Mar 04 2023 - Ep.5 Education System in America

0:00:08

G

Hello, this is George Caylor and welcome to Tea With George. And today once again we have with us my co-hosts Professor Steve Putney and retired attorney, who lives on the left coast of Washington, Diane Gruber. And today we’re going to talk about education. And I want to begin by saying, I went to school 1949, graduated from high school in 1962 and I went to a one-room schoolhouse. And it’s about a third of my book Surviving Georgie. You can get a copy at survivinggeorgie.com. In fact, the first three people that email me that they want a copy, go to george@teawithgeorge.com and I will send you a free copy of Surviving Georgie. Only book endorsed by Focus On the Family and Saturday Night Live. Well, we talked about the one-room school and our, it was 8 grades, roughly 25 kids, one teacher, all subjects. And we learned everything. And it’s hard to believe this but this was in Pennsylvania, rural Pennsylvania, and we had the highest scores of development in the whole state of Pennsylvania for years and years.

0:01:29

D

Oh,

0:01:30

G

Just coming out of that one little…

0:01:31

D

Oh, I believe it George. Yes. Yes.

0:01:33

G

Yeah, one room school. And then, the class of 1962 had the highest inflation-adjusted SAT scores ever before, and ever again. 1962 and that was the years I graduated. No, I’m not talking about the intelligence of myself. I’m just talking statistics, what happened there. Well, children, they are our future. What happens to our country, our legacy is our children. And I recently saw where…

0:02:05

D

Yes,

0:02:06

G

Canadian parliament is discussing euthanasia for minors without parental consent. And they were talking about minors who were mentally ill, who had a debilitating disease, indigenous, that means the native Indians from Canada and I was thinking this is right out of the Holocaust. I can’t believe my ears. In America we’re not quite there yet. But it seems that we’ve begun with education. So, I’ll start off with Professor Steve Putney here. Tell us about the McGuffey Reader and what you know about the early days of education. I know it was better back then than now. But how?

0:02:52

S

Thanks, George. Well, let me begin by stating a phrase and I’m not sure where I first learned this, but I think it’s pertinent to our conversation today. And that is as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. And you can think of children as like wet cement. You can mold them. You can shape them. And schooling has to be more than just content, subject content. There has to be a moral base to learning. Because that’s important for life. Teddy Roosevelt said, and this isn’t a direct quote. But this is the essence of what he was saying. To train a man’s mind without teaching him morals is to create a menace for society. Now if you go back in our early history, that was the basis of education. There was a moral foundation to it. I think of the Puritans, when they came over here in 1629, 1630. Within five years the general court had established a statute that where there was a community of 50 families they had to have a school for their children or they would pay a fine. Well, what was their schooling like? They learned to read and why is it that people then wanted to read? They wanted to read the book. I mean, they were a people of the book, and I’m referring to the Bible. But I think it’s interesting just to look at their primer, called the New England Primer, where they learned the alphabet. I’ll just go through, shall I just go through the first four letters?

0:04:33

G

Yea, go right ahead.

0:04:34

S

Okay, to learn A, B, C, and D, and this was the little jingle they learned. In Adam’s fall we sinned all. For B, heaven to find, the Bible mind. C, Christ crucified for sinners died. And D, the deluge drowned the earth around. I mean when you are exposed to, to a moral foundation, introduced to moral foundation and you build your learning based on that, you have a society of people that have character, have values, understand virtue. I mean, why is it George, when you were young, I’m sure your parents didn’t lock the door when they went to the store.

0:05:19

G

We never locked anything, ever.

0:05:21

S

It wasn’t necessary.

0:05:23

G

No, nobody stole.

0:05:24

S

And that’s what I talked about yesterday at the breakfast club when I defined the difference between freedom and liberty. You knew the boundaries. You knew what was yours, was yours and what was not yours, was not yours. And you didn’t take it because it wasn’t yours. And you wouldn’t be right to take it, as a violation of one of the ten commandments. That’s where our culture was when we were founded as a people in this country. Well, the primary educator, if you will, of the 19th century was, and you’ll appreciate this George, a Presbyterian clergyman named William Holmes McGuffey. He was born in 1800 in the Ohio territory at that time. And I think it was in the 1830’s, 36, 37, something like that, he wrote what we now know as the McGuffey Readers. There were four volumes that he wrote. I should have brought one in. I have a set of those at home. It didn’t occur to me. I’m sorry, I did bring in a book about William McGuffey. Now there was six volumes all together. But it was his brother that wrote volume five and six. And later in life… William McGuffey, I mean, he subsidized his livelihood by teaching. I mean he pastored a church, but by teaching. Anyway, later in life, he becomes a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. And that’s where he passed away in 1873.

