But go ahead.

So basically, we use a notebook. It's called the notebook system, right? And this is just a three-ring binder. But in there, for my kids, we divide it up into sections. There's no set section, so, you know, you as a teacher decide what you want in there—for me, vocabulary, study, work product, primary sources, and notes.

00:32:26
And so each one of those is driven in the principled approach from the standpoint that vocabulary words have meanings—and they mean something. Hence, that's why we use the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary, because many of the terms that are in the Declaration of Independence, our founding documents, you're going to find the definitions of those words in that dictionary, so that you know what those primary sources are saying.

Then a work product—in the principled approach, the teacher is the living textbook. There is an expectation that the teacher is always learning about their topic, their craft, that they just don't stop. In other words, they don't just stop at what they say either. They're constantly learning.

00:33:19
They also—the teacher keeps a notebook too, with what they're doing in class. Then the work product is based off seven principles. One of the principles is the principle of individuality, meaning that each child is made in the image of God and therefore is gifted in many different ways.

So for me, one year when we were teaching the Renaissance, right, I had the kids do a couple of different things for the assignment. For example, the Renaissance—the artists of the Renaissance, right? So I had one student actually pick to do a PowerPoint. They're technology-driven. This student over here wanted to actually create a collage of different artists. I had one girl that's an amazing painter.

00:34:21
In fact, you would probably think—and this is how horrible public education has gotten—if you had looked at her painting, it was pretty dark. I mean, what she did was she was a Renaissance artist that was actually doing a painting over the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages. I mean, it was dark, you know, to say the least.

You know, we get to a point where we're like, oh, maybe we need to make a referral because of this or so forth, and that wasn't it at all. She was just showing her giftedness. So that's where that work product comes into play, so that at the end of the year these kids are going to take home a binder and a half of all of their work product that they've done.

00:35:10
And it's what they have done; it's what they have created over the topic of study that's going on. It is amazing what I've seen happen. Behaviors have gone down. I've had kids sit there and take a few minutes to decide what I'm going to do for the classroom assignment. And you still get SOL material covered, but you go so much further than the SOL material.

The kids I've had on different years say, “Oh, Mr. Lamb, we like you, but you make our brains hurt. This is more thinking than we've ever had to do,” and it bothers them. It bugs them until about November.

Yeah, but yeah, that's what the principled approach is in a nutshell. There are so many other components to it, but yeah—when you talked about—actually, I have a question before I get into this one.

00:36:02
So I think we had—we talked on the phone, obviously, before the podcast and everything, and I think you had mentioned to me that there were four R’s in your teaching approach.

Yeah, yeah. So there's reasoning, yes, reflecting, and research—and reading. There we go. Yes. When you said that, I didn't have a pen to write it down, but now I was like, I’ve got to ask him this question: what were those four R’s again? Because I just think that that is so beautiful, and it does seem like it mirrors what you do.

I mean, obviously, if you're teaching history, you're doing so much reasoning with the vocabulary—like, what does this word actually mean? And you're helping them to reason on that. And then, of course, they're doing their own research, and you're giving them primary sources so that they can research these events. And you're giving them readings, of course—that's obvious.

Then I'm guessing that the painting portion, you know, with the young student, is just one little fraction of how a student could possibly reflect on what they learn. Is that how that works?

00:36:46
Oh yes. You know, what I've done is I try to—instead of, in a traditional classroom where the teacher would give everyone one worksheet or one assignment—I actually give them what I call differentiated assignments, differentiated instruction assignments, and that reaches out to their strengths, if you will.

Now, of course, if someone keeps picking painting over and over and over, I might say, you know, let's try this over here or something. But I do that for classroom assignments, and I do that for homework assignments too. When I've done this, behaviors have gone down, they're more engaged, and they start to develop some critical thinking along the way.

00:37:33
Yeah, definitely. And so earlier, when you were talking about how the curriculum has gone from multiple choice to true-and-false questions and things like that, I just find that absolutely fascinating—that with those types of questions, there really isn't a whole lot of critical thinking going on, particularly for this generation of kids, where they're more or less just guessing at what they think the answer is. And I've seen it.

You had an interesting post that you shared recently on Facebook where I think it was a young lady—I'm not sure—but there was a student. Anyway, regardless of whether it was a male or female, there was a student that wrote you a message, a pretty harsh message, on one of your tests or something like that, that said, “Don’t make me write anymore,” or something like that. Do you want to kind of elaborate on what happened there?

00:38:23
Yeah, so this is for American government, and in Virginia, it's required to graduate. And this student is pretty bright. They have a lower opinion of themselves than not. And really, what it was, the questions were summary questions. So you actually had to write out three or four sentences per question, if you will.

