In this episode, we re talking about the ban on Dr. Seuss and other classics in public schools, and why it s actually not so bad. We re also reading from an article from The Federalist about the alarming rates of sexual abuse in our public schools.
00:02:13.640And yet they created this huge fight and stuff around this where they've created this perception like, oh,
00:02:18.140conservatives are out to get gay people.
00:02:19.720But it's more, no, conservatives were concerned about the huge number of child grapes that are happening in our school system right now.
00:02:25.560That right now are higher on a, not, not on an absolute level, but on a per teacher to per preacher level than they were during the Catholic church at the height of the scandal.
00:02:39.580There is a reason to be putting these laws in place.
00:02:42.700So just for people who aren't familiar with the current stats, here's an article from The Federalist.
00:02:46.660One in 10 K through 12 students has been sexually abused by a teacher.
00:02:52.260And it says the rate of sexual misconduct in public schools far exceeds the high profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America.
00:03:01.580And this article came out in 2024, July 15th.
00:03:05.020Also, admittedly, it is not just the high number of grapes that are the problem.
00:03:10.260It is also the systemic attempts at brainwashing children into ideologies that have extremely negative mental health outcomes, which is something we talk about in other videos.
00:03:22.740This has been my first year in preschool with a class of my own teaching alongside another queer neurodivergent educator.
00:04:18.920But anyway, I want to get to this piece right here.
00:04:22.360So, for example, How to Be an Antiracist by Imran X.
00:04:27.660Kendi, which argues that the, quote, only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination, end quote.
00:04:33.640So a book that is actively arguing for discrimination is stocked in 42% of U.S. school districts that were surveyed.
00:04:41.500Meanwhile, only a single school district, Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, offers students woke racism by John McWhorter, a book that challenges the borderline religious anti-racist ideas advocated by Kennedy.
00:04:56.760So what we're showing here is, if you're talking about what's actually being stocked at the stores, like, are conservatives influencing this?
00:05:04.520Are they influencing what books are there and what books aren't?
00:05:08.820And conservative books that are even, like, Mill Road, or if you're saying, oh, I want both sites presented, are functionally banned from our libraries, even fairly mainstream ones.
00:05:21.580So, Felix Ever After, a book by Kacen Caller that claims that girls who hate, quote, being forced into dresses and being given dolls, end quote, are transgender, is available in 77% of school districts surveyed.
00:05:37.820But not a single school out of nearly 5,000 offered books critical of trans theories.
00:05:43.580Students won't find books like Trans by Helen Joyce or Irreversible Damage, the Transgender Craze, Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Schreier.
00:05:53.920Both recent bestsellers that present skeptical takes on the rapid rise of transgender identification among adolescents.
00:06:02.880So here what you're seeing is a book that literally, and keep in mind how insane this is.
00:06:09.620To say that a girl who hates wearing dresses and being given dolls is transgender, lots.
00:06:17.140Yeah, it's a radical fringe view that is also potentially quite damaging because the gender-affirming care that a girl might be driven to get by those ideas is pretty irreversible and can have very, very serious knock-on effects.
00:06:31.700It's not like that book is in some school libraries.
00:06:41.320It is also wild that not a single one of the 5,000 school libraries searched had either of two best-selling books that were skeptical of trans ideology.
00:06:52.240Well, it's just, it's weird to me that books on this would be present at all.
00:06:56.580I'm thinking of at least my experience with the school library.
00:07:00.220And there, I don't know if there were any books that were published after 1980 in there, like literally.
00:07:07.220Well, you went to a very poor school district.
00:08:27.240Memoirs by non-progressive leaders are also notably scarce.
00:08:30.120While Dreams of My Father, the memoir of Democratic President Barack Obama, is found in 75% of sample districts, Becoming, by his wife, is found in 65% of districts.
00:08:40.600Memoirs by Republican politicians like Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramasamy, and Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, and Ron DeSantis were essentially nowhere to be found.
00:08:50.660I mean, he's like a young person's person.
00:08:52.220So when they were looking at those 5,000 schools from 35 school districts, the Vivek one was found in 0%, Nikki Haley, 0%, Mike Pompeo, 0%, Tim Scott, 0%, Ron DeSantis, 0%, and Mike Pence, 6%.
00:09:36.180Yeah, although I have to also ask this question, which I think is important in any discussion related to political fights in America around banned books.
