Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Uh, Rob, I'm gonna let you kick it off. Um, I thought this was a, an app topic coming on the heels of, uh, governor Younkin, getting, uh, sworn in Virginia, uh, which has been a focal point for a lot of these clashes over, um, curricula and policy. So tell us about why Europe might be someplace because usually we think, oh gosh, we don't want to be like Europe. We don't want to have a European welfare state. Um,
Speaker 1 00:00:38 You know, it's interesting because Europe, um, European countries are held up as great examples of the welfare state, but there are certain respects in which they are more pro-free market than we are. Uh, and it's, it's, it's strange thing. And you get this all tied up with the, uh, the sort of Bernie Sanders thing where he says that it was a great thing that happened in the fall about five years ago, five or six years ago during one of, uh, Bernie Sanders runs for president says, well, what I want to see? And when I say socialism, but I wanted to say a country like, like Denmark and you had the Danish prime minister say, but we're not socialists. And very insistent about that because, you know, basically it doesn't want to scare off investors, uh, but it is true that, you know, they, they have a more generous welfare state on the whole, but in some cases they have certain kinds of taxes are lower and certain other things are freer.
Speaker 1 00:01:29 And I'm going to get to an example, having to do with schools where school choice is considered this radical libertarian idea, you know, introduced by Milton Friedman, uh, and sort of viewed as, as a far out until very recently viewed as a far out idea, but it's actually been fairly common in Europe for a very long time. And for reasons that I think have a lot to do with the school wars going on, uh, or that, that direct relate very directly offer a solution to the school wars we're having. So let me go back to the school wars we're having for a minute. And yes, this is partly inspired by, uh, Glenn Young kitten and his campaign for, um, uh, for governor and how that campaign went, uh, which sort of it, wasn't the beginning of the school wars here, but it sort of brought it very much to national attention and as think as inspired and encouraged a lot of imitators elsewhere and the primary thing, their attention for was, uh, the idea of the, sort of the, as this as part of the woke wars.
Speaker 1 00:02:32 Now, the woke wars of, you know, the, the, the so-called progressive left having this ideology of what the, what is sometimes referred to as being woke, being awakened to systemic oppression and seeing signs of that, a systemic depression everywhere, including in the pronouns people use. And in, in, in all these various little, uh, details of language that culture war has been region very strongly, I think since about 2014. And, uh, hasn't really connected to the average voter that much, because it's something that, that is a lot of that's going on if you're on Twitter, right? And if you're on social media, if you're highly politically engaged that looms large in your life, but for the average person and for the, I think for the depressed for a psychologically healthy person, uh, they don't spend a lot of time engaged in that. So it's something that happens off there and Twitter, it happens on Fox news that happens among the political presents, their minds, but where it really reaches out and grabs people is when it shows up in your kid's school.
Speaker 1 00:03:42 So when your kid is coming home, as mine did a while back with, uh, uh, assignments based on the 16, 19 project, right? So this idea that America is systemically racist and has been so since the very beginning and, um, no matter how much they have to torture history to, to make that happen. And that, that was very deliberately being disseminated out into the schools. And especially in the public schools, being very eagerly adopted by education, by teachers and education bureaucrats who were very sympathetic to that woke agenda. So suddenly that's showing up in your kids' schools and that's where it really reaches out and affects people. And that's how it became an issue in the election in Virginia, uh, last November and specifically what it, where it came out was, uh, uh, Terry McAuliffe, the former governor who was running again, uh, who was the democratic candidate, uh, made, uh, you know, a gaff and a GAF, of course, being defined as when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
Speaker 1 00:04:45 And he said his GAF was that he says, he didn't think parents should be allowed to control. What's taught in their kids' schools. And that sort of summed up for a lot of people, the bureaucratic mentality of, you know, we, the bureaucrats, we control everything you have no say whatsoever. And that's what sort of, you know, before Makala said that he was leading by five, by five points in the polls. He ended up losing by five points in the polls. That was the point at which the polls flipped and the voters turned against him. And like I said, that encourages a lot of other people who are now saying this sort of passing these anti woke school bills across the country. Now, the problem with that, the problem with that actually comes from the original context in which Makala said that because the original context was that McAuliffe was being challenged on a case that happened to Virginia.
Speaker 1 00:05:35 And I think 2013, and it was where a mom, a mother threw a fit because your son had gone into an AP advanced placement English class and was assigned a, um, a book with some sort of somewhat sexually overt subject matter. Now, this is eight, he's a senior in high school in an AP class deliberately designed to be reading college level material. But she got all upset about the idea that, oh, this was too much for him. This, this tender young 18 year old shouldn't be reading this. So it was a little bit, it wasn't, you know, that this was something woke being imposed. It was, this was much more of a little church ladyish kind of objection about, um, I want to be able to dictate to the schools, they can't assign these things where, you know, it could have been well, if he's that kid's not ready for this material, he shouldn't be taking this AP class.
Speaker 1 00:06:28 So, uh, it was a little more of ambiguous case. And I think that sort of set the tone for a lot of things I'm worried about with the anti bills being passed. So you have, um, some of these bills where they allow, uh, um, uh, they, they basically allow, uh, uh, people to come and challenge and, and get lists of books that are in the libraries and demand the certain books be removed from the school libraries, or there's my favorite, uh, example of one that is a clear kind of overreach, is that, um, one that, that, uh, provides, I think it was first proposed in Florida. Uh, although this has been done in different forms elsewhere, which provides bounties, where students, parents, who, who inform on teachers who are teaching unapproved ideas in the schools can get the teachers fired and the parents forming on, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, teachers teaching the wrong things.