Well, this student didn't want to do that. And my thing was, okay, they don't have an IEP that addresses writing, which means writing is not an issue. They can use a pencil, so they don't need to use a computer or anything like that. They just don't want to write because they don't want to think this through.

And so, yeah, as I posted it, the student answered, and I posted my response to it: that no, you will learn how to do this. You've had plenty of opportunity. It's just a choice of you not wanting to. And I made my response—I was a little upset about getting that, especially. And I tell my kids all the time that my biggest pet peeve is when I get kids—

00:40:19
Oh, we lost you there for a second. See if you come back. Oh, there you go.

When I get kids—and I tell my kids this all the time—my biggest pet peeve is when you have an amazing intelligence and you could walk out of here with an A or a B versus someone that doesn't necessarily have as high of an intelligence, that will work hard, do their very best, and maybe can only walk out with a C. But yet you're sitting here and you have every opportunity to walk out with an A. I have a problem with that. And that's what one of these kids is.

00:41:07
Yeah, most definitely. I see that in the students that I teach as well, where the thinking—it's painful. You can tell that it's painful. And you can also tell that there's hostility being built up when you make them do it, when you make them think or ask them questions.

And that's one of the things that I've been doing with this whole Venezuela lesson. I haven't been preaching my own opinion about the situation at all. Probably about 95% of the time, I've just been asking questions—just asking them questions, getting them to think. And it's been a really beautiful process because I don't typically, in the beginning, ask them any question that starts with who, what, when, where, or why—especially not how or why or what. I stay away from those three questions in the beginning of any kind of lesson because it's almost like they're not processing it.

00:41:56
They're not processing it, and I think a lot of it has to do with just not having background knowledge or just enough experience. And so those questions are very, very difficult.

So what I will do is I will start by giving maybe a true-or-false question to initiate the dialogue, or I'll start with a question that's an either-or or a simple question like who or when. That's much more concrete for them. But those abstract concepts that are based on how something happened or why something happened—those questions they really struggle with.

And it's not until you really do that deep dive of those three R’s—the reasoning, the reflecting, the research, the reading—that the why and the how become clear.

00:42:38
And it's just an interesting thing. So thank you for sharing that story about the student who wrote you that note.

I do have a question specifically related to parents. And that question is: when do you think it's important—or scratch that—when do you think a child can actually begin to understand that they're not just learning about history, they're fully participating in it? Because that's what we all are. We're all participating in history in some form or fashion. So when is it appropriate for that child? At what point is it appropriate for a child to understand that they're not just learning about history, that they're fully participating in it?

00:43:36
Hmm. That's a very interesting question. And I think that probably aligns more with the individual child.

You know, I remember for me, when I saw the red uniforms of the British soldiers in a fifth-grade textbook, I was like, oh, what is this? And then I turned over a couple of pages later and I see these incredible blue uniforms, and those were the good guys. And that's when it hit me that history is something amazing, something to be learned. And that, yes, we will become part of history at one time.

I think what does it for a child—and for any parent to understand it—is how we educate children. I mean, we've moved over into an SOL or a state-mandated test education versus the love of learning. I think if we could get back to helping students to love and thrive on learning, then they will actually come to that point.

00:44:43
What age would that be? That could be any age. I've seen students come online and realize that, oh, you know, there is something larger than me, and they get engaged with it from the get-go.

I have a girl right now online that I teach out of Texas, and I'm doing good staying up with her on stuff, but she is a voracious learner. And so it depends upon the age, depends upon the parent. Is the child encouraged to go beyond? Is the child encouraged to make mistakes? Is the child encouraged to create their own work product based upon the parameters? You know, that's where it starts to make sense.

An SOL test for accreditation purposes? No.

00:45:47
No. And even the principal at the school where I work even said at our last faculty meeting that accreditation really didn't mean anything. It was basically just—they checked boxes. They filled out the paperwork the correct way. That's what accreditation meant, and that's literally what he said at our faculty meeting.

So this whole idea of accreditation—you know, it sounds really nice. It sounds really fancy, like lots of smart things are happening. But in reality, the SOL system is dumbing people down. And I think it's pretty obvious.

But as far as the question is concerned, you know, students becoming—or kids becoming—active participants in their own history: I saw a kid one time. I was at the county clerk's office because I had to write an article for the local newspaper and blah, blah, blah.

00:46:36
And I had to do some research at the office. And I saw a young kid come in. He was probably nine or ten years old. And his dad took him to the clerk's office and was showing him all of the maps and all of the geographic information that they had about the town, the municipality, and the county and all that stuff.

