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TranscriptIntroduction
It’s so wonderful to be meeting with you again today, and I’m super excited to talk about Expectational Education with you.
This is a project the seeds of which were planted in the 1980’s. It grew slowly and methodically for the next twenty-some years, and with the exception of a few test cases here and there in various educational settings, the official core study began around 2010. Now, over ten years later, I’m so incredibly pleased to share my results with you. Of course, you will find free episode notes, transcripts, and related resources linked in the description of every episode in this series, so be sure to check those out. But now let’s turn our attention to this idea called Expectational Education and discover why expectations are so incredibly powerful. Topic
1. What is Expectational Education?
Expectational Education is an educational philosophy that can be applied in every academic scenario. It can be a homeschool, Christian school, or public school. It can be used with any age, it can be used with any size class, and it can be used with any curriculum. In fact, the tenants of Expectational Education can be applied to any course of study including spiritual truth as well as what may be considered the simplest of concepts like tying one’s shoes, making breakfast, putting away the groceries, and other household chores. As a philosophy, it is not a curriculum like Classical Conversations, it is not designed to only work in one kind of educational setting, and since anybody can put these concepts into practice in their own or someone else’s life, there are incalculable applications. Therefore, I believe that Expectational Education is simply a biblical model for glorifying God in our learning. Now, before we talk about the power of expectations and why this system is firmly built on them, I want to tell you that today’s show has been brought to you by MyPillow. That’s right, Mike Lindell and I have partnered in order to bless you, bless us, and bless them. You are blessed by being able to replace your generic pillow that’s so old you can’t remember where you got it with an exquisite product known the world around for comfort and support for a fraction of the cost of overpriced brands that are more interested in your money than your sleep. Truth.Love.Family. is blessed because whatever you buy—be it pillows, sheets, towels, dog beds, slippers, coffee, or the multiple other products available at MyPillow.com/Evermind—Evermind Ministries receives 25% of your order. If you spend $100, Truth.Love.Parent. will receive $25. How awesome is that?! And, of course, MyPillow is blessed because you’re enjoying their products. So, be sure to visit MyPillow.com/Evermind to see their current products and special offers. Now, be sure to add the “/Evermind” on there, or we won’t receive any benefit from your purchase. They currently have a buy one get one free offer on their cooling MyPillow 2.0, and you can purchase their Premium MyPillow for only $25 with our promo code. In fact, they’re also offering their 6-piece MyTowel sets for only $25 as well as bed sheets, sandals, slippers, and many more. And if you use our link or enter the promo code “evermind” you can get $100 off a mattress topper and a free set of sheets. So, check out MyPillow.com/Evermind today to participate in this three-way blessing. So, now let’s ask . . . 2. What are Expectations? According to the Webster 1828 Dictionary, an expectation is “The act of expecting or looking forward to a future event with at least some reason to believe the event will happen.” According to Merriam Webster, to expect something is “a: to consider probable or certain, b: to consider reasonable, due, or necessary, and c: to consider bound in duty or obligated.” Though all of those are great points to consider, I think the second is the most appropriate for this discussion. An expectation is the act of looking forward to a future event with at least some reason to believe the event will happen. And that event is considered reasonable, due, or necessary. Every person has at least one of two types of expectations being applied to their lives. The first is Internal Expectations. Internal Expectations come from inside us and apply to ourselves, others, or a situation. For example, I may expect of myself to wake up at 6am. I may expect my mail carrier not to drop my mail on the ground. I may also expect rain when I see the foreboding clouds. Each of these is looking forward to a future event that I believe is reasonable, due, and/or necessary. However, I may also have expectations in my life that are External Expectations. These expectations are directed toward me by another. My boss may expect that I be to work at 6am, or my server expects that I will leave a tip. The individuals with the expectations are looking forward to a future event that they believe is reasonable, due, and/or necessary. Both Internal and External Expectations are important in my life, but one of them is more important than another. Everyone in my life can have expectations for my life, but unless I have that same expectation for myself, there’s a high probability that I won’t do what is expected. However, even if no one else expects something from me, the sheer fact that I expect it from myself will practically guarantee it will occur. In fact, some people have expectations that defy reality, and yet the expectations come true. Most of you are familiar with the placebo effect. In certain cases, an individual will take a medication or participate in an activity that they firmly believe will result in their physical healing. And it’s been proven over and over that even if the medication is nothing more than a sugar tablet or the activity has nothing to do with the ailment, if the person truly believes it will heal them, they often get better. Now, that observation can open up a door for many questions as to how and why that can occur, but this is not the time to dive into that. For now, it’s important that we recognize that it was nothing more than the expectation that brought about the result. 