00:00:00.000Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk show, we have Dr. Larry Arn from Hillsdale College to talk about who's sovereign when it comes to education.
00:00:07.000As always, you can email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:10.000Take out your podcast app and type in Charlie Kirk Show and hit subscribe in the upper right-hand corner.
00:00:14.000Then I take your questions and your thoughts regarding our latest book, College Scam, College Scam.com.
00:00:21.000Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.
00:00:40.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:48.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:00.000Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
00:01:09.000With us right now is someone I consider to be a teacher of mine.
00:01:12.000In fact, I mention him and Hillsdale College extensively in my new book out today.
00:01:17.000Now, the book is called The College Scam, but in the introduction of the book, I have to make the proper, let's just say, nuance.
00:01:24.000I have to communicate the proper nuance where I say, quote, as I make clear in this book, not all colleges are equally corrupt or involved in this scam.
00:01:32.000If every college had a mission statement, like that of Hillsdale College, for example, my criticism would be quite different.
00:01:38.000If every school had a president like Hillsdale's Dr. Larry Arn, a leader who unapologetically contends for truth, liberty, and the development of good character, then my critique would be mostly about job placement and the cost of college.
00:01:50.000I mentioned Hillsdale throughout this book because Hillsdale has earned it and deserves it.
00:01:54.000And Hillsdale has been in the news a little bit.
00:01:56.000And with us is Dr. Larry Arn to help us explain that and some other things that are going on.
00:02:01.000Dr. Arne, welcome back to the program.
00:02:29.000Nobody can take you over and make you do what you want without your consent.
00:02:34.000Well, children are exactly the same with one difference.
00:02:38.000They haven't reached the age of majority.
00:02:41.000And so their parents stand in for them.
00:02:44.000And as anybody who's been a parent, that's a kind of a dance that goes on when kids grow up because as they grow, you have to let them go.
00:02:54.000But in the meantime, who better than the ones who are deeply devoted to them by nature, ones who gave rise to them, to make judgments on their behalf?
00:03:06.000And so this claim, I mean, Terry McAuliffe running for re-election or coming back to the governorship of Virginia, he basically just said blankly, parents shouldn't tell the schools what to do.
00:03:20.000And that's, you know, just read 1984, read Brave New World, right?
00:03:26.000I learned something from Betsy DeVos the other day.
00:03:29.000She's got a new book out called Hostages No More.
00:03:34.000And I had not known until she published the book that Horace Mann, the 19th century education figure in America, said that the children were hostages.
00:03:48.000That means that they are held to control someone else, their parents.
00:03:54.000And so, yeah, that's, it's crazy, this idea that somebody can have any kind of expertise that could substitute for the responsibility of parents.
00:04:22.000And so in Tennessee, Hillsdale College's Barney Charter Program has been expanding and has been making a big impact.
00:04:30.000And so you said very clearly that the authority must be in the parents and the stake must be in the parents' decision.
00:04:37.000And the teacher unions and this massive education bureaucracy, they have been seeking to strengthen and grow their monopoly by opposing parents' wishes for school choice.
00:04:50.000And this issue is playing out all over in Tennessee right now where unions and school boards and legislators, you could say they're rallying around this inaccurate coverage by the media to shut down charter schools.
00:05:02.000And I just want to say, you know, Dr. Arne, we have your back completely here.
00:05:06.000I thought what you said was spot on and the way you clarified it in the op-ed was really, really well done as well.
00:05:13.000Can you just fill our audience in a little bit about some of the drama happening down in Tennessee?
00:05:18.000Well, yeah, so we're intending to start a bunch of charter schools in Tennessee.
00:05:26.000Governor Lee requested that I do that.
00:08:39.000If they don't like it, they can go somewhere else.
00:08:42.000If they do like it and they want to help improve it, we're all ears.
00:08:46.000And so that's the way the schools used to work in America.
00:08:50.000And there's very powerful interest gathered around education.
00:08:55.000And more than half the budget of every state is in education, in the public education.
00:09:04.000But more than half the employees in public education are not teachers.
00:09:10.000That is the entire story, that more than half of all the expenditures in education does not go to teachers.
00:09:20.000It goes to administrative overhead, goes to all of these other different projects, and who knows what exactly it is.
00:09:25.000Hillsdale College, to important reinforcements, Hillsdale College is ambitiously expanding the effort to be able to educate students in the classical model.
00:09:36.000Dr. Arne is now being attacked, and so is Hillsdale College, by all of the government unions and all the special interests in Tennessee.
00:09:44.000And I just hope every politician in D.C. hears it from me that they better not give an inch to this because Hillsdale College is doing such phenomenal work and misrepresentations and a smear campaign from government unions.
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00:11:09.000What is the classical way of educating?
