The Gist of Mentors: 1:1 tutoring and socializing with adults can lead to extraordinary results
What if the classic bug of homeschooling - that children don’t spend time socializing with other children - is in fact its greatest feature? Proponents of what I am calling the “Mentor” homeschooling regime make exactly that controversial claim and ask: If you want your kids to be mature, why surround them with the least mature group in society? If you want your kids to be knowledgeable, why surround them with the most ignorant? If you want your children to be successful, why surround them with a bunch of question marks when you can introduce them to a bunch of exclamation points?
Figure 1. Viewers of the Jackass reality TV franchise may object to the characterization of children as the least mature group in society. Mentors would respond that such antics of extended adolescence are the exact byproduct of the segregation and celebration of youth.
Children who spend more time with adults mature faster - and academic studies of homeschoolers’ social skills find, contrary to stereotype, adults rate their social skills higher than those children in institutions. A major reason for that is that homeschoolers tend to be much less peer-oriented and more comfortable with multiple generations - which Mentors love. But Mentors embrace even the “downside” if their kids don’t form constant social experiences, as the Scandinavian studier of successful people Henrik Karlsson relates:
“Immersion in boredom is also a universal in the biographies of exceptional people. A substantial fraction were completely kept apart from other children, either because their guardians decided so or because they were bedridden with various illnesses during childhood (like Descartes). A spicy hypothesis raised by this is that socializing too much with children is simply not good for your intellectual development… A common theme in the biographies is that the area of study which would eventually give them fame came to them almost like a wild hallucination induced by overdosing on boredom. They would be overcome by an obsession arising from within.”
Figure 2. Every person could live for centuries in this universally prosperous Martian city powered by cold fusion if only we were more bored.
Critics would charge that Mentors deny their children a childhood. That’s correct. But Mentors respond: do you want your child to be a child or become an adult? There’s a fairly strong argument that ‘childhood’ itself is a relatively recent concept, and that younger humans of yesteryear were treated simply as inexperienced, not incapable. After all, according to Jewish law, a boy becomes a man responsible for his own actions at age 13! If you’ve ever thought that young adults were not especially good at “adulting,” perhaps juvenility has gone too far and you may want to think about doing something different for your children.
There are two veins of Mentoring to explore and they can be pursued simultaneously. The first is enlisting expert adult tutors to manage your children’s education. This practice is older than institutional school and, at various times in history from ancient Rome to industrial Britain, institutional school was considered the inferior product that you’d only use if you could not afford tutors (or were not educated enough to educate your own children). The historian Edward E. Gordon even notes that the Dutch Renaissance philosopher
“Erasmus argued that if the gentry did not shake off their medieval disdain for learning, then other men’s sons would take their place as England’s future leaders. This argument of Erasmus generated such consternation among the upper class that a law was even proposed in Parliament, possibly by Elizabeth’s close advisor, William Cecil, which forbade anybody below the rank of baron from keeping a tutor at his house.”
America’s modern elite, in contrast, has until very recently overwhelmingly leaned into institutions without even considering homeschooling - whether because of lack of knowledge, lack of imagination, or the country club effects of the accompanying social milieu. Even among very wealthy people who are perfectly content to pay large tuitions and contribute generously (and possibly also selfishly) to schools’ charitable accounts atop them, the idea of ‘homeschooling’ is nearly inevitably thought only in the context of parents teaching rather than hiring expert tutors. But rather than closely inquiring about the student:teacher ratio of a private school - where 15:1 might be considered good - why not consider the student:teacher ratio of 1:15, as royals once did, where a single student is getting educated by 15 experts individually? Parents are happy to spend extra on extracurricular coaches or a tutor to help get a child up to the norm - but what about tutors to teach the whole program, and exceed? The economist Alex Tabarrok, citing the example of the importance of enthusiastic math teachers recruiting potential geniuses to math competitions, says “Just as athletic talent can wither without guidance, it seems that intellectual talent may also be underutilized without proper mentorship, with many high-IQ individuals failing to reach their full potential.”
