Overview and Update for 2025
Here's what's in the works for Tectonic School in the upcoming year
I just released a promo video for the new year. This post contains all of the same info in written form. I released the video on both my personal YouTube channel (which has more subs and is much closer to being monetized) and the Tectonic School channel. To make sure you never miss a video, subscribe to both!
Why the name Tectonic?
Based on the word Tekton, the Greek word for a craftsman or carpenter, it is a program designed to help train young men to become the kinds of leaders and problem solvers our culture desperately needs.
This idea was inspired by studying the impact of the teachings and ministry of Jesus, the “tekton” from Nazareth, on history and culture.
Christianity has been the biggest driver of cultural change and positive progress since its inception.
Even for those who are not religious, the success of christianity is a topic well worth studying.
A few of the massive cultural changes brought about by Christianity are the normalization of monogamous marriage, the proliferation of education and literacy, and the creation of many cultural institutions, such as hospitals and universities, which emerged out of the local church.
Christianity still places an emphasis on spreading these practices in undeveloped countries.
But in the west, its cultural influence has waned.
My original goal was to solve some of the problems with the Church - While this program is designed to help young men, I believe churches need young men as much as young men need purpose, guidance, and mentorship.
Churches aren’t doing a good job reaching men or equipping them for success in life because they lack leaders with the skills and resources to reach other men.
Some of those resources already exist in the church, but they aren’t being utilized
Average adult church attendance is 61% female, 39% male.
Churches seem to be stuck in a cycle that perpetuates this imbalance. Most churches tend to platform male leaders that are either academic intellectuals, or charismatic communicators, but rarely good role models for the average man.
Masculine men do attend church, but they are an underutilized resource, especially if they are not academic intellectuals or charismatic communicators.
If masculine cultural role models are propped up by the church they tend to be Christian athletes and celebrities, not suitable examples for the average young man.
Craftsmen and builders provide positive masculine examples of a healthy lifestyle that is broadly achievable to many of the young men churches are failing.
There is a cultural movement towards the revitalization of skilled trades, especially as America has become increasingly dependent on immigrant labor, but simply adding more trade schools and trade jobs will only solve economic issues facing young men, not the cultural ones.
The cultural issues that are most worrisome is that people are getting married less, having fewer children, and doing so later than ever before.
People who get married and have children report having higher life satisfaction than those who do not, with the happiest marriages and families among those that attend church regularly. (this is all found in Nancy Pearcey’s book The Toxic War on Masculinity, and her research is drawn from the sociologist Brad Wilcox, author of the book Get Married)
Another cultural benefit to working in the trades is the access to continued education. These jobs allow people to consume longform content at a high rate, an opportunity that can be directed towards a variety of topics. While the average tradesman may not be able to achieve the highest levels of expertise in a given field, they have the opportunity to become far more informed and educated in a variety of topics than the average consumer of mainstream media.
In summary, the goal of Tectonic School is to connect young men with older mentors who can teach them practical skills that can help them earn a living, while also encouraging them to grow in character and maturity, towards marriage and family, and within a local church context that promotes charitable relationships between generations, and among neighbors.
If well executed, this plan will be a benefit to the young men, the older men, the local church, and the wider community.
The latest development is my completion of the book, Tents Before Temples.
Writing this book was an exploratory process for myself. The Tectonic School concept was born out of my own experience and intuition. As I began to write the plan, I wanted to explore the potential impact, and try to answer as many objections as I could think of, while also developing the concepts behind Tectonic School and explaining them in such a way that they could be applied to various other domains.
In other words, I saw Tectonic School as a way for me to use my own skills and experience to help others, which is why it’s concentrated on building trades, and young men. But the ideas and principles behind it could be applied to other types of training, education, and aimed at different groups.
The other purpose in writing the book was to have something to point to as an accomplishment, to connect with other people who would be able to help me accomplish the other goals in getting the Tectonic School project off the ground.
With that being said, what are the goals for the future?
Taking the ministry of Jesus and his disciples as the example, we can see that the cultural impact of Christianity spread through a few various means.
One aspect was mass communication; Jesus spoke to massive crowds of people, most of whom would not have access to the man himself, but benefited from His teaching. This is more easily accomplished now than ever before through various forms of digital media.
Another aspect was Jesus’ method of training disciples. This method closely resembles the way that trade skills were traditionally passed down from master to apprentice.
The third is the support and operation within the institutional framework. Christianity came out of a system of Judaism that had adapted to survive in exile, without the institutional support of the government. It prioritized passing on its traditions through emphasizing marriage and teaching children, studying and discussing scripture, and regularly meeting together in local synagogues.
Both Jesus and the apostles made use of the system of local synagogues, and there is a direct correlation between the institutional systems of his day and the local churches of today.
With these examples in mind, these are my goals for the Tectonic School project for 2025, with some ways that other people could help.
Here are my goals in the area of digital media and mass communication,
Continue to spread the idea and information to help others through digital media. I plan to continue making videos and writing blog posts, with an aim towards consistency. I plan to grow my personal YouTube channel since it currently has more reach, towards the goal of connecting with more influential people to spread these ideas. My channel covers a broader scope of topics than the tectonic school project, as does the book Tents Before Temples, and the next book I am currently working on.