Speaker 1 00:07:27 And you can see how this begins to get kind of intrusive. And they've also been questions about some of these anti Wilke bills that are saying you can't teach, you can't teach anything that would, uh, assign anything to students that would have the X and feel uncomfortable based on their race, as somebody saying, well, what if I wanted to teach about some of these debates around the civil war? And I want to assign a speech by somebody who's defending the Confederate position, and I want to do a sign that so we can study what the Confederate position was, but under the strict reading of a law, that would actually be outlawed. So there's a whole section of, of education that you simply cannot teach you. Can't certain things you can't assign that are relevant, important information, but because the law is too overly broadly worded.
Speaker 1 00:08:12 So that shows the problem we're having with the woke wars, because on the one hand, you have the people trying to impose the woke ideas and the 1619 project, and what have you in the classrooms. And then the other hand you had people saying, well, to fight back against that, we're going to pass a bunch of laws, basically entitling bureaucrats, or, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, parents as sort of a vigilante enforcers to go monitor and control. And, and every little thing that's being said in the classroom. So it's almost like you have a, a conservative political correctness that's being imposed on the classrooms. Um, and so I was looking for a way out of this woke wars, and the obvious answer is school choice, the ideas of using school choice to say, well, instead of having a battle over who gets to control, what's taught in the public schools, it makes much more sense to say, let's let people have the, the, their money back to go pay for their own kids' education.
Speaker 1 00:09:13 And then they can choose what kind of school they want their kids to go to. They can choose to go to a religious school or a secular school or a super woke school, but they can make that choice about their own children's education. And what fascinated me as I found out that this is basically what happened in Europe many years earlier, and this is a piece I have, uh, I'm gonna write this all out and a piece that is going to be published probably tomorrow morning in discourse magazine, uh, from the Mercatus Institute. Um, but I looked at a specific case of Belgium. Now, Belgium has country that was actually originally formed to be a Catholic country. It sort of broke off from the rest of the Nuffield ones, because it was the Catholic enclave there. And so over the 19th century and into the 20th century, there were these vicious battles that they had over separation of church and state that there was a one party in one fashion that wanted this to be very much a Catholic country with Catholicism as the official religion imposed on people, including, uh, through the schools.
Speaker 1 00:10:16 And there was a giant battle there's called the first school war in the 19th century. And then in the middle of the 20th century, they called it the second school war. And it was about, uh, at the time there was a secular party that was trying to basically promote secular public schools and trying to great write the rules for the schools in a way that would sort of push out the, the Catholic education. So there was this battle of Catholic schools versus secular schools. And what they ended up with coming up with in 1958 was something called the school pact and the adopted a form of school choice in which, as you can tell, if you want you to send your kids to a Catholic school, you send them to a Catholic school. If you want to send them to a secular school, you send them to a secular school.
Speaker 1 00:11:00 So it was a way in which they had the exact same kind of conflict we're having now a basic ideological conflict over what are your kids going to be taught? And the solution they came to achieve this, this piece for at least the last 50, 50 or so years, 50 or 60 years to achieve peace in the school wars was school choice. And that's also figured into that in Ireland, then a couple of other places that religious element has figured in as, so have questions over school quality. Um, I point out that it's something that can help us solve the, uh, the mass scores in school and the COVID wars in school. Although I consider that a secondary and short, shorter range thing, the wider range thing is the idea of, instead of having a battle for who gets to control your kid's education, uh, which political faction gets to control your kids education, have the, have the parents themselves controlling their kids' education in the most direct way possible, which is they get to decide what schools their kids are going to, and that would allow people to send their kids to traditional schools, uh, traditionalist schools.
Speaker 1 00:12:11 It would allow them to send them to, you know, woke schools. And I think the majority of us are the people who just want to, uh, uh, have our kids be taught the three R's and, uh, leave it up to them, ourselves and our kids, uh, to, uh, decide what our political loyalties are going to be, uh, on our own. And I think there'd be a big market for that. So what I want to talk about today was exploring the way in which, you know, what did the school wars consists of that we've been having and how is school choice a potential answer to that?
Speaker 0 00:12:44 Thanks, Rob. Um, I want to also invite all of you to, uh, ask a question, make a comment, um, would also love to hear, uh, views from the other side. Like, why do you feel that school choice would be a problem? What are the concerns you have? And, uh, and then also, uh, invited our founder, David Kelly, and my buddy Scott, up here on the stage, if either of you wanted to wait,
Speaker 3 00:13:19 Um, this David I'm, um, I'm interested in this discussion, um, but I'm gonna, uh, we'll walk for awhile. So, um, and allow others to, uh, follow up on what Rob's saying.
