Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - November 10, 2021


Ep 521 ｜ Yes, Critical Race Theory Is in Schools ｜ Guest： Tony Kinnett


Episode Stats

Length

57 minutes

Words per Minute

179.14851

Word Count

10,322

Sentence Count

634

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

54


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so
00:00:14.360 far. Go back and listen to yesterday's episode about vaccine mandates that I did with Ben
00:00:19.240 Shapiro. Definitely go back and listen to or watch Monday's episode with President Donald
00:00:24.540 Trump. Today we have another guest. We are going to be talking about how critical race
00:00:29.580 theory actually is showing up in schools. You have been hearing breathlessly, endlessly,
00:00:37.400 relentlessly from liberal pundits on social media, in the media, saying that critical race
00:00:44.820 theory isn't something that's taught in K-12 schools. This is a law school level, esoteric,
00:00:51.540 obscure philosophy. This has nothing to do with public school education. This is not something
00:00:57.880 that's happening. This is just a bunch of racists stoking racial anger. And this is white supremacy
00:01:06.700 and white fragility and white and racist and white. The reality is, is that critical race theory and
00:01:14.900 the tenets of critical race theory absolutely are being taught in schools. We have talked about
00:01:21.800 critical race theory a lot over the past two years. And let me just say, let me just say,
00:01:26.220 I'm not trying to pat us on the back here, but we were one of the first conservative shows to even
00:01:32.220 define critical theory, to talk about critical race theory. We were way ahead of the curve on this.
00:01:37.660 Now, I will also say that there were a lot of people talking about critical theory and critical
00:01:42.360 race theory before I was talking about it. Obviously, they've been talking about it for decades,
00:01:47.260 but there were conservatives, there were Christians who have been talking about this and warning about the
00:01:51.700 tenets of critical race theory for a very long time. And so really, in the grand scheme of things, I'm late to
00:01:57.980 the game. But we have been talking about this for years now, in one form or another. And thankfully, more and more
00:02:04.520 people are waking up to it. So the first thing I take issue with is when people say, well, these people
00:02:10.720 complaining about critical race theory, they don't know what critical race theory is, they can't define critical
00:02:14.700 race theory. As I've said many times, try me, try me. Unfortunately, I've spent a lot of time reading
00:02:21.680 critical race theorists and reading primary sources on critical race theory. I wish I did not know the
00:02:29.480 misery that is critical race theory, but I absolutely do. The reason that we're talking about this, the
00:02:35.060 reason we're going to talk about or talk to my guests is because of this Virginia election, where parents
00:02:39.720 were up in arms, not just about the tenets of critical race theory that are being taught in public
00:02:43.720 schools, but also the gender theory that's being taught in schools and the mishandling of some
00:02:50.980 terrible situations that we've talked about in Loudoun County schools. And so parents really did.
00:02:58.060 They made this election. They pushed the election in the way of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. And that's
00:03:06.700 why we're talking about this. And for whatever reason, Democrats and a lot of people in the liberal
00:03:10.340 media, they just, they just don't believe it. They just don't believe that it's anything other than a
00:03:16.100 white supremacist boogeyman. And that parents who are mad about it just must be these crazy white
00:03:21.060 supremacists. Here's a little montage of people in the media saying just that. Critical race theory,
00:03:28.940 which isn't real. You cannot teach the truth about Thomas Jefferson. You must give encomiums to
00:03:34.960 Thomas Jefferson in school. Otherwise that's critical race theory. If you even talk about enslavement,
00:03:38.940 that's critical race theory. Anything that makes a white parent uncomfortable is critical race theory.
00:03:43.420 We don't teach critical race theory. This is a made up, this is a Trump, Betsy DeVos,
00:03:48.700 Glenn Youngkin plan to divide people.
00:03:51.500 All right. Well, there's a lot more examples than that, but this has been talked about constantly in
00:03:58.200 the media, on social media, that this is just this boogeyman. That was Joy Reid. She's been saying
00:04:05.060 this a lot. That was her in the middle talking about that really white people and conservatives
00:04:12.420 just say critical race theory is this, is just talking about slavery or is just talking about
00:04:20.700 racism. And white parents are just uncomfortable with kids learning about racism and slavery,
00:04:26.240 which is not true. Way before we were talking about critical race theory, way before people were
00:04:30.440 even worried about leftist indoctrination in schools. People were learning about slavery.
00:04:36.200 People were learning about the Trail of Tears. People were learning about Jim Crow. I went to a
00:04:40.580 Christian private school in Texas growing up. I learned about all that kind of stuff. Honestly,
00:04:46.120 it seems to me like the majority of mainstream liberals actually have no idea what it is and especially
00:04:52.780 don't know how it manifests itself. Really, what it seems like most liberals think is that it just means
00:04:59.080 being critical of racism. That's what critical race theory means. I have talked to liberals who say
00:05:04.360 that they're, you know, social justice liberals and they accuse conservatives like me of not really
00:05:09.620 knowing what critical race theory is. And then when I ask them to define it and ask them what they've
00:05:14.660 read about it, what they say is that, oh, you know, it's basically just looking at how racism affects
00:05:19.560 people. They don't know. I think, honestly, a lot of people on the left just defend it because
00:05:24.120 the right is attacking it. And so it's just a knee-jerk reaction. They see it as another culture
00:05:29.720 war. It's just they think that because the right says it's bad that they have to say it's good.
00:05:36.260 But if a lot of these liberals actually knew what CRT holds, they would realize that it goes against
00:05:42.440 many of the things that they say that they believe in, like equal rights. And we'll explain that in just
00:05:46.800 a little bit. The truth is what started out as an obscure esoteric idea by a 1970s scholar has now
00:05:54.460 expanded to characterize much of the left's understanding, not just about race, but about
00:05:59.820 human nature in general, about our society, about America's institutions, our constitution,
00:06:05.280 even their understanding of truth itself. There are people in the center and on the left,
00:06:10.460 professing Christians included, who will say, I don't believe in critical race theory. Critical race
00:06:15.360 theory is not something being preached from the pulpits. It's not something being taught in schools.
00:06:19.300 They'll say, you know, yeah, I don't believe in critical race theory at all. But then they will
00:06:23.780 say things that actually are derived from critical race theory. They just don't realize it. The concept
00:06:30.200 of white privilege, for example, is a concept of critical race theory. Whether you agree with it or
00:06:34.200 not, it is. Specifically, it comes from critical whiteness studies. This idea that there is a seen and
00:06:40.940 unseen collection of ways that white people use and have access to to help each other that is mostly
00:06:47.960 inaccessible to non-white people. That's originally what white privilege means. Systemic racism is a
00:06:54.880 concept of critical race theory. Again, whether or not you think that it is real in 2021, it is a concept
00:07:00.560 derived from critical race theorists. People really get mad when I say this, but if you read critical race
00:07:06.840 theorists, you know that that's not actually controversial to say that the claim of systemic
00:07:11.620 racism is not based on hard data. It's not based on hard facts. It's based on a narrative with certain
00:07:20.000 forms of facts sprinkled in to try to support the narrative. It's really a theory. It is a particular
00:07:26.600 perspective. It is a philosophy that the system is to blame for all problems that are suffered by
00:07:35.440 non-white people. So it goes something like this. Slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, the war on drugs,
00:07:42.300 etc. All existed not that long ago, which is true. Therefore, it's obvious that these laws, this theory
00:07:49.160 says, are the reason for racial disparities and black people's problems today. And that theory, that
00:07:58.060 narrative of systemic racism sounds really believable because those were things that actually happened.
