Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#593 Our Schools Are Failing Us...Let's Do Something About it! Join the Discussion
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Jack and Tom explore how certain narratives are reshaping classrooms and their profound impact on student performance and mental health.
The introduction of concepts like Critical Race Theory and Gender Theory, create division and confusion among children who are inherently loving and curious. As educational standards decline, especially in troubled regions like Illinois, we figure out what's at stake and how parents can regain agency over their children's education.
We call for transparency regarding curriculum content, advocating for a collaborative approach between parents and educators to root out harmful ideologies and uphold foundational values. Join us for this discussion that seeks to awaken the community to prioritize children’s well-being and education.
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I'm with my good friend Tom Hampson, crime investigator, spent his life trying to protect children in child sex trafficking, child porn, you know. Now it turns to education because he sees what's happening into the schools, bringing these gender ideologies, critical race theory. At the end of the day, tom, it doesn't work, does it? I mean it's an abject failure and I think people are finally waking up to the point that something has really failed across the nation. But in Illinois, I mean it's abysmal. In Illinois, I mean it's abysmal In certain school districts in Chicago we have, I think it's, over 30 schools that have not one student that can read at proficiency level. With the dumbed-down standards of education in Illinois, this is a real problem, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's a tremendous problem, and it seems that the more the government gets involved in things, the more they screw it up.
Speaker 2:No fooling huh, no fooling. Who would have thought? Right, who would have thought? But you know what's the sad thing? And I don't think that parents are totally awake to this yet. In fact I know they're not from our presentations that we do, and I'll allude to the presentation on stolen innocence that we just gave this weekend but they're not really awakened to the point that this is by design.
Speaker 2:And what we're seeing are skyrocketing costs. Our property tax is going up, skyrocketing costs for education, skyrocketing mental health issues among students. It's crazy. So now we have these both skyrocketing At the same time. We have this like a lead weight sinking to the bottom of the ocean, the proficiency standards, reading, math, et cetera. So mental illness among students, skyrocketing costs, and we're falling further and further behind. So that's the reality. That's the reality.
Speaker 2:So something happened, what went wrong? And then we realized that we've gotten away from the basics teaching kids knowledge, actually teaching them the actual foundation, say, of our country, how it was founded, all the way from virtues are all being thrown out and these ideologies are brought in to replace things like the Ten Commandments, what it really means to be a human being, what it really means to be compassionate and empathetic for others you brought up right before we came on, tom, and maybe you want to touch on that with kids on a playground, you know, when they see someone of color, when they see somebody say, maybe with two dads or whatever, these kids aren't systemically racist or systemically, you know, prejudiced are they.
Speaker 1:No, they're curious, Most of the kids, certainly from the very moment children are born. I think they're either what do you call it an introvert or an extrovert, and the extroverted kids are running around trying to get to talk to everybody that they can, and the introverted kids are over there just trying to find a single friend that they can talk to. It's not like little kids hate each other right from the right off the bat. They actually are quite curious and quite friendly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know the thing, one of the things I was thinking about is a lot of the problems that we see today. Some some would say that the reason we didn't know about them in the past is because they were hidden, and this just isn't true, I can tell you. When I first started doing investigation of the sexual exploitation of children back in the 70s, there wasn't anywhere near the problem then as there is now. It just wasn't there, and part of it is that.
Speaker 2:Give us an example, tom. When you're saying that, what are you thinking about? When you're saying the problem's not there? Give us an example or two, just to make sure we zone in on what you're thinking.
Speaker 1:Well, there's always been issues of incest within the family. You know, within the family that there's, it's always been a element of our culture that is that acts contrary to what the common virtues are, that you know the. But in even in the seventies and it already deteriorated by then to a certain extent but even in the seventies a majority of the people had shared values. 90% of the people in the 70s actually in the United States were Christians and most of them actually believed in the principles of Christianity. That's fallen today to like. 63% of people identify as Christians today and of those, there's a very small percentage who actually have a Christian worldview. It's 9% of people who claim to be Christians actually have a biblical worldview. Even those that go to church regularly, only 17% of them have a biblical worldview. The rest of them have a worldview that they pick and choose what they want to believe in. It didn't used to be that way.