And the dad was talking to him, engaging with him, teaching him about all these things, explaining how things worked. And this was a fairly young child. And for me, as a teacher, it was wonderful to see that because I never see that. I never get to see people engaged in that kind of learning.

00:47:11
So one of the questions that I have for you is: what is something powerful that—especially for parents that are not history buffs like you are—what is something powerful that parents can do locally that doesn't necessarily involve some complicated curriculum or lesson plan, and it doesn't necessarily involve a classroom, to really teach kids their own history, even if it's just their local town's history?

00:48:15
Right. First and foremost, get off the phone. The phone—don't let your kids be on it 24/7. That's one. Get back to having a conversation with them.

You know, some of the best little lessons you could do—like if you're in your city park and there's a monument or a statue there—start to explain what the statue's about. You know, there's so many little things that you can teach a child through just communication.

Math, for crying out loud—math. You're in a store; have them help you pick the least expensive product that's on your list. You know, you come across something that says two for $3 as opposed to one is $1.79. Having those conversations and making it exciting a little bit—oh, hey, I didn't realize this is two for three versus $1.79. Which one's cheaper? What do you think?

Or, you know, yeah, there's so many things. We have a garden. That is how our daughter—and I didn't even know this—got interested in horticulture: watching her mother and I do the garden. And that's how she got interested in plants.

00:49:12
So just—the biggest thing you could do in this day and age right now is to be an engaging parent. You know, not a nuisance; not always getting, you know, in their face or something, but being a parent, not a best friend, and really having conversations with them. And that's how they learn.

You know, I come into a classroom anymore, and kids use four-letter language all the time like it's just an average, common, everyday thing. They learned that. They learned that from parents that have modeled that. And so parents can teach their children more than what they give themselves credit for.

Yeah, definitely. And basically, these everyday conversations that parents are having with their children can become these important moments where historical thinking and reasoning are formed, and I love that.

00:50:21
I think that's, for me, one of the things that started my appreciation for history—and I'm nowhere near where you are—but one of the things that started it was an assignment I had, and this was in my 11th or 12th grade year. I remember being in high school, and there was also a similar project that we did in eighth grade.

But specifically in high school, I remember that there was an assignment we were given in our AP history class to interview someone from our family to try to understand what life was like in the 30s or the 40s, or, you know, before our time. I interviewed several people in my family.

00:51:00
One of them was my grandpa, and just different people. And listening to their stories—which history, it's got the word story right in it—but listening to their stories was one of the most fascinating things for me because I learned some history through the lens of people's real and lived experiences. It wasn't just reading, you know, out of a textbook, which there's nothing wrong with that, but it was really enlightening for me to hear how people lived, how they spoke, what they believed in, what they did, how life was different—you know, all of those things—and listening to it in real time by people who actually lived it themselves.

That was a really beautiful thing, and that was one of the things that got me interested in it.

00:51:45
Even if, you know, a parent is not a history buff, that's something that they can do with their kids too, because you don't have to be a history buff to discuss the things that have happened in the past—for your own life anyway. So that's pretty exciting.

So one of the questions that I have for you is: in your opinion—you talked about truth in the beginning of the lesson that you teach, you know, you're big on teaching truth—so in your opinion, what's the biggest threat to truth? Misinformation? Is it just the speed at which things come at all of us? Or do you think there's some level of emotional manipulation and psy-opping that's happening in today's world?

00:52:24
What's the biggest threat to truth today?

The biggest threat to truth today is personal and organizational agendas. And that comes down to—we've all now, since 2020, been through an amazing rollercoaster, and I don't mean amazing in a good sense either. But, you know, we've seen things like CRT, critical race theory, which, by the way, is very much still in schools even today. And those are all agendas to push to fundamentally change who we are, if you will. And they come in stark contrast to truth.

That's why I don't even like textbooks anymore. Textbooks now are even to the point where it's the author's own interpretation of an event. And so truth is pulling out those primary resources.

00:53:29
And I tell my kids all the time—and I tell parents for you as well—you don't have to like the primary source. There are some primary sources that sent chills down my back and I got angry about, but that is what was said. That is that understanding at that time. And who am I to turn around and deny it?

Like, I know teachers—I have a good friend that's a history teacher in my own building—will say something like, “Well, you can't always rely on primary sources because they have their own biases.” No, you can rely on primary sources because that is what they wrote down based upon what was going on with that event. It's not about “everyone has a bias,” per se.

00:54:28
I mean, that's only come into existence—that term and utilizing it—just in the last 20 years, really, with regards to when we want to demonize someone or something else. So yeah, I think it's personal agendas or institutional agendas that's attacking truth.

