This is busted pencils, fully let it education talk. Here are your hosts. Dr. Tim
Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinachi, educated educators talking education.
And there it is Tuesday night busted pencils, fully let it education talk
educated educators talking education. Johnny Lupinachi day to teacher
appreciation week man. You know what I thought I appreciate you for all of the
teaching that you've been doing with me over the last four years on busted
pencils man. I thought I would just jump right into that because you've taught
me a lot about, you know, how to actually dig deep into the questions. And so I
thought for my teacher appreciation today, Johnny, I'd say Johnny Lupinachi, I
appreciate you man and all the work you continue to do my friend. Oh Tim man, I
appreciate you too. Many caught me off guard with that one. I mean, you know,
teacher appreciation week is important because every week of the year of
especially this school year should be teacher appreciation week. And you know
Tim, I appreciate you too, all the educating you do especially to teach
teachers, right? I mean we have teacher educators on board and you know we don't
have teacher educator week. So we'll just we'll just kind of lean off of
teacher appreciation week. You know, I was thinking today about appreciating
the teacher and and I yesterday I really talked about first grade and the
importance of like kindergarten and first grade teachers and the work they do.
So blanket appreciation again to all those early year educators. But I was
thinking I had a teacher Kenneth McCurnen in high school ethics and morality
elective and it was like through my mind, you know, even about the the great
areas and we read an article by Maxine Green actually about why to
wakeness in the moral life. And I remember that article in that class in those
discussions that we had, you know, as juniors in high school, you know, really
kind of come into age getting ready to vote in a couple of years and you know
really really kind of green at what the world was like to think politically.
And and that class really opened me up to thinking about a world view that
centered kind of a morality that wasn't necessarily a religious morality.
It was just ethics just about, you know, what we talk about in democracy is
common good in those important things. So big shout out to high school teachers
out there that are encouraging young people to be political and to think about
the world and in the value human rights and to center empathy and to think
about the world and to feel the world. And so that's big work that those
teachers are out there doing too. So appreciate that. Tim, I also appreciate
that last week I got to hang out with you at a really cool place in Madison at
the Monaco Brewing Company tap house. And you know why that is, Johnny, because
busted pencils is sponsored by Monaco Brewing Company. They sued from
Monaco Brewing Company, sued the state of Wisconsin to end its parasitic
voucher system that hurts public schools. Monaco Brewing Company is making
Wisconsin great again, one beer at a time. Check out Monaco Brewing Company
dot com to see where you can buy their progressive beer. Yeah, Johnny, what a
great week that was. And again, Monaco Brewing Company, thank you for that
lawsuit against the vouchers in the state of Wisconsin. We know talking to
all of the people there that you are going to be filing that again. But
Johnny, think of those two of teachers, we have got a great guest tonight. Oh,
man, especially. And I'd say, yeah, you know, in fact, Dr. Diane
Rabbits, thank you for being one of my favorite teachers over all the years.
And welcome back to busted pencils. Diane, how are you? Well, thank you, Tim.
I, you know, I'll never forget that video you made some dozen years ago when
Michelle Rie was trashing American education. And you made this fantastic
video of some guy flopping around on the Olympics. Do you remember that?
I, I remember that. Yeah. And that was a pretty funny. I was, yeah, I was
trying to do a little spoof on the Michelle Rie and what really mattered.
But yeah, I remember that. It was a really bad video. I'll have to bring it
back and show it sometimes. But I know, thank you for remembering that. That
was that time. You know, what was that? That was, I think the second year
after the save our school's march in Washington, DC, when we were down there in
2012, because she was mocking America's performance at the Olympics.
I, which I don't really understand because we have incredible athletes and
incredible Olympians, but she was just using it as a kind of a metaphor for
our school stink. Therefore, everything stinks. Right. You did a great
You know what? Yeah, because what I did was I went and showed us all the
things we were in first place. We're first place for child poverty. We're
first place for, you know, like, wait a minute, why we, why we disson on, you
know, the American education anyway, thank you, Diane. So teacher
appreciation week, Diane, you got some appreciation to give to a teacher?