Speaker 2:So here's the practical reality is the point that you're making. We're seeing this again with the problems that I just brought up with mental illness with kids. I just brought up with mental illness with kids. When you take, you know whether you believe in the Bible or you don't, whether you believe in shared values or you don't, whether you believe in the Ten Commandments or you don't. The reality is when we took those things out, sexual abuse went up, crime has gone up.
Speaker 2:When you, you, if you, if you have no model, no shared vision, no understanding of of what it means to be a human being and our search for truth, you know this search for truth is innate in us. Even little kids, like you said, they might be curious, but they're, you know, they're curious about the truth. You know what? What is the truth of things? You know how do I discover things? You know they have this awe and wonder about creation. They have this awe and wonder just discovering things. A bug on the playground, right, they're all around this big bug wondering what it was, how it flies, what it does.
Speaker 2:When you start to inject systemic racism here, I'll give you an example. So if I tell a little kid on the playground a little kid that's Caucasian, that in school, in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, which is what they're doing that they're systemically racist and there's no way to change that. This is just innate in them. And then I tell the little minority student, maybe a black child on the playground that he's systemically oppressed and there's nothing he can do about it. You know we're creating division here and we're getting away from.
Speaker 2:You know your premise right before we came on that we have to get down to the basics again. We have to see each other as human beings and away from all this color and these gender ideologies and all this stuff which are stealing the innocence, robbing the innocence of our children when, when there's when, when they nobody should be. Just let them be on the playground, let them discover one another, let them talk to one another, let them become friends and and and and. Don't get them all confused from what their parents are teaching them. If their parents are teaching them one thing and the school teachers doing the opposite, something's wrong there, tom, and I don't really see a way out of this unless we get back to a morality that works for our nation. And the last thing I'll say is you know, we are the most homogenous nation in the world. You know, the most successful and the most homogenous nation in the world you know, the most successful right and the most homogenous we have.
Speaker 2:Every single race, every single nation is represented as our citizenship right. If we get away from those common core values, what made that all possible was our founding fathers and those beautiful documents, and we have to be able to teach those to our kids. If we're afraid to teach our founding fathers and our founding principles the Constitution, the US Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights if we're afraid to do that because some people are fallen and sinful you know, tom, we're always going to be fallen and sinful. But if we don't model what, what, what could be, and work toward that, there's not much chance of success, or is there?
Speaker 1:yeah, all right. Well, who was it that said the? You know, the one of the founders said that our, our form of government, was created for a moral and religious people it was john adams, yeah yeah, and madison said very similar things and so and, and we're becoming an immoral and irreligious people.
Speaker 2:And that's by design, Tom. Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not by accident, Absolutely yeah, that's part of the Marxist effort to strip God out of our culture and the churches have gone along with it. So that's not that isn't. It isn't all government that's causing this. The churches have stepped back from being moral leaders in the world. In our country, they won't take stands. When was the last time you heard a church take a stand against abortion or against, or have a church that talked about, you know, pro-marriage of male and female, or even took a stand and said, no, there are only males and females. There's not all these other things that are going on. Churches just don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now you know I'm Catholic and so you know I have a pastor that does speak, a pastor-priest that does speak about those things. But it's hit or miss too. You can go down the street to a different Catholic church and they could have a LBGTQ flag up there, but that's not— Well, they do in Chicago.
Speaker 1:They have some—they've got a bunch of them in Chicago. They're just like that. That's right.
Speaker 2:That's right. So you can find them. But you have to be selective. You know, in the old days if you lived in a certain geographical area you were assigned to a specific parish, a Catholic church say. But now I tell people, nope, I said you know, we can't go along with that anymore. We have to find the pastor. The priest and the pastor right in an evangelical church say that's going to speak to your point. The priest and the pastor right in an evangelical church say that's going to speak to your point. The truth. And you have to. They may be few and far between, but you got to find them. And what we're finding, tom, over and over again, if you go to the churches that have a lot of kids and a lot of families, it's because of what you just said, it's because the pastor is speaking the truth and he doesn't love, right? I mean, you know love is the basic thing of this right. You have to teach people, you know the truth in love and you have to speak about love in the truth. One without the other.
Speaker 1:It's not activism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, here's the activism. The activism is to proclaim the gospel and it's all. That's truth and God is love. Right, it's not as bad as people think. Some people say well, I can't preach the gospel because it's too harsh for people to hear it. The reality is the violence, the hatred, the division, the child abuse that is. That is what's harsh, the reality of taking morality out and what you leave behind, this dysfunction. This is what's harsh, tom, and I think, and and here's a here's, here's a good point I want to get your point, your, your opinion.