Yeah, I appreciate that. When you said that, it reminds me of this podcast that I have coming up with this other individual, and it's gonna be a doozy. They have some interesting perspectives about institutions and how things are done. And a lot of it comes from a racial lens for this individual. So it's gonna be quite interesting to speak on that topic.

Yeah, go ahead.

I mean—oh, and I can give you an example of this, right?

00:55:15
An example is that there's a view that anyone that was Black in the 16th and 1700s in this nation were slaves, and they had a horrible existence and it was absolutely miserable. And that's not true. There were people that were slaves—yes, horrible existence. But what most of us don't know is that some of our founding fathers actually would be considered Black.

People like Wentworth Cheswell, who was known as the Black Paul Revere—he rode more midnight rides than Paul Revere did, and he was elected to public office for 40 years, over and over and over. You never hear about that. Why? Because it doesn't come into the agenda that we want to push.

I mean, the hero of Bunker Hill was a Black man for killing the British commander. He was accredited by Washington, no less, for saving over a thousand colonists' lives. In fact, he's in the painting of the famous Battle of Bunker Hill—you see him in the right-hand corner. We don't talk about this, and we should, because it is part of our history. But over the years, it was deemed that we don't want that because it goes against the narrative of what we're wanting to do.

00:56:16
Yeah, and it also empowers individuals who I don't personally believe the government wants to see them empowered. And that makes me very angry and very upset, but a conversation for another day.

So in terms of the way things are with the world now, kids are hit with so much information. They say we're living in the information age, and this was an experience that I had. I want to get your take on this.

So I was at a conference one time, and there was a teacher there, and the teacher was also a mom. And their child was a college student, and their child was majoring in political science. And the mother said that her child had pretty significant mental health issues like depression and apathy and things like that.

And I thought it was interesting that the kid was majoring in political science, first of all. But the other piece of it was, she said that the reason why he felt depressed all the time was because when he looked at the world—the state of the world—he just felt there's no point in doing anything because either the sun's gonna engulf the earth, there's gonna be a nuclear war, there's gonna be this, we're gonna run out of water—whatever—so why care?

00:57:53
And that was his perspective and point of view. So, in your opinion, how do you think parents can help children learn about history and question information and still become empowered by that, but without having to become cynical and distrustful of everything?

Because you see these kids, and one major event happens in the news, and then the next day another major event happens, and the next day another major event happens, and it's this constant thing. I was listening to a comedy show by Dave Chappelle, and one of the funny things that he said in his show—which there's a lot of truth to it—is he said, in previous generations, when a major historical event happened, at least there was time between one event and another so that you could grieve, or you could be excited, you could feel, you could process. But now it's just one event straight after the other, after the other, after the other—

00:58:47
—and it's hard to process all of that, especially for these teenagers who are still developing. So how do you think parents can help kids question information and learn without becoming cynical and having mental health issues and just becoming distrustful of everything?

Yeah, that's definitely a topic to go on. But there's a couple things that seem really simple that we just take advantage of, right? Proper diet. I mean, what we are putting in our mouths is, in many ways, poison. So, I mean, you're not balanced, if you will, when you're Cheetos and sodas and vapes and everything else. So that's one thing. Proper rest is another.

But also, too, what I tell my two children—or three—is that I tell them that the world is made up of human beings. And man, human beings—we are flawed. The worst of us can do some of the best things, and the best of us can fall and do some very terrible things. And that's going to happen. The choice is how we process that.

And one of the things that's out here is that kids today have very few resiliency skills. We have gone out of our way to protect and shield them from failure, that we haven't let failure teach them lessons about life. Everyone—it doesn't matter—sports, right? You can't play soccer without having the rule that you can't score more than five points against the opposing team, or you can't—or everyone's going to get a trophy. I know that's probably a cliché that's been—

00:59:48
We lost you there for a second. Let's see if you come back to us.

01:00:47
Oh, there we go. Go ahead.

Cliché: everybody gets a trophy.

Yeah, that was my generation.

Yeah, I mean, everyone gets it. Even if you were in last place, we all go to Dairy Queen and everyone gets a trophy. We have taught kids how to be soft on resiliency skills. When you're soft on resiliency skills, then everything is going to have an impact on you.

The best thing that parents can do is teach your children that there is failure. Failure is not always something that's an enemy, but it can be a great teacher of things. You failed the test. Did you fail it because you just didn't care? Or did you fail it even though you put your best foot forward?

Yeah—oh, I think we lost you there again.

01:01:38
Let's see.

I'm teaching that.

Yeah, yeah. Teaching resilience definitely is a big thing. And I definitely think that just lived experiences help kids to build up that sense of resilience, but also just sort of being balanced about the news intake, social media intake.