Well, I, I just heard a story actually just about an hour ago, my
partner went to have cataract surgery today. And she is very, she loves to
talk to people. So she got to know all the doctors and technicians of it. And
as theologist told her that when he was in junior high school, you know, I
guess a freshman in high school, his father just walked out on the family.
And he was devastated. His mother was devastated. And he didn't go to school.
He stayed home from on with his mother to help her take care of her. And
then when he went back to school, he thought he was going to be in deep
trouble. But instead, one of his teachers took him in and talked to him,
found out what had happened, encouraged him to join the swim team, which he
did, and which gave him a sense of purpose and focus encouraged him with his
academic work. And he went on to become a star in high school. He could have
been a dropout. But that one teacher got to him and got inside his head and
figured out how to help him the most and kept him in school. And he then
went on to a university Rochester. And from there, became an
estheologist and has a great career over that one teacher.
Yeah. Well, that is that one teacher. So great story. And we all think
about that. So all of you teachers out there, great appreciation.
Busted pencils were making sure that we acknowledge all of that hard work
you do in anywhere in that teacher. I am though. So 2020, you published
slaying Goliath. I had you on the Busted Pencils podcast. We were ready to
make a movement out of this. It's like finally, the story of the wins that we
were accumulating against Ed reform and the pandemic hit. And all of a sudden,
it went away. What do you think though? Or you know, four years later, you
know, what was the effect of the pandemic on that movement? And is it
time now to reignite and go after? And let's slag Goliath again?
Well, what's really frustrating was that that was a moment in time right
before the pandemic where there had been teachers strikes across the
country. And they just ignited, I mean, literally spread from West
Virginia and to Oklahoma to Arizona. And then back again, and it seemed like
teachers were run fire. And if once teachers decide that they're not going to
take it anymore, they win. But it takes strikes, it takes dramatic action.
And there was this wave across the country where that I felt, and I think a lot
of people felt that things were really going to change. Teachers would get
better salaries, better working conditions would begin to, as a nation,
to begin to look again at the rhetoric around education, which has always been
so negative, or at least in the last dozen years, incredibly negative. And then
the pandemic came along. And the air just went out of the balloon. I mean,
everybody wanted to talk about fixing education or changing education. All I
wanted to talk about was should schools be open or closed? Kids get vaccine or not
get vaccine. And you know, suddenly we had proud boys and then along came
moms for liberty. And the subject changed to vouchers. And I think during the
pandemic, something dramatic happened, which I frankly did not see. I was asked
by my publisher during the pandemic to write a new ending to the book about
like an afterward. And I wrote something very upbeat about how when the pandemic
was finally over, people would appreciate their teachers because I had been
seeing these tweets and notes and all kinds of comments online saying, oh my
god, I can't manage my own two kids. How does the teacher manage 26 of them?
You know, like we should be paying them a million dollars a year to be a teacher.
It's such an incredible thing. So I thought, well, there's going to be a new era
of appreciating the good work, the hard work, the dedication of teachers. And
that it's really hard. And that most of the people who sit in their arm chairs
and talk about how to fix education and how to fix teaching wouldn't last a week in a
classroom, maybe not even a day. And these people running foundations, they wouldn't last at all
because they have no idea what they're talking about. So what happened was during the pandemic
that all these folks who thought that they knew had all the answers got their heads together
and decided, now is the time to plan for a real revolution. We're going to move from
Charters to vouchers. And as soon as the pandemic was over, boom, the vouchers
flowed and all the red states. And that was not an accident.
Well, yeah, right. It's just like, whoa, and I remember that too. There was a point where
teachers were the heroes. They were bringing lunch to people who were hungry. They were providing
all that space. And yeah, and it was just like all of a sudden, though, it was like somebody got
wind and said, there's too much positivity going around this teacher thing. We need to figure out
how to bring them back down. And as you said, whether it was the orchestrated movement, which I
always believe that anytime public education does fall into that downward spiral, it's typically
orchestrated. But here we are now, 2024. And there are lots of Goliaths still out there, Diane,
and maybe even some new ones that have things for us to be looking at. I wonder, though, before
the next break, though, too, do you see any opportunity in where we might need to go?