00:09:48.680You know, these are, for the most part, physical books.
00:09:51.620And I don't know how many high school students are actually reading.
00:09:54.500Aren't most of them just addicted to TikTok and or their AI boyfriends slash girlfriends?
00:09:58.720It's the autistic kids who are also the ones most likely to convert.
00:10:05.840Yeah, I wish I had better stats on who is actually checking out and or reading these books because I have doubts.
00:10:12.720Yeah, and I think it's funny to me and a little bit misguided.
00:10:15.680This is very similar to me to the bathroom debate about schools with parents.
00:10:20.460And yes, I understand that there have been isolated incidents and they are very worrying about mixed gender bathrooms or policies where schools allow transitioning students to go into the bathroom of their chosen gender.
00:10:35.540And then they, you know, go in and they assault people in those bathrooms and cause problems.
00:10:39.760Like I get that that's that's a thing, but they're very isolated incidents.
00:10:43.000And I'm sure that there are much more common incidents of just full out violent bullying outside of bathrooms.
00:10:48.940Right. What what I think is, is that people are not putting their focus in the right place.
00:10:54.620They're not putting their focus where their actual damage is being done.
00:10:58.400Not that many people are reading books.
00:11:00.900Not that many people are being assaulted in bathrooms.
00:11:03.320And yet these are the two top discussions that are taking place.
00:11:06.540Like as I run for state rep in our state, these are the discussions parents are having about their kids in school, not the curriculum, not the bias and skew of the teachers,
00:11:16.940not the bias and skew of the school boards, not social, emotional learning.
00:11:21.540There are all these things that are taking place in school that are steeped within every moment of the day that every student is involved in.
00:11:29.320And yet we're talking about isolated bathroom incidents and books that I don't think anyone's reading and refer to our podcast on nobody reads anymore.
00:11:40.280We have the data on that, even when you look at bestselling books.
00:11:43.120And I think some of this is selection bias when you talk about the biographies of progressive leaders, you know, dreams of my father versus biographies about Nikki Haley and stuff.
00:11:53.240It's just, you know, Obama was a more famous figure.
00:11:55.300When you probably look at the bestseller status of those books, the, the, the incidents of them being in school libraries probably tracks almost perfectly to their bestseller status and rank among other books.
00:12:07.360No, I think we just went over that was the trans books. The two books that I mentioned that were in 0% of libraries were both New York times bestsellers.
00:12:16.600You did. Yeah. You did say they're, although we know, we know from our data, which I think we covered in our, our, our episode on why nobody reads that New York times bestseller status does not necessarily indicate a book that is actually bestselling.
00:12:28.920Amazon bestseller status is a much better read of that. But anyway, my, my argument.
00:12:33.220No, Amazon bestseller was very few books. The point being Simone, look, you can be a bestseller with a few books, but to be a conservative New York times bestseller is actually means that you're selling serious books.
00:12:45.140I think that you are being taken in by trying to be, take the middle approach here where the reality is, is this is pretty horrific that this is happening.
00:12:52.460And if the position that you want to take is we should stop spending any money on public school libraries or school libraries, I am okay with that position, like transitioning them into other centers.
00:13:03.380Well, or, or, or having schools work in concert with the local libraries of any town or city, because pretty much every township and city in the United States has a library system.
00:13:15.300And I don't know why we need to have school libraries in addition to that, when we could maybe shift funding and be a little bit more efficient if we pulled resources.
00:13:24.440I think that's a really good point. And I think they should do that, but let's continue. Okay.
00:13:28.600And then at the end of this, we can talk about whether libraries matter at all in the modern age.
00:13:34.580The American Library Association and groups like Penn America have raised alarm and millions in donations by warning of the continued rise in attempts to censor books and materials in the public school and academic libraries.
00:13:46.620Penn America estimates that 2,532 books were removed from schools in 32 states during the 2021 and 2022 school year.
00:13:55.360But an investigation by the Heritage Foundation found that 75% of those so-called banned books were actually widely available to students.
00:14:02.760My own research uncovered the same. In some cases, such as Amanda Gromer's The Hill We Climb, a poetry book was supposedly quote unquote banned by the Miami-Dade County School District.
00:14:13.360It was actually just moved from the elementary school to the middle school section of the library.