0:06:56

G

Wow. You know, I remember the McGuffey Reader because we used the McGuffey Reader in my elementary years. And there were stories about morality doing what’s right, and now it seems kids are pretty much what we call feral, like a feral cat.

0:07:15

D

Yes. Feral, absolutely. Yep.

0:07:18

G

Lives in the woods, hunts by its wits. Now, the feral cat is really a dangerous thing to the local wildlife. And about the most dangerous thing in the woods is a pack of feral dogs.

0:07:30

D

Oh, yes.

0:07:32

G

They’re not afraid of humans. And they treed me one time. I was out hunting with my musket. I only had one shot. It was musket season. And so, I climbed a tree until they went away. Then I came back the next day with a 12 gauge with the plug out, meaning it held six shots with buckshot and uh… waiting for them, cause then I was ready for that.

0:07:54

D

Oh, no.

0:07:55

G

But, feral, the kids don’t seem to know anything. I saw a video the other day on the news about this teacher, a diminutive teacher, who took one of her student’s Nintendo’s because he just was not paying attention in class. And then, he ambushed her. He weighed 270lbs. Knocked her down, the first knockdown knocked her out. And then he punched her head 15 times trying to kill her. It seemed he had no remorse for what he was doing. He was trying to kill someone over a Nintendo. Feral, no set of morals.

0:08:31

D

Yes, and he was six foot four inches or something like that.

0:08:34

G

Yeah, 270lbs.

0:08:36

D

And when they interviewed him, yeah, when the police first got to him, he’s standing there like he didn’t understand what the problem was. Why were the police coming to get him. He stood right, yeah and he was like what, 15, 16 years old? Something like that. Big, big, big boy, and yeah he didn’t have a clue he didn’t understand what the problem was.

0:08:56

G

Diane, would you…

0:08:58

D

Yeah, we’re talking feral. Yeah.

0:09:00

G

We’d like to hear from you now. You wrote a fabulous article. How do we get to it and then talk about the article itself.

0:09:08

D

Well, I called it defund the Department of Education because Thomas, representative Thomas Massie, and I believe he is a a representative from Kentucky, yes…

0:09:21

S

Right.

0:09:22

D

Kentucky, he had, he filed a bill that basically terminates the department of education. Now, it’s not going to go anywhere. But I appreciated it very much because maybe we should start the discussion about what the Department of Education has done to the quality of education. And just to make it clear that anybody that’s listening to this podcast, let’s review how it used to be. In 1940, less than 75 percent of the population had graduated from high school. I repeat, a minority of Americans had graduated from high school. However, let me read this here. Oh, their literacy rate was 97.1 percent. I repeat that, 97.1 percent. And this falls right in line with what Steven and George, what you two were talking about. Whether it was the McGuffey read or whatever. They were getting a quality education and they never went to high school. Or they didn’t even finish high school. And yet they had a literacy rate of 97.1. Okay, well let’s fast forward here. In 1979, when the Department of, when Jimmy Carter, bless his soul, when Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education 1979, the literacy rate of adults in America was 99.4, 99.4. So, it went up from 1940 to 1979 by approximately two percent. Today, literacy rate with American adults today is 79 percent. I repeat, 79 percent. The Department of Education, I blame it entirely on them, entirely. And I believe in my humble heart, I think this was intentional. If it wasn’t intentional, they could have reversed the trend 20 or 30 years ago. They had time to say to themselves of my goodness, look at this, this is awful. What are we doing wrong?

0:11:31

S

Well, we’ve done or what they have done is dumbed down education in this country. And your right it’s…

0:11:40

D

Well yeah that’s proof.