00:11:12.000And why do you believe that is the best way that children learn?
00:11:16.000Well, first of all, classics, that means the first addressings of the biggest questions in the West happened in the East, too, in a different way, but it's hard to know everything.
00:11:29.000And so you can get everything you need by beginning with the Greeks and the Romans and the Christian, early Christians.
00:11:35.000So what is everything you need to know?
00:11:38.000Emphatically, by the way, you don't begin an education with contemporary politics.
00:11:45.000First, you have to know what politics are.
00:11:48.000And you have to know what everything else is, too.
00:11:58.000Those are the questions that Socrates asks.
00:12:01.000And so, classical education is an encouragement to step outside everything around you today and think deeply and permanently before you begin your active life.
00:12:14.000Also, classical education rightly identifies, I mean, it's not the only place this happened, rightly identifies what are the human skills.
00:12:23.000What is it that people do that other creatures don't?
00:12:27.000And the answer to that in school is reading, writing, and arithmetic.
00:12:32.000So, classical education wants to get really good at those things because that's how you navigate and understand and see the world if you have a human soul.
00:12:44.000And so, it excludes huge ancillary things that are now the main subject matter of school.
00:13:23.000And understanding that we are the speaking beings, as you would say, that if you have children or if you have, you know, dogs, one will start speaking and one will not, and can differentiate more than just the difference between pleasure and pain, but also good and evil.
00:13:40.000And Hillsdale College is the premier institution that believes in classical education and wants to see it continue to grow.
00:13:50.000There is a desire from parents right now that want to embrace the classical model.
00:13:56.000Why is it that the administrative state and specifically government teacher unions are so threatened by the classical model of education?
00:14:05.000Why is that at odds with a technocratic expert way of governing?
00:14:11.000It's in that word you just said, techne, right?
00:14:14.000Techne is one of the prime human activities.
00:14:50.000That's the first line of Aristotle's metaphysics.
00:14:53.000I mean, I was writing something about this today because I have a 19-month-old granddaughter and a two-month-old grandson living near here.
00:15:03.000And I just get an instruction in human nature every time they come over.
00:15:44.000All phonics, it just means sound, the Greek word sound.
00:15:47.000All phonics does is take the natural fact that they've learned to talk and apply that to reading.
00:15:54.000Kids love phonics, it's exciting because what you do is you learn to sound out the words, and then in three or four steps, all of a sudden the word appears.
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00:17:03.000You have to know what you're going through.
00:17:05.000So look, I just had dinner with Andrew and Todd in Orange County.
00:18:01.000I hang out with them casually and I've got to know them really well.
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00:19:41.000Our older kids are nine, seven, and four.
00:19:42.000And when I think of them going to college, I cringe at the thought.
00:19:46.000While my husband and I did learn essential physics concepts in college, I've wondered if a tech program focus wouldn't produce better engineers.
00:19:56.000Recall all those young engineers who went to college and couldn't perform basic physics.
00:20:01.000Thank you for all you do and keep up the great work.
00:20:03.000P.S., you're right about the essential work of plumbers.
00:20:21.000I have a daughter that has three years of college and no degree.
00:20:24.000It's not willing to go back to finish COVID took care of that and has a good amount of debt.
00:20:28.000I wish I would have may have heard of you four years ago.
00:20:30.000I've seen that you've written a book about college scams, but wondering if you could point my daughter in a direction of how to pay off her debt.
00:20:36.000Any suggestions you might have would be certainly be appreciated.
00:20:39.000Well, look, first, if she has three years already under her belt, there might be an argument just to be to finish it off because at that point, you already have the debt and the liability, and you might as well just get the piece of paper at that point if you're already three, you know, three years into it.
00:21:15.000These ideas I had formed in speeches and lectures.
00:21:19.000And so the first thing I did when I wrote the book is I got a team together, a research team, and I said, I need to compile all the different speeches that I have given on this topic.
00:21:30.000And so I re-listened to all of them and got them transcribed.
00:21:34.000And then I said, okay, I know that I've read some of these things on this stuff over the years.
00:21:39.000So then we went on about a year or two years of a research, literal blitz of just piles and piles of articles and studies.
00:21:49.000And I mean, it was a huge amount of deep research.
00:21:55.000But the thinking that went into this book was a decade.
00:21:57.000This was a decade of thinking about this, where I was just, man, this doesn't make sense.
00:22:02.000So it wasn't just like, wow, I'm going to do this overnight.
00:22:05.000These arguments have become almost extensions of my commentary.
00:22:11.000From the earliest days when I was going on Fox business to just recently last week, the message really has remained the same that you're not really getting what you're paying for, guys.
00:22:29.000Because he, being a remarkably educated man, saying that college is a scam and not worth it, it's like, wow, you know, I believe it.