00:08:02.900 That's real. That's historical. But the assertion that those things were actually the cause or are
00:08:09.360 actually the cause of remaining disparities today is not backed up with factual causal arguments.
00:08:18.140 It is highly, highly debatable whether or not those policies still have a significant impact on
00:08:23.120 disparities and outcomes today. But rather than debating it, CRT just accepts it as true without
00:08:29.900 debate. Because CRT, critical race theory, starts. It starts with the assumption that everything is
00:08:36.060 characterized, everything in this country is characterized by anti-black racism. So when people
00:08:42.540 say, well, I don't believe in critical race theory, but I do believe in white privilege and I do believe
00:08:48.060 in systemic racism, well, you believe in critical race theory. And those are just two examples.
00:08:53.280 We'll get to more later. Let me give you a definition, a real definition of critical race
00:08:59.880 theory. Critical race theory. This is the definition. I always try to shorten it and
00:09:06.740 summarize it as much as I can. And I'm never able to because it's just, it is kind of complex. I mean,
00:09:12.720 you could just say it boils down to white oppressors and black and brown oppressed and that every single
00:09:18.240 thing in society comes down to that. That might be a simple way to just say it. But there are a lot
00:09:24.660 more aspects of it that I think are even more troubling and radical than that kind of reductive
00:09:30.860 myopic and ahistorical and illogical view of the world. So critical race theory is a theory
00:09:36.860 by a scholar developed by a scholar named Derek Bell in the 1970s. It's been around for a long time.
00:09:44.040 He and the proponents of CRT would say that it is a way to examine American history and our current
00:09:49.700 institutions through the lens of race. That's the most generous definition that you could give it.
00:09:54.500 That is how they would define it. So Bell held that racism is not an exception in society,
00:10:00.480 in American society, but it's actually its normal state. It is the usual way of doing things in
00:10:05.680 America. It is intertwined, not just with our institutions, but in how most people live our
00:10:10.740 lives in the U.S. So in other words, it is central to the human experience. And critical race theory
00:10:16.860 seeks to examine how the centrality of race and racism has affected people's lives, black people's
00:10:22.900 lives in particular, both individually and systemically. CRT is one of many critical theories.
00:10:29.000 There's queer and gender theory, feminist theory. Critical theory is a school of thought that examines
00:10:33.940 power structures and hierarchies within society and asserts that society's problems are due to these
00:10:40.380 structures and hierarchies rather than, say, people's individual choices. So the goal of the critical
00:10:47.200 theorist is to liberate so-called people from these structures and hierarchies, typically through major
00:10:54.020 societal and political changes. The assumption is that people are oppressed by systems that have been
00:11:00.280 put in place by the most powerful in society to keep them down. So critical theory examines these
00:11:06.920 systems and offers ideas for how to finally attain liberation. Critical theory was established by
00:11:14.100 the Frankfurt School in Germany, which was a school of social theory that, like Karl Marx, who wrote the
00:11:19.300 Communist Manifesto, examined social conditions and hypothesized about how the poor conditions caused
00:11:25.220 by capitalism and other systems could be changed by revolutionizing power structures and hierarchies.
00:11:31.240 So critical theory, it's not identical to Marxism. So when you hear liberals saying,
00:11:36.680 oh, they're just saying this, it's Marxist, it's not, it's not Marxist. It's not exactly Marxism,
00:11:42.900 but it is similar. So just as Marx, the father of communism, saw the world through the lens of class
00:11:49.060 oppression, rich versus poor, bourgeois versus the proletariat, greedy capitalists versus the working
00:11:53.700 class, and sought to overthrow capitalism, so everyone would live communally and equally in harmony without
00:12:00.440 any, you know, personal profit or private property. That's what he believed. So critical theories see
00:12:07.580 the world through the lens of some kind of oppressor versus oppressed. So critical race theory takes
00:12:14.600 Marx's view of the world as the rich oppressors versus the poor, poor oppressed, and asserts that
00:12:19.280 the world, or at least the U.S., is divided by the white oppressor and the black and brown oppressed.
00:12:24.920 And the simplest and most clear breakdown of CRT is a book called Critical Race Theory,
00:12:31.740 An Introduction by Richard Delgado, Gene Stefansik, two critical race scholars. And here's how they
00:12:39.660 introduced CRT. So they say, quote, critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous
00:12:44.820 movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism. So from critical legal studies, it borrows the idea
00:12:51.700 that there is no one right answer when it comes to the law and legal decisions. It depends on
00:12:56.060 interpretation. It depends on perspective. It depends on reasoning. It uses feminism stance on the
00:13:02.460 relationship between power and social roles and, quote, the unseen, largely invisible collection of
00:13:08.520 patterns and habits that make up patriarchy and other types of domination. That's important because
00:13:15.020 that lets us know how radical CRT is compared to most traditional Western thought about the rule of law,
00:13:24.420 about due process, right, and the concept of truth. So CRT, as a critical theory, and as critical theory as a
00:13:30.180 product of the Frankfurt School, dismisses the idea that truth about society can be discovered through
00:13:35.480 objective means or through the scientific method or through data. And rather, truth is a matter of a person's
00:13:42.200 standpoint within power structures. So this is why white people, and in particular white conservatives, are dismissed
00:13:51.120 on this subject, even if they bring up data or counter logic to a particular claim about black people's oppression
00:13:56.680 in the U.S. Data or any points that contradict the idea that black people are systemically oppressed because of
00:14:03.920 inherently white supremacist institutions can be ignored because they are coming from the wrong standpoint. The
00:14:09.480 standpoint of the so-called oppressed trumps any standpoint or facts presented by someone else.
00:14:16.300 And now, it's not just white people who are dismissed by this. It's also people who represent
00:14:21.140 the construct, critical race theory says, of whiteness. So that is why a black or brown person like
00:14:28.500 Winsome Sears or Ben Carson or Votie Bauckham or Candace Owens or Samuel Say or all of these people who
00:14:35.160 don't agree with critical race theory and don't agree with the leftist perspective on race and
00:14:39.720 justice, why they are dismissed as, you know, carrying water for a white supremacist or even called white
00:14:46.220 supremacist themselves is because critical race theory doesn't just see white and black as the color of
00:14:51.240 your skin, but where you stand when it comes to these power structures. And so a white person like Terry
00:14:59.000 McAuliffe might actually be considered by this leftist view of race as more black than someone
00:15:05.160 like Winsome Sears, who is a Republican and a conservative and doesn't go along with the victim
00:15:09.460 mentality that critical race theory peddles. So it's very convoluted. It's very convoluted.