Well, what has happened is very scary. And that is the Supreme Court is now in the hands of a
majority of people who don't believe in separation of church and state. And so we've had a couple
of introductory decisions that break ground saying that, yeah, religious schools can get public
money. Yes, all those states that have an amendment or a right in the center of their
constitution says not a dollar to religious schools, whether direct or indirect, they're just
ignoring it. And as the Supreme Court is allowing them to, and in fact, they're saying, you know,
if you want to spend money on church schools, it's okay with us. So we're going to see more
challenges and more money flowing to religious schools because of the court.
It's busted pencils fully. Let it education talk to numbers eight five five seven five two four eight four two
teacher appreciation week. Our guest, Dr. Diane Ravage, we're talking about slaying Goliath was
released in 2020. We say on busted pencils, it's time to re-release it. We're going to do it
unofficially this way because there are more Goliaths than ever out there. But it's time. It's time
right now. Johnny, we say busted pencils fully-ledged public schools, bedrock of democracy,
more with Diane right when we get back.
Oh yeah. Oh man.
Aaron's on the board tonight. It's busted pencils fully-ledged education talk.
Educated educators talking education. The number eight five five seven five two four eight four two
our guest Dr. Diane Ravage, we're talking about her book slaying Goliath released in 2020 that was
really put together this this compendium of all of these successes of people pushing back on
ed reform. You know, Diane, you mentioned some some key places. I wonder, you know, if we talk about
this, the badass teachers, they were they were one of those people slaying Goliaths. What was it
about the badass teachers at that time? And how do we reinvigorate the badass teacher movement?
Well, the badass teachers were well organized. They had great leadership. They've kind of I think
the the pandemic has quieted them. I don't know who's the leader of it right now. But it showed
the potential of teachers who were not members of unions and in some cases were members of unions
who were able to organize and have an impact in states and communities. And they were very
powerful and could be very powerful again. But I think, you know, we shouldn't. I don't want to
just say look what worked and what happened four years ago because there were some great things.
And I think the best of all of them were the teacher strikes. But I think of West Virginia,
for example. And I visited West Virginia with my the last stop on my book tour. And then everything
closed down. And in 2018 when they went on strike, they shut down every school in the state of
West Virginia. And I met the organizers and it was any A and A F T combined. And they were
incredibly successful. In fact, I cannot for the life of me understand why West Virginia is a
red state. They have such an incredible labor history. And they continue to elect time after time.
I guess Joe Manchin is the four of us left. There is there. But his seat will probably be taken
by a Republican. And he's a very wealthy man. Jim Justice, who I think is going to take his seat,
is a governor now. He's a billionaire. And you know, the people who have nothing are electing
billionaires to office. And I just don't get it. They have more money to campaign with.
But so the grassroots are strong. And it just doesn't translate into political leadership.
But I wanted to mention a couple of things that if I were to do a new addition of
slaying Goliath, I would want to add Brandon Johnson, who was elected mayor of Chicago.
And that was a classic battle because he was running against one of the best known reformers.
Paul Valas. And Paul Valas had led New Orleans district. He had been the superintendent in a
variety of places. He led privatization in Philadelphia before he went to New Orleans. And he had
tons of reformer money. And Brandon Johnson was a teacher who had the support of the Chicago federation
of teachers. And Brandon Johnson won very handily. And now Chicago will have an elected school board
that their first elected school board. And I don't know, maybe since 1995, something like that.
And one of the heroes of slaying Goliath is G2 Brown, who led a hunger strike to stop Brahma manual
from destroying one of the very last of the neighborhood open enrollment schools. And he's running
for office to be elected to the new school board. So Chicago right now has hope. And that's
quite the loss of great Karen Lewis, who is a union leader that I was crazy about.