Speaker 0 00:13:34 Thanks. Thanks,
Speaker 2 00:13:36 Scott. Thank you. Well, good topic. Um, you know, one thing I was reminded of, I know a few years ago there was this case in Germany where they were trying to homeschool and they took the families, kids away. Um, that's one issue also, um, you know, when you talked about Younkin, um, in Michigan, or I'm sorry, in Virginia, there's something going on in, in Michigan as well, where they also came the Michigan Democrat party tried saying this weekend that, you know, the client of the public school is not the parent, but it's higher community. And I mean, they did have to take that down, but it still is what they believe. So, I mean, I'm for school choice. I just, I, again, I, I kind of bristle at just always focusing on how, you know, they're not fighting CRT the right way. I mean, at some point we just have to go and take on CRT.
Speaker 1 00:14:34 Well, I think, I think fighting it the right way as a major is an important question to be had because here's, so I want to talk about that Michigan Democrat thing. Cause I just saw that, uh, earlier today, and like I said, a GAF is when a politician accidentally tells the truth and that was definitely fits that definition. What they were asked, what they were naming is the basic premise of public schools as such. And the basic premise of public schools is that the client, the customer of the public schools is the state is society as a whole. It's the collective. And so it's the idea of collective control and collective responsibility for your kids' education. That has been the premise of public education from the very beginning that is inherent in the process of public education. And that's why I'm in favor of school choice as the answer, because a lot of conservatives will not challenge that premise of the state has an interest in your kids' education. They'll just disagree as to what the content of that ought to be.
Speaker 1 00:15:39 Maybe like homeschooling cooperatives. Uh, well, yeah, that's one, I mean, and cooperatives is a great example. Now you talked about Germany by the way. And that's another great example of there's where the premise of the state is, has the thing with the primary interest in your kids' education. That's where that comes in, where that's, how they can say, you know, that they can engage in these campaigns against homeschooling because basically how dare you be allowed to do that. Now I understand that there are some cases where you can have, you have cases where you could have, um, you know, cults and religious cults and things like that, where they're basically refusing to educate the kids at all. Uh, and, uh, you know, they're just repeating to them propaganda, or, you know, they're not doing the basics of education. And there's a, I think a case to be made that a child has, you know, that the rights of a parent do not extend to abusing a child.
Speaker 1 00:16:39 And the rights of the parents do not extend to withholding from a child, the very basics of education. Now the very basics have to be fine. It has to be defined very, basically there's a case you can make there, but this was good. It goes way beyond that, the German case, where it was simply, you know, we, the state wants to dictate what your kids get taught, what the curriculum is, what the standards are and any way you have of escaping the state education, we're going to cut off. And that's a very German sort of, uh, a German sort of thing to do. And unfortunately with lots of bad historical overtones that, you know, we, we must have control over everything. So that's why I'm very much in favor of the idea that, you know, there are a lot of conservatives though, who would accept this idea that the state or society has a, an interest in your kids' education.
Speaker 1 00:17:30 And so therefore they don't want to break up the public schools. They want to say, well, we should be in control of the public schools. We should be dictating what gets taught there and making laws about what can't be taught there. And there's that authoritarian, impulse that, especially in the religious rights, you know, uh, but there's some, a lot of ironies there too in that the religious right is often been at the end at the, on the receiving end of, you know, state control over education. Um, and I would like to talk about that more later, but that's what I want to head off is any idea that, well, we just have to fight the woke people. So the way we should do it is to dictate from our perspective, what gets taught in the schools. It doesn't solve the underlying problem and it just ratchets up. The woke war is even more,
Speaker 0 00:18:17 I think it's interesting, the German connection isn't entirely incidental. When you look back to the beginnings of government schooling in the United States, there's a common misconception that, uh, our country was founded on government schooling, but we had at least a century, uh, of our history where, um, education was private and literacy rates were, were higher than in, in some cases even today. Um, and it was, um, uh, we're performers here in the United States looking to, uh, new bureaucratic models overseas and particularly the Prussian model, which was instituted in part as a response to, uh, to a feeling that, uh, the, the Prussian state had lost its military readiness, um, that they needed to systematize education to, uh, build better citizens, but also to build better students. And so that's kind of the inheritance that we're dealing with today,
Speaker 1 00:19:29 And it involves a lot of very pressure and regimentation and repetition and that sort of thing. And it really lends itself to indoctrinate ideological doctrine. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:19:38 Well, and you even look to the etymological root of the term kindergarten, uh, it's a garden that you're, you're cultivating, you're growing, uh, young, young people, um, Lawrence.
Speaker 4 00:19:52 Yes. Hello. Uh, very interesting subject. I, as a homeschooled student for many, many years, I would like to see maybe the concept you talked about school choice, but maybe even that term clarify perhaps a little bit more because my concern with the concept of school choice is that you're giving the power back to the parents, so to speak. But now that you're giving this voucher, they can go to any school. And then the school has to admit these people, the states now has pierced the veil through this voucher system saying, listen, we've given them their voucher. You have to accept these people, or it pierces the realm, perhaps even further where government could get more involved in what private schools teach, because they're saying we have a vested interest. We have given these people, their voucher, and that's sort of my concern. And I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are to that.
Speaker 1 00:21:00 Well, I think that's an excellent concern. I've had that concern for a very long time. Um, it's why I actually was, I was opposed to vouchers for awhile. Uh, I'm I'm laptop opposed to vouchers now because I think it's better than what we have right now, better than the alternative. Um, the system I prefer would be something more like a tax credit, uh, that is, you know, it's not government money that's being given to you that you spend on the Dewar than allowed to spend on the schools. Uh, it's your own money, and you're simply allowed to claim a tax credit for it. Uh, and so it, it keeps it much more of like, this is your money, not the government's money. Uh, and in both cases, you know, a tax credit would make sense because for most, most people do pay a significant amount of money in taxes to support, to support education, to support the schools.