00:15:16.360 Delgado and Stefan Sick also explained that one of the primary tenets of CRT is a critique of the liberal
00:15:21.780 order. By liberal, that doesn't mean leftist. It just means basic Western democratic systems and the
00:15:27.440 Western rule of law. So it actually holds in derision the idea of inherent rights and constitutional
00:15:33.960 rights, the right to due process, free speech. They actually argue that these are all tools of
00:15:38.480 the oppressor. So critical race theory, it's radical. It is truly radical. It doesn't believe in the
00:15:43.780 constitution. It doesn't believe in constitutional rights. It doesn't believe that America has ever
00:15:48.980 been a place that has granted liberty and equality for all people, but that it is inherently white
00:15:54.400 supremacist. And so even though Iber Max Kendi and even though Nicole Hannah-Jones, who wrote the
00:16:00.860 1619 Project and whatever that woman, that white woman's name is, who wrote White Fragility, Robin
00:16:08.460 D'Angelo, even though they don't call themselves critical race theorists, they are all peddling the
00:16:13.900 same nonsense. That America is inherently innately racist, that white people are inherently innately
00:16:20.560 racist and that the entirety of the institutions and systems in the United States are so infected by
00:16:29.400 white supremacy that there is no way that we will ever be able to achieve their version of justice,
00:16:37.360 equality, and liberation until we hold all white people back and we tear the systems down and we
00:16:43.820 build it into some newfangled, convoluted, in my opinion, corrupted version of equity. It's truly
00:16:52.200 radical. It is revolutionary. And again, it's not based on fact. It's based on this hypothesis
00:16:58.140 that we were actually founded on the enslavement and oppression of people and that we are still
00:17:04.140 carrying forms of enslavement and oppression today. It's really hard to make that case when you look at how
00:17:10.360 far Black Americans have come. Also, when you look at the fact that every single civilization has had
00:17:16.580 slavery, every single ethnicity has been both an oppressor and oppressed. Every person of every skin
00:17:23.560 color probably has oppressed people somewhere in their lineage. So this collectivist idea that America
00:17:30.740 is only exclusively and systemically a form of oppression for non-white people, it just doesn't hold up
00:17:39.460 to facts. And if you bring up, for example, that Asian Americans are far more successful across a
00:17:45.320 variety of categories, including Asian immigrants than white Americans, they have a higher graduation
00:17:50.940 rate, they have a lower divorce rate, they've got a lower fatherlessness rate, they've got a higher
00:17:55.660 median income than white Americans. And so if you ask logically, how can America be a white supremacist
00:18:01.440 nation if white people aren't supreme, when it comes to most of the categories that we view as
00:18:06.400 categories of success? They'll call that a model minority myth. They'll say that's offensive,
00:18:11.360 that's pitting Asian people against Black people. Really, we need to just be pitting, you know,
00:18:16.040 white people against non-white people. And they won't deal with your facts. They won't deal with your
00:18:22.180 data. They won't deal with your logic. They'll actually just say that that's all a construct of
00:18:26.040 whiteness. They don't want a colorblind society. They want more division. They want more segregation.
00:18:31.700 They actually think this is going to somehow accomplish liberation. Well, look, critical race
00:18:38.500 theory and its philosophies have been driving the most radical wing of racial activism, so-called
00:18:45.800 social justice activism in the Democratic Party for a long time. The people who are fueled by this kind
00:18:52.120 of theology and ideology have been leading the cities who are made up of majority Black and Brown
00:18:59.600 constituents for decades. And has that achieved liberation? I don't think so. But again, if you
00:19:05.920 bring up those kinds of logical or data-driven points, then you're just dismissed as some kind
00:19:11.360 of white supremacist. And so in that way, critical race theory is self-certifying. It can't actually be
00:19:17.400 argued against. It is axiomatic. It is really more of religious dogma than anything founded in truth.
00:19:24.820 And so when professing Christians, they find themselves latching on to this kind of thing
00:19:29.360 by saying, well, systemic racism is a fact in 2021. White privilege is a fact in 2021. You might agree
00:19:36.800 with some parts of that. But to say that those are all givens, that we just must accept those as a
00:19:41.900 reality, well, you're not actually trafficking in truth. You have believed and are peddling critical
00:19:47.800 race theory whether you want to believe it or not. And we do see forms of this, absolutely,
00:19:52.800 in the public school system by separating oppressed versus oppressors, by talking about
00:19:59.160 the inherent evils of the United States. We're not just talking about teaching the good and the bad
00:20:03.720 and the ugly of American history, which everyone is all for. But we are actually talking about
00:20:08.900 resegregation, demonizing whiteness, demonizing Western civilization, demonizing America, and also
00:20:17.260 putting a stumbling block or an obstacle before black and brown kids by saying there's this
00:20:22.860 insurmountable thing called white privilege and you'll never be as successful. It's breeding resentment.
00:20:28.280 And it is also, a lot of people are angry because it is taking the place of kids actually learning
00:20:34.220 critical thinking, actually reading the classics, learning about math and science and STEM, all of
00:20:39.920 these things that parents want their kids actually learning about. Not to mention it's unbiblical.
00:20:44.820 We don't have time to get into all of that right now, but critical race theory is partiality. It is
00:20:53.220 judging people by their skin color, assuming their experiences and their inherited oppression and where
00:21:00.780 they stand in the world based on the color of their skin rather than based on fact. God hates
00:21:04.920 partiality, Exodus 23.3, Leviticus 19.15, Deuteronomy 117, Deuteronomy 16.19. And we've talked about this
00:21:13.260 many times. We'll link some previous episodes where we talk about the dangers of critical race theory
00:21:18.280 and where it is cropping up. Tony, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you
00:21:24.780 are and what you do? Absolutely. I am Tony Kennett. I am the founder of the Chalkboard Review, which is
00:21:30.360 an education publication for all teachers. And then I am the science coordinator for now for the
00:21:36.980 Indianapolis public school system. Okay, tell us why you said for now.
00:21:41.860 Well, so I've exposed a lot of stuff going on on the inside of Indianapolis in the last couple of
00:21:47.160 days. Some might say that even after I've been in two HR meetings before for really small things that
00:21:53.300 kind of weird to be pulled into HR over tweets saying, rest in peace, Rush Limbaugh, I wonder how
00:21:59.100 they're going to react at this point. I've received no emails of any kind this morning. So none that I
00:22:03.800 usually get normally I have 1520 emails in the morning, it's been eerily silent all morning.