Yeah. But Karen, you say, but Chicago, hey, and actually, too, Chicago is in the listening range
of those people driving around listening to civic media right now. Johnny Lupinace,
see, we got a call, though, right there. LA time. Yeah, let's get to call with with our guest,
Dr. Diane Ravage. LA Tom, you are there. What's happening, our friend?
Hey, guys, first off, we, the people ultimately are the government. And we must never forget that.
Just like people that are in unions, they are the democracy in the workplace. And hopefully,
they use that power to choose the right people and leadership. What I wanted to say is Diane
just brought up a really great idea or great information, which is West Virginia. You know, Bernie
Sanders won West Virginia. We need a good FDR Democrat, maybe a teacher, or someone that is a
strong progressive and not someone that's going to run away from progressive roots and education
and unions and all of these types of things that actually run in West Virginia, because I think
we could probably win that state. What do you guys think? Well, let's go throw the question right
to Diane. Diane, what do you think LA Tom's question there? Well, you know, to me, it's one of the
puzzles of this time is why places like, you know, if you think even like Mississippi,
Alabama, the whole South, they should all be voting Democratic. And it seems like their history
as places that elect Democrats was based in race, that they had racist Democrats. Now,
it's the Republican Party or the racist. And all of those states are locked in for the Republicans,
even though that's where the highest poverty is. No unions, high poverty, high inequality.
And why aren't, why aren't the ordinary people voting for people who are going to make their life
better instead of people who protect the status quo? I don't get it. What about a teacher candidate?
I mean, Johnny and I, we've been talking about this, and I know Johnny, I keep saying,
Johnny's going to have the next question. But what about a teacher candidate? We keep encouraging.
We say every time we see an educator get involved, whether it's a local school district, whether it's
state legislature, or whether it's national, that they really bring something that is potentially
able to communicate to maybe, you know, a neighbor who could typically be voting in their,
not in their best interest, like we see in West Virginia. Well, in Tennessee, there's a teacher
running for the Senate against one of the most right wing of the senators. The right wing
Senator being Marsha Blackburn, who is a trooper. And she, Gloria Johnson, who was a special ed
teacher as a legislator. And she was one of the three people who led the boycott, you know,
demanding gun control legislation. And they threw out the two black guys. Are they the
Justin's or Justin? Yeah, Justin and yeah. Yeah. Well, they threw them out. And by one vote,
they mistrowing her out. But she's, you know, and she said, well, you know, the reason they didn't
throw me out is I'm white. But she only, she only stayed in by one vote. She's now running against
Marsha Blackburn. Marsha Blackburn has a lot more money. And it would be fantastic if
Gloria Johnson won the Senate seat in Tennessee. Yeah, Johnny. Well, that's great. And that's,
that's fun for our listeners too, because you're out there listening. You're saying, hey,
wasn't Gloria Johnson on busted pencils? A couple of weeks ago, she sure was. She sure was.
Simple. I would say what Diane's kind of, you know, illuminating here is that we the
David's can slave the Goliaths. You know, and so I think in the next segment, when we come back,
I would love Diane. If we can go into that for our listener out there who's saying, okay,
what can I do? You know, I know we talk about supporting public education, but how can we get
together in that grassroots way that you're talking about, you know, and do something about this
situation that really feels like, I know when I'm listening to this stuff all the time, I feel like,
how can I make change? What can I do? And our listener out there listening, when we come back,
Diane's going to tell us, hey, how can we the David's slave the Goliaths? It's busted pencils,
give us a call 855-7524842. It's laying Goliath when we get back.
If you're not turned down to politics, politics will turn on you.