Speaker 1 00:21:48 Uh, and I think I ran to advocated a version of that where she also advocated that if you don't have children yourself, you could get a tax credit to give your money to a charity that would then pay for the education for other kids. It may be, you know, give money to a private school that you, that you approve of, uh, that they could give us scholarships and you get a tax credit for that. So the idea is that you could then bring even more money into the private money into the system. Uh, even for people, for parents who could not afford on their own designed Ethan with an apron, with a tax credit to send kids to school. Uh, so I think that's a better system. Any is going to be imperfect because the thing is, there's a media for control that you're dealing with, right?
Speaker 1 00:22:34 The fundamental fact is there is a mania for control. This belief that you keep getting repeated again from, uh, from, from Tony, Bacala you get it repeated from these Michigan Democrats that the state and the collective and the, you know, the, the, uh, uh, society as such through the government has a right, has, has an interest in a writing control your children. They're not really your children to the government's children. And they get to control them. That media for control is there, and you're going to have to cope with it somehow. So I look for what are the ways that you can reduce the avenues by which that media for control can be imposed. Uh, so instead of having everybody shunted into the public schools, and then the, you know, the bureaucrats and the teacher's unions in control of the public schools give people a way to escape the public schools.
Speaker 1 00:23:26 And it has to be in America. It really has to be done by making some kind of distance between the government and the school. So in Europe, one of the things I found in Europe, a lot of the school choice systems are not don't have that separation. What they have is that the government directly pays for and supports these, uh, different kinds of schools, the secular versus religious, et cetera. And then that support is sort of allocated based on enrollment by the parents, but the money never passes through the parents. The money goes straight from the government to the schools. And obviously with the first amendment being what it is, you know, here in the U S to the extent anybody still pays any attention to it. You can't do that because you can't have government directly paying for, or supporting religious schools. And I think it would be a really bad idea if they tried.
Speaker 1 00:24:15 Um, so you have to have the idea of the money goes to the parents, and then the parents spend the money. But like I said, I would prefer the even greater separation of you get to claim a tax credit on your tax return, but it's your money in the first place that's being spent. So you get even greater separation from the government being able to put rules on it. But yes, I agree. There is a danger that once you had a voucher system, what the fallback position of, you know, they get the media for control as was behind all this, the fallback is going to be well now, now that you're receiving vouchers, we're going to come in and we're going to say, you have to take these students and you can't choose which students you take. You have to, um, teach a certain curriculum.
Speaker 1 00:24:56 You have to, uh, engage in, you know, you have to comply with certain, uh, non-discrimination, you know, anti-discrimination things that we have and our exact interpretation of that. And so we're going to impose a bunch of rules and regulations on you. So there's going to be this mania to use any wedge they can to impose regulations on the curriculum and the policies, uh, and every decision a private school makes. But they're kind of doing that already. So, so I think it's something we're gonna have to cope with in one format and no matter what happens,
Speaker 3 00:25:31 David, Rob, this is hi. Um, I wanted to go back to something you said, I, I think your point that the, uh, the customer of the public schools is not the parents Northern children, but the state. And I think that's a really fundamental point that, um, is not noticed, uh, uh, as often as it should be. But I, there is an argument that goes back to Horace Mann and, and to people in their 19th century that, um, education is not like other commodities, like, you know, the food dependence providers, because if, if we have a democracy that depends on, you know, the cliche is an educated citizenry, and I've always thought, you know, that's not a totally dumb argument. Um, and you know, it gets, it seems smarter and smarter. The more elections I follow and the more craziness is going around. So what do you make of that? That, because education is so closely tied with the knowledge of the world and the ability to think that are exercised in voting. And if we give people the vote, we, you know, if, if our political system gives people to vote, the political citizen should also provide somehow either some combination of the opportunity and maybe a requirement to get educated.
Speaker 1 00:27:05 And it's a couple, that's a really, there's lots of things we could say about this. So we just start on it here. Um, first of all, the idea that an educated citizenry is important to a Republic. I mean, this goes back to Tocqueville. It goes back to Thomas Jefferson. This is the reason why he advocated for the creation of the university of Virginia. Although he also interesting thing about UVA, uh, since I'm local here, uh, uh, is that when he designed the campus, he designed it without a church. And he did that very deliberately because that was his idea of separation of church and state, right? So you'd have to, if you wouldn't have the government providing higher education, you have to not have any religious aspect to it because of the separation of church and state. Um, but, but, uh, I think the thing is, you know, this Jefferson's views on this are sort of the, the wedge people used to say, seeing the founders agreed with us to what we should be doing this.
Speaker 1 00:28:04 I would say this to the extent that it is actually true, that education is important for the, you know, thriving Republic and for maintaining freedom and a free society and, and having a, a system where the people vote, having that system work to the extent that that's true, and it is true. Then the last person who should want to be in charge of education is government for two reasons. One is because if you want, if the purpose of educating the kids is to leave them free, to make their own decisions, political decisions, uh, and, and to, and to put the people in charge of the government, instead of the government in charge of the people, then you should not have government to, in charge of the education, because the government's in charge of the edge. You know, the whole issue here is, are, are the people in charge of the government or as the government is in charge of the people?