00:22:09.460 And that is because for those who don't know, well, we're recording this on a Friday. So this
00:22:15.040 will actually come out on on a different day. But as we're recording this last night, you went on
00:22:19.740 Tucker Carlson, you had a video that came out on Twitter. That's how I discovered you talking about
00:22:25.820 how critical race theory actually is in schools, at least where you are, but it's not necessarily
00:22:31.220 under the explicit name of critical race theory. So that's why you're a little skeptical that things
00:22:37.900 are eerily quiet in your inbox. Can you tell us why you made the video and reiterate what the video
00:22:45.360 is about? What did you say? Absolutely. So I've been writing in conservative education policy for
00:22:52.220 some time. But in my my work life, I have been working as a science coordinator, as a science
00:22:58.200 instructional coach for the district of Indianapolis. And my job is to go around and make sure that
00:23:03.120 the science curriculum is up to snuff for our 30,000 plus students. I'm supposed to help teachers
00:23:08.540 become better teachers, not just in science, but kind of across the board. And in the last year,
00:23:14.020 it's gotten really weird. Some of the stuff the district has started putting out, they've always
00:23:18.400 been really to the left. But things that they started expecting of their teachers to do grouping us
00:23:22.680 into these weird sessions where they would tell us that, you know, this systemic racism that white
00:23:27.480 people are responsible for is ruining the entire country and that IPS is going to fix it by
00:23:32.900 utilizing these principles from Kimberly Crenshaw and Gloria Ladson Billings, these critical race
00:23:38.700 theory as they wrote it in the early 90s and early 2000s. So finally, I honestly had enough. I've been
00:23:45.060 held to double standards. They've literally sent out an email earlier this year telling parents are
00:23:50.720 telling principals that if a parent emails you, you tell them that we are not teaching critical race
00:23:55.480 theory. And with the Yunkin election and everything going on, now all of these people are coming out
00:24:00.480 on media and saying not only is critical race theory not taught in K-12 classrooms, not only is it not
00:24:05.200 even a legal framework anymore at some graduate level, you have people going on national media and saying
00:24:09.860 it just simply doesn't exist.
00:24:10.960 Right. But it's Nicole Wallace, MSNBC, a supposed Republican, Hardy Har, who said critical race theory,
00:24:18.540 which isn't a thing. And so and there are other guests saying the same thing. It's amazing how they've
00:24:23.880 shifted all the way to there, that it's basically just this imaginary boogeyman that the right just made
00:24:30.460 up. Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, continue on. Obviously, we know that that's not real, that it
00:24:38.620 is showing up in classrooms, but continue on what you were talking about in the video, how it is showing
00:24:43.200 up. Well, there are two basic arms of learning and instruction. There's curriculum, which is the stuff
00:24:49.480 that you learn in class. It's the actual facts, the actual standards, the math, the history, the English,
00:24:54.720 et cetera. And then there's pedagogy, which is how it's taught. And so we can legally tell parents we
00:25:01.820 can, you know, kind of wink and say, well, we're we're not actually using critical race theory in
00:25:06.920 our standards. We're not teaching it as part of the curriculum. But realistically, once those school
00:25:12.040 doors shut and the administrators are alone with the staff, they implore us to make sure that we're
00:25:18.380 teaching our students from a critical race theory pedagogy, which just means that when I teach,
00:25:23.560 it's through a lens of systemic racism in the United States, this race essentialism. And so that's more
00:25:29.980 of what I want to communicate to parents. I just can't stand the lying to parents. I don't think
00:25:34.420 that's in any way acceptable. And that's what finally pushed me over. Yeah. And give us some
00:25:39.740 examples of how this is showing up in the classroom. Maybe a lot of parents, well, meaning parents, maybe
00:25:46.300 even conservative parents might not recognize it because it's so often brought in under the guise of
00:25:52.680 diversity, inclusion and tolerance and equity. All of these very good and just and righteous
00:25:58.800 sounding terms that no one wants to push back against because no one wants to be seen as a
00:26:04.660 racist or bigot. But it's not really about diversity and inclusion and tolerance, is it?
00:26:10.120 Right. No, it's all about the buzzwords and education. We love our buzzwords. They make us sound
00:26:13.860 so smart. We went to our graduate programs and we learned to say things with such nuance and talk about
00:26:19.660 mitigating these incredible factors. So how it looks in classroom is the teacher will walk in
00:26:24.320 and say, guys, to encourage equity and to encourage racial justice and all of these things that sound
00:26:29.620 really great for our communities, I'm going to have you all stand up and do a privilege walk.
00:26:34.380 And we are going to determine that because of your skin color, not your heritage, even now it's about
00:26:38.880 the phenotype, the skin color. You look white. So if you're Cuban or you're, you know, a light skinned
00:26:43.480 Hispanic person, you're out of luck. Sorry, you're white now. Yeah. And we make students do these
00:26:47.560 privilege walks and at very young ages determine how racist they must be and how privileged they
00:26:53.860 must be. And there's the soft bigotry of low expectations. We just had a meeting the other
00:26:58.540 day in which it was discussed that while our black and Hispanic students weren't scoring very well
00:27:03.540 on state reading tests, all of our teachers were still giving them A's and B's in the classroom just
00:27:08.480 alongside students who weren't black or Hispanic, which was really weird. It sounds like the soft
00:27:14.460 bigotry of low expectations to me. That doesn't sound like that's helping children, patting them
00:27:19.240 on the back when they're not meeting standards. That's how it shows up is we treat black and
00:27:23.960 Hispanic students like they are inferior victims. And then we treat white students as though they
00:27:29.460 are horrific oppressors. And that's what it looks like on the day to day. Just has nice words painted
00:27:34.840 over it.
00:27:35.260 So we hear it a lot in the rendering of history that sometimes comes from the classroom, like
00:27:42.220 Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States type teaching, 1619, right? 1619 project type
00:27:49.560 teaching, which is not at neither of those sources are actually even meant intended to be historically
00:27:56.120 accurate. They are actually intended to be a particular narrative or particular perspective
00:28:01.300 of what the authors of those sources want American history to look like, where white means
00:28:08.000 oppressor, black and brown always mean oppressed. And therefore, every institution in the United
00:28:12.900 States is permeated by that oppressed versus oppressor, white versus black dichotomy. Real
00:28:19.100 history is a lot more complicated than that. There's good, there's bad, there's ugly. That's
00:28:22.620 the problem with critical race theory. It's not teaching kids about race and history. It's about
00:28:26.440 teaching people about a particular, and I would even say prejudiced and ahistorical view of history.
00:28:33.640 That's why people have a problem with all of this. But it's not just showing up in the history
00:28:38.300 classroom or in the English classroom or in social studies or whatever. It's showing up in math and
00:28:42.280 science, right?
00:28:43.720 It really is. And that's kind of the weird thing. And in my domain of science, there's been such a push
00:28:48.220 to make sure that we're meeting these weird racial quotas in our programs. We're putting a weird
00:28:55.160 emphasis on how equitable our texts are and making sure that all of these science texts,
00:28:59.880 we're adopting a science curriculum this year. So I'm reading hundreds of different science texts,
00:29:04.800 articles, et cetera, trying to make the right choice for our district. Well, they put us on a committee
00:29:09.420 and now they have a racial equity committee looking over my shoulder to make sure that the books that
00:29:14.140 we choose are equitable. And they have all of these examples because there's no way that a black or
00:29:19.280 Hispanic student could ever understand the same examples a white student could. That's called the
00:29:24.000 culturally relevant pedagogy. That's Gloria Ladson Billings again. And so it crops up some math and
00:29:29.220 science. We're starting looking at a partnership with Indiana University that analyzes how a math
00:29:34.300 teacher teaches and then analyzes what the students of color score in that class to determine how racist
00:29:40.360 the math teacher is. It's wild.