Oh, yeah. Somebody knew Aaron on the board. Thank you, producer. Aaron Busted pencils fully
led an education talk, educated educators talking education. Our guest, Dr. Diane Ravich,
she's joining us. We're talking about 2020 slaying Goliath. The book that was set to take the
movement to fight for public educations and move it another step closer to saving the public schools
that are the foundation of democracy in this country. I mean, that's the reality that public schools
in democracy, they go hand in hand and whittling away at this, Diane, you're talking about,
there's still Goliaths out there that we need to go after. Johnny was asking who some of the
some strategies and you had some thoughts too about just talking about the whole essence of
privatization. And the reality too is that every move in a direction away from public schools
has been based on a blanket of evidence that doesn't exist. Nothing got better from the reform
or standpoint. The disruptors, as you called them. Yeah, well, it's something that puzzles me,
I guess if I think about what's the most bizarre thing that's happened in this whole battle to
save public education, it's that the public schools continue to be better choices than all of the
alternatives. Charters are not better. They're very frequently much, much worse. The ones that are
most successful are the ones that exclude kids. Public schools accept everybody. They don't have a
choice. And so people say, well, we need charter schools and kids will have a choice. And so
the charter schools have the choice, not the kids. And now we have many states with vouchers
where public money is going to completely unaccountable religious schools and also to private schools.
And the evidence against vouchers is overwhelming. My favorite voucher researcher is Joshua
Callan at Michigan State University. And Josh was a voucher researcher for 20 years. And he
began to realize, you know, I can't just talk about the good things and not so good things.
Most of the things that are happening are terrible. The kids are falling far behind. And most of the
vouchers, we now know this to be a fact because it's true in every state with vouchers. Most of the
vouchers are going to kids who are already enrolled in religious and private schools. And
the evidence is clearer that it's high income families that are benefiting most from vouchers
because it's a subsidy for them. They may be paying 40,000 a year in tuition. And now they get
eight or $10,000 from the state to reduce the cost. And then the voucher school raises its tuition.
So, you know, it's like a lose-lose for the public because there's less money for the public schools.
And increasingly, as we see more charters and more vouchers, there's less money for public schools.
And also the kids who will leave public school are not the poorest in the neediest. They're the kids
who are doing the best. Although they don't do very well in voucher schools either. I mean,
Josh Cowan has pulled together the evidence showing that when kids leave the public schools to go
to a voucher school, they're usually going to a religious school with unsertified teachers,
or to a private school with unsertified teachers. And their learning loss is greater than the
learning loss of the pandemic. And many of those kids return to public schools because their
parents realize, well, all right, you know, we tried that. It didn't work. It was terrible.
So, if you just look at the evidence, vouchers are a step backwards. It's just moving a huge
multi-million dollar. In some case, like Arizona, a billion dollars in the pockets of
wealth, high-income families, and doing nothing for public education other than taking money from it.
Well, and on that too, we say, you know, in Wisconsin, particularly, where civic media is based,
this is that, you know, we've had Ruth Khan upon a couple of times to say that, yeah, 80% of those
vouchers went to parents who had already had their kids in private schools. And Diane, what you're
saying, though, too, is the evidence of, quote, making schools better. But isn't that evidence that
they really didn't care about making public schools better that this really was just a way to take
public dollars and to move them away from public schools to create a private school system because
the reality is, is they weren't looking to fix public schools. They were looking to
sync public schools. And that's what we're seeing. Well, they always use the rhetoric of, we have
to fix public schools. And I remember Wendy Comp used to say poverty is not the problem. Bad
teachers are the problem. If we can only, you know, get teacher America everywhere, then fix the
schools, then poverty will take care of itself. Well, that, we know is sheer nonsense. So,
what the reformers are so called reformers, which I prefer to call disruptors or deformers,
what they, they had to use this language of, we're going to fix things. We have the answers.
We're going to have charters. We're going to have vouchers. We're going to have teachers for
America. We're going to have high stakes testing. None of it work. None of it picked anything.
And so now that they don't even make those claims, they're doing it because they want to do it.
The choice in itself is the only thing they care about. And they don't care about the consequences.
But the courts have to have that high-flown promise. And what we know now is we have research. We know
that other promises were lies. I mean, the vouchers are always sold. We have to help save
poor kids in failing schools. Those are not the kids taking the vouchers. It's rich kids in
elite private schools and kids who've been in religious schools from kindergarten on.
Johnny. So it's a hoax on the public. And the whole point is privatization because somebody's
making money out of this. And it's not certainly not improving public education or helping kids.
