34. Jay Wile and Berean Builders

In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Dr. Jay Wile from Indiana. Dr. Wile has a PhD in nuclear chemistry and has taught at Ball State University, Indiana University, and other postsecondary institutions. While teaching at Ball State University, Dr. Wile had an experience with one of his top Freshman students who was asking insightful questions about what he was studying. When Dr. Wile learned that this student was homeschooled, he decided to learn more about homeschooling. Dr. Wile developed a 3-part criteria to identify homeschool students among his classes. He learned that homeschool students tended to participate more in class, they read the material in preparation for class, and they would try to answer the extra questions that Dr. Wile would put on tests. When he and his wife eventually adopted a young woman through church connections, the Wile's decided to homeschool so that they could help her fill her learning gaps in preparation for postsecondary learning. Over the years, Dr. Wile has been sought out by many homeschool families for help with teaching Science. He has developed many texts, notebooks, and materials, including "Science in the Beginning." Listeners should visit bereanbuilders.com to find Dr. Wile's excellent resources.

Websites
https://bereanbuilders.com/ecomm/
https://www.mfwbooks.com/

Books and Curriculum
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
Berean Builders Science Curriculum

This Golden Hour
Free eBook Course
thisgoldenhour.org

Transcript

Jay Wile: 0:00

While I was homeschooling her and shortly after, I would have talked only about the academic benefits. But in fact, the most important benefit of Us homeschooling our daughter is we have a lifelong relationship with her that's very close, and it wouldn't have happened. And this isn't true for all families, but, we had her for a short time. And so we wouldn't have gotten as close as we had we just have this quantity of time so that's the big deal. I mean, Our daughter Wants to go on vacations with us and wants to you know, she and her husband are long haul truckers. They spend five weeks out on the road living in truck, and the week they're home, they live with us, and that's the way they want to do it. They're not doing it because of financial need or whatever. They're doing it because they want to spend time with us.

Timmy Eaton: 0:47

I'm Tim Eaton, homeschool father of six and doctor of university successfully and completely without the school system. Edgy. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years, and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get Started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower Anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling. And homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today, and enjoy this episode of this golden hour podcast as you exercise, drive, clean, or just chill. You're listening to this Golden Hour podcast. In today's episode, we get to spend time with Jay Wile from Indiana. Doctor Wile has a PhD in nuclear chemistry and has taught at Ball State University, Indiana University, and other post secondary institutions. While teaching at Ball State University, doctor Wile had an experience with one of his top freshman students who is asking insightful questions about what he was studying. When doctor Wile learned that this student was homeschooled, he decided to learn more about homeschooling. Doctor Wile developed a three part criteria to identify homeschool students among his classes. He learned that homeschool students tended to participate more in class. They read the material in preparation for class, and they would try to answer the extra questions that doctor Wile would put on tests. When he and his wife eventually adopted a young woman through church connections, the Wiles decided to homeschool so that they could help her Phil Herr Learning Gaps in preparation for post secondary learning. Over the years, doctor Wile has been sought out by many homeschool families for Help with teaching science. He has developed many texts, notebooks, and materials, including science in the beginning. Listeners should visit Berean Builders dot com to find doctor Wiles' excellent resources.​Welcome back to this golden hour podcast. We are so excited to have with us doctor Jay Wile from Indiana. And doctor Wile is a PhD in nuclear chemistry and an author for Berean Builders.

Jay Wile: 3:11

Yes. Pleasure to be here.

Timmy Eaton: 3:13

Yeah. I'm so grateful that you've taken time to do this. We are excited. You're definitely one of those people that, like, when we heard Back that you said yes, we were like, he said yes. We were we were really excited. And our kids have used your materials for years, and we are grateful for that, very blessed by that. So thank you very much. And why don't you just start with a little bio of yourself and whatever you'd like to

Jay Wile: 3:32

say? Sure. Yeah, I got my PhD in everybody's favorite subject, nuclear chemistry. I actually started my life my professional life as an actor. I Did professional acting for about a year. And the Lord told me professional acting wasn't for me. Wow. And I had actually Uh, used a lot of chemistry and special effects. I played Dracula in Dracula, And he had to do stage magic, and it was all chemistry and things like that. So I thought if I'm gonna go to college instead of being an actor, might as well study chemistry because I know a little bit about it already. Yeah. And so really enjoyed learning more and more about it. The deeper I got, The more I became fascinated with the mathematics, and so I took basically the most mathematical form of chemistry you could possibly take, and that's what nuclear chemistry is.

Timmy Eaton: 4:21

Though before that, though, you weren't into science and into chemistry. Not

Jay Wile: 4:24

a lot. No. I was, I was back you know, the US, System goes through fads all the time. And I happen to be in the school system when the fad was, we give you a test in second grade, and that tells you what you're gonna be for of your life. So I took that test, and they said I was talented in science. And so I did get tracked in science. And I did really well. But, part of it was, high school and junior high and so forth, everything's so simple That it wasn't interesting to me. And at that time, acting was much more interesting because Yeah. There's so much depth to it if you do it right. So I just I was doing what I considered to be the most challenging thing at the time, which was acting. Once I actually went to college and saw how challenging chemistry was, Then, yeah, I got very interested in it, but not growing up.

Timmy Eaton: 5:10

No. And so were you acting right out of high school type thing, or you're like, really? Yeah.

Jay Wile: 5:14

And it's, back then, you could do things you can't do now. So in the US, if you wanna do acting on stage Professionally, you need to be a part of Actors' Equity, which is the union. And there are all sorts of hoops you have to jump through. Back then, nobody had records. So If a director wanted you in a show, he could just lie and say, oh, this guy's been acting with me for two hundred stage hours. No problem. And there's no way to check that. Basically, I got into the union before I graduated high school. And it was basically this one director who saw me in a high school play And love me so much. He had a part for me in his the play he was currently doing which was gonna happen in the summer, which worked perfectly for me. And so then afterwards, I just, stuck with it for a while. And I made a decent for an actor, I made a d a stage actor. I made a decent living. It just wasn't for me.

Timmy Eaton: 6:05

And you were young. You were young? Yeah. Yeah. I was young. And did you grow up in Indiana, in the Indiana area? Or Yes. As

Jay Wile: 6:11

a matter of fact, I'm living in The hell I was born in, which, I grew up in this little town and was totally bored with it, and I went to school in upstate New York a thousand miles away or whatever. And I swore I'd never come back to this one horse town, and I'm

Timmy Eaton: 6:24

living here now. That's awesome. I it's I have no concept of that. I was born in New Jersey, grew up in Chicago, and here I am in Canada. So I don't know how things work, but that's interesting. That's really cool. And then do or do you do any kind of acting now or any kind of theater? Still do. Yeah.

Jay Wile: 6:40

As Matter of fact, the the folks on the podcast can't see it, but I've got posters of the shows that I've my favorite shows, like my dream role. My very first Professional. Very first show that I got paid for was Man of La Mancha. I was in the chorus, and my dream was always to play the lead in that. And four years five years ago, I got to do that. Wow. So Congrats. Yeah, it's just amateur, and it's for fun. And I have a great time doing it. I usually do two two or three

Timmy Eaton: 7:08

shows a year. Oh, that's awesome. Anyone else anybody in your family do that with you, or is that just Yeah.

Jay Wile: 7:14

Actually, you know, my wife uh, we got married once I started college, so she wasn't around for the professional acting Mhmm. Years. Uh, But, you know, she started I was doing amateur acting, and she basically didn't like theater people. But now she does it. Now she does. Yeah. She's she does acting with me. And my daughter doesn't do any stage acting, but Our church has a drama ministry, and I write the dramas. Oh, okay. And so she's been on stage with me in

Timmy Eaton: 7:42

church. Oh, that's it. I'm glad you I'm glad you get to have your foot still in that ring a little bit, so that's probably good for you. That's awesome. Thank you. So tell us about your first exposure to homeschool. Like, how did that what was your first exposure to it? What'd you think of it? Did you have any preconceptions before your first exposure. Tell us some of a little bit about that.

Jay Wile: 8:00

Yeah, I didn't. I was totally ignorant of it. So I got you know, I went to School in upstate New York, got a bachelor's, ended up staying there for a PhD, which doesn't happen a lot. Usually, you're encouraged to move, But it there aren't a lot of places that offer a PhD in nuclear chemistry, and the place I was in undergrad also offered a grad school. So I did that, and then I got offered what they call a postdoc, which is, your first academic posting after you get your PhD, And it's all research. It's not teaching or anything like that. I got that at Indiana University, which is only a couple hours from my hometown. And so I was there And ended up getting a chance to be a part time professor as well. And so my first teaching gig was actually at Indiana University, And then I went to Ball State University. Okay. And Ball State University is one of the lower tier state schools in Indiana. And at the time, this was in the early nineties we didn't have much in terms of admission standards. I mean, We had something, but, you could get in fairly easily. At that time, homeschooled students were having a hard time getting in to the higher tier universities Because there was no way of evaluating them

Timmy Eaton: 9:12

or whatever. It was still new enough that it was a foreign territory to admissions counselors and universities.