00:29:43.180 Oh, my goodness. Can you explain that a little bit more? How are they determining how racist a math
00:29:47.880 teacher is by how many equitable, so-called equitable examples she's using?
00:29:52.600 Well, it kind of depends there. So the Racial Equity Institute out of the Carolinas comes in every
00:29:57.700 year. We pay them oodles, canoodles and toaster strudels of money to come in and give this big,
00:30:02.820 huge, long lecture to us.
00:30:04.700 That's our tax dollars, correct?
00:30:05.880 Oh, absolutely. So your property tax dollars are going straight to some racial equity group to come
00:30:11.080 in and lecture us about water. And they come in and there's no data that supports a lot of the
00:30:16.500 claims they're making about ethnomathematics, for example.
00:30:19.260 What in the world is that?
00:30:21.080 Oh, ethnomathematics. Yeah. The theory that math has been dominated by white faces for such a long
00:30:26.320 time, you know, even though we're using Arabic numerals and even though we draw a lot of the
00:30:29.740 concepts of trigonometry from the Islamic golden age, et cetera, it's apparently dominated by white,
00:30:35.280 male, cisgender, normative nonsense. And so ethnomathematics is more equitable. It's about teaching the
00:30:40.760 history and the process and the color of the people that were coming up with these things and
00:30:45.920 really just theorizing these incredible whatevers, because you could never find your multiplication
00:30:50.860 tables useful, despite the fact that I use my multiplication tables every day. That's the
00:30:55.980 only reason I know what seven times seven means anything.
00:30:59.100 So equitable or ethnomathematics is more about the process, but not even necessarily the process of
00:31:07.320 how you get, you know, what seven times seven is. But I guess how these formulas were formulated by
00:31:16.920 people of color and how colonization, I'm sure, and imperialism and oppression and all of these things
00:31:23.560 kind of go into the history of mathematics. But at the end of the day, that's not going to teach
00:31:28.680 someone how to build a bridge. It's not going to teach someone how to engineer a plane. It's not going
00:31:33.400 to teach someone how to calculate the dosage if they're a nurse. So what are the repercussions of
00:31:38.760 kids, especially, like I would say this disproportionately affects kids who don't
00:31:43.540 necessarily have involved parents who are raised by maybe a single mom who doesn't have time to pay
00:31:48.100 attention to all of their homework. Like what are the repercussions for these kids who are not
00:31:52.180 learning simply that two plus two equals four, but that two plus two equals four is a construct of
00:31:56.740 white hegemony?
00:31:58.560 Well, think about it. You just talked about all of the industries that those students could never
00:32:01.920 participate in because they didn't have a good enough grounding in mathematics.
00:32:05.580 So all of the trades education fields that would make a lot more than I'm making at Indianapolis
00:32:10.340 public schools that I wish I had known about when I was in high school are not being given to these
00:32:16.000 students. Instead, they're all of these airy social dynamics that we really want our students to focus
00:32:20.620 on that don't do anything for trades education. I mean, we're in the middle of a massive supply shortage
00:32:25.000 in this country. I really wish we had more people going into trades education, working in industries
00:32:29.580 like contracting and lumber and HVAC, etc. But we're not preparing our students for that. In fact, we're
00:32:35.780 ostracizing large parts of our communities that work in those trades because we're afraid of stereotyping
00:32:41.840 the Hispanic community. Don't want to talk about contract and drywalling work because that could have
00:32:46.440 some type of anti-Hispanic or, excuse me, latinx implications. It's silly, it's performative, and it's going to
00:32:53.700 cripple our students in the modern economy. So what is the goal then? What is this curriculum
00:32:59.260 preparing kids for, if not real life? I think it's really in two parts. So I think the goal
00:33:05.880 realistically is just to preen. A lot of people are bored and they want something to preen over. And so
00:33:11.260 this is something that at the end of their day, they can come home and they can feel really good
00:33:15.100 that they advocated for someone. And it makes them feel really great when they're angry, when they
00:33:20.240 participate in their Orwellian two minutes of hate. And it gives them a passion and a drive for
00:33:24.560 doing things. Realistically, I think that the district is wrestling with this as a whole.
00:33:29.140 Superintendent Johnson has her big masterful plans that she's going to carry through
00:33:33.160 because our academics are pathetic. Our scores are dismal. So she doesn't want to be responsible
00:33:38.320 to the Indiana Department of Education or to the parents of the community. So she needs a project to
00:33:43.300 look like she's actually doing something. Enter the Black Lives Matter resolution and the 1619
00:33:48.380 project resolution. She gets to look like she's doing something, even though realistically our
00:33:53.140 kids academics aren't getting any better. In fact, we're crippling them socially and emotionally as
00:33:56.720 well. Yeah. And, you know, it's that aspect that I think has woken a lot of parents up who aren't
00:34:01.440 necessarily political or maybe they typically vote Democrat. It's not just what these kids are
00:34:06.580 learning. It's also what they're not learning. And I have talked to several moms, one mom in
00:34:11.580 particular outside of Dallas and Texas, a conservative area. She was not just saying all of this
00:34:16.960 sexually explicit, racially divisive, you know, LGBTQ material that her young kids were
00:34:24.020 learning as young as five. They were learning about gender identity. And then her eighth grader
00:34:28.560 was learning, was recommended a book by her social studies teacher that opened up with different ways
00:34:34.240 and how to's on how to commit suicide, glorify child rape, pedophilia. Suicide? Are you serious?
00:34:41.640 Yes. Yes. And people can go back and listen to that episode. We'll link it in the description to this
00:34:46.420 episode. I mean, terrible, terrible stuff. And this particular teacher is very much a left-wing
00:34:51.620 activist teacher. And so, of course, this mom, she's a Christian conservative mom. She was obviously
00:34:56.320 upset about this. But what has gotten other parents upset, even if maybe they ideologically agree with
00:35:02.160 some of that stuff, is what the kids are not learning. They said the same thing. Their scores are
00:35:08.140 abysmal. Their eighth graders, a lot of them are reading at a third grade reading level for no reason,
00:35:15.260 for no reason. And so you're creating a bunch of, I guess, dumb activists. Maybe that's the goal.
00:35:20.760 I mean, it's really embarrassing. But this is, again, most likely from what we can tell from the
00:35:24.680 early data, what flipped Virginia for Youngkin. I mean, you have all of these parents of every
00:35:29.960 color and creed who are upset at how the public schools are doing things. And then his campaign
00:35:35.220 comes out. Randy Weingarten from the union comes out like as a last ditch effort to save the election
00:35:40.400 from McAuliffe to suggest that the only people who are concerned are white parents. And all of
00:35:45.620 the black and Hispanic parents are looking around going, we care just as much as the white parents,
00:35:49.780 what we don't exist because we don't agree with you. And this is, again, this is just the exact same
00:35:54.760 racial pawns on a chess piece that have been in education for a very long time. You don't care
00:36:00.480 about the parents and the kids. Their color is just a way for you to feel better about your activism.
00:36:05.660 And it goes to show how convoluted that word racist has really become that. I mean,
00:36:11.160 that's the accusation that's been launched since the Virginia election that, oh, they voted for racial
00:36:18.560 white ignorance, whatever it is. They can say that you voted for the Republicans that won,
00:36:25.620 the three Republicans, only one of whom is white, by the way, because you're a racist white person.
