Craig Thompson (@CraigThompson)

I posted this in the homeschooling forum recently, but it is definitely worthy of being looked at by business owners if for no other reason than to encourage fellow business owners to seek out and prioritize the hiring of #homeschooled students. When is a child more competent than a person with a college degree? When they are homeschooled, of course. I had an interesting conversation with a medical professional recently. I had not seen him in a while, so we were able to catch up on what was going on in life and in business. What he shared was alarming although not at all surprising. He has been unable to find patient charts and files in his office filing system because one employee was unable to understand basic alphabetical filing. "BROwn comes after BRAnson and certain after BARns" was something the employee just either could not comprehend or had never truly been taught the alphabet properly. Another employee he hired had a college degree. She could not do basic math. "If you have 300 in one account and 100 in another, what is the difference?" "200." "Right. Now let's say that you have 300 in one account and -100 in the other, what is that difference?" Blank look. No comprehension at all of the mathematical concept of negative numbers. This employee was completely useless when it came time to read charts which the doctor had written over the course of decades because, yeah, you guessed it, they were written in cursive. No clue how to read them. Her handwriting on the charts she was supposed to be adding to or filling out was so bad that the doctor told me that to describe it as being like a second grader's handwriting would have been an insult to the second grader. She couldn't even write between the lines. He moved her around the office trying to find anything that she could do. Nothing. After being moved to one position she actually had the audacity to ask if she was getting a raise since her job duties had changed. She had been passed up from grade level to grade level and finally was handed a diploma from an accredited college or university because...nobody would tell her, "You failed." It was left to a business owner to enlighten her as to what does and doesn't work post graduation. I had a long conversation with our children about this real-world example of just how low the bar is in public education. Literally, my youngest child could do the math using negative numbers without thinking hard when asked. It also gave me a chance to talk about the need to have a higher personal standard of excellence so that when they get into the business world, they can easily compete against the other business owners based on attention to detail, quality of service, etc. Hopefully this will encourage some stressed, harried, and discouraged mom or dad out there who is still slaving away on the fundamentals. They matter. DEI won't last forever. Someday people will all understand that it really means "Didn't Earn It" and will crave service and products from people who really know how to do something. Our children who are being homeschooled and taught real skills will be positioned well to be the business owners and leaders of...almost anything that matters. And if you are a business owner or manager, you would do well to make inroads into the local homeschooling community to look for your interns and new hires. I told my youngest that with one day of training they could go down and begin the process of fixing the folder filing system of a medical office just based on their current skillset. It's something to think about, for sure.