Some of Erasmus’ advice for how to find the right tutors still rings true today; as Gordon summarizes: “The tutor must be first of all, a man of high character, worthy of fullest confidence… well-read… His great aim will be to kindle spontaneous interest,” demanding of high standards but also “patient, remembering that he too was once a boy.” Gordon concluded that “Erasmus believed that a tutor’s effectiveness depended upon his ability to discern the ‘natura’ of his pupil, the taste, interests and special talents that made each child an individual.” Many parents hire an institution based on reputation, but when you hire a person, it can become a lot more real. A different Renaissance tutor, Roger “Ascham was distressed that parents took greater care in hiring a man to care for their horses than a tutor to teach their children. As a result, families got tame horses and wild children.” Do you hold your children’s teachers to the same standards as you would your lawyer for an important transaction, or some other equivalent service? Some historical students even had a tutor overseer whose job was not so much to teach but to manage their education over the course of their childhood, hiring experts throughout. Just note that even the best Mentor can only do so much with the wrong child: you’d be hard-pressed to find a better tutor than the brilliant and wealthy Stoic statesman Seneca - but Nero turned out very badly.
The second vein of mentoring is to seek out, for the company of your children, the very best in society regardless of whether they actually teach for a living. For better and worse, American society awards status and capitalism awards money to smart people who pursue professions beyond teaching children - and that typically deprives children of interactions with our country’s most talented individuals.
A central premise of a Mentor-focused homeschooling regime is that children are better off maximizing their time with admirable adults - that that is in fact the greatest opportunity that homeschooling offers to differ from institutional schooling, and that adult-orientation is characteristic of the childhoods of geniuses. The idea can be fairly attractive to parents, though they may not be willing to pursue it as far as Mentors say they should, and it’s obvious that anyone is influenced by the people they spend the most time with.
Mentors lament that certain parents don’t use their high human capital to advance their own children’s education. Many geniuses were homeschooled by accomplished parents who gave up substantial parts of their own careers to set their children up for maximum impact from an early age - the philosopher John Stuart Mill, who the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls “the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century,” had a “father [who] considered raising his children to be of equal importance as his intellectual work.” If one or both parents can be a child’s first significant intellectual mentors, then that’s an exceptional headstart and there will be no one more motivated. How often do extremely high performing parents pass along their children to be educated and cared for by people who don’t perform at the same level? Parents of varying talents may attempt to find teachers for their children who are even smarter (or more virtuous, or otherwise better) than they. Is there an Aristotle for your young Alexander the Great? Alexander’s father allegedly wrote to Aristotle, offering extreme incentives,
“I give you notice that I have a son born to me, but I am not so much obliged to the gods for his birth, as for the happiness that he has come into the world while there is an Aristotle living. For I hope that being brought up under your direction and by your case, he may deserve the glory of his father and the empire which I shall leave him”
How can you incentivize the most admirable unrelated people you know (or know of) to spend substantial quality time with your children? One answer: cash. If you have the resources, why not pay the most admirable people you can afford to personally tutor your kids and, perhaps just as importantly, spend lots of informal time with your family, as was common in eighteenth century British and American families? Your family gets the benefits of knowing how such people’s minds work as well as subsidizing their important independent work - a serious intellectual may be able to write his magnum opus between lessons, a brilliant entrepreneur may openly discuss his ongoing challenges, etc. Old school aristocrats were perfectly happy to employ scientists, architects, and all kinds of professionals to teach their children and enrich the intellectual atmosphere of their households. Notably, a committed Mentor program could be the most expensive homeschooling regime of all - but it may very well be worthwhile.
If not cash, try charm. Come up with your list of the most admirable you know and invite them over for dinner or out to lunch with you and your kids - or, as may be required, make an intentional trip (perhaps not just across town, but across the world) to go visit with them. Seize the flexibility of homeschooling and remember that in a mentoring regime this is the curriculum, so make it your focus: curate sustained interactions with the highest quality people at least weekly.
Figure 3. GPT’s impression of the stereotypical beneficiary of the Mentoring homeschooling approach.
Many parents arrange for a teenage babysitter to take their kids so they can go enjoy their own adult time free of the distractions of children. Or they invite friends over and tolerate their children giving guests, at most, brief superficial acknowledgement before doing their own thing. Mentors insist this does your children a disservice. Children all the time prepare for recitals and sports events where they clearly “behave,” why not do the same for your curated adult interactions? Have your children research the biographies of your guests and, if applicable, directly read their works (or, for the young, you read your guests’ work and engage in enough discussion beforehand where your kids understand the basics). Train your children to be good interviewers - and then ask your guests for reading lists. Have your kids write substantive thank you notes. Then invite your guests back once your kids have read more and repeat.