Speaker 2:We're starting to see gen z wake up, especially the gen z men, and I'm talking about not the youngest, you know, they're still in high school, but the fifth, the 19, 20, 21, 22 year olds, and it's because of you, you know I I showed you this briefly before we came on, but basically what this is talking about. It shows just very briefly I'll describe it is that it's gen z compared to millennials, gen x and baby boomers, and it shows everyone in the blue, at the very top anxiety levels skyrocketing, depression levels skyrocketing, suicidal thoughts skyrocketing. And this is gen z. Well, what's happened? Uh, thomas is they're saying, uh, ah, something's wrong. We grew up in the most toxic culture in the history you know, maybe in the history of a period you know, with again all these twisting and distortions of who we are as human beings. And yet, yet the human heart was made for more and these people are waking up, tom this is actually gives us an opportunity to speak the truth to them?
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because they've been falsely taught that our country was founded on evil principles, that it was based on the elites exploiting the poor, the marginalized people, when in fact, our founding principles were based on biblical virtues, and it's those biblical virtues that are being suppressed today.
Speaker 1:It's a lie that our country was founded on slavery, for example. That's just not true. If it hadn't been for Christianity, we'd still have slavery all over the world running rampant. It was Christians that have gotten rid of this, and that's the tragedy of what we see now going on in our schools is that all of these people, so many people in the schools, are trying to teach kids falsehoods about our country and about what's good and what's right, and that's the thing that parents have to start taking control over again. And I think one of the things that Gen Z has discovered many of these problems and there's been a conservative reaction among them. And there's been a conservative reaction among them where there's been a sudden increase in the number of young people getting married and having families, and you know, there's even voting conservatively, there's a surge of conservative voting by the young people. In fact, there's more young people that support the current administration than older people people 65 and older still on the Biden side.
Speaker 2:And I think what they saw, tom, is just something was wrong, something has to change. And they saw especially the men. Again, we see more men. The women went up too. I mean to your point, the whole gen z has started to move, and I wouldn't call it republican they're, they were moving toward trump, because in and without, they don't have to know everything yeah, just common sense, that's what I was going to say to say something's wrong.
Speaker 2:We got to bring something in now. Now, they may have done it for economic issues. They might have saw it did it because of the anxiety that they're feeling. They may have done it for economic issues. They might have did it because of the anxiety that they're feeling. They may have seen it just because how toxic the culture is around it, without really knowing why and I said that's why I got back to this may be a good time for them to really be grounded again in the gospel and because what they're going to be searching for, as they start to try to become better prepared as voters, as citizens, that they have to get back to these basic truths, don't they? Yeah?
Speaker 1:You can't run a society on a lie, no, or on opinions.
Speaker 2:You know Right. You know this is a republic, which is better than a democracy. Of course, democracy is just mob rule at the end. You know, a republic is something different, but this republic again stands on a moral and religious people, and that's just a fact. That's the reality, and I think we finally got to a point, tom, where people are waking up. And this is really Gen Z more, because when you look at the millennials, I don't want to throw them all under the bus, but they grew up with their heads in the proverbial pot with the frog and they have been slowly getting stewed in this toxic sludge and just went along with it.
Speaker 2:It was really sad in a way that they're all grasping to make themselves happy and trying to get money and all this stuff that you know. And there's nothing wrong with money, there's nothing wrong with a nice car, there's nothing wrong with a nice house, from from truth and love, from marriage to families, from teaching your kids, as they're starting to go through school, that there is an objective morality.
Speaker 1:And I don't think they know it, tom, so they're having a hard time passing anything down you know, our the way our culture was set up was for people to take responsibility and to do the right thing. That you can't, that the government isn't coming down and telling you exactly what to do, running you like a little robot or something going out there says you do this and and that it was. We were supposed to take responsibility for ourselves and go through our day doing the right thing all the way through the day, and and we had, we had a common understanding and belief in what the right thing was. Well, now it's just gone. Crazy People at a very fundamental level. They're trying to destroy just what it is to be a man or a woman. If you don't have the common understanding and agreement on what that is, you don't have much to work with. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So here here, I want to throw something at you. I have a vision. I have a vision, tom, and and and it's just because it's failing, the education system's failing, right. And so we're in illinois. We're in the belly of the beast, but this is is not just Illinois where I said this. The costs are skyrocketing. Mental health issues are skyrocketing. The proficiency levels we can't read, we can't do math. Now, this is a nationwide thing. Illinois just happens to be some of the worst, you know, as far as costs and all these issues. So here's what I'd like to propose to our local school board Tom, I get your thoughts on this. Basically, these curriculums are getting thrown out, in and out.