Jay Wile: 9:18

So unbeknownst to me, we had a high we had more than our fair share of homeschoolers because homeschoolers could get into Ball State. So I knew nothing about homeschooling. My first time I learned about homeschooling was a student who was already, I already recognized him as one of my top students or that you're my top student in chemistry. Comes to my office during office hours and puts us our big Tome general chemistry ebbing fourth edition on the table and points to an equation called the Gibbs free energy, which is one of the hardest Quite frankly, if you don't use any of your research, you don't understand it. And most of my even most of my PhD chemistry colleagues don't really understand the equation. I do because I use it in my research. So he pointed this equation, and I figured it was gonna be, how do I use it in homework problems, blah blah blah. But he actually said now I've used this equation. I understand how to answer the questions, but I've been thinking about this equation. And that amazed me at all that I had a student in my office who had been thinking but specifically thinking about an equation. And he ends up basically giving me a very it was primitive, but still a very good understanding of what the Gibbs Free energy really means. And I was impressed by that. So we had one of these meaty conversations that every professor loves. Yeah. You live for that. Yeah. Who's got a student who is actually interested, wants to go well beyond the class material and so forth. Wonderful. So at the end of all this, I said, now you I've already I already recognized you're one of my top students, but, obviously, you've thought a lot about Yes. So you must have had a really good chemistry experience in high school. Where did you go to high school? And he kinda looked at the floor and said, at home. And to me, that meant he was too sick to go to school that he had some long term illness. So I said, oh, so you had tutors going to school and bringing you homework and so forth. And he said, no. No. No. My mom taught me. And I looked him right at the eye, and I said, so she's a nuclear physicist then? And he said, no. She never went to college. And so I have in this my top student who's actually got some very deep physical insight, which is strange for a freshman um, who was taught Chemistry by a mother who never went to college, and I had never heard of this before. So that, of course, got me interested. And so I looked into it a little bit the way an academic looks into things. A regular person would try and find a homeschooler and talk to him, but an academic looks at the

Timmy Eaton: 11:48

Literature to see. Where's the research on this? Yeah.

Jay Wile: 11:51

And even in the early nineties, the literature was pretty clear that, yeah, homeschool students do better at university than homeschool students. And that's why today, it's easier to get into the top tier universities as a in the US. I don't know about Canada. But in the US, it's easier to get into the top universities as a homeschooled student because everybody who's doing the admissions, they know the research, and the research says they're still the most successful university students. But we didn't know that back or at least it wasn't popular knowledge back then. So that was my experience. And once I looked at the literature and studied him a little more during class and so forth, I kinda got this idea of what I could look for to find the homeschooled students. And then I kinda ask them, if I felt like I had a decent relationship with them. Did you happen to go to school at home? And most of them would say yes. Is that right?

Timmy Eaton: 12:37

So what were the indicators for you? How did you how could you tell? Okay.

Jay Wile: 12:41

There were three things, and the first one is one of what he expects. They are the most talkative in class, not in terms of talking outside of their turn, but actually asking questions. Participating. Participating in class. They are by far the most active participants. And I think part of it is, at least during the nineties, it was a new thing to them, so it was kinda

Timmy Eaton: 12:59

fun. Yeah. Yeah. I was It's what's what? What is the setting?

Jay Wile: 13:04

Yeah. Yeah. And the second one was a corollary that when they participate in class, it was clear they had read the material ahead of which is very rare. As a professor, you always say the first day of class, you're gonna be better prepared for class if you read the material we're covering before you come to class Yeah. Knowing full well that almost Nobody does that. But, it was clear they had read the material so they were readers more than their fellow students. But the bigger one was on TES, and this is what I noticed from that first student and kind of, On tests for this for the students who are science majors, there are all sorts of different chemistry you teach and teach to nurses And things like that, you don't do this. But for science majors Mhmm. I would always ask a question on the test that was unlike anything I had discussed in class. But if you really understood the material, you should be able to reason through. Most students, and this is always the case, most students just left it blank. What I noticed was this guy, this first guy I was talking about, he would always try even if he was wrong, but he'd always try and write down something. And so that's the first thing I would do whenever someone whenever I was grading these tests, I would see someone actually try to answer that question. I'd See if they were doing the same kind of reasoning that this kid seemed to be able to do. And that was the big one that was really almost

Timmy Eaton: 14:18

a hundred percent. That's interesting. I so I I completed my doctorate degree about five years ago at University of Alberta, and I wrote my dissertation on home education. And one of my biggest findings was that it didn't seem and, this is peripheral to what you were saying, but it didn't seem that, Test taking in the secondary years had any impact on performance. I'm saying good or bad in post secondary, and I was surprised by that. And but it might like you said, it might be the novelty of it. And it was just interesting to me that they and then the, the corollary finding was that the secondary homeschool kids had been taught how to be such so self directed in their learning that they were more prepared for post secondary because they had already been living that type of of learning. They've been I think that's

Jay Wile: 15:09

why Yeah. Go ahead. I think that's why they end up doing better on tests. And I don't know your research so I don't know That maybe they didn't take tests in homeschool, but the way the reason they take tests they do testing better, and we see this in the US whether you're talking about standardized testing or university They love testing. They do better on tests, but it's because they know how to think or at least have more experience thinking. And a good test, that's what they're trying to test is whether you can think

Timmy Eaton: 15:34

this stuff. Yeah. It's learning yeah. The phrase I keep learn you know, a lot of people use is learning how to learn. And And it feel it feels like employers, universities are looking for who knows to learn, and they're trying to construct things that will verify that or illustrate that you'd know how to learn. That's really interesting. I think that's that was astute of you to see those three kind of main connections among those homeschool students. Those are pretty specific. You had to have been pretty specifically observant on those behaviors. So that's a good thing to do.

Jay Wile: 16:02

First of all, it interests me. So I treated it a lot like one of my research, projects. I wanted to do a sort of a Unbiased analysis. Because, you meet one superstar student. That doesn't mean anything. No. Yeah. That superstar student could come from a wrecked home life and a terrible school. buT, so the one thing you ask of the this student who so impressed me with his insight on the Gibbs Free Energy, is that something That was promoted by homeschooling, or is he just a brilliant kid? Yeah. Is this an outlier? Yeah. And so that's that was really the way I was looking at it. And so so I did I what did wanna really see. And then and, the thing that separates a scientific theory from a bedtime story is the scientific theory makes predictions that can then be confirmed by data. And so what I wanna do is can I find a set of characteristics that was Would be an accurate predictor of homeschooling? And it wasn't a hundred percent, but it was pretty good.

Timmy Eaton: 16:54

That is that's impressive. And in your experience since then, Would you say that it's held fairly consistent, or I'm saying just in your observation, or is it like These kids at this level coming to a university like that are high performers, or do you feel like I know what When in my studies, what the literature kinda says on it, but it is, have you found a consistent story,

Jay Wile: 17:16

I have, I think and this is not just my experience, but some colleagues' experience as well that I've spoken with. But also in the literature in the US we can look at high level schools like Boston College and places like that, and the homeschooled students do better. But that could just be homeschooled students are held to a higher admission standard. But then you go to the technical colleges, Places like York Technical, the only admission requirement is that your check clears. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not making fun of that. That's necessary. Yeah. Yeah. So but that's the only admission requirement. And even in York Technical, the homeschool students do better than everybody else. So I do think that it's A general trend, and I don't think it's because they know how to take tests. I really don't because, you got a lot of People making money out there trying to teach kids how to do how to take tests, how to take the SAT, how to take the ACT. And you get marginal improvements, you don't get you can't really say if I take all Kaplan students, they score significantly better than all non Kaplan students. That's never been shown. But I can say that on average, homeschooled students score above the standard deviation, uh, compared to The non homeschool students. Yeah. That

Timmy Eaton: 18:28

is fascinating. That's fascinating. And I found similar things. And sometimes people, people that are wondering about that. They'll criticize the sampling or, and basically the but then you look at it, and it really comes to a family home life that has a huge influence on that. So we'll talk about that. So can I change gears a little bit? So about your own So what about your own your personal decision to homeschool? Oh, yeah. So come to be in

Jay Wile: 18:52

Yeah. So At this point in my life, when I'm talking to this student that has all this insight looking at the literature and so forth, I don't have kids. So it's not on my radar. My wife and I are double income, no Kids were both committed to our church and our careers, and that's and each other, of course. But that's really it. And then because of a situation that happened in our church, We end up becoming the temporary legal guardians and then adopting a young teen. And that's to this day, she's our only child, so she's spoiled rotten. So when we were her legal guardians, we actually couldn't, Change her education. That was you know, you don't have that much control yet. When we finally adopted her, then that was the first thing. As soon as we were there, her adoptive parents, she was pulled out of school when we start homeschooling her. And for us, the I'm sure big part of why we did it was simply because of my experience with all my homeschool college graduates. But the specific reason we did it was her goal to get a college degree. And I really wasn't in favor of her do getting that college degree because I didn't think she'd ever use it. And it turns out I'm right. She doesn't use it, but She had emotional reasons why she wanted to get a college degree. Yeah. Being more insightful said she should get one because it's that important to her. Mhmm. So the reason we homeschooled her was we knew she did not have the skills to get a decent college degree she was one of these students who's very smart, but because of her previous home life, there were days she didn't learn anything, and there were days she learned everything. So she had all these big Gaping holes. And there's no way institutionalized learning fixes that. So I really described all of the rest of her schooling years as Educational triage. We found the holes, and we filled the holes.