Speaker 1 00:28:51 Well, for those who want government to be in charge of the people, having control of education as an excellent instrument for making that happen, because the government gets, decide, here's what everybody's taught. Here's, you know, we get to sort of try to dictate whatever, what everybody's going to think, what educational basis they have. We get to dictate their curriculum. And therefore we get to basically create the voters that we want to have in order to keep us in office. Uh, that is what happens when governments are in charge of it. Now, the other reason for government not to be in charge of something that's so important is government is bad at doing things. You know, government is I think the ultimate reputation of this Horace Mann argument that we have to have government funding for education because our government control of education, because education is so important is the actual counter-argument is what happened once we did that, what happened to the public schools and what happened to the public schools is they basically went downhill in quality consistently over the last century.
Speaker 1 00:29:51 And there are whole, their whole areas, especially in the big cities. There are whole areas where the public schools are utterly failing to teach the kids anything. Um, and you know, if you go on Twitter or if you go out and talk to high school kids, uh, or if you, uh, uh, Jay Leno used to this great jaywalking segment, uh, on, on his show where he would go out and he would stop tourists, I think on the streets of Hollywood. And he would ask them simple, basic questions, they would have absolutely no idea what the answers were. Um, it really shows that, you know, the biggest argument against public schooling is the actual result, which is people are not getting the education. They need to make good decisions and to keep our Republic thriving and healthy. Uh, so I think, you know, w we ultimately absolutely need the alternative to that. We need some other way of getting a better education, uh, put out into the hands of, of the parents.
Speaker 3 00:30:44 Okay. Thanks, Rob. I just have a follow up, because you mentioned the, uh, um, uh, uh, very poor quality of many public schools. Um, I heard libertarians, um, argue, were arguing in favor of private education, or at least the option of private education programs, arguing that I've heard two, two arguments. First is that public schools, if you look at the educational results, uh, the private schools and homeschooling often job better, uh, the results are better for the kids than at public schools. But the second argument, and this goes back to Europe, um, is, you know, they, they look at educational statistics and achievements across countries and say, well, that us, uh, students lag behind other countries. And that always puzzled me because I thought, and maybe I'm wrong, given what you've said. I, I thought that was crazy because European schools are all public or at least funded by public money.
Speaker 3 00:31:46 So is that not the case? Um, because if I lose thinking of France in particular, I just assumed most of the schools there are, are state run or state certainly state funded. And, um, that's, that's the opposite of what a liberal parents are arguing for in this country. So if you're being, students are doing better, or Japanese students are doing better than us students on math and education so forth, um, that sounds to me more like an argument for public schooling. What am I missing here? Uh, maybe I'm just wrong about Europe, uh, in other countries.
Speaker 1 00:32:29 Well, yeah, that's interesting because, um, people have said that, uh, Europe has a better educational system in some ways, but a worse education system. And some other ways, I think you, we talked about terrible the education system heroes in America, and yet we produce, you know, most a disproportionate number of the world's inventions and innovations and high technology and scientific breakthroughs, et cetera. Now that's partly because we bring in, you know, all of the best immigrants from everywhere else, but it's also our native people. So, you know, the, uh, the, you know, the people who were born and came through the education system here. So a couple of things in that, all, I haven't waited too deeply in this. I'm not an expert in this, but I've sort of followed some of the people who are, and every discussion about school quality has to deal with selection effects.
Speaker 1 00:33:16 So, for example, when you talk about public schools versus private schools, I have to confess one of the reasons why private schools are so performs so much better than public schools is because who goes to private schools. Well, primarily it's the children of better off, better educated parents, right? It's the people with college degrees who are making, you know, who are professional jobs, who are, uh, uh, you know, making good money who are generally tend to be more educated, put more emphasis on they're more. It also means people go to private schools are come from parents who, who have greater importance of education, because they're not willing to, you know, they could just send their kids to the public schools and not pay anything at all. They're willing to shell out the extra money. So you get a better education for their kids. So you're going to get selection effects.
Speaker 1 00:34:08 You're going to get, you know, kids who are, you know, you're gonna get my kids, my kids go to a private school and here they are, they're getting, you know, uh, uh, uh, a huge education just at home. Uh, just did the environment and the home environment they're in, uh, that gives them a huge advantage. So that's part of what's going on. And I think that's also, it goes on in comparisons between the us and Europe, um, where, uh, I think to some extent, you know, the U S has, uh, factors, factors in the population distribution in the U S that can sometimes drag down our, our numbers relative to, you know, like a small European country where everybody's basically everybody's middle class is going to be much more, you know, even if they have private or public schools, the, the, the parents and that the social environment that the kids are coming from is going to be much better.
Speaker 1 00:35:03 Another factor that goes in there, this complicating factor is educational fats. Cause sometimes what happens in America is you had things like progressive education that came through and often were a wrecking ball that it didn't matter who was managing the schools. It was the, the educational, fashionable educational theories that came through that were a wrecking ball and reduced readership rates. I mean, you know, there was a whole, uh, people might remember 30 years or so ago, there was a whole, you know, there was a company called hooked on phonics and there was a whole movement to bring back phonics, which the way I was brought up learning how to read, uh, which is a way that just works. It works beautifully. It had been wholesale abandoned in favor of these crackpot methods that failed at teaching kids to read. And it, it, it was because such a disaster, the pub in the pub, in the schools that this method that worked had been swept out and a method that didn't work had been brought in that you had this whole market that opened up for people to market these phonics teaching materials to parents, to give to their own kids, to help them learn how to read outside of school.
