A New Curriculum to Rescue our Children
Increasing numbers of young students are leaving schools.
Why?
There are many factors that contribute to student attrition from schools in recent years, including most notably the pandemic, concern over safety issues, drugs, and even declining birth rates. But there is perhaps one factor that is more important than all of these other factors combined: the education system is corrupt.
Increasing numbers of students, and their parents, are also waking up to this sad reality. They are sick and tired of the indoctrination and propaganda that is so prevalent in the American school system. Instead of being taught the truth about religion, philosophy, history, literature, and even math and science, too many are being fed a steady diet of nonsense in the form of alphabet soup ideologies such as CRT (critical race theory), SEL (social emotional learning), and a variety of radical and degenerate sexual creeds. The corruption may be worst of all in higher education, but it is rampant everywhere.
The question, as always, is “therefore, what?” or “What is to be done?”
In my opinion, the only and best solution to this problem and every other problem in the world is to preach the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But Americans also need to be educated, to learn how to think clearly, and to reason with discernment. To that end, I would like to introduce what I consider to be the best solution to our education problem in America: Fathom the Good.
What is Fathom the Good?
Fathom the Good is a curriculum that includes a unique approach to education that can give both adults and children wisdom against the world and prepare them to live woke-free and independent of the ideologies, indoctrination, and propaganda of the modern American education system. Fathom the Good was created by Elizabeth Sexton and Ralph Hancock in a remarkable collaborative effort that has the potential to bless families everywhere.
The curriculum is unique because it makes the highest levels of scholarship accessible to young and old alike, even those with no philosophical background. In simple ways that are naturally engaging, Fathom the Good nourishes and enhances our God-given capacity to reason. If you can read and write, you will benefit from Fathom the Good.
How does it work?
Fathom the Good uses original text, primary sources, reasoning tools, mentoring videos, podcasts for parents, and family discussion guides to enhance the capacity of students to think clearly and to distinguish truth from error. Professor Ralph Hancock’s original commentary guides students towards a higher philosophical understanding regardless of their prior educational experience, and it conveys the kind of helpful knowledge that everyone needs to navigate through the radical ideologies that are so prevalent in our world.
Fathom’s primary sources draw directly from the great thinkers and authors who helped to shape what has come to be known as “The Great Conversation” that is the foundation of our Western political, philosophical, and religious heritage: Alexis de Tocqueville, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Machiavelli, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, Rene Descartes, G.K. Chesterton, Seymour Lipset, C.S. Lewis, Irving Kristol, and Allan Bloom, just to name a few.
Fathom the Good also uses reasoning tools to help students to hone their critical thinking skills. It has become increasingly apparent that public and even private education in the United States has failed to provide Americans with real critical thinking skills and the ability to analyze and synthesize the philosophical texts and principles upon which our great nation was founded. Such ignorance jeopardizes the cause of liberty and justice, as well as the moral traditions that undergird this great cause.
Fathom’s five-minute animated mentoring videos also provide verbal and visual explanations of philosophical concepts to enhance the learning process. A series of thirty-minute podcasts for parents help to streamline the course material, summarize the lessons, and provide additional insights. The family discussion guides are a quick, go-to resource for parents, grandparents, and other adults who want to guide children of all ages in meaningful conversations about things that really matter.
Of course, I’m not an unbiased proponent of this new curriculum. Ralph Hancock is my dad, and Elizabeth is my friend. But I do not make my endorsement willy-nilly or simply because of my relationship to the creators of this new curriculum. I am passionate about education myself. I love learning. I have devoted much of my life to education. But even after all of my studies and experiences in education, as soon as I began to help edit and review the Fathom courses, I knew that I had stumbled onto something special.
In fact, after finishing the courses myself, I learned so much that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Fathom the Good even to my best and smartest graduate school professors. It is that good. But the truly remarkable thing is that with such dogged perseverance and tenacity, Elizabeth has accomplished what I might have previously considered to be impossible, namely, to make thinking at the highest level accessible to the average person, including the average parent and his or her children.
If you, like me, are sick and tired of the indoctrination and propaganda that is so prevalent in the American school system, and if you, like me, are not content with the mediocrity and the imbecility that is being handed down to the rising generation in our nation’s schools, then I cannot recommend Fathom the Good more highly. Young people will love the challenge to learn something of substance, to stretch their minds, to expand their souls, and to learn how to really think. And as much as young students will love it, I’m sure that adults and parents will love it even more. The content and the form of the curriculum aims not only to edify, but also to prepare us to do battle in the ongoing and raging contest for liberty and truth. Together we can fathom the good and help to set American education, and America herself, on a better course for the future.
Don’t just take my word for it.
On his excellent Cwic Media show, Greg Matsen endorses Fathom the Good (see here, here and here), and he also interviewed my dad about Fathom and other things.
Lorelei praises Fathom the Good as follows:
“Fathom the Good has been the best curriculum I have ever done. Coming from someone who hates writing and avoids it like the plague, I was surprised by how approachable and unintimidating the course is. I love that it is incremental, building on skills and knowledge, and teaches you how to think, not what to think.”
And Rozelle Hansen adds her endorsement:
“I wish there was a Fathom the Good program available when I was in high school. I have loved sitting by my daughter as we learn together about the origins and development of the Western Philosophical Tradition, the ideas of great thinkers, and how these ideas helped form our Constitutional Republic.”