3. How do Expectations Influence Education? One of the seed ideas that gave birth to Expectational Education is an observation I made long ago that “Genius is Expected.” Every genius I had researched either expected greatness from themselves or had someone else in their lives that was expecting greatness from them. Now, I am not claiming that this system will make your child a genius, but I am saying that it can. There are three kinds of geniuses in this world. There are those who naturally function on a different level than everyone else. They are the Natural Geniuses. Child prodigies in music and math are good examples of these. Then there are those who by work have set themselves apart. They have moved themselves up to a different level by working very hard. They are the Learned Geniuses. These individuals are seen to be geniuses by those who don’t know them well because they do in fact function on a different level than most, but they got there in a very different way than those who were born with the natural proclivity. The third kind of genius is a mix of the previous two. These are the Learned Natural Geniuses. They were born with a natural predisposition, but they also worked hard to further hone their abilities. I believe Usain Bolt is a perfect example of this. Usain Bolt is considered the fastest man in modern history. Not only is it clear that he was gifted with physical abilities beyond experience, but he worked tirelessly to hone those skills. By the way, a young man by the name of Noah Lyles is currently the worlds fastest man, but he has yet to break Bolt’s 100 and 200 meter events. His eyes are set to break that record at the 2024 olympics in Paris. Now, Expectational Education can’t make you or your child a Natural Genius, but it can help you to become a Learned Genius, and—if you are already a Natural Genius—can help you become a Learned Natural Genius. It does so by identifying and implementing appropriately high expectations for the individual in question. Both of these steps are important. First, appropriately high expectations must be accurately identified. If the expectations are too low or too high, they will only damage the situation. All people rise or fall to the level of the expectations in their lives—whether they be external or internal expectations. Therefore, it’s imperative that we have the right ones. Expectational Education tailors the student’s learning to their individual highest potential instead of their past performance, their attitude toward learning, or any current cultural biases. Expectational Learning creates an atmosphere where the student can thrive and mature because it identifies and implements the right expectations. So, let’s consider the power of expectations by looking at three ways that expectations hurt us and the only way they can help us. A. Low Expectations Low Expectations are harmful because they demand that we fail. In Colossians 3:23 we read, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.” Similarly, Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” I Corinthians 10:31 reinforces that we do our best for the right reasons: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Galatians 6:9 encourages us with, “And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.” Proverbs 13:4 reads, “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, But the soul of the diligent is enriched.” And there are so many more passages that command, describe, or exemplify the need to do our best. Therefore, doing less than our best is a sin, and it’s a failure to please the Lord. When we have Low Expectations for our children we are giving them permission to fail. When someone else has Low Expectations for us, they’re asking us to fail by doing less than our best. There are so many ways in which we have Low Expectations for ourselves and our children and students. Any time we choose to impatiently do something for our kids because it will simply take longer for them to do it, we are demanding that they fail by not even having the chance to succeed. This also happens when we’ve been convinced that certain information or an activity is beyond our child’s developmental stage, and so we create a barrier for entry by refusing them the opportunity to learn. By the way, I plan to talk about the truth and lies of developmental stages later this season. It’s so sad to me that daily in the lives of millions of young people in our society, they are being presented with nothing but Low Expectations and are therefore expecting those same low standards for themselves. But what about standards that are average? They’re better than being too low, right? B. Moderate Expectations The issue with Moderate Expectations is that they reinforce complacency. I’ve always told my students that if a young person does their best and gets a “C,” that is infinitely better than an “A” student doing less than their best and receiving a “B.” This isn’t about higher or lower in comparison to anyone else. This is about identifying and implementing our best to the glory of God. The best thing about Moderate Expectations is that they reinforce complacency, but—this is something I rarely have the time to get into when I’m doing an interview on someone else’s show—but there’s really no such thing as Moderate Expectations. Moderate Expectations are a comparison against other people and their performance. But though Expectational Education does consider what people are generally capable of accomplishing, the real meat of the system is that it identifies the individuals best and sets expectations in place that will help them achieve it. Therefore, if there is only one best for me, then anything less than my best—even if at appears average and better than other people’s Low Expectations—it’s still lower than it should be for me, and therefore, it’s demanding failure of me. It’s really easy to be complacent in our parenting or our teaching when we know our kids aren’t accomplishing all they could, but they’re accomplishing more than others are, or they’re accomplishing what the state of expects of them. All we’re doing is breeding a comparative complacency in our kids that makes them comfortable with Lower Expectations than they should, and they are therefore failing to truly glorify God. But it’s also possible to swing too far to the extreme. C. Inappropriate High Expectations If I tell my daughter that I expect her to go into our backyard and construct a spaceship that will land me on the moon, I am expecting the impossible. Not only am I practically inviting her to fail, I’m forcing her to fail. Someone can be handed Low Expectations but not give in to the request, but—instead—excel by doing more than was asked of them. But when I am given an expectation that it is literally impossible for me to achieve, I can’t help but fail. I will fail every time. Inappropriate High Expectations force failure. Now, there are two big hurdles with this point. On one extreme, nobody in the world truly knows what their best is. And when something is asked of us that is higher than we believe we are capable of accomplishing, it’s so easy for us to believe it’s “too hard” or even “impossible.” How many times have we heard our children bemoan, “I can’t”? Let me make this clear, just because someone believes the expectations are inappropriately high, doesn’t mean they is. When we give in to such thinking, all we’re doing is giving them permission to fail by potentially having lower expectations than we should. And that leads to the second difficulty