00:14:18.260In Gender Queer, a graphic memoir for teens about gender identity that the New York Times called, quote, the most banned book in the country, end quote, was available in about 25% of the school districts I surveyed.
00:14:30.460Another gripe that I have, you can take this out if you must, but where are students actually being radicalized?
00:14:37.800Where does an adolescent in the United States or elsewhere actually decide that they're trans?
00:14:44.240I do not think it is in their school library.
00:14:46.460I think that it is when they go to an anime fan fiction forum and hang out in chat forums online and start getting radicalized by people there.
00:14:54.400And first they start identifying as, you know, non-binary.
00:14:57.500And then they start, you know, using they, them pronouns and it goes on from there.
00:15:03.060And yes, their school absolutely plays a role in this to a great extent.
00:15:06.840I think public schools are influential in tipping the scales.
00:15:10.460And that's something that parents absolutely need to discuss.
00:15:13.280But it is only in the form of affirming something that has begun online, at home, on their own, in chat forums, and certainly not chat forums, and certainly not on websites that have anything to do with gender-affirming care or politics or anything else.
00:15:37.000And so when parents are trying to ban books, like if, for example, the conservative dream came true, right, and suddenly there were only gendered bathrooms, and there were only no, you know, no books about sexuality at all in schools ever, and there was no sex ed, it wouldn't change a goddamn thing.
00:15:53.980Because you would still have students radicalizing the same way that they're radicalizing now.
00:15:57.220And if you don't change the policies and the state laws right now around protecting children who are starting to identify as non-binary and who choose to identify in their schools as different names and different genders, and parents are often not told about this, and in some cases, like you have in Minnesota, that's a sanctuary state for trans kids.
00:16:16.060You have governors like Tim Walz, who's now the VP candidate in the United States, saying, okay, well, we can even, you know, take kids from their parents if the parents don't agree with the kid's choice to transition.
00:24:52.820So anyway, like I enjoyed, like I would say that there's some materials that people, that conservatives would get their panties in a bunch about.
00:25:16.500Come on, like anyone can watch that and be like, oh my God, you know, like it's, it's great.
00:25:22.380And like the thing, the thing is like for me, fan service and anime does nothing for me.
00:25:26.720You know, like the jiggling boobs, it's just, eh.
00:25:30.160So like imagine, you know, any, I'm sure like male fan service doesn't really do anything for you when you're watching anime.
00:25:37.620So, you know, imagine if it was just all female fan service for you and cute romances, you know, I think that that's, that would probably maybe be more appealing.
00:26:02.240And this is one of the things that we're like, you know, you're talking about what young girls actually like.
00:26:06.820And we mentioned this in a recent episode where everyone was like, no, young girls like buff, muscly men.
00:26:12.220And I'm like, then you have no young girl friends.
00:26:15.480Like you, you must have not actually talked to a, a, a late teenage girl, early twenties girl, because if you at all engage with these communities, they do not.
00:27:38.640Oh, even if it wasn't like, if you really like, if that's too offensive for people, just teach teens how to prepare tax returns and have that be their first job.
00:27:50.340What people are missing is at the same time as you shouldn't be focused on the false areas of operation, i.e. whether it's gendered bathrooms or whether it is libraries,
00:28:01.400you need to be focused on where they're actually getting your kids.
00:28:13.620If you aren't paying attention to the battle happening in fan fiction communities, then you aren't paying attention to how your daughter is going to be indoctrinated.
00:28:20.740You don't know where your kids are being radicalized.
00:28:46.380But you win this by winning the fight in the community, by creating alternate iterations of this community.
00:28:53.960So for example, if you approach something like the satanic panic by banning Dungeons and Dragons, then what you ensure is that your kids are secretly going to Dungeons and Dragons events.
00:29:06.780You have no say over and that are antagonistic to your perspective.
00:29:09.520The way you win the satanic panic, the way you win the fan fiction wars is to create alternate communities that are copacetic with your worldviews.
00:29:22.680If you created the Christian, what's the word I'm looking for, Dungeons and Dragons club, then your kids are protected.
00:29:30.160In fact, one of our friends who lives in our local community does this.
00:29:34.800He runs, he's a dungeon master for a group that a lot of his employees go to, but also his young kids go to.
00:29:41.060Who are like, you know, I think like 8 through 16 or something.