At elite British universities, you “read” a major based on your interest and what your advisor recommends - why not recreate that earlier, at home? Gordon describes the system, using the help of an adviser at Oxford for decades:
“Balsdon tells us that, ‘A good [Oxford/Cambridge] don is the servant of his pupils and not their master.’ Each student prepares an essay with extreme care each week for his tutor’s review. The tutor and student in their hour together review this essay. He challenges him to produce evidence, and refutes him by citing other evidence. ‘A good tutorial should be a sparring match, keeping the two of you in training. It should not be a substitute for a lecture.’”
Or, alternatively, why not discuss elite business school case studies with genuine businessmen? Or famous legal cases with judges and practicing attorneys? It’s true that very young children will likely only catch bits and pieces of the adult conversation - though even then, it establishes a standard. But many early teenagers are perfectly capable of such discussions themselves, especially the more they have, and may even find it more interesting to deal with real adult challenges than the traditional curriculum. Not even a teen, I once pressed Governor George W. Bush on his plan to reform social security. You give your children a gift if they can become comfortable with (and not intimidated by) successful people in society.
Figure 4. The fictional vibe of Mentors is somewhere between the Count of Monte Cristo (who would not have become so wealthy or talented without Abbe Faria) and Darth Vader (who arguably had the greatest possible mentors in the galaxy between Obi Wan Kenobi and the Emperor).
You should also be trying to intentionally form new relationships with whomever you believe to be the highest quality people. Personally, I’ve become friends with some of my favorite authors just by cold-calling them and asking them to coffee to discuss their work. Get involved in charitable and religious work and you are likely to find all kinds of virtuous people. Consider moving to a place that features a maximum number of possible candidates (e.g. around George Mason for the economists, New York for financiers, Nashville for musicians, Washington D.C. for top politicos, next to a prestigious seminary, into a farming community, near an army base, etc.). Naturally, not everyone is going to be receptive (I know one genuine genius who used to teach college but was glad to get out of it because “at some point adults need to stop spending time with children”), but plenty will be. I’ve mentioned this kind of approach to several impressive people and many feel tickled at the thought they could advise a young person. Keep at it!
Relatedly, you may attempt, as much as possible, to involve your children in your own adult activities, especially work. Crassus, famously the richest man in ancient Rome through shrewd real estate transactions and also the general who defeated Spartacus’ revolt and mentored Julius Caesar, stated that “My school was the forum, my master’s experience, the laws and institutions of Rome and the customs of our ancestors.” Gordon notes that “under the supervision of his tutor the boy memorized” the equivalent of the Roman Constitution and, like many Roman youth, learned by trying to emulate the city’s leading men, especially its attorneys making arguments in open court.
Debate your dilemmas with your children. Read provocative articles and books - including the Good Book - and discuss. Wherever you happen to be, ask if your kids can see behind the scenes (in the kitchen, the cockpit, etc). You may contemplate engaging in activities that disproportionately attract adults (politics, for example). Most people can’t bring their kids to everything but most people who can don’t - and how many have really tried? One Yale grad I know accompanied her father roofing after school and learned quite a bit about salesmanship. My father, a retailer, continuously took me to stores - not to actually purchase anything (you should be saving, not consuming!) but to get feedback from a child’s perspective. And if not parents, can you find other adults who will take your kids with them to work for a while? Ideally, you want to get to the point where your children are not merely interning and fetching coffee (though that’s not a bad start) but genuinely apprenticing to see what a career and an adult life is really like. Such practice used to be very common before the rise of institutional schooling. Mentors can and do argue that going to a meeting with you and seeing how the world really works - even when it’s boring - is superior to a formal lesson in front of a blackboard.
While the main intent of all this interaction is for your kids to actually learn from and emulate the most admirable, this also all has a gigantic secondary benefit: networking. Success is not just about what you know but whom you know - and impressed mentors can make introductions, write letters of recommendation, or even arrange for jobs.
