During a podcast interview with Theo Von, actor Vince Vaughn opened up about pulling his daughter out of traditional schooling and the reasoning behind the decision.
When the topic of homeschooling came up, Vaughn confirmed he had gone that route personally. “My daughter in first grade, we did it,” he said. “I hired a lady that was good. I got a curriculum, and I’d pick a curriculum that I liked. But the first year she was by herself, and she’d look at me when I’d leave her in the classroom like, no one wants to be sitting by themselves.”
That experience pushed him to find something different. He stated, “So then I found a public hybrid school where she would go two days a week. And then I moved her to a local Catholic school, and now she goes to a big public high school and she’s doing great.”
But the reason he initially pulled her went deeper. Vaughn explained that it came down to what he felt was being taught and how.
He noted: “For all the same reasons, you start looking at this stuff and figuring that you want to try to give an education that is not so drowning in beating them down.”
When Theo pressed him on what he meant by that, Vaughn was direct. He said, “Everything was taught from a place for a while like pointing out everything bad, and you can’t say this or you can’t feel this way, or so much guilt education. You’re bad to feel this way or that way.”
He continued: “I thought it’s just too heavy. And also, just a hatred of anything. I always liked optimism, being positive. Why not share different ideas? Why not have a difference of opinions and create an environment where you can talk about different things?”
Theo noted that it seemed like kids were being made to feel bad about themselves, and Vaughn agreed. “I’d go to my kids, and when I would get stuff, I’d say, this is not the history of how this started. This is not real. We didn’t invent any of this. So you’d have to kind of go, and that’s a lot of work.”
Theo observed that the process amounted to a kind of reprogramming, to which Vaughn simply agreed.
Vaughn also touched on how his own upbringing shaped his views on school. His father was the first in his family to attend college and consistently uprooted the family to get access to better schools.
“They kept moving to get to better schools,” Vaughn said, “but we weren’t prepared for that because I didn’t know what a tutor was. No one had a tutor. So we moved to an area that was more academic and exposed to stuff, which was good.”
He also spoke warmly about the patriotic tone of his own schooling. “We were super pro America. Everything was taught in that way. I liked it, by the way. I love it,” he said.
Theo agreed with him, saying: “It kept us together. It was like one thing you had in common. If you take away things that people have in common, then they don’t have anything in common.”