Timmy Eaton: 20:35

And as parents, you were that's impressive to just think of you really first of all assessing that. You were assessing that in the first place. How old was she? Like, when you just started homeschooling?

Jay Wile: 20:45

Four four four well, when we started homeschooling her, fifteen. Fifteen.

Timmy Eaton: 20:48

Okay. Okay. Carry on. Sorry. I interrupted you. Oh, no. That's

Jay Wile: 20:51

alright. Yeah, we were her temporary legal guardian guardians at fourteen. And, neither My wife and I thought we wanted kids, and this is God's way, of course, of saying that we needed a kid. It wasn't like It's just the way it happened. But, when you adopt in that situation, you've got this kid who Doesn't want to appear needy, but is very needy. And so you try and fix those meet those needs that you can meet really well. And as Gator myself, I figured I could meet the need of her wanting to go to college.

Timmy Eaton: 21:23

So your you would say that your main motivation, I think the way you said it, was that She wanted a degree, and you guys wanted her to be able to fulfill that. Yeah. And you also mentioned that institutionalized schooling wouldn't accomplish that for her. What are your thoughts on that? Like, why why were you so Yeah. Clear that wasn't gonna happen through that

Jay Wile: 21:40

route? Because, she had these holes in her education, which were from previous years. So in math, for example, when she, It was after we adopted her, but she took the PSAT. Mhmm. And she scored in the thirty percentile in math. And the reason was there were Something she could do really well if you know what solving polynomials were. She could solve polynomials Like they were going out of style, but she couldn't do the rearranging in an equation when you had when you had, you know, uh, fractions. So when you had fractions in both sides equation, you're solving especially solving for something in the denominator. She couldn't do that. Now that's actually earlier algebra than solving polynomials, But solving polynomials was the day she was learning and the other ones, day she weren't. So what I had to do was I had to say if you're gonna go to college, you're gonna have to All this set knowledge and skills in order to be able to do what you're expected to do at college. So we gotta make sure you can do all of that. And

Timmy Eaton: 22:39

you were identifying you and your wife are identifying the gaps and going, and I kinda get it. A traditional system, they're doing their best with what they have, but With thirty kids in a class or whatever, you it's hard to assess what kid has what gaps and then how to attend to those gaps. That's

Jay Wile: 22:53

hard. And even worse than that is because of the way an institutionalized learning works, it once you've taken algebra and gotten a c or better, You're not gonna look at algebra one. You're not gonna see algebra one again. So if you've got holes in algebra one, and they're never gonna be fixed because you'll never see it again. Yeah. You may be expected to use it somewhere, but you're not gonna be taught it again. And so that was the problem. You just do well enough to pass Uh, and then you never revisit this stuff. Well, In homeschool, she just took all barrages of Um, evaluation testing for me to see. And it's in all subjects, not just math and science, but history and all that stuff. We were seeing what she didn't know. And then we specifically you know, we looked at resources. Sometimes the resources were for middle school, because that's where she had missed. Yeah.

Timmy Eaton: 23:39

Yeah. Just go back over the gap list.

Jay Wile: 23:41

Yeah. So we would do so we would do that kind of stuff. And that's just something an institution isn't prepared to do because of just the way it

Timmy Eaton: 23:49

works. No. Totally. Yeah. And so what were you and your wife, were you guys studying certain homeschool materials, or were you just using your own knowledge and your own ideas, or were you looking up Charlotte Mason and John Holt and different uh, influencers to the home education movement. Or were you just kinda I'm an educated person. My wife's educated. We can convey education to our

Jay Wile: 24:07

children, to our No. Really, this is one of the problems with the way academics works. As an academic, I knew theory really well, but I didn't know anything about I mean, you know, when I teach chemistry, I mostly teach something I've never done. I have a cert I do nuclear chemistry, but I teach electrochemistry, which I've never done. I teach this, which I've never done. And so in the same way, I knew homeschooling the way I know chemistry mostly from theoretical standpoint. Totally. Yeah. And and from a practical Standpoint, I didn't even know there were things called Charlotte Mason. I didn't know there was home school curriculum. So you know? So when we started home schooling. I did ask a few of my friends not friends, but people I had encountered as homeschoolers what they And most of it was Bob Jones and Rebecca, and I didn't like either one of them very much. Yeah. Yeah. So in the end, I used a lot of stuff that I and on the Internet, I used Some of my old books. I did notice my daughter enjoyed finding the answer more than reading the answer. So I actually started having her do a lot of research based uh, stuff. And she loved learning about how to use the Internet, how to find good reliable sources and unreliable sources on the Internet. That was a practical thing for her. She learned she was back in those days. She was way ahead of her time in knowing what was reliable on the Internet What was it? Because she tried to use it in her schooling to do research, and we'd find out when her answers were right and when they were wrong.

Timmy Eaton: 25:33

That's awesome. That's really how did she like it? Like, how did she do it all the way through senior year?

Jay Wile: 25:37

Yeah. Yeah. Hated every minute of it. Hated every minute And no joke. She's a very social creature. And it's funny nowadays, and as an adult, she's not. But as a teen, she was a very social creature, And didn't want the only reason she did homeschooling was we said, If we're gonna be your parents, this is how it's gonna happen. So it's a package deal, and she took the package. But she really didn't like it. And so I did try and Find ways to make homeschooling a little more enjoyable for her just to show her that I was trying. Totally. But, no, she didn't like it the whole time. Now Once she went to university, after six weeks She appreciated it. Yeah. She called. She had mom get on the other line on the other phone, and she thanked us both. Oh. Because she saw the difference in What it did for her. Yeah. What it did for her. But, no, she didn't like it. So like

Timmy Eaton: 26:28

I said, we might social you and would you say the main reasons were, like, she felt like social was lacking? Or what were the main reasons that she didn't enjoy it? Or did it feel more compelled, or what was it?

Jay Wile: 26:38

She never liked learning, and I think having friends to complain about the learning with was expecting. Yeah. Was missing. Also, and, I only know my experience in Public school For sure. Yeah. Different for her. But she would back when we were temporary guardians before we came before we could homeschool her, she would come home telling me about these Full blown conversations that went on during class. And I was like what was the teacher doing during the stuff? Oh, he was teaching, but nobody was listening. And so I think she found school as a way to say she's learning, but in fact, not learning much

Timmy Eaton: 27:12

at all. When I asked so I'm so I teach right now, and I teach high school level, university level religious education. And It's it's just interesting to me, and I think some of it is just like kids like to say things that they, they their peers wanna hear. It's just whatever. I don't know. But the the there is this consistent answer of what so why do you go to school? When you try to get any kind of philosophical Question in there. First of all, they roll their eyes a little bit, and I get that. But they're almost inevitably, the answer is it's I come because this is where everybody is. This is where the friends are. And I there's nothing wrong with that per se, but that is interesting that we have evolved in our society that school is not even looked at as you this is where you come to learn how to learn and to love learning and to read and to study. That does happen. I know that happens, but it isn't the focus. Especially when you throw in and I loved I played three sports in high school, and I loved it. But especially when you throw that stuff in there and dances. I mean, It be it's become a totally culture unto itself. And I'm not demonizing it, but I do feel like it's a little weird as far as the purpose is to learn, and we've changed that. We've really changed that, but That's interesting that she verified that as well. So talk about what are some unique struggles that you guys had in your Tuition Homeschooling. And then maybe even what you would consider to be the benefits in your own situation and then generally. But let's talk first about Challenges or struggles that you see maybe specifically to your situation and then maybe in general that