0:11:41

S

It’s done by design. It’s a lot easier to control people that don’t know than people that can think on their own.

0:11:49

D

Bingo, exactly, yeah, I just, and this article I wrote was on Substack on my America First Reignited Substack newsletter. And I mean this is just like, okay. I kind of knew instinctively. When I was practicing law in Oregon, I lived in what was supposed to be, it was West Linn Oregon. We supposedly had the highest rated school district in the state of Oregon, the highest rated. Parents moved to West Linn to benefit their children, okay. I practiced law in West Linn. So many, not all certainly, but many of my younger clients who came to me had grown up in West Linn. Some of them couldn’t even fill out my intake form. You know, name, address, birthplace, birth date just some basic information. They couldn’t fill it out. So, I knew instinctively something was wrong. But when I saw these stats I mean it just blew me away. I mean this is just, you know, the Department of Education needs to be defunded. Or something, we need to do, parents need to take back their authority. Something’s very wrong here.

0:13:05

S

Well, that’s true.

0:13:07

D

And we’re just, I feel so sorry for the children.

0:13:09

S

I mean in the time George was in school, I’m sure you had a school trustee who ran the school. But he was answerable to the parents. You didn’t have consolidated school districts that had a group of administrators that were in charge. Everything was local.

0:13:26

G

Well, the teacher was the trustee. We didn’t have another trustee.

0:13:31

D

Yeah right, right, right.

0:13:33

G

And so, you know, I want to make a comment here. My dad graduated the 8th grade. And college graduates today look down on that. My dad went on to become a very successful farmer, business man, and died a wealthy man. And, I was looking at the 8th grade examination, that is to pass the 8th grade and to get your certificate that you did pass your 8th grade. I defy any of us three, including Steve, professor, to pass that 8th grade examination.

0:14:14

D

Yes.

0:14:15

G

It’s on poetry, math, history, and here’s one, grammar, vocabulary, and these questions, I mean they are hard. And I have an advanced degree in finance, but I couldn’t pass that 8th grade examination. Well, my dad had to and he went on to be a very successful man. I don’t think there is an 8th grade examination anymore and certainly, I haven’t seen any examinations that were as hard as that one. It seems like, do we even care if they’re up to snuff on where they’re supposed to be?

0:14:53

S

And 40 years ago, they used to have 8th grade graduation ceremonies. I can remember that, in rural areas.

0:14:59

D

Oh, that’s right, yes, yes.

0:15:02

S

I don’t know if they even have those anymore. You know, just like there has been monetary inflation, George, Diane. We’re also experiencing educational inflation. Because what kids are getting in college today is what kids used to get in high school.

0:15:16

D

Oh, yes,

0:15:18

S

We’ve dumbed the system down…

0:15:19

D

Maybe even junior high. Oh yeah, and I went to law school with the Oregon governor that just left office after eight years of destroying the state of Oregon, Kate Brown. And about, I think 20… maybe it was 2020, maybe it was 2021. She stopped, she made a law or I don’t recall if it was legislation or if it was just through an executive order, I think it was an executive order, where you don’t have to prove any, any, proficiency to graduate from high school. Everybody that sat in the chair in high school for x, you know, in school for x amount of years got a diploma of, a high school diploma. So, I mean it’s just, it has no value.

0:16:07

S

All they had to…

0:16:08

D

So the person that’s really studied hard, yeah, yeah, just sit there and the person that studied hard and got a, you know, really learned in high school, their diploma has no value because a future employer doesn’t know if they’re the one that worked hard or if they’re the one that just sat there. I mean it’s appalling. And she called it racist.

0:16:29

G

Well, something I… I was a school teacher for just a little bit before I took off with the rock and roll tour. And my children, this was in New York state, and they did really well on the New York state region’s exams. In fact they were doing much better than the average, and they were doing better than the other teacher who taught the same subjects I did. And yet, I got paid a lot less. Why? Because I had taught fewer years. And so you weren’t taught for the quality, I mean you weren’t paid for the quality of the education you taught or how well your kids succeeded. And that rubbed me the wrong way. It was very un-free enterprise, un-capitalistic. And so I went on the rock and roll tour. You got paid according to how many people showed up to your concerts and dances, how many records you sold. It was very capitalistic. And now that I’m a financial planner, I’m called a counselor. But I’m really not. I’m a salesman. If people don’t buy my ideas, I don’t make any money. And so, I believe in that system, and that’s the American system. But the education system and the teacher’s unions just don’t adhere to that at all. Diane, I want you to talk to us before we leave you today and leave everybody. Talk to us about the teacher’s unions and what’s going on there.