Speaker 2:I always thought that these PhDs in education were experts, and I think we've abdicated responsibility to our children's education because we thought they were experts. They know better than us. And then, as I looked into this, tom, my master's degree is in philosophy and theology. But philosophy at its core is the awe and wonder, and all good philosophy starts with awe and wonder. It starts with what's true, what is good, what is beautiful, right, and starts to question those things. As part of that, I studied education and I studied okay, what are the great books, what is the best way to teach kids, you know? And it was very interesting to me. And as I started to look at these curriculums, tom, I thought well, every school district must have a set curriculum, we must be able to see it. Let me poke around and see what we can approve or not approve.
Speaker 2:Then I found out that they don't post this stuff, they don't share this stuff with you, and they're throwing curriculums out left and right. You know they're experimenting on our children. One quick example my oldest granddaughter is in high school. She never learned to write cursive. And now the younger ones are learning because they realize it's not good not to learn cursive, for all kinds of reasons, and at the end of the day they just experimented with her, they threw it out. Now it's back in. Well, she missed it and she's a very bright girl. But there there are some some you know, some some detrimental effects of that you know. And so one thing after another math, one curriculum comes in, one goes out. So here's my proposal to them that parents are no longer the enemy to these school districts, that the parents are going to have to be brought on and be partners with us and take back your primary role of educating your children. But if they're going to send them to government schools, at least let's find the best curriculums that work. No more experimenting on our kids. What are the best curriculums that and I'm talking about elementary school kids here, tom, to read, to do math. There are good curriculums out there. Let's see if we can't agree in our school district to some basic format.
Speaker 2:The second thing is to post it online. Put it online so that every parent can look at that curriculum. See all of the additional answerary. You know the literature that they're bringing in, the way they're doing math, the articles that they want to use, the problems that they want. Just post it. You got it. You're going to teach the kids. Just post it. We can all take a look at it. That way, if my child's not reading well, I can say well, here's the books that the teacher's using to recommend. Maybe I'll bring those books to my own house or print off the material and just sit down with my child. I want to become a partner with this teacher and help my child along. So that's the second thing.
Speaker 2:The third thing get rid of all of this, all these ideologies, all these scl programs and all this stuff. That does nothing. It tries to make teachers, amateur psychiatrists, amateur counselors, that that with no training at all, survey after survey, after survey. And it's all by design, tom, not to teach our kids anything but to make them critical conscious, critical consciousness of this oppressor, oppressed model that we already went over today. Well, that can I do it, tom can I do it?
Speaker 1:is it possible?
Speaker 1:it's going to be hard to do because there's within our school system. They they're experimenting with kids from the earliest age, all the way up through high school, in every aspect of their education, and it starts. Really one of the most egregious experiments is it starts with three and four year olds, where they're teaching them that they don't really know whether they're a boy or a girl until much later the doctor only guessed based on what they looked like. Where they're teaching them that they don't really know whether they're a boy or a girl until much later the doctor only guessed based on what they looked like. And it's only later, when they become more sexually active, that they'll begin to understand whether they're a boy or a girl or whether they fit in some kind of other category.
Speaker 1:Now imagine the confusion that the kids start off with and this is magnified throughout the curricula and what the kids are taught just in general, even anything that is in our culture today. The schools are teaching as though that's normal. And the schools are teaching as though that's normal, so that, if you have you know what was the one thing in the sex ed curriculum. You had to know the difference between somebody who is a gay, bisexual, lesbian, pansexual, two-spirit, two-spirit. Imagine this. This is what they're teaching. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Well, not only are they teaching that, Tom, they're teaching it to very young children who have no idea what they're doing, and what we found is they don't look.