That's what I was going to ask. And I was going to say, you know, how do we name the Goliath?
And then what happens if the Goliath kind of wins in this? I mean, it's been successful thus far.
So naming the Goliath here, one of them being that's privatization effort. But what happens
if Goliath wins? Well, I think if Trump has reelected God forbid, but if he's reelected,
we could lose public education. It was still exists, but it would be like the schools of last
resort for the kids that nobody wanted. The kids who didn't get chosen by a charter, the kids who
didn't get chosen by voucher schools are other private schools. And they would be the dumping ground
for those kids who have high proportion of kids with disabilities. Kids with disabilities have
absolutely no rights in voucher schools and in some charter schools. So I'll simply say to them,
you know, we're not the right fit for you. You better try a different charter. So the public schools
are required to provide those services. And the public schools, if there's a Trump victory,
you will see another someone very much like Betsy DeVos as secretary. We'll see vouchers
in more and more places. The public schools will become the dumping grounds and they'll have the
kids who have difficulties who are behavioral problems. And we'll see segregation that will
look very much like before the Brown decision of 1954. I think about that. Okay, so pushing back
on that, Diane, too, as Johnny, you're saying it's like, yeah, what are the stakes? The stakes are
incredibly high. We're talking about truly losing public education. And I'd say, too, to remind
people, you lose public education in this country, you are going to lose then the democracy that
has been under attack also in these recent years. The reality is that, too, the democracy's under
attack. And if you want to see that, you look at what's happening in the public schools. And you
say, why do they want to get rid of public schools? Because public schools are that place for what,
90% of the people to, yes, learn the academics that they're supposed to learn, but also understand
and have an education in civics in government of being a responsible citizen and saying it's
the only institution that has, as its mission, responsible citizenship, active citizenship,
on top of the academics, people seem to forget that the public schools are that are those places
where we learn to be democracy, to be in a democracy. I just, you know, thoughts on that potential
or at that point I am. Well, you know, you remind me of one of the heroes of
slaying the lieth who's still doing heroic work. And that's Charles Johnson and the pastors for
Texas children. And they've now opened up similar organizations in several states, but no
and so far has been as successful as the Texas pastors. They have stopped Greg Abbott's
stouture scheme in his tracks. Now, I don't know, maybe three sessions in a row. And
they're authoring in his site. Now, Greg Abbott says he doesn't want indoctrination. He wants
education. That's why kids ought to be going to religious schools. Well, the purpose of a religious
school is indoctrination. I mean, the purpose of public school is not indoctrination. It's to
bring together people of all kinds of religions and faiths and no faith at all and learn to live
together, learn to cooperate, learn to do projects. And religion is what you do on Sunday or
or Saturday or whatever day you do it. But school is not the place for religion. That is indoctrination.
And Greg Abbott's turned it on his head. And that was his campaign slogan for his voucher fight
was we don't want indoctrination. That's why we need vouchers. And he's collected millions from
these Goliaths. I mean, one of the worst of them. And I don't think I got him into slaying
Goliath, who's a man named Jeff Yes. Jeff Yes is in Pennsylvania. Maybe you came across him when
you were there. Yeah. Jeff Yes is a multi-multipidionaire, one of the biggest donators to Trump. And
oddly enough, a graduate of New York City public schools for which he has no gratitude. So he's a
big funder of charteres and vouchers. He gave Greg Abbott six million dollars, which was the biggest
donation ever to any politician in Texas. And Greg Abbott used that money to run candidates,
extremist Republicans against moderate Republicans. And he was able to knock out some of the moderate
Republicans who opposed vouchers. So it's a bitter fight. But it had been amazing. I mean, they
were an example of how you can mobilize people and fight for what's right and good and true.
And I see that we point to the Texas too, because you know, the idea, particularly rural Texas has
been so incredibly strong at pushing back and fighting for their public schools. Even in rural
Tennessee, because you saw Governor Lee lost his voucher push this year. And largely on the fact
that rural Republicans said, no, these are our schools. We don't have a choice. The only choice we
have are our public schools. The only choice we have, therefore, is democracy.