00:29:46.060And kids are not as repelled by doing things with their parents as you would think if you engage with earnesty in the activities that they enjoy.
00:29:56.280And this can be reading their latest fan fiction and stuff like this.
00:29:59.480And it's a good way to educate your kids to help them learn better language, right?
00:30:03.540You know, getting kids to engage creatively in things that they're not shamed for and that you can engage them on is a great way.
00:30:12.420You're like, oh, you want this to win the local fan fiction competition?
00:30:15.420Like, I'll help you with this, et cetera, right?
00:30:19.820When you ban this stuff, that's where you lose.
00:30:22.900Or when you focus on battles, if you're out there, like, I bet you so many of these parents, right, who are, like, fighting, like, to get this, like, book instructing on play show and stuff like that out of school libraries.
00:30:35.060If you ask them, yeah, when was the last time your kid went to the school library?
00:30:47.400It's part of a social hierarchy battle more than it's about actually trying to make things better.
00:30:51.780And yet it makes the entire Republican movement look bad when we should just be not funding these libraries and focusing on the community institutions, as Simone says, the community libraries that already exist.
00:31:02.700Yeah, well, I think the other important thing that cannot be understated is addressing policies that allow schools to be places where once the radicalization has begun, they bring it up from 10 to 100 by affirming that and by legitimizing it.
00:31:25.760Remember, there's that story how when I was a kid, I just, like, innocently said at one point that I was going to marry my best friend, and we're going to have 100 cats, and we're going to live in an RV.
00:31:37.980And my school decided that I had just come out as a lesbian and had a call with my parents and had a call with, like, there was a whole, all these meetings because they basically made it a thing.
00:31:50.800And I just, I mean, they didn't, like, have a meeting about how I wanted to have 100 cats.
00:31:58.900Like, this was how unserious, I mean, I was, I guess, like, I just, like, I don't know, I just assumed I was going to be a lesbian because everyone around me was a lesbian.
00:32:05.720Like, all my kids, all my friends' parents were lesbian couples, so I just figured, like, it didn't really matter what gender you married, and I didn't know what I was.
00:32:14.580But I think that that is something that is happening at schools is kids are saying, you know, doing things like being a Tom girl.
00:32:23.600And rather than just being like, oh, she's a Tom girl, rather than being like, oh, Simone says she's going to marry her best friend and have 100 cats, they're like, oh.
00:32:34.000But there's nothing you can do about that.
00:32:35.960The whole bureaucracy is corrupted, okay?
00:32:38.640There's nothing you can do without taking down the school system.
00:32:41.580There are laws, there are laws that, I mean, come on, the Tim Walls.
00:32:45.200We're so close to launching right now.
00:32:46.940We've been doing all the final polishes, it's getting so nice.
00:32:50.060I really just want the product that hits the shelves to be something that people can be proud of.
00:32:54.800And I feel like we're there, we're waiting for the final ad to be made.
00:32:57.740It might actually go live before this episode does, but so if it does, you know, check it out.
00:33:01.820Yeah, well, you might throw the promo video in here.
00:33:04.860Sadly, we're still a few days away from the promo video being done,
00:33:07.980but we probably are going to have the first final draft done today, which is exciting.
00:33:13.060Although, for any who can't wait, here is the first 15 seconds of the promo.
00:33:17.340Frankly, we're terrified to send our kids into the legacy school system.
00:33:21.020To that end, my wife and I built the Collins Institute,
00:33:23.820a comprehensive interactive map or skill tree comprising all of human knowledge.
00:33:28.500The platform is designed to be usable as soon as a student gets comfortable with reading
00:33:32.120and goes about midway through a PhD in most subjects.
00:33:35.060If you want to get to the end, yeah, it could be kind of fun.
00:33:39.020But yeah, I'm just saying like there are actually state laws.
00:33:42.100There is actually legislation in place that can empower teachers to not tell parents
00:33:48.800as kids start to go through the process of transitioning.
00:33:52.480And I think that addressing those is important.
00:33:54.920If parents are at least informed, it doesn't matter how radicalized teachers are.
00:33:59.080Parents can then have conversations with their children
00:34:01.660and at least have a part in the de-radicalization process.
00:34:07.380You know, of course, there are like plenty of bits about how like,
00:34:10.700you know, conservative parents hear that their daughter has decided to transition.