Speaker 2:we call our program, our presentation, stolen innocence, right Robbing children of their innocence obliterating their moral imaginations, right To the examples you just brought up, right to your, the examples you just brought up. But they right, these ideologues that actually have have hijacked the, the, the teachers, colleges. They look at the innocence of children as a empty vessel that they can mold, that they can fill right, yeah, they are purposely doing that and so.
Speaker 2:so now this gets back to this, tom why are the anxiety levels, the depression, the suicide levels going up? We're injecting something that is, you know the psychological word. You know term would be cognitive dissonance, something that these kids are learning is going against what they feel in their hearts, even as young kids, is going against what they feel in their hearts, even as young kids.
Speaker 1:Kids need security, certainty, they need to feel safe and they need to feel protected and loved.
Speaker 2:And everything that they're teaching them goes against that. Yeah, so is there? I mean, do you think that a district would actually in Illinois again? Are they able to do that? Would they be able to? You think that you can actually get a group of people together if the school board went along with it, tom, to say, yeah, we have to agree on some curriculum that has been proven, run a framework around it, make it transparent and let's get rid of all of the things that have nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with ideologies, because this is not being taught in school to teachers, so, so they have to almost be retrained. That's why we need a curriculum. In other words, if we don't have a curriculum that we can agree on, then these teachers are going to be all over the board because that's what they're learning in school.
Speaker 1:Well, parents should be able to agree on the curriculum. In fact, the federal government says they have to agree on the curriculum or they can opt them out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you can't really opt out of all these classes, because what we find out, I mean you can opt out of the schools which you have to opt out of of all these classes, because what we find out, I mean you can opt out of the schools which you have to opt out of but you can't opt out of the classes because these ideologies critical race theory, gender critical, gender theory, climate hoax all this stuff is injected into the curriculum.
Speaker 2:so if I in other words, if'm teaching reading, I am teaching reading now about this oppressor-oppressed race thing. Now I don't say it's critical race theory, but that's exactly what I'm doing with the literature. That's why I say make it transparent, post these books online and if a parent sees it, you say no, I thought we agreed not to push this stuff on our kids.
Speaker 1:Well, the other thing is, if it's posted online, if you know what they're being taught, you can speak against it. Like I remember when my son was in grade school or something and I used to be a hunter and I took him hunting a couple of times with me just to accompany him. He didn't, he just went along with me to hunt and in one of his classes the teacher said that people that hunt are really destroying the environment. And well, in fact, the fact is that hunters are the first environmentalists. They were the ones that actually started the whole environmental movement, because there were people like you know all the buffalo that were slaughtered. Even out east they had people that were just destroying the geese population and geese.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons why geese are federally protected to this day is because they were almost extinct to this day is because they were almost extinct because these hunters that were selling to grocery stores and restaurants were killing them all. So I explained all this to my son and I also went up and talked to the teacher. I said you know, I'm a hunter and this is the history of the environmental movement. And you know she changed. I mean she appreciated knowing that she had no idea that it was true. So this is. This gives parents the opportunity to interact with the teachers in a constructive way, if they know what's being taught yeah.
Speaker 2:So a couple of things. You know. I don't know people realize this. You know, when you have the big game reserves in africa that have actually preserved elephant populations, lions, all these beautiful animals, they're supported by hunters and by the money coming in for the touring groups. Now you can say, okay, I don't like hunting, I'm not a hunter and I actually never shot anything but a chipmunk that kept trying to bury itself underneath my thing and I got so mad. I actually got a pellet gun for that and I and a and a and a woodpecker that kept putting holes in my house so instead of being a hunter, you were a murderer, that's it.
Speaker 2:I was a murderer, yeah, and, and and it was I. I got some satisfaction out of hunting those things after they destroyed my porch. You know they all got underneath my porch and it actually caved in. I mean, the my concrete slab actually caved in. I didn't realize the damage they can do and the woodpecker had seven holes in my house it was. It was quite a satisfaction, uh tom to, to be able to shoot that thing after I warned it many times, hundreds of times. But anyways, the point being they that people don't realize that without these game hunters, big game hunters, and without the people paying all these fees and stuff and supporting the national parks in africa and other places, those the big game would have been gone already. You know, we would have been, we, we would have it's protected against poachers and stuff, just because of those things you know.