Jay Wile: 28:41

you see. For my situation, one of those, she didn't want to do this. Yeah. So we had to and one reason was the social aspect, obviously. So one thing we did to try and help that is our house became the place where her friends could always come. That's awesome. And then when she wanted to go somewhere, We went out of our way with friends. And how was she making friends? To make sure well, these are old friends from, and then church friends. And she was going to the same church we were in, so that was continuing. Cool. If there was some Activity that she wanted to go to with her friends, no matter how inconvenient it was, we tried to make it happen because we're recognizing that we're Taking away some of her social interaction, so we need to give back where we can. Mhmm. Also, because she didn't like it, Uh, I would do things that at least made her not like it less. So so I gave her, Yeah. I gave her a lot of choice on what she read in terms like when we did literature and so forth. Gave her a wide range of choices on what we were gonna read together and so forth. Also, every now and again, she didn't catch on that she could get on to my university's website and find out my days off. So when we had, one of these university Holidays that nobody else celebrates. Yeah. I wouldn't tell her. I'd just wake her up late because, she loves any teen sleep in. I'd wake her up late, and then I'd take her to Kings Island, the local amuse not local, but close by amusement park. Cool. And I would Continually remind her that if she were in public school, she wouldn't be at Kings Island right now. Yeah. And so so, I did try at least Do though meet those show her I was trying. Right? Yes. So so I think that was one. And then the other one for me was It was very easy for me when it came to math and science to figure out where she had her holes. Yeah. When it came to things like History and literature and writing and so forth. That was harder to do. Now it turned out she was a pretty good writer. She was terrible with grammar, but she was a pretty good writer already. So it was just a matter of cleaning up her grammar, which is

Timmy Eaton: 30:44

That's awesome. And your in your situation, I just wanted to get in there for the second, like because you it was one child. That's that is I'm not sure how common that is that people are homeschooling one child. Who was the principal? Was it you and your wife very combined in that, or was it one in particular? Like, how did what it look like on a daily basis?

Jay Wile: 31:03

Yeah. It was mostly me because, Uh, my classes at university the chemistry department at Ball State University had majors, but the way we stayed a legitimate department was we were a Service department. Basically, premeds, nurses, all of these people, and even writers had to take two science courses and all that. And that's how the chemistry department stayed a legitimate department on campus. My classes were very popular, so I could go to my department head and say, I can't teach class before eleven, for example. And he would arrange all the Class so that that's awesome, man. And so that's what happened when we started homeschooling her. I went to him, and he and, he wanted full classes, service classes full, so chem one hundred and all that. We just, we we arranged it so I didn't have to Teach until eleven. So I could what would happen is every morning we'd get up. I was always up early. I would wake her up. If she had done really well on the previous day's assignments, I might let her sleep in a half hour, an hour, something like that because Yeah. Teenagers like that. But then we'd get up and have breakfast so forth, and then we go into the study. And I would go over the lessons that she did The day before in my grading of it and what she did right and what she did wrong, then I'd introduce what she needed to do today. Most of, Like I said, what she was doing research to find her own answers, so it was lists of questions or assignments or something like that. One thing she could not do on her own was math, so I would do the math lesson every day and then leave her problems to do. What I found worked really well, and she admitted it in a way to ask if she could do it. But what I found was she did better if After we got done with all that, I went off to school or went off to work, she could go back to sleep. Yeah. And that's what she would do. So after I left, she'd go back to sleep And then get up and do all of her work. Yeah. And so the rule was, by the time I got home, she had to have all her work done so I could then grade it wow. And start again. So

Timmy Eaton: 33:02

nice flexibility. That's Yeah. It was nice.

Jay Wile: 33:04

Yeah. And it was you know, obviously, you couldn't do this with a seven year old, but you could do this with a fifteen year old. Andy. So my wife's role was more the disciplinarian because, I don't know, Having not had kids, having not grown up with her, all she had to do was crocodile tears, and I was a puppy on the floor. Yeah. But my wife It wasn't affected by that. So whenever there was a problem with the schooling, with her performance or whatever, my wife would get involved there. That's a

Timmy Eaton: 33:32

good team effort. Yeah.

Jay Wile: 33:34

And, also, my wife would offer a lot of suggestions on, here's especially my wife's master's is in information science. So when Dawn needed help using the Internet, that was all Kathleen, my wife. She Wow. Excellent. That's actually would make the Internet sing. Were is there

Timmy Eaton: 33:50

any in your view, are there any general challenges or struggles or things that you're like man, I don't love this about the homeschool world? Or is there anything that come to mind Like, what is it for you?

Jay Wile: 34:00

Yeah. One of it is, I think students secular or Christian in homeschool tend to be very parochial. So they don't have a wide range of academic views they've been exposed to. So you know? And, A lot of it is they don't understand how tentative all of our knowledge is. So they read in their history book, that here's why the hundred years war was won. And no one really knows, and there are lots of different theories, but they learned what their book said, and that's why the hundred War was run won. And, they this scientific concept is right and this scientific concept is wrong, when in fact, A lot of it's really gray. They don't understand that. And So you have

Timmy Eaton: 34:38

to read more widely.

Jay Wile: 34:40

Yeah. And that's hard to do because parents want To one reason parents want to homeschool is they wanna bring them up in their worldview, and so that tends to be exclusionary. And, but I tried to work Against that. I'm a creationist, and my books are creationist. But one thing Dawn and I my daughter and I read in for her high school biology was Richard Dawkins, the blind watchmaker Yeah. Which to this day is his best work. He got he started

Timmy Eaton: 35:04

going downhill after that. But blind law factors I've seen several interviews. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's a good guy. Again? We'll put this in the notes. But

Jay Wile: 35:11

Oh, the blind watchmaker. K. Yeah. And I think the subtitle is something like why design in nature, why the evidence of evolution shows there's no design in nature or something like that. And so Interesting. All evolution, but, I thought it was important for her to see the other side. She had got it already in school, but more importantly, it was important for her to see that I didn't have trouble engaging with the other side. And I think this paid off because her first biology class at university was called dinosaur evolution. Mhmm. And, not every week, but fairly regularly, she'd call me and tell me something that the professor had said that she had never heard before and asked me what I thought about. And I do think that if we hadn't read and it wasn't just Dawkins. It was couple other. But if we hadn't read evolutionary sources and she hadn't seen me engaging with these I'm not sure she woulda asked me that, in college in university because it's just, if your child doesn't see you actively engaging with sides that you don't agree with, they tend to think you don't do

Timmy Eaton: 36:11

that. No. I love that. That's a that is a good thing to model. I agree. Um, This is kind of an aside to that, but, and we'll come back we'll come back, but I like the organic nature of this discussion. So how because as a scientist and as a somebody who's teaching that, how do you respond to the question when people ask you about navigating science and faith. What like, because that's gotta be that's gotta be something that's on, confronting you all the time.

Jay Wile: 36:35

Oh, yeah. And, a lot of it is because there's such a very poor understanding of this history of science. That's and that's the very first thing I say whenever anybody is just asking in general about science and faith is I say we wouldn't have the science we have today if it weren't for the Christian church. Not just for scientists who are Christians. It was the Christian church that brought us the science we have today. The, the science the Greeks brought us was Okay. But it wasn't based on a scientific method. The scientific method was developed by the bishop of Lincoln And his student who was a Franciscan friar. And, and they specifically said the Bishop of Lincoln Robert Grosseteste, Actually said, look. We have systematic theology. They didn't call it that. They call it something else. But what we would call systematic theology today so that we understand god's Special revelation properly. We need to have a system for studying god's natural revelation that's just as accurate as our systematic, Theology. Now he didn't really talk a lot about how you do that, but his student, Roger Bacon, had a whole A section of his major book his Opus Major. The whole section was called the new experimental science. Mhmm. And he was basically explaining how It's okay to come up with hypotheses, but these hypotheses are useless unless you test them. That's what

Timmy Eaton: 37:56

I liked your science. You gave so the one that we started with and have loved is science in the beginning, and I do wanna get to that. And right in the very beginning, I don't know if you do this in all your books, but you give this very clear, simple, concise definition of what science is. And too often, I think people are pitting the two when there's no controversy in my mind. Then and because it's a it's a pursuit of truth, and one doesn't necessarily negate the other. And so I don't know why they're always pitted. That's always been my