Admittedly, all of this is easier as your children age - but don’t underestimate your youngest. They still benefit from just being around competent adults and hearing them talk. Young children can be taught very early mastery of foreign languages, musical instruments, and even math while reading about the accomplished and even directly reading some adapted versions of genius itself (though even here, be careful not to dumb it down too much!). Before too long, you could easily fill a curriculum with reading about the admirable, reading admirable people’s writing, and reading what admirable people recommend - and that would be in addition to as many meetings and apprenticeships as you could arrange since, according to Mentors, reading is no substitute for actual interactivity. You may consider more of the breadth of the traditional curriculum if that’s attractive or if you’re just trying to ensure that colleges and employers won’t have a reason to reject your child - but, historically, geniuses specialized relatively early and all kinds of exceptions are made for geniuses. The real trick is that you have to cultivate your children to be interesting to competent adults. And, depending on what kind of competency you’re looking for, that will affect your curriculum, especially in math and science. One answer in the spirit of Mentoring is that you lean into whatever expertise is most easily available to you. But the age of the internet means that you can find all types of public book recommendations from smart people - a recent trend on X saw the founder and CEO of Stripe, a multi-billion dollar fintech company, list out what he thought consisted of Silicon Valley’s canon of books read by its leading executives. If your child wants to go into tech, why not work through that - and then cold-email executives asking for a meeting, mentioning your child has already read this list, what else should he be doing?
One real problem is whether the most admirable adults can effectively teach at your child’s level - and perhaps whether there’s a good reason to have professional teachers who focus on particular ages. The historical record is mixed on this, with some very smart people seemingly unable to interest children but lots more examples of successfully passing along much higher standards than we have today. You could try to solve this by pursuing the first vein and specifically hiring professional teachers amidst your general program, though plenty of professionals don’t follow the best evidenced practices, either. The good news is that perhaps the most significant positive intervention that has been identified in education is 1:1 tutoring - “the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class” - but where it has been studied, it has followed a particular, scripted program that builds mastery (90%+ correct) of material and has the largest impact on the lower skilled. If you can get the right tutor to follow the script, it may be worthwhile to game out standardized tests, especially on math.
But Mentors who have studied the childhood of geniuses (and even more typical tutored children) have something different in mind: less about measurables and memorization and more about conversation and conundrums. Mentors argue that testing really is not necessary when a mentor knows her student so well that she knows what he doesn’t know. What has worked: “The adults had high expectations of the children; they assumed they had the capacity to understand complex topics, and therefore invited them into serious conversations and meaningful work, believing them capable of growing competent rapidly.” The Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman insisted:
“There isn’t any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher—a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things. It’s impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned. But in our modern times we have so many students to teach that we have to try to find some substitute for the ideal.”
Whether cultivating genius, character, or just the ability to make a living, in earlier eras, children were set up for real relationships with competent adults in fields that they were most likely to pursue and raised up by specifically delegated individuals to embrace society’s highest conception of virtue. On rare occasions that meant something like John Quincy Adams accompanying his father on diplomatic missions, but for most, it was an apprenticeship, often to a family member, other times actually signing over a kid for years to a professional to learn a trade. Today, it could totally be worthwhile, child labor laws permitting, for a child to shadow a master plumber or get personal direction from a Chick Fil A franchisee.
Of course, a historical problem with these kinds of relationships was that a child’s mentor or tutor might abuse them - sometimes with the consent of parents and society because there were different standards of corporal punishment, other times clearly a betrayal of the parents’ trust, such as pursuing an inappropriate relationship. This danger is real but feared to the point of paranoia in today’s society, where abuse nevertheless tragically occurs even in conventional institutions. Mentors would encourage you not to deprive your children of fruitful relationships with adults: pick highly ethical mentors. A separate problem, however, may be that even brilliant and ethical adults may have very different views of parenting than you, and you should be sensitive to how that might manifest, whether your families start to spend a lot of time together or it affects the advice the child receives individually. But again - this problem exists already with any adult your kids spend time with!
A reasonable debate among Mentors would be whether they’d prefer to have one hundred lunches with one mentor or one hundred different mentors. A significant clarification would be whether the mentors are all of the same quality as the one. Both approaches can be valuable, but I suspect that really going deep with a single genuine genius is better, especially if the other choice features no repeat interactions.
Tune in next time for how other approaches might critique Mentors!