Speaker 2:The other thing is you. You know, when you talk about slavery. Slavery has been here since since very ancient times. We know this and it was not just black people being enslaved, there was a whole white people. In fact, our bible, right the old testament, almost starts out with the second book of exodus, with with god leading his people out of what? Out of slavery right? And so people were enslaved all the time. And to your point, it was actually Christians that finally stood up and put an end to it, even though there are still slaves around the world today.
Speaker 1:And when you add in the sex slaves Actually, there's more slaves today than there ever was in history.
Speaker 2:I was just gonna say that, yeah, especially when you add the sex slaves and you add the child, the children. Now there's children being adopted so-called adopted into homes now and being used for sexual purposes, and so this is disgusting stuff that's going on. And unless we get back, tom, like you said, to a moral base and this is the battle, I think this is the cultural battle that Gen Z is waking up to that we have to get back to being a moral and religious people and there's no other way to create unity within a country, unity, and otherwise you just see this division and hatred.
Speaker 1:We have to have a common morality or there's no common understanding of what's right and wrong, and you can't run a society when you don't have that common understanding.
Speaker 2:Especially when her mind is like ours.
Speaker 1:Right. I think that there's a possibility for local school districts to become rational and begin taking a look at the curriculum and posting it and making it being completely transparent in what's being taught to the kids and moving away from some of these ideological material that has taken over all of our school districts. However, one of the problems that we're going to run into right from the beginning is that these school districts have to be ready to go to court, because as soon as they start pulling out this ideological content from the schools, there's going to be a backlash from the left and they'll immediately go into court to demand that this content be returned so how about trump now with the trump administration?
Speaker 2:I mean that that at least you're not going to get the push from the feds like you were now. Now the left would be coming from the state tom that's, you know, going to court with. I mean, we have these rogue prosecutors we know that right in the state of illinois, the soros-backed prosecutors, who are so corrupt it's disgusting. Can they actually go? And you think, even with the new—and the reason I bring this up is because I don't think I would have tried this with the Biden administration because of what you just said but at least the Trump administration, we're not going to have that coming down from the feds at at least right.
Speaker 1:Well, you might be able to get the feds to, for example, you mentioned earlier about the PPRA that pupils, I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's talk. Yeah, here, let me. I have it here. It's the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, that allows parents to take a look at anything that their child is being taught in the school, so they can look at the curriculum. They can look at any materials that they're provided Like. If the child is referred to an online website or an online book or online materials of any kind, they have the right to get access to it. Materials of any kind they have the right to get access to it Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. They don't have that right. So if they go in and they say, well, I'd like to see this stuff, very likely the school is going to say, well, you don't have a right to see what the teacher's lesson plan or the extra materials.
Speaker 2:Which is preposterous actually, if you think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but under the Freedom of Information Act you don't have a right to see it. However, under the PPRA you do. The problem is you have to file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education and under the Biden administration they wouldn't even bother looking at it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Under the Trump administration. They might at least try to enforce that PPRA.
Speaker 2:My point to the local school board would be let's just voluntarily put this up. Why? Why not make it transparent? Because if you're embarrassed or you know you're teaching kids something that parents wouldn't go along with, you're going to be a little more careful if you have to make it transparent, even though obviously they can hide some stuff. But I'm going to ask my kids then and my grandkids show me what you learned in school today, right, and just ask them those questions.
Speaker 2:So, tom, who's going to sue, like if a school district says I'm going to go along with this, I'm not asking the school district to go against anything, really, it's just we're not going to teach critical race theory, we're not going to teach gender, critical gender theory, we're going to get back to the basics.
Speaker 2:So I and again I'm trying to word it here in a way that you know to, you know, so you know I don't want to get the district into, you know, this hot water. I know that that we've talked about libraries that tried to ban books and then then just gave up because the feds were coming after them, right, to ban books and then just gave up because the feds were coming after them, right. So I'd rather keep them away from litigation. What would be the red flag do you think, tom, that we just have to watch out for so that we didn't get involved in lawsuits and legal suits? I mean, we can find a curriculum. I would think that's not pushing God in the Bible, it's just moving us into historical reality of our founding fathers, of virtues, of how we treat one another. But just finding good literature right, Good books to read, good literature to read.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing that I know. I can't point to any specific law that they might use in these things, any specific law that they might use in these things. But this is what you have to understand is that there is such a mass of laws in the state of Illinois and in every state, that clever attorneys can find a way to file a lawsuit to get what they want done. You know, I look and I look when I was with the state. If we wanted to get somebody on something, we could find a law to get them on, believe me, and that's just the way it is. And let's take, for example, if you remove the SEL out of, let's just say, let's get rid of all this SEL stuff. I know that there's a law in Illinois, an anti-bullying law in Illinois, that says there are certain things that you're supposed to do in order to create a climate. And a lawyer could use a law like that to go in and say they've removed this SEL curriculum, which was intended to prevent bullying and help prevent bullying. So what they're doing is they're really discriminating against these children who are marginalized because of their race or their sexual identity or whatever it might be, and so they can file a lawsuit and get it locked up.