0:17:55

D

Well, we all saw how, we all know how abusive they are toward the children. They’re teaching them to hate each other based on skin color. They’re teaching them this trans gender poppycock. This is child abuse. There is no other way to say it. It’s just plain child abuse to tell a little six-year-old that she really isn’t a girl and get her to worry and wondering what’s wrong with her. And so, for the teacher’s union, Jimmy Carter, when he established the Department of Education he did so because if he did that the teacher’s union would fund his re-election campaign in 1980 and all the members would vote for him. And by the way senator Joe Biden voted for the Department of Education. And one of the things we’re doing, trying to do here on this little long beach peninsula in Washington state, we have a very small school district, less than a thousand children. But their test scores are horrible and three of the seats are be coming up for election here at the end of the year and we’re fighting to get some school board members that care about the children. The ones we have now, or at least the three leading ones, they’re only there to further their political career, their democrat political career, the ladder., They don’t care about the children. The test scores are awful, you know. That’s about what I say about that I mean look at the, look at the behavior of Brandi Weinstein. She never taught, did you know that she’s the head of the teachers union. She taught school for one year, you know, like 40 years ago when she was young. She’s just climbed the ladder of the union. That’s all she’s ever done. She doesn’t care about the children.

0:19:38

S

Let me make a comment and say that it’s estimated that 100 million school children learned to read based on the McGuffey Reader. Well, this is a…

0:19:49

D

Wow.

0:19:50

S

This is a quote from Henry Ford. He said most youngsters of my day were brought up on the McGuffey Readers. Most of those youngsters who still survive have a profound respect for the compiler of the readers. The moral principles, Dr. William Holmes McGuffey stressed, the solid character building qualities he emphasized are stressed and emphasized. Today, even though the McGuffey Readers themselves are not required reading. You talk about course content. Early on in my career, and I started out teaching elementary education, and then I kind of grew up with the kids. I moved up into high school and I wasn’t satisfied there and went back to graduate schools so I could move on higher still. But I remember a fourth-grade reader, and this was the story. It was about a grandmother and a granddaughter that lived by the sea. And the granddaughter had a black cat. And there was this little stupid boy that just lived down the way from them. And the whole point of the story was, it was demeaning the male gender and it had nothing to do with the monogamous marriage and family. It was awful. And it was so much symbolism I can’t say that it was a occultish. But it certainly was weird. It made no moral sense whatsoever.

0:21:14

G

It wouldn’t have passed; it wouldn’t have passed muster with McGuffey. You know, speaking of Henry Ford, I remember a quote about him. He was in a board meeting and one of the board members of the Ford company said, Henry, they were arguing, she said Henry, you don’t even have a college education and you’re arguing with me who does, I do. And Henry Ford said no I don’t have a college education and if I don’t know something, withing five minutes I can find the man who does know it. He said that’s the difference between you and me, and why I own this company and you don’t. he said I may not know the specific thing. But I can find out more quickly than anybody else, the specific thing. So, children are taught what to think rather than how to think. Henry Ford knew how to think.

0:22:17

D

Oh.

0:22:18

G

And he built the greatest corporation at the time in the world. In fact, you, one could argue that he helped us win World War II. And he certainly, he mechanized the farm. And we were farm people. We were very grateful for him for that. It wasn’t back breaking work after, after Henry Ford mechanized all the machinery. Diane talk more about your article. What went wrong besides the Department of Education? Is that it or is there something more?

0:22:53

D

You mean with the Jimmy Carter? Or,

0:22:56

G

Yeah what went wrong with our education system besides the department, it took an abrupt dive after the department of education was founded.

0:23:05

D

Oh yeah,

0:23:06

G

What else is there?