Therefore, we don't want vouchers in our state to keep that movement going. And you just talk
about the billionaires funding the push. When's a billionaire going to step up and fund one of us,
Diane? Well, I've searched high and low. And it's, I don't know of any billionaires funding
public education, although I did make a long list of them that are fighting against it.
And the only reason I can think, I mean, I don't know where Jeff Bezos stands, for example. I
haven't seen him funding the bad guys, but he doesn't fund the good guys either. One of the really
nice things I have to mention is that Chris Lubyanski at Indiana University, that a study of which
organizations have the most influence in education. And number one was, number two was the Heritage
Foundation. Number one was the American Enterprise Institute. Number three was a network for public
education. And then there was, you know, Betsy DeVosis group, et cetera. The others all spent
multiple millions each year. We, our budget for that year was $302,000. So even with the small
amount of money we had, we were number three amongst all these multibillionaire organizations.
Right. So, you know, people can make a difference. And that, that's the most important
message I was trying to get across and explain Goliath. Not that we have done it. He ain't
slain yet. And in fact, if you said there are many more Goliaths, but they're so the only hope we
have is we have the numbers. They have the money and we have the numbers. So how do we get a
crawl? How do we reach our numbers? Get the mobilized, get involved. And first-way people that they
can win important victories. Sometimes one person, and G2 Brown was an example of that.
And other times, mobilizing with other parents and fighting back. I mean, just, do you come across
Jeff Piper and Missouri? Oh, yeah. We've had her on the show. Yeah. Oh, wonderful. Well, she's
doing great job too with mobile, you know, speaking on behalf of world Democrats who are trying to
say their public schools. And she said, we don't have any private schools around here. Right.
Well, it's just, so Dr. Diane Ravage, thank you so much. Right now, 2020, but it's 2024.
This is the movement. This is the call, Diane. You just said there we have the numbers and we need
those numbers and we know you're out there listening to busted pencils. We know you're part of the
network for public education. We know you're a bad ass teacher. We know that you love your public
schools. We got to get active. We got to push forward in this because yeah, billionaires aren't
going to step out and save us right now. Although, hey, any billionaires out there that want to sponsor
busted pencils, we'll take a couple dollars to keep going just to keep us on the air.
But that is it. Dr. Diane Ravage, thank you so much for busting pencils without tonight.
That's that's that. Thank you and pick up the great work. Donnie and Sam.
All right. Thanks, Diane. Cindy, when we get back,
oh, man. Yeah, I thought we'd come back into the last segment. Little seven dust,
schools out, not yet though, almost out. Busted pencils, fully let it education eight, five,
five, seven, five, two, four, eight, four, two. Just had Dr. Diane Ravage on talking about her slaying,
the lieth book released in 2020. I re-release on busted pencils, but you're not officially
but saying, you know what, it's time to continue. Bring up. Let's get the fight together to slag
a lie. Cindy from Appleton, you're on the phone. We want to talk to you. Sorry, we didn't have
a Diane on for you, but Cindy, what's happening, our friend?
Well, that's all right. And I'm just glad she brought up the indoctrination thing because
I would think that intelligent people would be able to figure this out on their own that
public colleges, public schools, public high schools do not indoctrinate. That's what the
private cast, like the private Lutheran college of schools and high schools do is indoctrinate.
And like I said, I can't believe people can't figure that one out on their own.