Speaker 1:It's just like with most of these executive orders. There have been lawsuits filed against the Trump administration, children in the United States that we're not going to provide any money for any of these hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, hormone therapy, or certainly not surgery under a certain age. That law has been enjoined or that executive order has been enjoined. The Title IX withdrawal has been evaded by many of these school districts already. So there's people are not complying with the executive order that comes out, so the same thing is going to happen in these school districts. So what? The school districts have to be ready to fight against this leftist agenda. That's sure to come, because if you're not willing to fight something, you're just going to give in.
Speaker 2:Well, I would say they're not going to be willing to fight Tom, and I'll tell you why Because, like most school districts in Illinois, they're running out of money. They're all scrambling for more money. They all are trying to figure out what?
Speaker 1:How about get rid of a? If you get rid of a few of those administrators, you got a couple hundred. You got to buy half a million dollars you can work with.
Speaker 2:That's right, but that's another lawsuit, right? So you know who fired me and why did you fire me. And you know you fired me so you can sue the state, and you know I mean. So I would say you know we have to do the best we can to stay away from lawsuits, right? Somehow get back to the basics and throw the ideologies out without, without trying to push them anywhere, just get back to the basics.
Speaker 1:I think one of the things that's going to have to happen is there's going to have to be a case somewhere that will be the first one that will set the standard, that will create a what do you call it?
Speaker 2:a principle that other jurisdictions will have to follow yeah, it's a case study, but, but at the end of the day, I don't know if parents are willing to fight for this stuff.
Speaker 1:Tom, you know and, and and they'll be so so, yeah, that'll be a good question all I can do, that's if they're not willing to fight for it, then they're not, then then there's no one. One of the—I think the fundamental virtue that must—that Christians have to have is courage, because you can't do anything without it. Right, right, if you're just going to give up because you don't have the courage to fight—.
Speaker 2:You're 100 percent true. We have to speak the truth and love, love people in the truth and have the courage to actually do that. As we wind down here, tom, we're running out of time. As we wind down here, you know, do you think that the millennials parents in general I'm generalizing here I know a lot of great millennial parents I really do that, that that really understand everything that we'm generalizing here? I know a lot of great millennial parents I really do that, that that really understand everything that we're talking about here, but they pulled their kids out of the schools already, so they're not going to stand up. So who's left? Who's left? Parents that have abdicated their responsibility to the state? Right?
Speaker 1:It was. It was parents in Virginia that really started this whole thing, this whole awakening of people around the country about what's going on. And so I think if parents can become awakened to what's happening in the schools, most parents are going to defend their child. They're going to do something to defend their child, to defend their child, and if they can't afford to send them to a private school, or if they don't have the resources to be able to or the ability to homeschool them themselves, then they at least will be able to fight and back the fight anyway and stand up for their children. And I think we'll find that it's just. The problem is getting people educated as to what's happening. Everybody wants to somebody else to do it. Well, that's why?
Speaker 2:you know there's nobody else to do it. That's why I want to find a succinct way to express this in three minutes in front of the school board. But I can, I can. I can express it every, every school board meeting for three minutes and we have them twice a month.
Speaker 1:Transparency of the curriculum is a is an excellent place to start.
Speaker 2:It's like a no brainer right and and and and again. You know, start working on getting back to the basics, which means rooting out things that don't belong in that. You know whether I bring up SEL or not, other things that don't belong in the school right.
Speaker 1:Start with the transparency of the curriculum, and then you can go from there. Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 2:Maybe don't open that can of worms. I only got three minutes anyways. All right, that's a good point, thomas, thank you so much. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Goodbye everybody. Thanks for joining, joining us today. Talk to you again soon.