00:34:14.580And so then they decide to transition to and start making fun of it.
00:34:17.780And the daughter like chooses to not, you know,
00:35:42.780Yeah, and they start by so commonly it's just being non-binary or changing to a new nickname and it's just playing around with it.
00:35:53.560And parents can very subtly start having meaningful conversations with their kids about things like body dysmorphia, about their discomfort, about, you know, other things going on in their life.
00:36:03.820Sometimes the stress that drives people to body dysmorphia or to turning to gender affirming care is because there are big problems elsewhere in life.
00:36:11.620I mean, all of my times when I started doing things to hurt myself when I was an adolescent, like when I started starving myself, it was because of the stress that I experienced at school and school really wasn't working for me.
00:36:21.900And the way I dealt with that was by by starving myself and other kids are dealing with this by trying to change their identity by transitioning.
00:36:31.380This is these are all areas where parents can start to intervene.
00:36:34.280So I disagree with you that it's not like, OK, once they've that once they've started to explore, they them, they can't go back.
00:36:42.820Yeah, but your your your job is like 99 percent harder at that point.
00:36:47.740So because by telling them to go back or by getting them to question,
00:36:51.900this in any way, you are now seen as abusive to them and they then will begin to quarantine any their their mind, any ideas you are putting in there, which is why you need to give them a full understanding of human sexuality before the school presents an alternate understanding of.
00:37:06.980Well, yeah, and well, and also a full understanding of what transitioning is and what gender affirming care is.
00:37:12.320Most of the people coming into this, like we did an episode on Planned Parenthood, what young women are being told, for example, before given testosterone is they're having.
00:37:22.520Often just two hour consultations with someone at Planned Parenthood where they list very few of the symptoms of transitioning, like two, two symptoms, one being like vaginal dryness, which is like, oh, who cares?
00:37:34.460Right. And then they go in and they don't understand.
00:37:37.780Now, if you educate your kids well before puberty about not only puberty and sex ed and all that, but also like, by the way, one thing that people often do at this time or that more people are doing is they're transitioning.
00:37:58.420Then they're going to come into this really differently because, again, what people are being told is it's reversible and that it doesn't cause any problems and that it has all these benefits.
00:38:07.900Yeah, well, and I think share them pictures and video of the surgery in the same way that they used to, you know, they scared our generation out of pregnancy by showing people like videos of pregnancy.
00:38:17.840Snacky Smalls presents The Miracle of Childbirth.
00:38:42.540Just go through videos of it, you know, and they'll be like, oh, okay, this is not something.
00:38:46.160Because a lot of the, what I've heard is the way that they sell the medical transition to people, they don't really explain what's happening.
00:38:55.000They, like, explain it super quickly and in super short euphemisms.
00:38:58.380And that most of the detransitioners are like, if I actually understood what was going to happen to my body, I wouldn't have done it.
00:39:05.440Yeah, like, getting a mastectomy can actually be pretty, like, there are two ways to do it.
00:39:10.020I think in one way you have to have little ports to, like, drain the pus or something.
00:39:13.500And then another way you try not to, but then it can lead to a lot of bruising and internal bleeding.
00:39:18.860Yeah, it gets, it gets pretty intense for sure.
00:39:52.900Hold on, this is the thing about, like, manga, right?
00:39:55.340And it's actually interesting why I think manga has continued to do well.
00:39:57.840It's because it hasn't been captured in the same way that the publishing industry has.
00:40:03.520As we remarked in our other video on the publishing industry, right now, most of the publishing industry is just a pet project to the publishers and doesn't make them money.
00:40:12.000They really make money basically just off of Bibles and back sales, which is a shame that it's going to all the rest of this horrifying stuff, right?
00:40:20.060But anyway, so then they funnel the money from that into making the industry.
00:40:24.760But it also means that they're not really focused on, like, making money in the industry, which means that they're okay with kicking out talented writers if they don't fit their agenda, right?
00:40:32.540Which is why all of the teen novels are so boring and by the books these days.
00:40:36.180It's why all the stuff coming out of the industry is boring and by the books.
00:40:39.400And it's why when kids want something that has any degree of intellectual vitality to it, they have to go to non-woke markets.
00:40:47.460In the same way that I think that that's why a lot of conservatives watch anime these days is because in the United States, the market is so, what's the word here, a little terrible, right?