00:36:32.640 But if you didn't vote for these other guys who are white males, it's because you're racist. It
00:36:39.840 doesn't make any sense. Obviously, the Republican side included a Cuban American, a Jamaican American
00:36:45.460 who was the first black woman to be elected to a statewide office. The left obviously cares about
00:36:50.240 that identity politics. But apparently you are actually more black and you're more equitable if you
00:36:57.320 are a white person who voted for a white Democrat than you are if you are a black parent who voted for a
00:37:02.480 black woman to become lieutenant governor. It's insane. Is it not insane?
00:37:07.760 Oh, it's hilarious. There was just a guy that I speak with pretty regularly in Indiana. He used to
00:37:12.140 be the vice president of the Indiana College Democrats, and he thought he had this really
00:37:15.980 great tweet lined up. Look at all of these members of the Indiana General Assembly and of like the
00:37:21.320 representatives they send to Congress. Only one of them is black. And then it turned out that that was
00:37:26.280 false. And now, of course, we're going to the Virginia election and we elect not only the first
00:37:32.620 black lady lieutenant governor, but also the first son of or the first child of immigrant attorney
00:37:38.560 general and a fine gentleman. And yet there's no you know, there are no posts made. My racial equity
00:37:45.780 office didn't send us any emails about this historic moment in genuine racial equity and equality.
00:37:50.580 Instead, it doesn't fit their agenda. So it gets left out. Yeah. More racial pawns.
00:37:58.660 And it just goes to show maybe this gets to the heart of what we are talking about, about the why
00:38:03.120 behind this curriculum. It shows that it's about power. It's not really about helping people of color.
00:38:09.220 It's not really about so-called justice and equality. It's really about power. You are considered
00:38:14.500 on the right side, even if you are a rich white male who sent his kids to private school,
00:38:20.020 just as Terry McAuliffe did. You are more black and more equitable than the black daughter of
00:38:29.560 immigrants or the black immigrant who is a Republican. It's really about power. And that's
00:38:34.640 why people say what critical race theory comes down to is the same thing that queer theory comes down
00:38:39.380 to. It's the same thing that feminism comes down to. It's not actually about for women, just like
00:38:44.240 feminists really don't give a flying flip about what I do or don't do or whether I'm oppressed or not.
00:38:49.440 They only care about people on their side of the political aisle. What it always comes down to
00:38:56.120 is a form of communism, whether it's it's not, you know, class bourgeois versus proletariat anymore.
00:39:04.400 Critical race theory is white versus black. And then queer theory is cis heteronormative versus not
00:39:11.240 feminist theory, male versus female. But what it really comes down to is power. What it really comes
00:39:17.640 down to is politics, right? You're absolutely right. And there's so many interesting aspects
00:39:23.700 of the Marxism into critical race theory dynamic. I used to not believe it. I used to think that it
00:39:28.860 was just some silly racial performative nonsense that it had always been. And I honestly used to
00:39:34.640 think the Marxism aspect of it was like a kind of a deeper Republican conspiracy theory until I sat
00:39:39.700 through the racial equity training. And they told us that they wouldn't even use the term white privilege
00:39:44.220 anymore in that certain racial equity institute because it disparaged the underpaid, oppressed,
00:39:50.540 poor white people in areas like Appalachia. And they imposed through the entire segment of
00:39:57.120 trainings that we had to go through and have our camera on. And we had to be active and paying
00:40:00.360 attention because they were hoping that they were watching us that the American system of capitalism
00:40:06.280 is what perpetuated slavery. And American capitalism is what perpetuated Jim Crow ism,
00:40:11.700 even though that's not true. It was obviously state laws that kept black individuals from eating
00:40:16.800 inside white areas of restaurants, etc. And it's amazing how they've shaped this narrative,
00:40:22.840 as you talked about Howard Zinn, into this very strange socialist dynamic they're trying to pass
00:40:28.520 off as just the way it's always been, the way it always was.
00:40:31.920 Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you said that they won't use white privilege because it
00:40:36.600 disparages poor white people. That actually shows to me something that actually makes more logical
00:40:41.920 sense, because I do think white privilege is offensive for that reason. There are black and
00:40:48.580 brown people who have not been oppressed in this country. There are white people who have been
00:40:52.960 oppressed. And I don't even know about oppressed being the right word, but they've had particular
00:40:58.660 hardship. I think that what you see, what you're seeing with that is what you always see with
00:41:03.540 intersectionality is that they end up tripping over themselves because you're constantly finding
00:41:07.900 these like little intersections of how someone is oppressed. And you can't ever get fully woken up
00:41:14.920 to like fully acknowledge all intersections of oppression until you finally realize, oh, so people
00:41:20.940 are just individuals with individual experiences, individual hardship, individual talents and strengths.
00:41:26.800 And if we treat people as individuals and hold people to a high standard, give them the tools to reach
00:41:32.060 that high standard rather than lowering everything to the most common denominator of our perception
00:41:36.900 of the kind of person who is oppressed, then maybe we can actually move forward. But people don't seem
00:41:43.780 to be able to get that. I don't know. This is where the history revisionism comes in, because if you start
00:41:48.940 looking at people as individuals and their character and their choices, you can build a much broader
00:41:54.760 society that's colorblind, that works to help each other, that actually encourages the goodwill
00:41:59.620 towards all men. And you can't have that in the intersectional dynamic that, you know, Kimberly
00:42:04.760 Crenshaw puts out. That's why Nicole Hannah-Jones worked so hard to reshape the narrative of American
00:42:09.660 history in the 1619 Project. It's why Howard Zinn did his entire thing. It's why we're doing it in
00:42:14.560 Indianapolis and claiming that Indianapolis is one of the last cities to embrace civil rights, which is a
00:42:19.820 complete sham. And in Thomas Sowell's book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the very first line
00:42:24.960 actually shows from Indianapolis history that the upper class white people in Indianapolis were not
00:42:30.620 upset about black individuals emigrating north from the south. They were mad about poor white people
00:42:35.320 emigrating north from the south. And he points that out very quickly and says it's more about
00:42:39.580 individualism and more about being concerned about character than it is about being concerned about
00:42:44.500 what skin color is moving into your neighborhood. It's a lot of crazy, fear-mongering nonsense when you
00:42:51.300 start treating everyone as part of this weird social victimized group.
00:42:55.140 Yep. And he also says in that same book, making a similar point about different kinds of
00:43:00.240 black people, how northern black Americans didn't like southern black Americans moving to moving to
00:43:07.940 the north. There was a different culture. There was a different type of behavior. There were different
00:43:11.280 expectations for the family, for employment and things like that. And he talks about the rift
00:43:15.720 between black Americans. And that is one problem with critical race theory viewing, you know, white,
00:43:23.700 bad, black, good, is that the world is way more complicated than that. The reality is that every
00:43:30.120 person of every different kind of ethnicity has oppression somewhere in their lineage. Virtually every
00:43:36.900 civilization has had enslavement, has had some kind of discrimination, prejudice. Thankfully, in the United
00:43:43.160 States, because of our founding documents, what Frederick Douglass called anti-slavery documents,
00:43:48.960 essentially, we've been able to look back at those founding ideals and say, oh, right, slavery is wrong.