And I have to be pretty stringent on myself and ruthless with myself because I've noticed that over the past few days my dopamine intake on Instagram has definitely increased. And I'm like, okay, I need to step away. And today, for example, I am not looking at any videos. And I have already gone back on my promise to myself today once. And I said, I'm not going to watch any more videos. I'm not going to watch any more videos today—but I did it anyway.

01:02:21
And I know this is not good for my mental health. I know it's not good for my emotional health, and I also know it's not good for my physiological health. So I definitely think that just having some distance between the TV, the phones, all of that is super important to get kids to be able to process what's happening.

Because if you're constantly feeding yourself all of this information—I mean, we can see that suicide rates are crazy high, especially with young people. I mean, it's across all generations, but young people are killing themselves. And I think, honestly, just slowing down—just slowing your brain down. Not just stop feeding it all of this stuff on social media. Take some time to disconnect from all of that, get close to nature again, you know, and slow down.

01:03:06
Get some exercise. Let's go out to eat. Let's eat some healthy food. And let's spend some time together and talk this through. And, you know, I would say more often than not, the situation would turn the other way.

But, you know, I don't know. I mean, I certainly can't gauge somebody's mental health. I'm not qualified to do that.

But I do have a question for you. My mom had brought up that there was a young man—I don't know if you had heard about this—but did you hear about the… apparently there was some young man in Canada, 20-something years old, who had depression and was euthanized by his doctor for having depression?

I think I heard something about that.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to do some more research on that. But yeah—again, you know, that goes to worldview. What I mean by that is: we, over the past 50 years, have cheapened life. Life is not as important as a commodity.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, did we lose you there?

Now, that allows for you to pick when you want to have suicide. And there's—along with those nations too—you know, there's medical boards that say, well, you're too old, and so we're not going to do… or you're too young. And it comes down to a moral and a value set, where when we don't value life as what we should—

Yeah, agreed. And that—man, when I heard about that, it just sent chills down me. I mean, I felt not good.

01:04:50
And I have not gone down the rabbit hole of that because I don't want to do that right now, because that rabbit hole is dark. That is—I mean, aren't they all? But this is especially dark.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

So, okay. Well, we're wrapping up our podcast now, and I always ask the guest this final question. It's always the same, and you can interpret it however you want to interpret it. It's totally, totally up to you. And the question is: what do you believe is the most important education that a child could ever receive?

The most important education that a child could receive is the ability to love to learn—to learn how to love everything that they would come in contact with from an educational perspective.

01:05:50
When you teach a child how to do that, then you don't have to worry about that child getting a piece of paper, meaning a diploma, because that child is going to learn anyway. They're going to find ways to get the information that they need. The best education that you can give a child is one that teaches them and shows them how to love learning. That's what it is.

I really appreciate that. Yeah, thank you so much. And it's so true, too. So first of all, we're going to have a great relationship because I definitely want to talk to you a little bit more off the show and see about potentially teaching some history classes for a micro school and things of that nature.

01:06:33
If you're interested in that, I think it would be really cool to have that as an option, because I know we had talked about that before. And also, I want to give you a chance to promote anything that you are doing—your History Moments with Ted—or is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience today?

So actually, History Moments with Ted, we do have an event coming up. January 31st, we are going to do the Lost 13th Amendment. And tickets in person are $29. If you have a subscription on Substack of History Moments, it's $19. But we are offering a Zoom event with it too, live. So those tickets are $14, and then if you have a subscription, $10.

01:07:29
What that gets you is the primary sources. It'll be sent to you digitally, or if you show up, you'll get—

We lost you there for a second.

Actually, I can't Uber you if you're coming on Zoom. But to find out more information about that, you can find that out on Facebook, on History Moments with Ted, in the featured section. There's information that's there. Or you can always reach out to me.

What's your—how can I get in touch with you?

So I'll give you a couple ways. By phone, my number is 757-372-6343. Or you may contact me through email at tedlam@HistoryMomentsWithTed.com. And I'll get you set up with whatever ticket and venue of how you'd want to do it.

Perfect. Well, thank you guys so much for listening today.

01:08:30
We have just been treated with Ted Lamb today. He's an amazing teacher, parent, father, former school board member—you know, just all these amazing things. And he has shared with us a lot of interesting information about history and the way parents can incorporate history into their daily lives, as well as raise the bar for students to help them level up. So that's what we ultimately want to see anyway for our kids.

So thank you, Ted. I just want to send you my deepest gratitude and appreciation for you being here today. Thank you again so much, and we are so glad to have you.

Thank you for inviting me.



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Ted Lamb

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