Jay Wile: 38:23

And they weren't for a long time. This whole thing about science being pitted against Christianity Occurs right around the mid eighteen hundreds. Prior to that, I teach you a graduate level course at Memorial College on Reading the great scientists of the past, Yes. And their work. And you read Kepler and Newton and Huygens and All these guys. And they regularly reference the creator or providence or whatever the word they use for it is, Specifically as God's done this, and we need to figure this out. That was a very Kepler even says in his Scientific work, he says, that the universe is an image of the trinity. The sun is at the center. That's God. Yes. The the they thought the stars were at the edge of the universe. That's the sun because that's god the sun because we use him for guidance, and then in between is god the holy spirit. He said the universe is the trin is a symbol of the trinity. You couldn't write something like that today in any science, It's a paper or anything. Yeah. It's

Timmy Eaton: 39:20

interesting how and like you said, it's fairly new. It's it's almost similar to fairly new in the sense that traditional schooling that we call now is fairly new. It was always agrarian and home education. And, there was different ways of education, but, the system as we see it now is new. What about benefits? Like, we We kind of went aside, but I wanna come back. You were talking about the general challenges, the struggles. What are you seeing as from your personal experience and your experience observing it? What are the benefits academic or otherwise to the homeschooling choice. It's

Jay Wile: 39:50

important that you say otherwise because While I was homeschooling her and shortly after, I would have talked only about the academic benefits. But in fact, the most important benefit of Us homeschooling our daughter is we have a lifelong relationship with her that's very close, and it wouldn't have happened. And this isn't true for all families, but, we had her for a short time. And so we wouldn't have gotten as close as we had we just have this quantity of time You don't

Timmy Eaton: 40:19

have the time. Exactly.

Jay Wile: 40:21

So that's the big deal. Our daughter Wants to go on vacations with us and wants to you know, she and her husband are long haul truckers. They spend five weeks out on the road with their in their living in truck, and the week they're home, they live with us, and that's the way they want to do it. Cool. They're not doing it because of financial need or whatever. They're doing it because they want to spend time with us. You have

Timmy Eaton: 40:41

that relationship founded. Yeah. Yeah. And

Jay Wile: 40:43

her husband doesn't have nearly as good a relationship with his Parents. And he says he's envious of that. He really is. And there's for us, there's just no way we'd have this relationship otherwise. So that's, to me, the biggest benefit. And I realize not all homeschool families have that same story, but I think you're more likely to have that story as a

Timmy Eaton: 41:03

homeschool That's a good way to say it. It's interesting. As I talk to families either in this podcast or just in general, homeschool families, Academics is usually somewhere down on the list. I'm saying that I'm saying in my experience. And for us, that's accurate too. Like, when we started so we've homeschooled. We've got six kids, and we homeschooled. We've been doing it for about fifteen plus years. So we've had two graduate now now in the third on third graduating here in a year and a half. Anyway and our motivation always from the beginning was time with our kids and time with our family. And all the other misconceptions and preconceptions that we had have slowly just dissipated and gone because, Um, there's just been so many benefits, and academics it turns out academics is one of them depending on how you do it. And people have totally different philosophies, whether they unschool or world school or, there's so many different, tangents of it now. But, any others come to mind for you as far as well, first of all, what would you say what are the academic benefits of it. Like I'm saying, is it academically advantageous to homeschool?

Jay Wile: 42:06

Oh, yeah. And I think there are Probably multiple reasons, but the top two the first one is you can tailor the education to each individual child, and that makes a world of difference and doesn't happen in school. It can't happen in school. And so like I said, my daughter, I learned she wanted to research things. So a lot of Her education was about finding answers to questions, not about reading a textbook and things like that because she learned better that way. And also finding the for her, tailoring the education, we found the holes. I said when she got the p took the PSAT, It was thirty percentile in math, seventy percentile in English. When she took the SAT just Little over a year later. Ninety percent in English, seventy percent in math because we were able to fill in the gaps, and that was Tailored to her. So tailoring is the probably the biggest of all the factors. But I think the second, which is often overlooked, Is in most schools, you are your peer group punishes you for learning. Yeah. So you are learning is discouraged by the peer group. At homeschool, learning is usually encouraged by the peer and not just your siblings, but also when you go to homeschool events and church and all of that. The homeschoolers are much more interested in what you're learning than your peers would be interested.

Timmy Eaton: 43:29

About books is

Jay Wile: 43:29

a big one. About books. Yeah. And because these homeschoolers actually do read and they find out they enjoy it because, read, for most people, reading is enjoyable, and so they wanna talk about the books Dave Wile and so forth. And so that's something that's actively discouraged by most public school and private School peer groups. But it's not in homeschooling. I think that's a big one. This

Timmy Eaton: 43:51

one's Yeah. And it's a cultural thing like you're saying. I like that had that is typically the positive cultural uh, you know, experience for homeschool for homeschool kids is that it is encouraged. And like I said and I don't think the kids even totally believe that, but it is cultural in the schools where for kids to be like, I hate learning, and school stinks. And you just go, why? How has that crept in? But I in

Jay Wile: 44:10

the US, we know there have been lots of studies on this. Young elementary age girls are significantly better at math than elementary age boys. By the time we get to high school, it's exactly reverse. Now the boys are significantly better than the Girls. And, you can put whatever stock you want in sociology papers. But, basically, all the sociological studies say the reason is The girls recognize that being good at math isn't attractive to boys. Wow. And so they simply stopped being good at math. Most of them. Not, Wile was talking about Obviously, yeah.

Timmy Eaton: 44:38

It's average. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. So there is some cultural strong cultural strains there. I wanted to ask you one one more question on the personal side, and then I wanna definitely move to your works and what you've done because they're they've been Such a blessing, honestly, to the homeschool world, and I'm not familiar with who else you're possibly blessing with your works. But What would what counsel would you give if somebody was so so I what I have noticed and the one of the reasons I started this podcast is So many more people are starting to homeschool. And, as a result of COVID and not just that, but COVID and then what people see as government schools instead of just learning and lots of agendas that are being pushed in the schools, all that kind of stuff. And there's a myriad other things. More people are homeschooling, and it's more acceptable. It's more mainstream than it ever has been. And people whereas before, the majority of people were weirded out by it. More people are open to it than ever before now. So with that in mind, what would you tell somebody somebody who's close to you or or if you were talking to a crowd and they said, You know, what are some good counsel to give new homeschool families or people who are considering the option? Because it is a viable option, obviously.

Jay Wile: 45:45

Yeah. As far as what counsel I give somebody who's considering this I'd say, You have to understand, it's a real commitment. It's not something you can, you can do one day and not do the today. Oh, I don't feel like it's a school day. Let's call it mental health day or whatever. No. That doesn't work. School, that's bad for your kids, on multiple levels. So you do have to realize it's a commitment. It's going to be more work for you than any other choice. Now my Brother, my old eldest brother who I consider to be the best father I've ever met. When we adopted our daughter, I said, what advice do you have for me? And he said, I don't really know that I have any answers, but I can tell you this. When you have a choice of what to do with your daughter, Make the decision to choose the option that's hardest for you because that would be the best for her. Wow. And that's really true. And so I think the one reason homeschooling is you can say homeschooling is better is because it's worse for the parents. And when I got my PhD, I went without a lot of sleep because it's a lot of work. I went without a lot more sleep homeschooling. Because I worked a full time job just, rigged my hours. But I slept a lot less as a homeschool father than I did as a PhD student because, I had to be upgrading papers and learning stuff that I didn't know anything about To help her learn and all that kind of stuff. So it's a lot of work, first of all, but the benefit's incredible, not only for the students' academics, but more importantly for your relationship. But that's the other caveat I'd say. There are some personality combinations that simply won't work. Mhmm. And so you do have to be willing to First of all, you have to be able to really honestly ask yourself, can I stand to be with my children for that long? Yeah. Yeah. Good. And maybe five of my kids, that's okay, but the sixth one, no. Yeah. So and you have to make those kinds of decisions because it may be that your personalities just do not work. There are some kids who just cannot have a parent who's an authority figure in any other area. Yeah. So so you do have to think about that. But, yeah, It's gonna be hard work and it may not work. But if it does, it's gonna be the best thing for your relationship as well as for the child's academic. No.

Timmy Eaton: 48:07

Thank you for that response. And, even in the case of some like you said the five kids, you're you're rocking pretty good with them, but You struggle with the other one. There are other ways to facilitate learning that might be an adjustment to what you do with the others. And Oh, sure. Like you said, probably the prominent thought or the highest priority should be what is best for that particular child and your relationship. Because, Let's say you had somebody that you they did do amazing academically, but you're you have no relationship or you hate each other. That's for not. Anyway no. Thank you. That's a great response. Well, let's Let's shift a little bit at least for some time on what you do. Like, Of all, I wanted to ask you and this is now I'm getting just curious for my own, exposure to your works. When did you like, what was your first what was the first text you wrote?