00:43:54.760 Excluding women from the voting process or black people from the voting process was wrong. Jim Crow was
00:43:59.260 wrong. Without those foundational documents that critical race theorists and radicals like
00:44:04.320 Ibram X. Kendi and Nicole Hannah-Jones think are bad, like critical race theory actually thinks due process and
00:44:09.860 free speech and freedom of religion are all tools of oppression that should be eradicated. Without
00:44:13.880 those things, we would not have the equality and the liberty and the justice that we have today.
00:44:22.460 And so it's not only historically wrong, it's morally wrong. And what I want to hear you talk about
00:44:27.560 also, I know you're a Christian. From a biblical perspective, why do you take an issue with some of
00:44:33.880 the things we're talking about?
00:44:35.020 In the very latter parts of Scripture, it's cited that every tribe and tongue and nation will bow to
00:44:40.300 the name of Jesus Christ. And Christ came to save the sins of the world. Christ never looked at an
00:44:46.720 individual and asked them about their family history, about what history of oppressive sins. In
00:44:50.960 fact, early on in Old Testament Scripture, the Israelites were told very specifically not to
00:44:56.820 whine about the things their parents had done, you know, children on these sour grapes that their
00:45:01.540 teeth had been sharpened for, meaning that you are not responsible for the crazy things that your
00:45:07.300 parents, your grandparents, your great grandparents did. And I'm not going to hold you to those things
00:45:12.600 either. So that's one issue. Before that, of course, was the fact that all peoples are created by God
00:45:19.260 equally. And he didn't, you know, create people to be part of certain cultural groups, certain
00:45:23.820 different cultures popping up on different sides of the earth, kind of evolving alongside each other.
00:45:28.560 He created one people that we're descendant from, and within that we're all related. It's actually why I
00:45:34.020 became a science educator is because I am just astounded by the beauty of creation and the intricacy
00:45:39.620 of its design. And really seeing that day-to-day interaction, it makes me cringe at the idea that
00:45:47.800 someone could view the soul of an individual reduced down to its skin color. That bothers me. I don't like
00:45:53.780 equating culture to color. It's never been done in Scripture. You'll notice that the Bible never
00:45:58.240 actually talks about the color of an individual's skin in the entire book. It talks about the culture,
00:46:02.800 talks about where they come from, it talks about what they think. But you never have, you know,
00:46:06.800 in the latter writings of Paul going, now be careful about these Ethiopians down here, be careful about
00:46:11.420 these Greeks over here being white people. He never does that. He addresses specific cultural issues
00:46:16.960 within the church that they're dealing with. And that culture, the character, and the decisions
00:46:21.720 are what are addressed in Scripture. Yep. It's an anti-biblical view of sin, of human nature.
00:46:31.680 It says that instead of original sin being sin, as we know it to be, original sin is actually racism
00:46:38.900 for white people, and people who are not white are somehow absolved of the guiltiness of sin. And
00:46:46.500 you nailed it. When people are before the judgment throne of God, there's not going to be a bunch of
00:46:54.160 woke math tabulating if that person was oppressed enough to absolve them from the words that they
00:47:01.880 said, from the thoughts that they thought, from the things that they did. That's not how it works.
00:47:07.840 We are all held to the same standard. The fact of the matter is, is that every human being
00:47:11.940 is held to a standard of perfection, of perfection. In order to be reconciled to God, in order to have
00:47:18.840 a relationship with God, you have to be perfect. You have to keep the law perfectly. Bad news is,
00:47:24.740 absolutely no one can do that. White, black, does not matter. Doesn't matter what your dad did.
00:47:29.360 Doesn't matter what your great, great, great, great, great grandparents did for good or for evil.
00:47:34.600 Can't reach it. There is one who did. And the color of his skin, unlike what critical race theories say,
00:47:40.780 actually doesn't matter. What matters is that Jesus Christ became our reconciliation. He reached
00:47:47.480 that standard on our behalf because no one could do it. And all of us who are in Christ or made one,
00:47:52.840 all of us who are outside of Christ or dead in sin, those are the categories, biblically, ultimately,
00:47:58.720 that matter. And when we divide people along other lines, pit people against one another, try to
00:48:04.800 try to have people reach different standards based on some convoluted, newfangled idea of equity that
00:48:11.800 is actually completely inequitable and unjust, suffering will happen. People will suffer, right?
00:48:18.260 Every time. And realistically, this is one of the reasons I get such a kick out of every couple of
00:48:22.900 months. Some collection of institutes, you know, some group of anthropologists will come out with a
00:48:28.500 new picture of this is what we believe Jesus looked like. And then you see all the people from the
00:48:32.920 left and all of the hyper-progressives who aren't Christians and really have nothing,
00:48:36.340 want to do nothing with Christianity. They'll say, ha, see, look, he was a Middle Eastern Jew. He
00:48:40.860 wouldn't even be allowed in white churches today. And everyone on the area of Christianity is basically
00:48:47.220 like, so he was a Middle Eastern Jew? Yeah. We knew that. We knew that. Like, that's literally what
00:48:53.460 Matthew carefully outlines. Have you had the opportunity to watch The Chosen?
00:48:57.640 You know, a lot of people have told me to watch it, and I started watching it, and then I just
00:49:03.000 didn't. Not for any reason, not because I didn't like it. I just haven't watched it all the way
00:49:06.400 through. I love how they outline how particular Matthew is inciting Christ's genealogy and where
00:49:13.640 he comes from. Again, not from a, here's what color he was, but because you actually get to see
00:49:18.560 all of the individual prophecies that are fulfilled by his calculating writings. And again, I just,
00:49:25.460 I really get a kick out of someone, you know, telling me, well, you know, Jesus was Jewish.
00:49:29.800 What do you have to say to that? Well, yeah. Awesome. That's what I've known my whole life.
00:49:34.380 Yeah. And?
00:49:35.500 You know, it just gets this, these racialized ideologies get everything exactly backwards.
00:49:40.720 Like, we are made in God's image. I don't have to make my God in my image. Like, I don't,
00:49:46.100 I don't have to try to make Jesus in my image in order to worship him. And actually, if you love Jesus
00:49:50.760 any more or any less, if you relate to Jesus any more or any less because of the color of his skin,
00:49:57.160 then I'm afraid that you're actually worshiping a political ideology. You're actually
00:50:02.160 worshiping race rather than worshiping our Savior. And actually, the Bible goes,
00:50:09.780 the Bible doesn't even tell us, like you said, anything about what he says. But in Isaiah,
00:50:13.860 the one description that we do have of him is that he was really nothing to look at. Like,
00:50:18.780 his appearance wasn't anything that you looked upon and you said, wow, like, that is the king of
00:50:24.680 kings right there. And so it's almost like God is going out of his way to say, look, the appearance,
00:50:30.380 it really doesn't matter. When you put stock in that, you end up idolizing something that you're
00:50:35.080 not supposed to idolize. You end up breaking a commandment that you are supposed to put no other
00:50:41.420 gods before the Lord your God. When you elevate skin color to the place that a lot of racial ideologues
00:50:47.300 have in this country, that's what you're doing. You're making an idol, right?
