This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Yeah, there it is.
It's, you know, it's Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk,
educated educators talking education classes in session,
Wednesday, so happy you all could join us.
In fact, it's a special little episode today,
producer Jess and Tim taking it all by themselves.
Jess, how are you doing, my friend?
Well, you know, there's been a lot going on.
I am a little bit.
I am glad to be here with you.
I am glad to be here to do the work.
And I'm ready because there's going to be a lot of work that needs to happen.
We do have a lot of work to do.
And Johnny Lupinacci, occasionally, guess what?
He's a coach and you all know that.
And Johnny is coaching today right now.
The Washington State hockey team, they're playing a game today.
So anybody going, where's Johnny Lupinacci?
He's doing his job coaching hockey because he's just kind of a guy.
And that matters.
And that matters.
We said we want that stuff to be, you know,
the extra or the essential curriculars that make public education,
both college and K-12 great.
It is one of those things that the extra curriculars,
or as we like to say, not even we like to say,
is we're pointing out more and more the essential curriculars
that truly engage and create an education experience
that benefits the entire community.
But yes, Jess, here we are.
One week in a day, beyond, or actually longer than that.
No, one week in a day.
One week in a day.
We can all do that.
One week in a day.
And we are now digesting, making sense of putting the pieces into play
and trying to understand what comes next.
Not pulling any more hair out on my head,
although again, that was too late for that.
But yes, president elect Donald Trump coming in.
Yes, I know coming in January, new president four years.
Okay, the reality is that is what's coming to us.
And no, we're not asking for a new vote count or anything like that.
We are just fully in the position of saying,
okay, we know it.
We know he's coming.
We've had four years of, you know,
a little bit of an experience about the type of education platform
or what do you say platform dismantling attack?
dismantling you name at the attack.
But yeah, you know, so we are going to be doing a,
we're going to be dealing with a,
another second term of president elect Donald Trump,
being, you know, in charge of education.
And it's like, hey, but just, you know,
there wasn't a lot said in the run up in the quote,
you know, kind of like a tit for tat back and forth policy analysis of,
you know, what's the, what's the Harris waltz platform in education?
What's the Trump?
It just really wasn't one of those discussion points,
except for the fact that president Trump in the,
you know, he distanced himself from this though,
but in the project 2025 report,
there was this push to dismantle the Department of Education.
Well, this is one that he claimed very early,
very loudly.
This is one that he kept saying,
I can't wait to get back.
The first thing I'm going to do is end the Department of Education.
This is not one that he said, you know,
I'm distancing myself from project 2025.
This is one that he said, yep, that's, I'm going to run,
I'm going to run strong on that one.
I own that one, you know, dismantling the Department of Education,
the Federal Department of Education.
And again, just a mini,
mini, little history lesson.
No, he is not the first person to put this forward.
In fact, this has been, sadly,
a lifelong dream of hardcore,
and maybe not even hardcore,
but conservative Ronald Reagan's election in 1980,
ushered in the attack on the Federal Department of Education.
In fact, there was a movement at that point to do away
with it.
Reagan didn't,
but remember that, you know,
where does the hatred of the Department of Education come from?
Well, it's not from Donald Trump.
It's actually a long-held Republican kind of belief.
And so the reality here that 40 years later,
it's now coming true.
Well, boy, talk about patience.
It's one of the things conservatives and Republicans do,
is they just keep plugging away, plugging away.
But here it is.
So, but though, Jess,
I'm more disturbed now,
because there has been a little bit of a release
in what is Trump planning to do in public education.
There's a video out circulating right now
about two minutes,
two minutes of just the Donald,
telling us what to expect.
And I thought, you know what?
It's our job on busted pencils here
to bring some of those comments.
And then more importantly,
let Jess and Tim dissect
and make sense of them for you,
the busted pencils listener.
Without that, you know,
without any more than of us just rambling on,
just let's hear a little bit about what President-elect Donald Trump
has to say about public ed.
Sure.
Just before we go into that,
this video came out on Sunday,
the 10th of November.
So this is just five days after being elected.
And now we're starting to get some of those specifics.
So let's take a listen.
Here we go.
Here are 10 key ideas that will power our movement
for great schools.
First, we will respect the right of parents
to control the education of their children.
Second, we will empower parents
and local school board to hire and reward great principles
and teachers,
and also to fire the poor ones,
the one whose performance is unsatisfactory.
They will be fired.
Like on the apprentice, you're fired.
Third, we will ensure our classrooms are focused,
not on political indoctrination,
but on teaching,
the knowledge and skills needed to succeed,
reading, writing, math, science, arithmetic,
and other truly useful subjects.
Fourth, we will teach students
to love their country,
not to hate their country like they're taught right now.
Jess.
Mm-hmm.
Tim.
So much there.
There is.
There is.
Let's go through those first four points here.
First, parental choice in education.
Now, what does that really mean?
Okay.
Well, and I'm going to kind of push me away
because he's really going to go into this.
But number one, he actually,
he's using this to anticipate what he's going to say
in a couple more here,
but the respect he uses
is we're going to respect parents' rights.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Have parents been losing rights?