Jay Wile: 48:50

So the first text I wrote was the chemistry book, a high school chemistry book. Okay. And the reason was I wasn't planning on doing any of this. I Was still a professor at Ball State, but I, knew I've was introduced to homeschooling and did a little bit of academic research. Yeah. So I simply looked in the phone book, and there was an Indiana Association for Home Education in the phone book. So I called them. And this

Timmy Eaton: 49:16

is in the early nineties?

Jay Wile: 49:17

Yeah. It's in the early nineties. Gotcha. And they're still around. It's called IAAG. I Don't know if they still have a phone number and are still in the phone book, but they were back Then. Yeah. And by phone book, I actually mean online. I even in the nineties. Yes. I'm with

Timmy Eaton: 49:29

you.

Jay Wile: 49:31

And so I called him, and I said, I'm a professor at Ball State. I've had some really great homeschooled students. I'd like to just find out what's what you guys do. Yeah. And so they you know, we had a little meeting and then they asked me to speak at the next convention. It's just specifically about My experiences with these homeschooled

Timmy Eaton: 49:50

students Oh, you didn't know what you were getting yourself into. I didn't

Jay Wile: 49:53

know what I was getting. Of course, I get introduced as a science professor chemistry professor Ball State University. So immediately, I have five or six parents who want me to start teaching a coop, which I didn't even know what a coop is. And so once I was ex it was explained to me, and I said I'd pray about it and everything I decided that really wasn't homeschooling. That wasn't the strength of homeschooling. Now I'm saying don't do co ops. I do think we use co ops way too much these days,

Timmy Eaton: 50:17

way too much. I am I kinda tend to agree with you. I I wanna do it my family's way, and I'm and, anyway, I'm with you on that. So

Jay Wile: 50:25

but I said this isn't really homeschooling. So rather than teaching a co op, I will write you a Of course. I will send it to you chapter by chapter. Here's my phone number. You can your kids can call me if they get stuck. And that was the way the chemistry book got written. And They have

Timmy Eaton: 50:43

access to this, professor at a university. That's amazing, man. Yeah.

Jay Wile: 50:49

So and here's how I how little I thought of this as a book. I got a call from a lady in a different state in Ohio, and she said I have a friend in Indiana who uses your chemistry book. And I said, I've never written a chemistry book. And she said, no. She sent me this. It says exploring creation with chemistries. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's Yeah. I have written that. I don't think of that as a book. Because, honestly, it was chapters loosely send it by mail. Wow. That's how I was doing. Wow. And so that's what got me started writing and that was ninety four, I think.

Timmy Eaton: 51:23

How are you doing that on the side with your work?

Jay Wile: 51:26

The thing is when you've taught University chemistry, all levels. I taught chemistry for poets, chemistry for doctors, pre meds, And chemistry for chemist and physicist. So I took all three levels for multiple years. It was It's all in your mind. So all you did was go and what made my books Popular among homeschoolers was I typed the same way I talked. So it wasn't like I tried to be real formal. I think I just, What would I say? And then, of course, I've paired it down for high school. But, basically, the entire time, every time I was thinking, okay. This chapter's gonna have to have thermodynamics. The question is, How much thermodynamics does the high school suit the high school student need to have in order to be successful in my university level course when we get Fascinating. So it was all based on experience. And so both chemistry and physics were like that. I could just sit at the typewriter or the computer and type away. And we But

Timmy Eaton: 52:18

how did you order it, and how did you make it flow? Same man.

Jay Wile: 52:21

I ordered my classes. That's the thing. I've done

Timmy Eaton: 52:23

it all. You've done it. Yeah. You were just I when I look at your science in the beginning, for example when you look at it, you're like, this is for, younger years, but, man, it is it's rigorous, but it's but it is accessible, but it stretches you, and I love that. I love that it's not you know, you're not you're making them rise to it. And Yeah.

Jay Wile: 52:42

I've always had a problem with our the way our education system dumbs down. You have to pare down, but you should never dumb down. That's what I'll say. Ever get to a point where you have to start sorta lying to the student about stuff or oversimplifying it, then you don't talk about that at all. Yeah. It's a disservice. Yeah. Yeah. So you pare down. You don't dumb down. So even my elementary courses yeah. You're not covering nearly as much, and you're covering very basic stuff. But I don't want you off the hook. What do you learn about what you know what it really

Timmy Eaton: 53:15

means? Relative to what else is out there, you're covering a ton. I that's what I love about it. About

Jay Wile: 53:20

homeschooling is one one family can spend a year on it, another family can spend three years on it, And it's all because there are different goals and different students, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, you're right. Science in the beginning is a lot more than most elementary level one year courses, but for a lot of homeschoolers, it's more than one year anyway.

Timmy Eaton: 53:36

Yeah. Because you can do a whole unit and, that's the beauty. We you could do whole unit in a few days, and I just love that aspect of it. That's amazing. So you just so so then when did you compile it, actually? When did you say, okay. Let's do make this, and then you compiled it. And that wasn't costing you too much, not financially, but I'm saying it wasn't costing you as far as time and first

Jay Wile: 53:55

cost and yeah. At first, once we got the once I got the chemistry book, the first course done and, sent him all the chapters out and everything. Sure. I started printing it out and throwing it in a binder and selling it at homeschool conventions or selling it Through the mail and everything. But when we decided to actually turn them into real books Was when between my wife and I she tends to go to bed later than I do. That printer would be running probably twenty hours a day. Roll up. Point, we were like, okay. Yeah. We gotta do something else. But, the Lord has always blessed us, financially and so forth. So we were able to borrow a lot of the money necessary to do the initial investment in making books. But, of course, what we found out is if you got the money, suddenly, what used to cost you forty dollars to produce now only cost you five. And so that make way, if you've got a lot of money, you could do this. Yeah. And and so it worked out real well. Pretty early on, Uh, we were just self publishing, then we or self printing it out. Then we hired a printer and did it that way. And but we're still self fulfilling and all of that. And, eventually, we had to hire one person and then two people and then get offices and so it just kinda grew organically. There was one year where I actually tried not to sell anymore because we were in a transition phase where we couldn't grow much.

Timmy Eaton: 55:18

Oh, I don't think most people can say that. They tried not to sell

Jay Wile: 55:22

anymore. But, we hit at just the right time. Homeschooling was starting to get very popular, and there wasn't anything for High school science written for the home. It was mostly Bob Jones and Rebecca trying to or an ACE and those kind of things trying to adapt it to the home, which Doesn't work real

Timmy Eaton: 55:41

well. Wow. So and then how many how do you know how many textbooks that you've produced?

Jay Wile: 55:49

No. I really you mean, you're talking about quantity or title? I don't even know titles. I'd have to go back and think about titles. I'm

Timmy Eaton: 55:55

just quantity. That's because away. You're that prolific that it just keeps flowing. Are you doing anything right now?

Jay Wile: 56:02

I actually this is the first Cheers since nineteen ninety three that I've not been writing. Wow. How does it feel? Well, I I still write, Blog post. I really don't do much of that right now. Yeah. It feels nice. I told my wife, at some point, I one of our favorite authors my favorite, not hers. One of my favorite authors. Yeah. Has a series he's never finished. And I finally told her, I can see why. Yes. Because at some point, it just gets trying. So I will go back to it, but right now, I'm not doing anything. Now what I am doing is my publisher has Just contracted with a nurse to write a book on health high school health program. Oh, cool. Be editing

Timmy Eaton: 56:40

that. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. So you're not it's not like you're not busy.

Jay Wile: 56:46

Yeah. Yeah. And I still I teach. I teach a bachelor's level course for Memorial College. Yeah. And I do teach some online school courses for chemistry and physics for homeschoolers.

Timmy Eaton: 56:55

Excellent. Wow. Maybe just talk a little bit about, so you kinda started your own business at some point, and then and that kind of led you to Berean Builders.

Jay Wile: 57:04

Yeah. So I started my own publishing company. That got so big. I ended up selling it. The sale didn't work out the way it was planned, so I ended up I was supposed to stay for ten years, ended up leaving after two. So I wasn't really thinking of doing much, but then I don't know if you know the company My Father's World. Yes. I love them. I love them. I do know them. I like not only the curriculum, but the people. David Hazel Isn't a remarkable man with what he does. He really

Timmy Eaton: 57:35

I I interviewed a lady from Texas who does a Spanish curriculum for homeschoolers, and she had a very funny you should look up that episode. It was funny that she had a writer or she had an encounter with David Hazel's wife, and David was basically ripping on her work. And then, anyway, They ended up getting together and collaborating, but it was a funny story.