00:50:51.160 Absolutely. And it's heartbreaking to see people really, and this is my issue, quite honestly,
00:50:57.540 with many of the hyper evolutionist views of history. And being a science educator,
00:51:02.360 this isn't usually something I talk about, but at least not since I've been out of the classroom.
00:51:07.820 But I have a serious issue with the hyper evolutionist view of history because it makes
00:51:12.220 human zoological. It puts us in the same classes as animals that are to treat each other in this
00:51:17.760 violent, horrid way without value, without a soul. And it takes away the individual value that is not
00:51:24.500 that isn't the outside of the of your skin, that isn't the amount of melanin, you know, the shape of
00:51:28.520 your nose, how high your cheekbones are, the shape of your eyes, etc. It does put the human value at the
00:51:35.540 consciousness at the soul. And that thing that we all have and share that animals do not have and never
00:51:40.800 will have. And realistically, when I'm considering science and my science instruction, I do try to
00:51:46.520 impress upon my students, or I did when I was in the classroom, how valuable human life is, and how
00:51:52.280 that is to be protected and sanctified. And that actually explains why humans do what we do regards
00:51:57.480 to the environment, in regards to our genetic experiments on things like food, in regards to
00:52:03.640 how we study and analyze history via science. And it really impacts your entire view as a human once
00:52:10.460 you realize the value that a soul has, not a color, but a soul.
00:52:16.080 Absolutely. All right, how can people follow you, support you? That's my first question.
00:52:21.860 The second part of the question is, for people who want to know what's going on in their school
00:52:27.040 district, what do they do? So two part question there.
00:52:30.860 Absolutely. So about a year ago, my colleague Daniel Buck, who is a teacher up in Wisconsin,
00:52:35.120 also a political writer, noticed that there were no places that if you weren't on the hyper left,
00:52:40.860 not the moderate left, not obviously not center or right, if you weren't in that camp, then you
00:52:45.760 were not allowed to write for organizations like Ed Week, Chalkbeat, University Publications, etc.
00:52:50.740 And so he suggested to me that we should start a publication that would give a window into
00:52:54.820 education. And so parents could see what all teachers are saying, regardless of political
00:52:58.160 affiliation, left, right or center. I told him, no, I didn't want to be a part of it. I had to like
00:53:02.740 another failed publication. No, thanks. I've made it through my early 20s without having a podcast.
00:53:07.480 I'm good. And he worked me over on it a little bit. And he asked me that if I'd pray about it,
00:53:12.560 I'd pitch it to a few people. Well, long story short, we launched Chalkboard Review in late
00:53:17.140 November. It's at Chalkboard Rev on Twitter, www.thechalkboardreview.com. And now we're at 18,000
00:53:24.780 readers monthly. It's been incredible. The amount of teachers and community members,
00:53:29.980 professors that have written for us from the left, right and center, we have articles that call me
00:53:33.680 very bad and ugly names. We still publish them because parents and teachers and community members
00:53:38.740 should be deciding whether the article is any good or not, not me. So that's something that we've
00:53:43.480 really enjoyed doing. We've had a lot of great guests on our cast on Teachers Lounge, which is I
00:53:48.000 ended up being forced to start a podcast. And we've had some phenomenal people just telling their
00:53:53.100 stories of things that they're doing in their communities. And it's been wonderful. You can follow me
00:53:57.620 on Twitter at the Tonus, T-O-N-U-S. Some okay tweets there. I appreciate it for sure. But make
00:54:04.880 sure you're checking out the Chalkboard Review. This is where our work is. If you're a parent,
00:54:09.660 and you want to know more about what's going on in your classroom, you want to see you're a little
00:54:13.480 nervous about the curriculum, you're not sure what your kids are learning. The first thing that I
00:54:16.920 would do is actually check your kid's phone. Most of the nasty stuff that they're running into is on
00:54:22.300 the first swiped news page on Snapchat. Seriously, that is where all of the frontline growth stuff is.
00:54:28.140 That's thing number one. Check your kids' phones. People don't like that I say that. Too bad. The next
00:54:33.740 thing you should do is talk to your teacher. I had great relationships with my parents. I would tell
00:54:38.160 them things I did like, things I didn't like. I would ask them what they were doing at home so I could
00:54:42.120 support it in the classroom. And that is a vast majority of teachers. The biggest lie in education
00:54:47.460 from the left that I've seen is that all teachers are voting on the left. That's not true. Surveys
00:54:53.520 have shown that that's not true. It's really only about one third, which means two out of the three
00:54:57.600 are moderates, conservatives, independents, who most likely just want to go teach. Talk to your
00:55:02.000 teachers. Now, if you see stuff in your kid's work, and you should be checking your kid's work
00:55:06.420 that you don't like, that you think is wrong, you should go to the teacher about it. The teacher's
00:55:10.740 uncooperative. Go to the principal about it. If the principal's not willing to hold his teachers
00:55:14.820 accountable, you go to the superintendent, because now you have a principal that's not doing their
00:55:18.580 job. And if the superintendent does nothing about it, they brush you off, etc., then you go to the
00:55:24.000 school board, and you elect a better school board that's going to hold your district accountable.
00:55:28.880 That's what you should do. And a lot of people did that. We saw last week during the election
00:55:34.360 that there were a lot of school boards, some successful in a conservative takeover of the school
00:55:40.160 board, some unsuccessful, but parents are certainly waking up and they're doing exactly what you're
00:55:44.160 talking about. Also, parents, you don't have to do this alone, I guarantee you. There are a lot of
00:55:49.140 parents who feel the same way you do, left, right, and center, who would be willing to talk to the
00:55:55.740 teacher, the principal, the superintendent, and school board with you. There's power in numbers. I heard
00:56:00.060 someone say, you know, fear is contagious, silence is contagious, but so is courage. Courage is contagious
00:56:05.860 too. You don't have to be a political expert. You don't have to have had, you know, an education
00:56:12.380 degree. You don't have to be a teacher to be an expert in the kind of education, the kind of
00:56:18.500 learning that you want your child to have. Parents, you have the greatest vested interest in the
00:56:23.180 holistic success and well-being of your child. Don't let anyone belittle you into thinking that
00:56:28.620 you don't have the primary role and responsibility there because you absolutely do. So thank you so
00:56:34.360 much, Tony. Thanks for being a teacher that involves parents. Thanks for raising awareness about
00:56:38.880 this. I know people are going to be so excited to follow you and especially Chalkboard Review
00:56:42.940 support you. And just thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on and talk to us.
00:56:49.580 Really appreciate what you guys are doing. Seriously, go out and look at some parent groups.
00:56:53.420 I wrote an article for The Daily Caller on I Met the Domestic Terrorists, and every single parent
00:56:58.220 group that I talked to was full of well-reasoned, kind individuals who will link you up with all
00:57:02.860 kinds of local news and resources. Amen. Well, thank you so much, Tony.
00:57:07.040 Thank you so much.