Speaker 1 00:36:10 So there've been cases where as you can shuttle fads sweep through the schools. And so if that fad doesn't hit France, but it hits the America, our numbers are going to go down and there's are gonna, are going to be better. Uh, last factor that I think probably has a lot to do with Francis Francis, a very centralized national everything's done nationally. It's all centralized in, um, in, in Paris, uh, has been basically seen as clearly the 14th and, uh, uh, that can be a bad thing. In some ways it could be a good thing in other ways, because, um, in America, I think what happens is the failing, the schools that are really failing badly are failing badly because they come from very corrupt, local political systems. So, you know, I used to live in Chicago and I'm not sending my kids to public school in Virginia.
Speaker 1 00:37:01 There's no way I would ever accept my kids to public school in Chicago, because you have this corrupt, uh, politically dominated, uh, uh, local government that really can't be trusted to do just about anything, much less to, to run an educational system. So you're going to get local areas. So our tradition of local control of schools in America has some positive aspects, but it means that you can have, especially in the sort of corrupt mismanaged, um, politically distorted environment of some of the big cities can't produce spectacularly failing schools in a way that wouldn't happen if you had more, a more centralized education system. So those are just some of the complicating factors to come in here. Yeah. Thanks Rob.
Speaker 0 00:37:54 Thanks, David. Uh, I also want to recognize a few people that are here in the chat with us. The chairman of the board of the Atlas society, Jayla pear is here as well as our senior scholar, professor, Stephen Hicks, who, uh, has written quite extensively about, uh, about education in particular, the philosophies of education. And so I'd like to recommend that you check out our most recent pocket guide to philosophies of education, uh, with professor Hicks has written the introduction to so, uh, JP, thanks for joining us. Did you
Speaker 5 00:38:35 Have a more of a question really? I, um, I, I am fascinated with the, uh, the pandemic, um, wave of, of, of criticism over critical race theory in the states. I am far more acquainted as to, with the way that our Latin American system was subverted. And I dealt into this issue for us history. And I would like to get if, if, if, if there's more knowledgeable, um, people on the stage that can instruct me as to what the, the, um, what was, what's the history of, of this trend. Because one of the things that that really strikes me is that I, when I first understood that critical fear CRI critical race theory was just in AA. One of the many applications of critical theory that had been being playing out in the academy and down into, into public education for a very, very long time. How old is, is this process of survey subversion of the education system, which is probably the reason for the, the, the claim that, uh, the, the, the left, the radical left one, the culture wall, the culture wars.
Speaker 1 00:40:14 Okay. I'm, I'm not, uh, I'm not the best, the best expert on all of that. Um, I think, you know, I think the critical race theory is that in the current and the form is taking now is more recent, and it has to do with these theories sort of reaching a critical mass people been trying to push this for decades. It's only, I mean, for example, one of the things that happened in the 2008 election when Barack Obama was first running, uh, his one things that came out with his connection to a guy named Billy errors, who was a, um, uh, uh, literally a terrorist, like a leftist terrorists during the sixties, during the hippie movement to the sixties, uh, who later then got off on a technicality and we never went to jail and ended up being a professor of education and a very influential professor of education.
Speaker 1 00:41:05 So there's this from the whole, um, theory of education. So going on since the 1960s, that's about how education should basically, well, I mean, it was the original woke education. It was the idea that education should be there to train people, to be political revolutionaries, essentially, to train indoctrinate kids into socialist ideas. So this has been going on a long time. I think it's only really sort of started becoming noticeable in the, in a serious way in the last 10 years, 10 to 15 years, and that's what's causing this, but we have the, the, the school wars in America, a very long history, uh, in different iterations that I think is important to, to keep in mind. So the version that I remember from the, uh, sort of sixties, seventies, and eighties, although it goes back even farther, it goes back to the 1920s was the battle over teaching evolution in schools, right?
Speaker 1 00:42:00 So there were there, there were the Christians who said, you know, we don't, we think that that teaching of evolution should be banned in the public schools or that teaching of creation of theories, uh, of the origins of life, uh, should be, should be taught in instead, or are taught and said. And then they, fallback position is creationism should be taught alongside evolution as an alternative theory. So there was this sort of argument about the religious content and of, of education in which it was the religious conservatives who were the ones wanting to impose something on the curriculum. Uh, and in my head and looking at the history of the, sort of the, the school wars in America, I discovered something that it surprised me, the king James version of the Bible used to be highly controversial as you know, basically everything, everything, all the battles we're having over the, the, uh, 16, 19 project, where once battles over the king James version of the Bible.
Speaker 1 00:42:58 And that sounds crazy. But what happened was that when they created some, this is what I talked about saying that the public school systems inherently create this problem. And some of the first state laws that created public schools, they mandated as part of that, that religious instruction should be part of the public school curriculum. And when that came along, when that was implemented, what that religious instruction tends to take the form of was readings from the king James version of the Bible. Now, then his, like the, the biggest, most influential English language translation to the Bible for hundreds of years. And the reason why that was controversial is the Catholics objected. They said, this is a Protestant version of the Bible that you're having them read. And that's, you know, you're just trying to inculcate our children with Protestantism, and you're doing this to the, to the, you know, to, to sort of drive out Catholic ideas about religion.