00:22:37.000But now he has the courage to say it and gave me more kind of, let's just say, of an attitude that I was willing to talk about it.
00:22:46.000And so throughout the book, you'll see, and again, this was kind of a part-time project because obviously I was hosting three hours of radio every day and traveling 300 days a year and speaking all across the country and doing Turning Point USA and all these different things, is that I tried to fit some current news items.
00:23:04.000And so, for example, when I first started this book, COVID wasn't a thing.
00:23:08.000But I believe the academic industrial complex actually defends and built the medical industrial complex.
00:23:19.000And cut, not cut six, but in chapter six, you see how college indoctrinates students and repress speech.
00:25:49.000I see that these kids are applying for jobs and their vocabulary is sloppy.
00:25:54.000Andrew just said right here, the hardest thing for us to hire at Turning Point USA and the Charlie Kirk show is someone who knows how to write.
00:27:47.000Now, a certain host who I have a lot of respect for here in New York City said, Charlie, it's so nice of you that you admitted you don't go to college.
00:27:54.000What do you mean, like admitted, like I committed arson or something?
00:28:07.000Let me get to another question here, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:28:11.000Shannon said, Charlie, after listening to your podcast today and addressing your question, is college a scam?
00:28:15.000I would like to confirm that as a current college student myself, the higher education system is a scam meant to brainwash the up-and-coming generation of this country.
00:28:23.000I'm a student at a D1 university and the wokeness at the school is through the roof.
00:28:28.000The campus buildings are covering posters and signage promoting LGBTQ values, increasing diversity, equity, inclusion.
00:28:34.000During the month of June, the downtown streets and campus lightposts are covered with rainbow flags, but not a single American flag gets displayed at any time, especially around the 4th of July.
00:28:44.000In a previous student orientation, by the way, this is a great writer here.
00:28:55.000See, it's really, in previous student orientation sessions, the program leaders promoted organizations and activists for every minority group imaginable with not a single mention of things that do not have to do with the average white male.
00:29:06.000In fact, one parent posed this question, quote, what is there to do for the average white male?
00:30:12.000The recent rulings from the Supreme Court, they didn't happen on their own.
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00:30:28.000Inflation has really made it hard on Americans.
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00:31:14.000Charlie, earlier you suggested young people just get out of high school should go offering to work for someone for free as a trade, or at least that was the impression I got.
00:32:07.000Charlie, I began realizing after starting my teaching career that college was being foisted upon almost all kids.
00:32:12.000Left to the 1960s, educrats at school systems began eliminating courses in the 1970s related to trades while simultaneously wearing down high school curriculum.
00:32:24.000It is not rocket science to see why a huge portion of today's high school kids are heading off to college, are wandering around aimlessly on campus, many who flunk out a stay or stay out to keep up partying.
00:32:34.000As a 1969 high school graduate, I myself became convinced that college was not the only way.
00:34:21.000Love your show and was sitting to listen to your show today about the college scam.
00:34:27.000I thought I would share or add to rant about colleges.
00:34:30.000I agree that we should not need four to 10 years of college and rack up thousands due to that you will literally never pay off until you close attention to your payments through end of catch the collectors try to catch you to collect more.
00:34:44.000Collection companies are all being sued or have open charges.
00:34:50.000As a 65-year-old mother of three and a grandmother of seven and a great-great-grandmother of one, I see deteriorating education.
00:34:57.000I homeschool all three children for very lengths of time, various lengths of time.
00:35:00.000We traveled with them, taught history, geography, and writing skills because government education was lacking.
00:35:05.000I appreciate you working with the youth across America, introducing ideas of alternative learning opportunity at Tapana Hillsdale Online and share with my children about this great program.
00:35:15.000And by the way, three out of three are now business owners and have the flourishing ability to employ others in their small business.
00:35:20.000Charlie, college in part is a major scam.
00:35:23.000I graduated a four-year state university with a BA.
00:35:26.000The only reason I turned out halfway normal is because I directed my own studies independently and read Christendom English and colonial American works.
00:35:34.000I wrote an essay my freshman year in 2004 arguing more people should attend technical colleges instead.
00:35:54.000I decided to quiz him and asked him to relay me four basic financial statements.
00:35:57.000Probably the easiest question I could ask.
00:35:58.000Charlie, he could not name a single statement accurately.
00:36:01.000High school and college teachers love to grade on a curve and offer extra credit to bring up grades.
00:36:04.000What a waste and disservice to our employers and profession, Florida CPA.
00:36:09.000Charlie, whenever my daughter comes home from college, I was sure to spend 20, 30 minutes deprogramming her from liberal bias brainwashing.
00:36:14.000It was helpful when I warned in advance what she would hear in her social work program.
00:36:20.000Thankfully, we thwarted the indoctrination.