Jay Wile: 57:55

Yeah. They're doing remarkable things with bible translation. They're they fund a bunch of bible. Yeah. It's a Wonderful. Anyway, they said, and they've had this remarkable ability to get publishers to let them start printing books that are out of print. And they even get Usborne to replace millions of years with many years. So they will buy the right to publish or to start printing an Usborne book that's not used anymore. But then they clear with the author to change millions of years to money. No way. They're amazing people. But, anyway, there was a book that was out

Timmy Eaton: 58:29

there. More aligned with creation.

Jay Wile: 58:31

Yeah. To be more Yeah. Creation friendly. Yes. Because that's the problem with Usborne Books is they're not necessarily young earth creation friendly. Anyway they said there's this book that we've had the rights to Print for several years, but we're gonna lose those rights, and the author doesn't want to renew them. So it was basically science in the beginning. It was called Uh, science in the days of Genesis or something like that. And they just said, could you write a book like that's science but separated out by the days of creation For elementary. I'd never done any elementary before. But I was like I'm not doing anything, and it kinda might be kinda fun. aNd I've always thought that if you're gonna do if you're gonna do a lot of hands on stuff, the time to do it is in elementary school because Yes. Learning is not content specific and so forth. So I said yeah, okay. So we're gonna do it, but every lesson's gonna have an experiment. We're gonna have fun with this and everything. And My wife and I work together on the experiments. She's got a degree in physics. Her master's is in information science, but her degree's undergrads in physics. And so we work on experiments together and love doing have a great time doing that. So and sometimes we're both amazed that it worked. We'll talk about it over dinner. Oh, I'll do this. Oh, that's never gonna work. You can do it, and it works. It's wow. Anyway anyway we did that, and I got done, and I liked it. And it is in the my father's world curriculum for that cycle. They use it in place of that other book. But then I got done with that. I thought Mostly because I had fun doing the experiments with my wife. Why don't I continue this with now the human history, the rest of history? Mhmm. So that's what I've that's why I decided to do that. Now I had a noncompete clause with my old publisher, so I couldn't publish any of this for three years. And my father's world couldn't use it for three years or anything like that, which is standard. That's not I'm not saying that's bad or Anything wrong with that? Just is. Just is. So I had three years, and in those three years, I wrote Science in the Beginning and Science in the Ancient World. And I was never going to publish it. I was gonna give it to my father's world and just let them print it like they printed the other books and everything. But then someone who worked with me in my old publishing company actually said, let me write up a business plan, see what you think about me publishing these books. aNd, I cleared it with my father's world because they were the ones who gave me the idea, and they were happy to not print it. Yeah. And so I liked his business plan, and I took it. And so he made Burning and Builders publishing. And we did The whole elementary series, which is a five book series, it starts with creation and ends with the early nineteen hundreds. Mhmm. And then our seventh grade book is science in the atomic age, which is the rest of science. And then we do earth science, and all that's been done by and then we do Biology, chemistry, and physics. And all that's been done by Beringian Builders. Wow.

Timmy Eaton: 1:01:14

That I didn't realize all that background. So so how did that how did you I'm just thinking of your personal life at that Life at that time, which I love that it was, like, something that was like a shared thing with your wife. And I don't know if your daughter was involved with some

Jay Wile: 1:01:26

of that, but, like She doesn't like Science. Yeah. Because god has a great sense of

Timmy Eaton: 1:01:29

humor. But how did you, like, how did you manage your other work and just

Jay Wile: 1:01:34

Can you I really I really wasn't doing anything else. I had the noncompete clause with my former publisher, so I couldn't, you know Well, I mean,

Timmy Eaton: 1:01:41

with your university load

Jay Wile: 1:01:42

and Oh, yeah. My university load I'm not a full time professor anywhere. I'm an adjunct professor. So I teach basically when I want, which is

Timmy Eaton: 1:01:52

So you could put as much time as you wanted it. So, yeah, yeah, Yeah. Did it take you to do for example, the science in the beginning? How long did it take you

Jay Wile: 1:01:59

to About a year and a half. That was much crazy enough, that's harder to write than high school chemistry, high school physics. Yeah. Because I, I really had to think about I had to think about activities, hands on cover, and then all the hands on stuff and everything. So it took me about a year and a half. I knocked out my first chemistry book while I was a full time professor And homeschooling my daughter. I knocked out my first chemistry book, and this chemistry book that the Breedon Builders published it, I knocked it out in four months. Wow. No. It took a lot longer to publish because before I publish any book, I have a PhD in the field other than me review it because I wanna you know, that's peer review. That's a very important part of science. Oh, okay. So you have that. I also had The only student in my university experience who have gotten a hundred percent on everything, every assignment a hundred percent. I had her solve all the problems to make sure I was solving the problems. That's great. So that all took longer, but I knocked out my part in four months. Did

Timmy Eaton: 1:02:55

she happen to be homeschooled or no? No. She had not been.

Jay Wile: 1:02:58

Okay. And, interestingly enough, she was a she she's a wonderful student. How can you complain about a student who gets hundred percent on everything? But she didn't have doesn't have the physical insight, for example, that student I had talked about before did or a lot of my homeschooled students. Yeah, she was a very meticulous person. Yes. anD she ended up going a perfect career. She's a physician's assistant. That's a perfect career For someone who's very meticulous Mhmm. But doesn't have a lot of physical insight. That's the perfect career because that's what you need. Yeah. Yeah, she's brilliant. She's a Great student, and I'm sure she's a great physician's assistant.

Timmy Eaton: 1:03:31

I'm just mindful of time, but I oh, this is this has been fun for me. Just a couple other questions. What are in addition to science, because you obviously have passion there. And I think I've heard you say in another podcast the real physics, chemistry, biology, like, it's especially for secondary home education students and any student for that matter are essential. I I don't know what else you would say to that. But

Jay Wile: 1:03:55

I think, Physics is not necessarily essential. It really depends on what you're doing. What you're gonna do with it? Yeah. Because physics is by far the most important of all the Sciences, and it's the foundational science. However, it's also the most mathematical and the most difficult Yes. Foremost people. So I do think that students don't need to take a real high school physics course. Depending on what they're gonna do. Yeah. If they're not gonna need it in university, not gonna need it in there. I don't think it's all that beneficial. Whereas Chemistry and biology is beneficial even if you never do science again. Both of those are beneficial Yes. For your just everyday life. Physics doesn't really help your everyday life much. Yeah.

Timmy Eaton: 1:04:39

Even though it is foundational, I see what you're saying. It's it's not gonna be that practical.

Jay Wile: 1:04:44

So That's why most universities want to see three high school science. One is life. One is physical, and I don't mean physical science. Chemistry, Physics, meteorology, something like that. And one can be anything else, but they don't require physics. Yeah.

Timmy Eaton: 1:04:58

The majority. What are the what other important subjects outside of the everything is science, but what other important subjects? If you're talking to homeschool families like this, if you were to say it point. Because we do customize. We customize the curriculum to our children. And one thing that I always counsel people is begin with the end in mind, and then from that, determine what that's the beauty of homeschooling is that you can say, if you're really if you know for sure. And I'm not saying there's that many homeschool or any secondary students who are that, for sure about what they wanna do. And hopefully, they do keep an open mind. But let's say a kid did know I am gonna become a whatever, a teacher or a writer or whatever it is. Work your way backwards and then do those things that are most relevant for your course. What are what would you say are just good no matter what?

Jay Wile: 1:05:44

I think every student every year until the student's no longer in school should be doing math every day, every year, no matter what. Doesn't matter whether you like it. Doesn't matter whether you're good at it. Einstein claimed he wasn't very good at math. He's probably better at math than I am, But he compensated for his lack of talent by taking every math class that was offered at his university. When he got his first regular professorship, That university offered more classes. He did what was unheard of at the time. As a professor, he sat with the students and took those courses. Because he realized I'm not good at according to him, not good at math, but I need to be experienced in math. So you have to do that every year, And especially in the elementary years. In the elementary years, there are three things you really need to cover almost every day, Reading, writing, and math. And if you can get through those three things almost every day, that's a really good element. The three r's. Yeah. The three r. Once you go on to junior high and high school, now you can start concentrating on the things you like or you think you need. But once again, math is there all the time no matter what because math is training your brain no matter what. I do think that, like you said, I think that If the student really has a passion for something, you should knock out some of the other things. Say, okay. We're not necessarily gonna do a lot of History this year. Instead, you wanna see Diana Waring's daughter. Diana Waring's a history, Writer. Her oldest daughter decided she wanted to play the piano wanted to go to a conservatory and play the piano professionally. And so she practiced four hours a day. And because you practice four because if her teacher said, look. You wanna do this is what you do to get the technique. You practice four hours And so Diana Waring said, okay. You're not gonna have to do this subject. So Yeah. You can start practice four hours a day. But the point is, and this is something I try and Stress with parents all the time. Your job as a homeschooler is not to get through these specific subjects. Your job as a homeschooler is to give the child the tools the child needs so that he or she can educate him or herself on their own. Excellent. And so it doesn't matter. I had this one student. His name was Nathan Hay. No. Hay. That's the student I have now. I can't remember his name. His first name was Nathan. He I was interviewing him. He was a homeschooled student, went on to Cedarville University, got a degree in electrical engineering. Mhmm. And she he said when he got to Cedarville University, He found out that he was behind in math, which surprised him because he thought he was a good math student. But compared to his peers, he was behind. And I said you got a double e degree obviously, you did something. What'd you do? And he just said, I knew how to learn, so I just caught up. And that's a successful homeschool experience. It doesn't matter that the mom used the wrong curriculum or didn't go far enough or whatever. The fact is the mom taught him how to learn. How to learn. So in the end, it didn't matter that the curriculum the whole math curriculum wasn't the best Or what?