with this point. How do we know if the expectations are too high? I believe the fear that we don’t realize we’re forcing our kids to fail petrifies us into inaction, or leads to embracing Low Expectations, or convinces us that we’re being Moderate when we compare ourselves to others. So, let me encourage you that you can know if the expectations are inappropriately too high, and even if you don’t catch it at first, it’s not an issue, because you will catch it later. The problems arise when the expectation becomes more about what we want to see versus what is best for the student. It’s in those situations where we become inflexible and will often continue to force failure through Inappropriate High Expectations because we being prideful and selfish. So, instead of Low, Moderate, or Inappropriate High Expectations, we must identify and implement . . . D. Appropriate High Expectations Appropriate High Expectations are the only expectation that promote maturity. They help people identify God’s best for their lives and actually accomplish it. That is the very definition of maturity. But the identification of Appropriate High Expectations is not enough, those expectations must be implemented, and that’s where the accomplishment comes in. Now, as I mentioned before, there is way too much information to cover in 5 podcast episodes, so please know that there are many questions you may have that won’t be answered, and there will be many principles that we can’t flesh out. If you would like me to speak on and fill out any of these topics on your podcast, radio show, homeschooling co-op, or teacher’s convention, please visit AMBrewster.com or use the Evermind App to make your request. If you would like me to come to your organization and teach this material so that you and your people are equipped to implement it, you can also visit AMBrewster.com or use the Evermind App to submit your request. Also, before we discuss our final point today concerning the implementation of powerful expectations, I want to point you to some podcast episodes we’ve already published that have to do with education, learning, and your child’s best. The Family and Education takes a look at various ways your children can and cannot glorify God in their educational choices. Teach Your Children to Learn opens the Bible to teach parents how to teach their children how God created, called, and capacitated their children to learn. God's Will for Your Child gives you a ton of information as well as a proprietary tool you can use to identify who God is creating your children to be. The Merest Christianity answers the question, “Why do your kids do what they do?” and will be a very valuable tool later in our discussion concerning Expectational Education. The Rock, The Bread, & The Donut is a really cool look into the things we give our kids, and what God expects from us. And The 5th Way to Parent is a two-part episode that helps us understand the difference between high expectations and high biblical expectations. Each of those series is linked in the description of this episode, and you can find hundreds of other episodes at TruthLoveParent.com all about how we can do our best to help our kids to do their bests when it comes to glorifying God. Now, let’s finish our discussion today by recognizing the most important part of implementing Appropriate High Expectations. There are many ways I can teach you to formulate and implement Appropriate High Expectations, but the most important one takes us back to one of my opening observations. The most powerful expectations that can even defy reality are Internal Expectations, and Internal Expectations are the expectations a person has for themselves. Therefore when it comes to implementing Appropriate High Expectations in your child’s or student’s life, you must learn how to persuade them—to convince them. We talk about this quite a bit in our Biblical Parenting Essentials Conference on the Evermind App. You can easily create a free account and gain access to that conference and all of the additional resources for only $20. Normally that material costs $25, but if you use the link in the description of the episode you can get $5 off the regular price. During the Reproof Stage of parenting I talk about the importance of not only presenting truth, but also presenting it in a persuasive way. You will definitely want to check out that conference for this reason and more. However, to give you a practical way to help your kids internalize expectations, I highly suggest you learn to communicate those expectation in unapologetic, matter-of-fact ways. For example, I regularly communicated to my children from a very young age that God created them to be and do more than the world understands. I told them matter-of-factly that the world simply doesn’t understand what’s best, but that God created us to do great things, commands us to do great things, and capacitates us (or gives us the ability) to do great things. Now, contrary to popular belief, this is not a mantra or mere affirmation. This isn’t about boosting self-esteem or any of that nonsense. This is about identifying the realities that our Creator God gets to decide how we live our lives and that we don’t truly know what we’re capable of doing. It’s not about finding the power inside of us, it’s about acknowledging the power in God for us. So, when it comes to implementing Appropriate High Expectations in your home, class, business, or church, it is very important that you on-board them equipping them to believe the truth about themselves, the situation, and God. To that end, let me put in another plug for The Merest Christianity series. It identifies biblically why we do what we do and teaches us how to believe things we used to reject. Conclusion
Thank you for joining me for this longer than usual episode. I hope you’re excited to continue learning about Expectational Education and how it can revolutionize your life and the lives of the people God has brought into your life.
So, please, please, please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets so that other Truth Love Parents can learn along with us. If you are looking for personal help, please write to [email protected] or call (828) 423-0894. From now until the end of July 2024, you can receive 50% off all of your counseling sessions with us through the completion of your program. And don’t forget to check out the additional resources I’ve linked for you, the Biblical Parenting Essentials Conference, and go to MyPillow.com/Evermind to get your home some fantastic necessities and benefit Truth.Love.Family. in the process. On our next episode we’re going to dig even further into Expectational Education by talking about the importance of maturity in every area of life, but specifically in education.
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