Jack Roser and Charlie Kirk discuss public education in the United States and the role of parents in our education system. Jack Roser is a former educator, and Charlie is the founder of Turning Point, the largest pro-American student organization in the country.
00:01:21.000Well, I'm fine, but uh they've seen me before, but they haven't seen him.
00:01:25.000And uh this guy is a mover and shaker of young years that uh marvelous experience uh you've done with your life.
00:01:33.000And uh I understand that you're a bit of a critic of the school system.
00:01:38.000Uh well, what is the matter with you that you're criticizing the system that has made you so wonderful?
00:01:44.000Well, you know, it's not all because of the school system.
00:01:46.000There have been some very good teachers, and uh through my years at Wheeling High School, I enjoyed my time, but there were a lot of times where I felt that the teachers were pushing an alter alternative agenda and that our textbooks were written in certain ways to make us think uh things that were not true.
00:02:01.000Uh they were trying to remove the founding documents from the U.S. history classes, they said they were not relevant.
00:02:07.000Um they try really spent a lot of time on the Progressive Era, and our economics textbook was written by Paul Krugman from the New York Times, and in it was factually incorrect data.
00:02:16.000I stood up to my teachers several times, and uh I tried to get other students to do the same.
00:02:41.000It was did not make the news, of course, but it was it showed that some people found that our founding documents no longer had relevancy in our schools, which is really concerning.
00:02:52.000Why what was the teacher's reasoning, Charlie, for our founding documents not having relevancy to our country right now?
00:03:03.000Some educational people in our district said that we need to have a more progressive view of our country and that everything post-1860 was more relevant to what the kids need to be learning.
00:03:13.000And I found that alarming, and um again, that wasn't all the teachers in the district, but it was a select few, and even a few, if they are teaching that way, it's very concerning.
00:03:22.000Uh now uh you may or may not know this.
00:03:26.000What was the pair parental involvement in something like that?
00:03:29.000Or first of all, the awareness level of parents, and then the involvement.
00:03:34.000It was minimal, and uh parents have not been involved in school boards like they need to be.
00:03:38.000Uh, they do not run for school board, they don't show up to the meetings.
00:03:41.000Just the fact that Paul Krugman had economics textbook approved and put into our public high schools is inexcusable.
00:03:47.000And that's who is Paul Krugman and why is he relevant to this conversation?
00:04:08.000Uh, the right judgment wasn't so good there either.
00:04:11.000And the uh the school board decided to put uh Paul Krugman's textbook into the public school system, where in quote it said the Reagan tax cuts did not accelerate economic growth.
00:04:23.000I wrote a piece for Breitbart.com exposing this lie in our public education school system, and it encourages the progressive train of thought into our students?
00:04:32.000And it's unfortunate because if a young person wants to get into economics, they're probably gonna look as Paul Krugman as a credible figure.
00:05:34.000In theory, do they do they make communism and socialism sound like a more desirable way to live where it's just fairer?
00:05:41.000Well, they they do put a very big emphasis on the progressive era in the early 1900s where they say that oh, there's a problem, there must be a government to fix it.
00:05:50.000For example, you know, Upton King uh Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle, you know, we had all the terrible meat factories, well, then we had to create the FDA.
00:05:57.000We had an unstable currency, we had to create the Fed.
00:05:59.000So the kids start to subconsciously feel that, oh, the government solves every problem.
00:06:04.000And we did a poll in our in our high school in the local area.
00:06:07.000Which economic system would be most prosperous to create wealth for the middle, lower, and upper class for all people over the next hundred years.
00:06:15.000Twenty-eight percent said capitalism, forty percent said socialism, the rest said they don't know the difference between socialism and capitalism.
00:06:28.000And um Well, yeah, at least yeah, I'd rather have them not know because there's opportunity for education.
00:06:33.000That's exactly what our group is doing is getting these kids understanding the morality of free markets, the immorality of excessive borrowing.
00:06:41.000This is Lane Schoenberger, chief investment officer and founding partner of Y ReFi.
00:06:46.000It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.
00:06:51.000His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.
00:06:58.000Now, hear Charlie in his own words tell you about why refi.
00:07:01.000I'm gonna tell you guys about why refi.com.
00:07:58.000We have over 20 to 25 national chapters, and we have 30 to 50 uh student columnists from all over the country that contribute to our website.
00:08:06.000We give them a platform of empowerment so they can write something, they can publish it, they can show their friends, their family.
00:08:44.000We have 12,000 likes, we're on the cutting edge of social media for young people.
00:08:48.000The second of which is in July, we're hosting hopefully one of the biggest debate tournaments in the Midwest.
00:08:52.000We're we're planning to have three to four hundred high school debate teams come and debate fiscal policy.
00:08:58.000The third is a very innovative way that we came up with, and it's to read that reach that 40 percent of kids that usually don't care about politics.
00:09:05.000We're hosting a three-on-three basketball tournament to get young people to come and play basketball, they leave with our t-shirt and they leave with a little bit of literature.
00:09:14.000Not many think tanks think to do a basketball tournament.
00:09:18.000And that's the way we reach kids that are usually apathetic or they don't know because we go to where they are.
00:09:23.000And that's that's what's innovative and creative about Turning Point USA.
00:09:27.000So you you're trying to do an outreach.
00:09:29.000Now do you ever do I mean do we have things right affiliated with the school?
00:09:33.000Because I know there are some um young folks out of the Will County area too that have a youth program and they reach out and they have meetings and they've really tried to they actually do walk precincts and things like that.
00:09:47.000No, we do not we do not do sp do specifically for any candidate, at least this last election cycle.
00:09:51.000And the reason is is we go at it in a nonpartisan point of view.
00:09:55.000Now we believe in fiscal uh responsibility, free markets, but instead of we we encourage uh civic participation, we encourage people to be interns.
00:10:03.000A majority of our uh people in our group were interns for Joe Walsh or Congressman Dold.
00:10:08.000But also we educate in meetings and debates.
00:10:11.000Like we hosted a debate at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and we're starting a chapter there.
00:10:16.000We have 20 high schools and colleges representative where they have meetings and they they gather and they educate their peers in innovative ways, like through basketball tournaments.
00:10:25.000Or one of the chapters they emailed me, they said, could we do an ultimate frisbee competition for turning point?
00:10:32.000Who would have thought of that otherwise?
00:10:34.000That's how you get college kids engaged in politics.
00:10:36.000You know, it's good to have the slideshow and the graphs, but we have to get them through the door first.
00:10:41.000But do you get them through the door and you do this frisbee thing and you give them literature?
00:10:46.000What's enticing them to even open this up?
00:10:48.000They they give us their email, they have to like us on Facebook, they like us on Twitter, we tie them in perfectly because through social media, it's kind of you last sue them in and then you reel them in later.
00:10:58.000Because these kids have their their minds going in so many different directions that once you tie them in, they're going to uh be educated.
00:11:05.000What topics are you mainly interested there?
00:11:24.000We think that every student should have a six uh chance to learn, and we think that teachers are not being held accountable in our public school education system.
00:11:33.000To give some perspective, uh, fifty teachers in the district two fourteen area earn 150,000 or more with no accountability.