Speaker 1 00:43:54 And of course, a lot of the people who, who, uh, who, who proposed doing this said, yes, that's the point. That's what we're trying to do. We don't like these Catholics, you know, we want to inculcate Protestantism and your kids cause we're, we're opposed to Catholicism. And that was the end across the 19th century. I found this fascinating history. There were riots, there were demonstrations, there were court battles, uh, and the upshot of all this, and it happened to period of decades. So the 19th century and the general upshot of that was that the solution was for two, for two to basically push prayer out of the public schools and to push religious instruction out of the public schools to make public education as secular. So therefore it couldn't be either Protestant or Catholic, it would be, or, or Jewish or whatever it wouldn't be for or against any one religion.
Speaker 1 00:44:45 It would be neutral on the religious content and the real estate would be pushed out of the public schools. Now, the problem of course is a hundred years later after that battle, we now have a new sort of quasi religion or a following that you had people with secular ideologies that they would have to oppose on the schools. And, and so you have, you know, the schools are nominally secular, but they're actually there to impose somebody sort of quasi religious philosophy of life onto your kids. And so we're still dealing with the same problem. Uh, now I'm sure there's a lot more to this history that other people can tell you. Um, this is the parts that I can sort of name off the top of my head here.
Speaker 0 00:45:28 Thanks, Rob and JP, uh, the two most, um, I'd say expert on critical race theory and the history of, of critical theory, uh, in the United States on our faculty would be professor Stephen Hicks and also professor Jason Hill. So do check out the events section of our site for upcoming clubhouse chats with them. I also believe that professor Hicks and, uh, professor Salzman tomorrow we'll be doing a live webinar. So that might be another opportunity to ask your question then, because it's an important one. And I know, uh, one that, um, professor Hicks in particular has covered extensively, Alan.
Speaker 6 00:46:17 Hi Jennifer. Hi robe. Um, as, as someone whose son is currently in the California school system and who is dealing with these issues in real time, uh, this subject is near and dear to my heart. Uh, as an aside to what you were saying, Rob, I would point out that, um, when you refer to France, that it's a matter of scale, the geographically Frances, a small enough country to be essentially culturally homogenous, uh, something we don't have in the United States. And the, to also say that part of that whole system included Lubbock, which was the sh um, slang for that final exam. That's how, uh, high school students had to go through, which was, which made them all sweat in, which was very tough. So it'd be interesting to see now that they've removed that essentially, I forget either they've removed it or they've lowered the standards to it.
Speaker 6 00:47:34 It will be interesting to see what, what happens to the, the, the education in France now that that's happened. Um, anyways, having said that, uh, when we're talking about the educational system here, um, I'm dealing with this in relation to math because they're now lowering in California, lowering the expectations and the requirements for math. Um, but as, as a, as a kind of just to offer it to you in, as well as to the room and then point out an example, um, that I forget it's the national conference of math teachers is an, uh, the largest organization of math teachers. Um, there's a report that came out that has said that math scores in the last 10 years have not changed. And essentially in the last 60 years have essentially stayed the same. And so that what you were talking about about all these new newfangled teaching methods, essentially have done nothing to improve them in, to improve the math scores and the, what I'm going to pause it is the idea that in America, we keep trying to find a solution to this problem.
Speaker 6 00:49:20 And that my answer is that the problem is that there, the problem is, is the parents and that they are not, when it comes to elementary school and through high school, the parents are simply not demanding enough of their students of their children. And is an example of this, um, Asian students on average spend 13 hours a week studying and doing homework. Whereas, uh, all other group groups combined spend only five minutes, not five minutes, five hours a week, so that, and that's reflected in the scores. So that, uh, really it's the culture of, I think it's okay, I'm sending you off to school. You teach my kid. I have nothing to do with it. That, that culture that seems to be prevalent in America has more to do with it than anything else. And what you see as educators, either genuinely trying to solve that problem, which can't be solved because they can only, you can't control the parents and you can only demand so much and, or using something like CRT to indoctrinate children, which I heard in a room, someone say, yeah, we need CRT so that we can get reparations past, but I'll end with that.
Speaker 6 00:50:59 And I'm wondering on your comments about that, because to me, that seems to be the, the, the big issue that's happening in America.
Speaker 1 00:51:11 Okay. So two observations of that one is there was a long article, I think, in the New York times that I read years ago, uh, that was very illuminating on this. It was about a place in, I think it was a suburban either Maryland or Michigan. I think it's Maryland, uh, is Maryland or Michigan. One of the two, I think that began with M but it was a, uh, it was a middle class suburb where there were a lot of, uh, middle-class well-off black parents who were there. Um, and they had a lot of them, a booth there because the local schools were supposed to be very good and they thought, well, if I move here, my kids will do better at school and they'll, they'll be better off. And then they were disappointed that there was still this disparity in the school district that the black students weren't doing as well as the white students, as they brought in a Harvard, uh, professor, like a Harvard sociologist, uh, to embed in the community.