Rather than trying to keep the best ideas private for monetization, my goal is to spread them freely and encourage people to make use of them for their own personal lives, or to get started on their own projects. However, I do aim to seek monetization based on people who want to support the project and ideas.
My goal for The Tectonic School YouTube channel is to keep it focused on topics specific to intersection of mentorship, skilled trades, and the faith. I hope to interview more people who have a story to share about their own experience working in these fields. One of the big aspects of the program is the idea that trade jobs provide ample opportunities for people to learn about a variety of topics through podcasts, audiobooks, and online lectures. My goal is to contribute to this process with content that provides a weekly reminder to encourage continued learning, and orient it towards helping others.
I would gladly welcome collaboration from people who would be willing to contribute their own writings, and I am especially interested in finding someone who would be willing to share the load of interviewing guests. My eventual goal would be to release a weekly interview on the channel, and to spread it to other podcast platforms.
I would also like to find someone who would be willing to serve as an admin for the Tectonic School discord server, which could serve a variety of important functions in the future, and help with distribution on other social media platforms.
On the level of personal involvement and program implementation:
There are a couple projects that I would like to see grow. My current family and work situation (baby #4 is on the way!) allows me a few opportunities to practice the Tectonic School model. One is by involving students in volunteer projects through my local church, and the other is helping to encourage and mentor some of my young coworkers. I am also working to develop a woodworking course that combines the character building elements with skill training, and test it out in our local homeschool community.
The third level is the growth of institutional programs.
This is an area that I would like to grow both personally and to see others implement. Most of the ideas both in my book and in the blogs and videos I have released thus far were developed under the assumption that they would need to flourish in an environment of exile. In other words, I didn’t want to assume any access to support from government programs or other established institutions. You can get a quick sketch of how this works from the video I released on Chapter 9 of Tents Before Temples. I began developing this program shortly after the Biden administration took office, during and after the covid crisis, which placed a lot of restrictions on religious organizations, and small businesses, and made entrepreneurship much more challenging.
However, the new administration is decidedly pro-business, and there is already a “vibe shift” that is having real life implications. There is a lot of excitement within the construction world that business is poised to increase. This definitely creates possibilities for the Tectonic School project to really flourish. But regardless, my goal is to try to spread the word and help people set up their own programs, around three basic models.
The first model is the easiest to get started - a church centered, volunteer based program that could take place primarily on the weekends. This would connect older men with some basic skills with younger men, including highschool students, to work on projects in their local communities.
The second model is the small business model - Tradesmen who own their own business or even work freelance could take on an apprentice, full or part time, with negotiable pay as they are able, combined with getting involved in a local church as an important part of the character development.
The third model would be to create a full time educational institution. This is my long term goal, to build a community that allows people to dedicate themselves to full time learning in skilled trades, preferably in a semi-rural setting where people can learn skills in other areas like gardening, and artistic crafts such as fine woodworking & luthiery, blacksmithing, textiles, and pottery.
There is another possible level for this program to be utilized. By expanding the basic apprenticeship model into other areas of business, beyond the construction trades, it would be possible to revitalize small towns by working with tech companies and other web based businesses that aren’t limited by location.
Further Goals:
My initial research and experience led me to develop this program to address a specific need, mainly that of young men. Men account for the vast majority of deaths of despair; including suicide and deaths related to drug and alcohol abuse. In addition to the fact that more than 60% of men no longer attend church, the same percentage of young men are deciding to forgo college. 25% of children are raised by a single parent, with 90% of those children being fatherless. Of that group, the majority of young men lack any kind of solid male role model.
Through my research, study, and personal experience, I became aware that this program could be of specific benefit to a certain group that is in need of greater support. While the primary focus is young men in general, there is a particular need to provide a pathway to success for young men on the autism spectrum. While much of the increase in diagnosis is due to better understanding of these conditions, our culture provides less options for these young men than in generations past.
While many people on the spectrum find success in the tech industry, children that receive an early diagnosis are being pushed towards a culture of “learned helplessness” based on their identity as a disabled person.
Many of those who would be considered on the spectrum in previous generations gravitated towards jobs in the skilled trades, and were able to achieve success not only in career, but in other areas of life as well, such as in marriage and family. The emphasis on college education and the removal of shop class from most schools took those possibilities off the table.
Even today, there is a high concentration of people with autism and ADHD within the trades, with low support needs, many of whom are undiagnosed. As someone who came to understand my own diagnosis late in life, I have seen first hand how the benefits of meaningful work, combined with the love of a stable family and a good church community can allow someone on the spectrum to flourish and become a productive member of society.
As children are diagnosed at earlier and earlier ages, it should be possible to provide them with an even greater opportunity to find success. With that aim, I believe that the Tectonic School project could provide a potential roadmap for even younger students in the future, perhaps inspiring a K-12 program centered around the same ideals.
If these ideas inspire you, if you are interested in helping me achieve these goals, please reach out, and help me share this message by liking, subscribing, and sharing this video and the other resources linked in the description. Thanks for watching.