I'm, Johnny, you don't only think about this in, man, Cindy, thank you so much for the call
from Appleton text from Mike. Oh, Mike in Denver. Yeah, we remember Mike, Mike DeGierre was one of
our guests. You mentioned concern if Trump is elected, yet how are the Dems, the Democrats,
that would be the Democratic Party, also complicit in the continual push to promote charter schools,
Democrats for education reform, deeper. And yeah, pick it out there, Mike, thank you. Are they tied
on, Johnny? I just want to, I just want to, you know, interject and kind of put a cap on things,
but, but take a little bit of a different perspective in it. And it dovetails into Mike from
Denver's, how come the Dems are complicit in this? And, and one of the reasons it is is because
there's a couple of, there's a little bit of a myth woven through what we talked about today,
and sort of this polarizing sides. We all land on the same side, privatizing public education
is a huge problem. But the reasons why we, we sometimes differ on and, and I really can argue
case by case example where there are plenty of charter schools and plenty of private schools
that are not indoctrinating, but they have the option to if they'd like to. Now indoctrination
is never good education. And so to make a blanket statement and say like all private schools are
indoctrinating is absolutely, you know, is hyperbole. Can they though? And this is where I want to come
back to. Can they? Yes. And so the danger in privatizing education isn't in the private versus
public kind of sector as we all probably on the come up experience education, but it's in recent
decades where everything political and public is being privatized. And what I mean by that is
the lack of transparency and democratic process and the governance of what's happening in schools
goes away. And that is why we oppose privatization. I think we get into the weeds and we get
really into some straw man arguments that it's that it's indoctrinating or it's only, you know,
we have to protect separating church from state. And those are all very, really important things.
But that can also happen in charter schools. And so well, I'm an advocate of public education.
I just want to say for argument leaves opening for the case example for the counterproof
that hey, but here I have a really good charter. We call them green light charters.
It's an example of a really great school that and we utilize and say instead of saying that's
what all of our public schools can and should be and many of them are. We use it as a case example.
This is really good education. This is why we need to privatize education, which is absolutely
a dangerous path. Absolutely. Yeah, down to it. The argument is really about like like us
David's fighting the gala at the privatizing the public good good education ought to have
transparency at the current as the current exists under, you know, constitutional laws and states.
It's governed by state state education is a state right. It is it belongs to the people of that
state. The government of the state you're in is in charge of your education system unless
we fall to the gala at the privatization and then we're in deep deep due to and I would say not
such deep due to because we well, we got to worry about indoctrination. That's bad education anywhere.
It's because we have to make sure we preserve democracy right and it's in and Tim, I'll go back
and correct one thing in public schools is not the only place we learn to be democratic citizens
in good schools anywhere because I thought immediately 20 charter schools that I've been
in and out of in the city of Detroit that do a really good job around activism and citizenship
and they become green light examples for the privatization. It's a double-edged sword we want to
get away from and if we don't have a good game plan for it and our game plan is they're indoctrinating
then we're in deep due to because they're going to say no, we're not look and we know you're not.
But I got to spend indoctrination to another way just you know since we're putting it out there.
I the privatization though and I think Cindy from Appleton was talking about this the reality
and Johnny you pointed that out very clearly. Private schools can indoctrinate but I would say
privatization is its own form of indoctrination because it's an indoctrination against the
public the common good democracy and so I'm going to you know we've talked about this before because
hey I don't have a problem with democracy indoctrination such as what public schools are because
being indoctrinated into a democracy yeah guess what that's what happens I don't know people
are like Tim that's not really good in democracy don't go together because democracy is about
recognizing force and free will and difference and indoctrination is more of a tyranny of one
set of ideas it's antithetical to democracy well then I'm advocating I'm advocating democracy and
I'm advocating yes patient and I'm advocating the fact this is the two that we don't want
parents in accountability public the common good Johnny you're talking about too and recognizing
that our commitment our commitment to each other Diane made the comment too about public schools
they educate everybody all of our different nationalities all of our different religious origins
all over to you they ought to raise and they currently don't but we but what we all agree on is
that they the mechanism is there the responsibility ought to be there and it should be part of the
public good and the governance of it and Tim I'll say for listener out there this isn't only happening
in education we just chop it up related to education this is happening to our health care system
this is happening to our choice for foods this is privatization as Tim is saying isn't indoctrination
in itself right it is the antithesis democracy and you know what one place where you can if you're
in Madison go check that out and chop it up and talk about it because Tim and I we got to last
week we got to get some great passionate conversations with the good people in Madison at the
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busted pencils educators amplified tomorrow night