Timmy Eaton: 1:08:41

No. That's really good.

Jay Wile: 1:08:43

Yeah, I don't have any problem with a parent saying, I'm not I have a problem with a parent saying we're not gonna do any Structured learning, but I could I have a problem with a parent who have no problem with a parent saying, this kid's passion is ballet. Okay. Great. Spend knock off some other subjects. Give them more time for ballet. Mhmm. If it doesn't work out, if you've taught them to learn, it doesn't matter. But it also I can have side benefits. I'll tell you another. A quick one. I was at a universe I was at a homeschool convention, and a mother and her son came up to me. And the mother said he's a he's a junior this year and finished his junior year. He said he has a chance of doing a science camp, Intensive science camp or an intensive ballet company for the summer, but he wants to go to med school. She said, so I assume he should go do the science camp. But I said, do you have to audition for this ballet company? Yes. Is it fairly well known? Yes. You definitely do the ballet company. No question about it. None at all. Because when you go to med school, there'll be all sorts of people who've taken science. Yeah. And sure enough, she comes back to me six years later or something like that. And she says when he interviewed for med school, Every one of his interviews ask him about that ballet experience. Absolutely.

Timmy Eaton: 1:09:59

Isn't that interesting?

Jay Wile: 1:10:00

Obviously, he had spent a lot of time about because if he could auditioned for and make this ballet troupe. He was good. But, he had so he had probably sacrificed a few courses, but that didn't matter because Anything you're learning is going to benefit you in the long term if the whole goal is simply to learn how

Timmy Eaton: 1:10:17

to learn. And learn deeply. Learn deeply, know how to learn. I love that you're saying that. Yeah. That's really helpful. Man uh, maybe I'll just maybe try to conclude with this. One thing that I have always wondered about like, so so I'm somebody I pursued, graduate degrees and stuff like that, like you and I know the value of the learning, but you don't need a piece of paper to learn. And in today's world, there's so much learning. What do you tell people that are approaching you know, students that are approaching post secondary, and maybe just I would call it life after high school or life after homeschool. What would your counsel be to somebody, who doesn't have a totally for sure idea of or something that requires I need this piece of paper, for example, an entrepreneur. How should people utilize their post secondary education, whether it's a formal ed like, are you like, no. Every kid should get a degree, or are you, like what tell me your thoughts on that, and what would you counsel in today's climate?

Jay Wile: 1:11:13

The majority of students should never go to college. The majority of Students should never go to college. I, I teach at a a a a Christian university. I used to. It's kinda taken a leftward lurch, so I'm not Nearly as happy with it these days. But initially, I was teaching at the this adjunct position at this local university here. And I would have freshman chemistry. I would have sixty students. Twenty of them should have been there. The other four forty were wasting their time, probably their parents' parents' money, and they were distracting the twenty kids who should have been there. So there are two reasons to go to university and only two. One, you have a career path in mind that requires that piece of paper. Then yeah. You go. You have to, but no choice. The only other reason you go to university is if you are a natural scholar. If rather than reading fiction, you want to read nonfiction. And rather than just accepting an explanation, you wanna debate it with somebody else from a different position. That's a natural scholar. University is a great place for you. If you don't meet one of those criteria, you have no business in college. And most likely well, we don't know this for sure, but most likely, your earnings will be lower than they otherwise would be if you go to college without one of those two paths in mind. Mhmm. Because in the

Timmy Eaton: 1:12:32

end, a praise not just about going. Because I feel like people always are putting forth when they visit schools or they visit, youth, they'll say, here are the statistics. People with a degree earn this much, people without a degree. But maybe the thing that's not being said in there is what you're saying Is what was your purpose and what was your intention of going?

Jay Wile: 1:12:49

But you've gotta be actually be careful of these statistics because if you actually look at The current situation in the US, don't know what it's like in Canada. The average college graduate makes less money than the average technical school graduate. The average. Because there are so many people in college in the US getting gender studies degrees and art history degrees. All of those have purpose, but they don't have they don't have a Career path. Yeah. They don't have many career paths. So in the end, they end up working in sales and things like that because they can't get a job in their degree field. Whereas if you get a technical certification for Network security or for plumbing or something like that, you're gonna have a job before you leave technical school, and it's gonna be a good paying Good job. Yes. So I honestly think if the goal is simply to have a good paying job, technical school's much better. Get some certification for something everybody needs that requires skill. Skilled labor is incredibly over It's incredibly valuable these days. Yes. And so no. I wouldn't say that. And for a homeschooler, If you don't know whether you've got a career path in mind with the college, then definitely don't go to college because if you don't have a defined career path that requires it, don't do it. And start trying to find the kinds of experiences you can have while you're in homeschooler, a homeschool, to figure out what you wanna do. So my daughter loves animals, and her first thought was she's gonna be a vet. And so I have simply had I called one the couple of vets have found one local who was willing to just let her Clean out cages and things like that. Excellent.

Timmy Eaton: 1:14:25

Excellent.

Jay Wile: 1:14:26

And the thing is, once she started talking to the vet, she realized she didn't wanna be a vet. Yep. At all.

Timmy Eaton: 1:14:32

Because I totally commend the same practice. I think that's such a good thing to do is to volunteer and to shadow and then get some real experience. Really? We pursue things, and we haven't even done the search to kinda know if we're into it. We just

Jay Wile: 1:14:45

And, and there are a lot of and especially if you think you might wanna do something academic. Most academics are really happy to spend, an afternoon or something like that telling you what they do. Yes. So if you say, okay. I maybe I wanna do I kinda like the chemistry. Maybe I wanna do chemistry. Then find a college that's close, call the chemistry department, the secretary, ask the secretary, do you have any professors who'd be willing to sit down with my son or daughter For two hours and talk about what he or she might do in chemistry. And most universities will find a professor to do

Timmy Eaton: 1:15:18

that. That is so good. I love it.

Jay Wile: 1:15:20

And You know? And at homeschooling, you have a chance to do that because the professor's not gonna wanna do this in the evening. Right? Yeah. But if you can if they can fit you between two classes, then That'll be great, but that'll be during the day. As homeschoolers, you got the day free.

Timmy Eaton: 1:15:33

And I love what you're saying, which sounds just so simple, but it is. You just call them. Call them and go do it because that's what we're finding too, and we've just and people don't do that. I just and as I talk to you, they just don't make the phone call. Just make some phone calls, Begin with the end in mind and see what you're gonna do, and then have experience. It's fun. It's fun to have those experiences and those talks. You'll walk away edified for sure. This has been an excellent conversation. I am so grateful for your time. I've loved it. I wanna give you the final word, anything you wanna say, and then also if you could tell us where people can find you and the best way to kinda get your stuff and follow your works and anything else.

Jay Wile: 1:16:10

Okay. Yeah, my final word would really be, for homeschooling parents. Homeschooling parents are this unique breed of people who are working as hard as they can for their children and often thinking that they're failing their children. And I've I have to say just homeschooling your children already gives them a leg up, and not only in career and everything else, but just in society. Homeschool students make better citizens. They're less likely to be on welfare, all of those things. You might think you You aren't giving them enough math or whatever, but don't worry about it. Just by homeschooling him, you are giving them a leg up. As far as where you can find me, my books are all at Berean Builders dot com. So remember, the Bereans were the ones who always studied The scriptures and made sure that what sure Paul was doing the right thing there. So Berean Builders, we wanna build Bereans. So bream builders dot com. That's where all my books are and so forth. I do have a blog dot doctor Wile dot com, but it's very Haphazard when I when I Yeah. When you got time. Update it. And it's very nerdy. No.

Timmy Eaton: 1:17:16

No. We that all the nerdier, the better, man. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, and people are gonna enjoy this one. So thank you for giving this this time to everybody. Oh, it's been my pleasure. That wraps up another edition of this golden hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it if you would take a minute and give us a review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it, and thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Timmy Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.