In the book “A Thomas Jefferson Education” by Oliver DeMille, it shares a list of essential skills from Harvard School of Law:
- The ability to define problems without guides.
- The ability to ask hard questions which challenge prevailing assumptions.
- The ability to quickly assimilate needed data from masses of irrelevant information.
- The ability to work in teams without guidance.
- The ability to work absolutely alone.
- The ability to persuade others that your course is the right one.
- The ability to conceptualize and reorganize information into a new pattern.
- The ability to discuss ideas with an eye toward application.
- The ability to think inductively, deductively and dialectically.
As I compare the above list with my experience, I think I missed out of several of these skills. I think that I was able to accomplish #3,4, 5, & 8. #2 would put your grade in jeopardy. #6 would be true but the right one was whatever the professors’ thought was true. New patterns (#7) were challenging the system and discouraged. I still feel that I am lacking an education, but I have several pieces of paper that say I am educated.
I started homeschooling with my eldest child during his kindergarten years due to some personal struggles he was experiencing. I was given the first edition of the A Thomas Jefferson Education book to read. I read it and put it on the shelf. I had no idea how to deal with it. I didn’t have an education like that at all. I was introduced to the TJE philosophy several more times before I decided to try parts of it. I started reading the books in the back. Finding others to discuss the books with was much harder to do. I reached out to some online groups to help me out and then attended a seminar put on by Aneladee Milne who was with LEMI (Leadership Education Mentoring Institute) at the time. I had some life-changing experiences and fumbled my way through implementing this in my own home. I changed so much about who I was because of this book. I renegotiated my core phase and started to get to know myself in new ways. One of the ways that I have changed is that I like Wythe skills better. Harvard skills are good too, but I think if I can work to achieve the Wythe skills I will have achieved an education.
Wythe Skills:
- The ability to understand human nature and lead accordingly.
- The ability to identify needed personal traits and turn them into habits.
- The ability to establish, maintain and improve lasting relationships.
- The ability to keep one’s life in proper balance.
- The ability to discern truth and error regardless of the source, or the delivery.
- The ability to discern true from right.
- The ability and discipline to do right.
- The ability and discipline to constantly improve.