Joel Mounts: Debate, Critical Thinking, and Teens With No Direction

Ask an adult whether they are doing what they thought they would be doing at twenty, and the answer is almost always no. Joel Mounts's point is not that plans change. It is that the years between the vague idea and the correction get spent anyway, along with the tuition, and almost none of that is necessary.

Joel Mounts works with teenagers on direction, career planning and the skills underneath both. He was homeschooled until ninth grade, which he says is where he first noticed how much of a school day is not learning. He went to college for pre-med, worked in a hospital, worked out he did not want to be a doctor, and by then was too far into the degree to stop. He then went to Asia and spent eight years teaching, three in China and five in Taiwan, which is where he found competitive debate. That has been most of his career since, and it is the foundation of how he coaches now.

Lisa invited him knowing he had nothing to say about custody, and he says so himself in the first minute. What he does have is the mechanics of critical thinking, which this community needs for a reason unique to it: children in these families are handed a version of reality by an adult who wants them to accept it whole. In the debate format Mounts teaches, seven topics a year, students must argue both sides, including the one they came in certain about. Before that comes source evaluation. Who wrote this, what do they have to gain, how is the bias running, and the separate question of whether an argument holds up logically even when the person making it has no credentials at all. He describes it as a muscle, which is the encouraging part: it strengthens with use.

From there they get into persuasion, which maps onto what BTGO teaches its clients almost exactly. Turning facts into something a judge will accept. Reading the individual judge in front of you, because they are all different. And a thought experiment about approaching a stranger at a party that lands on how much of persuasion is carried by tone and bearing rather than the words themselves.

The last stretch is for anyone with a teenager. Mounts is not against college and says so, but he wants a real reason behind the decision rather than a default, and he walks through what he watches in the numbers and in the trades. His alternative is concrete: pick a problem worth solving, find the people already working on it, and email them, because they have public addresses and they like talking to young people. Then school stops being arbitrary. He explains how to coach a shy kid through the first cold email and the first phone call, and describes the ambitious version, one recorded conversation a week from sixteen through college, which adds up to a few hundred professionals. He closes with the free version any parent can do this month, which he did with a twelve-year-old who had wanted to be a pilot for three years and had never met one.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• How to evaluate a source: bias, credentials, and whether the argument holds without them
• Why arguing the side you disagree with is the exercise that builds the skill
• Why a child who questions sources has something in place when the story arrives
• How facts become an argument that actually persuades the person deciding
• How much of persuasion is carried by tone and bearing rather than words
• Why college needs a real reason behind it, and what to ask before committing
• How a high schooler can get fifteen minutes with a leading expert, for free
• The one thing any parent can do this month with a kid who says they want a career

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why most teenagers have no idea where they are going
3:00 Homeschool, pre-med, and eight years teaching in Asia
6:00 Why debate, and what a bored, bright kid does with it
10:00 Arguing the side you disagree with, and judging a source
13:00 Building an argument that persuades a judge
15:00 Tone, bearing, and the cocktail-party test
17:00 Is college still the default answer?
20:00 The reason that makes college worth it, and emailing the experts
24:00 Teaching a kid to send the email and make the call
26:00 Turning screen time into a few hundred interviews
30:00 The free version: take your kid to meet someone doing the job

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Joel Mounts at Daobloom: https://daobloom.io/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.