0:23:07

D

Oh, yeah immediately. Well, I think in part the parents were not encouraged by the schools to be involved in their children’s education. There wasn’t a, they, you know, little by little inch by inch the parents were kind of shoved down the process intentionally. Or it became increasingly difficult for a parent to be involved. And I think also, it has to do with the fact that once LBJ created the great society and started sucking the taxes away from families and giving it to the government, a mom had to go to work. Even though mom didn’t want to go to work or, you know. My father supported a family of five very comfortably. We had acreage. We had a swimming pool. We had a very nice five-bedroom house etc. etc. He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade. And he supported a family of five. But that was before the high taxes set into the families. And so there is no longer a parent who has got, how should I say it, time to breathe and pause and think about what’s going on with the children in the school. What’s happening to little Johnny in the 5th grade, or his, you know, what’s his teacher teaching him. What’s, you know, what’s the correct pronoun nonsense going on? You know, I think that’s part of it. Little by little, inch by inch, generation by generation there is less parent involvement. And of course, the teacher’s unions loved it. And the administrators love it to. So I think that’s part of the whole process that got us to where we are now. Now, with feral children and illiterate children, and the math it isn’t just literacy. All of the test scores are down significantly since 1979 when the Department of Education was established, math too. Math is awful, so…

0:25:06

S

Diane did you see?

0:25:07

D

We need to get involved again.

0:25:09

S

Did you see a recent position paper by the department of education talking about reversing two Trump policies in terms of protecting religious groups on college campuses?

0:25:24

D

I didn’t see that, but I’m not surprised. They’ve been shoving God out of all levels of education for decades now.

0:25:32

G

Well, I’ll have to look it up. I don’t remember all the details. But, the Department of Education supposedly to protect religious institutions, or religious groups on college campuses because they were afraid that…

0:25:46

D

Yeah right.

0:25:47

S

Some faith based groups would discriminate against others if they had special protection. I mean, it’s typical leftist newspeak.

0:25:58

G

You know, I’ll, I’m going to finish today with, when I visited the Soviet Union in the early 80s I went there on business several times and they had something in the Soviet Union the communists called it bread and circuses. And Diane just alluded to it. The mother had to leave the home because the father was taxed so much that it took two people to make a living. And so they were both so tired earning their bread that all they wanted to do when they got home was just sit back and watch the, watch the boob tube. And even though it was black and white, it was actually very entertaining, Jackie Gleason and I love Lucy and all that. But so bread and circus, taxing us to the point where we have to work harder for our bread, put both families out of the, out of the home, the mother isn’t there, father isn’t home. They don’t have time or energy to get involved. And I’m not sure how we’re going to put this genie back in the bottle. Well, we’re wrapping it up for today. Diane, do you have any parting, any parting words? You only have about fifteen seconds.

0:27:12

D

School board meetings. Start attending the school board meetings!

0:27:16

G

Amen. Steve,

0:27:17

S

Well, I think, George, that things started down hill with John Dewey of the early 20th century and some of the philosophical changes he influenced in terms of, we use the term public education but I really don’t like that term. I prefer to call them government schools because that’s what they really are. And in terms of a moral base, no longer have we, do we have that sense of virtue and moral restraint. We live in a relativistic age and your morals are different than my morals. But that’s to say yours are better than mine. Mine are good for me. Yours may be good for you. So, if you have something I want to steal. That’s moral for me to do that. And I think we can blame a lot of this on values clarification which was very prominent in the 1970s and 1980s.

0:28:10

G

I remember that.

0:28:11

S

And the change in textbooks, it’s…it’s I can’t imagine. Even in history textbooks.

0:28:17

G

My daughter who edited for McGraw Hill found egregious mistakes in history books and but she was just supposed to edit the grammar, punctuation and spelling and so on rather than edit the horrific mistakes that she found. And it just really depressed her to see that. But John Dewey, I’ll end with this. John Dewey in his own handwriting wrote his mission. The product of public education, atheism and socialism. And you can see where that has gotten us today. Well, Diane Gruber, retired attorney, Professor Steve Putney, thank you so much for being on today. And our listeners, thank you so much and please share this with your friends. Go to teawithgeorge.com and you’ll hear this and also a daily message from me. Thank you to our producer, Jonathan Blevins. And goodbye everybody.

0:29:19

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