Am I missing this?
So this is one of those ones where it's like,
okay, that was,
what does he mean by that?
Whose parents' rights is he going to,
quote, respect?
And yeah, just the question of
when did respective parents
go out of favor?
I don't know that that's ever truly been the case.
This is kind of one of those issues
though that really plays well.
It sounds great
because it states a problem
and makes the problem a fact
without a reality of even checking the fact.
I'm going to give parents back the respect,
which assumes that they've already been,
it's already been taken away.
Right, right, right.
It's, it's like saying,
we're going to make our,
our bridges safe again.
Where are bridges not safe?
They just weren't just.
Oh.
And you know, parents have been pooped
on now for the longest time.
I, you know,
this one is one of those kind of,
when you go like,
do parents have the right
to direct the education of their children?
Is that what he's indicating there?
I wouldn't disagree with him
that parents have the ultimate authority
in the education of their children.
So I'm not that concerned about that.
But I think what?
Number two point number two.
That is something we should be very,
very concerned about.
That's the old,
the apprentice approach to work,
teacher workforce,
and principal workforce,
which is you're fired.
You're fired.
Here's what he's saying here,
is that he wants to do away
with teacher unions, teacher tenure,
and the ability of educators
who have been educated to be teachers,
long-term teachers.
This is a disruption in the workforce here,
and this is to create a culture of fear
around what it means to be a public educator
in America.
So this idea he wants
to actually create a sense of fear.
Lots of people understand, though, too.
We've been listening to this.
Teachers have already been in a state of fear
after the past few years with the attack
on critical race theory,
the attack on teaching history,
the attack on, you know,
the BS attack or the BS nonsense
of, you know, public school teachers
putting cat litters in the,
for all of the,
it's up, but there's been a culture of fear.
I worry about this one, though, too,
because this one gets out there,
and I know a lot of my friends
in public school teaching,
we'll hear this as a direct threat.
Absolutely.
It's, you know,
the word sounds so pretty.
We're going to reward greatness.
And if you are performing poorly,
if you are not performing up to standards,
then you will be let go.
And on the surface level,
that sounds like pretty much any job.
Sure.
But then we dig just a little bit deeper,
and he's talking about loyalty,
and he's talking about people
who are lining up to what he considers
to be greatness,
to be following his...
There you go.
His guidelines.
Loyalty.
Loyalty.
Not loyalty to a constitution.
Not loyalty to helping young people
develop themselves.
This is loyalty to one person.
Yeah.
And that's where he said, you know,
this is the attack on teacher tenure,
on unions, and you name it all of those things.
It actually really helped create a stable teaching for us.
Number three, though, too.
Then he really starts to go,
and what could you be fired for?
A political indoctrination.
We're going to get rid of political indoctrination.
And then he talks about...
I got a couple of ways to frame this one.
It's like, okay, political indoctrination.
And we've said this just many times on busted pencils.
What about the indoctrination of democracy?
Is it indoctrination to teach
about the Constitution of the United States?
Yeah.
Something that he doesn't understand
and has no respect for.
Well, and that is.
Let's be honest.
He doesn't want...
Democracy indoctrinated.
Constitution loyalty indoctrinated.
Truly having civic pride
and civic responsibility and civic actions
of a citizen of this country.
No, that's indoctrination according to Trump.
Being a critical, self-reflective citizen
who makes decisions that is in the benefit of an entire democracy
unlike the benefit of the loyal kind of patronage
that he wants for people to follow.
Then he follows this up with her too.
I love this.
And how do you know it's not political indoctrination?
Well, when they're teaching,
reading, writing,
arithmetic, science, and math.
Yeah, I'm...
I'm not hearing one really, really critical discipline there.
No, but I go.
I was...
I'm very interested, though.
I would love to find out the difference between math and arithmetic and math.
Arithmetic, yes.
That would be really interesting.
I want to know where history falls in, though.
Well, and notice it's left out.
It's left out.
It's left out very...
And to me, very intentionally,
because that is where we're talking about, you know,
whether it's civics, whether geography,
or teaching American history.
And I got to say,
I'm all for teaching love of the country.
Absolutely.
Absolutely 100%.
But the problem here...
I feel like that should come naturally
because you teach about the country.
You teach what the country is.
You show how we got here
and the ideals that founded our country,
the things that we're moving towards,
that should naturally engender love.
Hmm.
Hmm.
You would think so, but I, you know, again,
conservatives and I can't...
This is not Trump, you know, just to remind people, too.
These are not new statements coming out of this...
Yes, he's a...
He's a crazy unhinged man.
But the principles that he's advocating here
really do have their roots in history
all the way back into the Reagan's election in 1980.
And this truly, this attack on public schooling
and largely being framed from the standpoint of saying
public schools have created this downward cataclysm
that's called America, you know,
because...
And the reality is that American public schools
have...
This goes all the way back to a nation at risk, 1983.
The public schools caused the nation to be at risk.
And what are the solutions?
Well, some of the solutions that came out
was actually not really a solution,
but there were a lot of problems pointed out
in the 80s and through the 90s.