Speaker 1 00:52:03 And as spend, I spent like a year there and, or six months there and tried to figure out what's at the root of this, what where's this? And they, the idea was they're bringing them to find out where's the secret, hidden systemic racism that's causing this disparity. And what this guy came up with, this is a black professor at Harvard, but he was a, he was an African immigrant, which I think gave him a slightly different angle on things. And when he came up with those exactly what you're saying, he says the problem was with the parents, that a lot of the, that they have different attitudes towards education, that a lot of the white parents have the attitude that, you know, they're on top of the kids saying, you have to do your homework, you have to do this. You have to do that.
Speaker 1 00:52:39 I'm monitoring you to make sure that you're doing well. Whereas a lot of the black parents had the idea, well, I moved to this, this, this suburb because they had a good school system. It's the school system's job to educate my child. And that job, you know, happens at the school and it doesn't happen back at home. And my job is not to be on top. Now, he, he did not with himself that he Fred's, but coming to this conclusion, of course, cause they all want it to be told it's not their fault. It's somebody else's fault. Now, on the other hand, there is this whole long debate between, uh, in, in Britain, they call it between the,
Speaker 6 00:53:20 Oh
Speaker 1 00:53:21 Yeah. I like the phone call came in and interrupted her, um, that it's in Britain. It's that conflict with called the tiger mom. Uh, and the Tigger mum. So this higher mom, you know, is the tiger mother is the, sort of the idea of the Asian parent who is on top of their kid and making them do 13 hours of homework a week. And the Tigger mom is for the sort of gentle, soft and cuddly. You're more emotional, more concerned about your child's emotional well-being and you're less lax. And I would point out though, that that's hiker mom framework is not necessarily the best because the, you often have the Asian students perf uh, especially in, in Asia, is this even more the case in China, you have the Asian students who are doing all this homework and they're, they're obsessed with the tests of passing the tests, but then when they go out into the world, you know, 10, 10 years later, 20 years later, they're not producing as many innovations.
Speaker 1 00:54:14 They're not thinking as their thinking is not as creative as the American kids. Whereas here in America, we tend to have a system that's less on cracking the weapon, having to do lots of homework, but more on instilling a lifelong love of learning and teaching thing. And, and, and, um, teaching self motivation. Now I'm on a soapbox about this because I have Montessori kids and, you know, my kids are going, or my, my oldest is now it is not easy in high school, so it's not a Montessori school, but it's a school full of Montessori kids who came from the school. He, he, he, he, he went to when he was younger and the big advantage of this Montessori approach to education, it is so focused, unlike traditional public school education, unlike the sort of German regiments, the German model Prussian model, and unlike the tiger mother Asian approach, it's much more focused on the idea of making the kids self-motivated and, you know, the, the figures you'll always hear it by us.
Speaker 1 00:55:15 Montessori fanatics is, you know, the Google guys, the guy, the founders of Google are our Montessori kids. That there's a disproportionate number of people who are out there in top creative and innovative fields who came from this Montessori background. And I think that is the thing that's sort of missing from the, I do think it is hugely important to have parents involved and taking their kids education. Seriously. I see the results of that with my kids, um, and the advantage they have from, uh, and you know, the advantage that I had, uh, I talked about how, as a writer, what are the biggest advantages I had is my dad correcting my grabber from the time I was five years old, you know, so that the rules of, you know, my father was also a writer. So the rules of grammar and, and how to speak and how to, how to, how to, uh, use words correctly.
Speaker 1 00:56:02 That was all something I picked up, you know, as a kid around the house from the time I was from, as young as I can remember, that's hugely important. It's not necessarily, you know, go do 15 works, 15 hours of homework a week, because it can also be a matter too of teaching the kids to be self-motivated and self-directed. And I think that's, that's the advantage that the more American system has. Uh, but like I said, it's, it's not because of the depression regimentation brought into the public schools. Um, it's more because that's just part of the American culture. So I think it is true that culture that you have the culture of the country as a whole America has some advantages and some disadvantages, we can be very anti intellectual, which goes against, uh, uh, you know, it creates a sort of headwind for, uh, education in the, in our culture, but we can also, we're also very flush, more focused on people being independent self-motivated individuals, which is why I think that people who do do well in school go on to create so much more afterwards because they have that American spirit of, of creativity and individuals who've been, self-motivated thinking that means that not everybody's going to do well on our, in our education system, but those who make it through we'll actually do even better than people from other cultures that are less, self-motivated less creative, less in favor of independent thinking.
Speaker 0 00:57:29 Terrific. Well, that takes us right up to the top of the hour. So, um, Rob, thank you very much. Great topic. Um, little different than we usually do, uh, but a lot of food for thought I want to thank our founder, David Kelly, thank everyone who joined us up on stage to ask a question and again, please check out the events section of our site. Uh, we've got a busy next couple of weeks again as mentioned. We've got our current events, uh, tomorrow with professor Hicks and professor Salzman and then professor Salzman. And I will be doing a clubhouse on Thursday on price controls. Uh, and then next week, uh, again, we're going to be talking about enlightened self-interest with Rob on Tuesday. And, uh, and then we will be back with our founder, David Kelly, in fact, versus the following Thursday. So wonderful conversation really appreciate it. And I will see you guys later in the week. Thank you.
Speaker 1 00:58:46 Thanks everyone.