A constant problem, a coordinate conservatives,
was what they called political indoctrination.
And that reality was is that, yeah,
a critical citizenry was the focus
of the American social studies curriculum.
And that scares the hell out of conservatives,
seriously.
And even if you're a chainy Republican
and you're out there right now, sorry,
I'm going to tell you that you also advocated
for the kind of curtailing of teacher's abilities
to teach critical citizenry, okay?
And that to me is so ridiculous
because if you have any grasp of American history,
that this is how we got here.
It was being a critical citizenry.
Being a critical citizenry,
and I was funny, I was just watching on social media
and Harvey Kay, who I know has been
on a lot of civic media problems programs.
He's been on our show, though, too.
And pointing out again, guess what?
America was always a radical nation.
Always.
It's just that this form of radicalness
now that's taken over, not the same kind,
but there has been a long kind of
approach towards really suppressing
the advocacy of public education,
particularly around critical citizenry and democracy,
because guess what?
That's not good for power.
That's also not necessarily good
for total free market capitalism
to just totally do what it wants to do
in the name of market economics and profit.
So much going on.
I'm thinking, though, two,
608, 557, 857,
is the number starting to get more people
giving some comments and leaving us messages
in the mailbox,
the mailbag.
Sometimes it feels like we're all in a fog.
What are you most looking forward to
or frightened by coming up
as public education?
This Trump continues to move on.
He gave us some more.
He did give us some more.
Let's go back to this.
Yes.
Fifth, we will support bringing back
prayer to our schools.
Six, we will achieve schools
that are safe, secure, and drug-free,
with immediate expulsion for any student
who harms a teacher or another student.
Seventh, we will give all parents the right to
choose another school for their children
if they want,
it's called school choice.
Let's break these down, Charlie.
Do you start with the last one
and go for it?
You said you were right.
Respecting parents' rights.
He starts off with that number one
and kind of comes back and
truly sets up the team off of here,
which is school choice.
And this is where
public school advocates have been saying,
like, what is going to happen
with a Trump presidency?
A national movement
that is going to be universal vouchers,
a federal movement,
to make public education a choice.
This idea that parents,
no, we're not going to have
local public community schools.
You might be allowed to have one,
but the reality here is,
is that we're going to break up community schools,
give parents what they're
calling the right to choose,
which they already have had their right to choose.
Yes, they do.
A tax voucher
for money, for them to take
to the private school of their choice.
And now, Tim,
where is that money coming from?
That's coming from my neighbor,
the taxpayer.
And where was that money supposed to go?
That money was going to go to my neighbor's
local public community schools.
Oh, so what you're saying is
this school choice,
that's the choice
to drain money
from our public schools
and give it to private schools
that do not fall
under the regulations
and the accountability
of a public school.
Exactly.
And then that goes right to the very first part
of the, again,
school prayer.
Which prayer?
Yeah, I don't know.
There's lots of ways to kind of analyze this one.
We know, you know,
some people would say,
well, it's Judeo-Christian values.
I'm not even sure that we can really
throw the Judeo part of the Christian values.
Typically not.
Typically not.
I have a feeling that
if I were to stand up and start,
you know, reciting Shema
if I were to start reciting
the Amidah,
that's not going to go over quite so well
as a Christian
who is looking to say a prayer in Jesus' name.
Yes.
We like Judeo-Christian values
with just the Christian.
Yeah, right.
And I don't imagine
that a person is going to have the same rights
if the faith that they follow is Islam,
if the faith that they follow is Hinduism,
if they are of any religion
other than a narrow view of Christianity.
This reminds me
the two is because he, you know,
guess what? He doesn't say Christian.
He doesn't say he identifies it as
school prayer.
We're going to bring back school prayer.
And this is where there's been a great
organization out there.
The Church of Satan.
I love them.
I said too. And guess what?
You've just invited them into the classroom now
of which they continue to do this
where they show up and say,
fine, if you want prayer
back in your public schools.
We're going to have prayer.
We are the Church of Satan.
And we would like to have our own
kind of study groups
and our own involvement there.
And if you haven't heard of the Church of Satan,
by the way, I'm just going to jump in here.
They are a fantastic
humanistic group.
I know right.
That just comes forward with this push back
against if you are going to mandate religion.
You don't get to specify which religion.
We are calling ourselves a religion.
And they put this flashy name on a Church of Satan
because it gets that instant response from people.
And they're not a group that worships the devil.
They're a group.
It's a very humanistic group.
I really strongly encourage you.
Go check them out.
Yeah. In fact, you know,
let's find a link for them.
Oh, yeah, I'll drop a link in the show.
I'll drop a link for that.
Yeah, because you know,
and maybe too, if you're a Church of Satan follower
or worshipper, give us a call.
Give us a call. We'd love to have you on the show.
We'd love to talk about the work that you're doing.
Yeah. And if anybody has any of those connections,
how do you do that?
It's 608-557-8577.
That's the mailbag.
Busted pencils.
608-557-8577.
School prayer, school choice.
Everyone, though, too.
I love this one.
And if you're a homer,
another student or another teacher,
you're expelled.
Mm-hmm.
Guess what?
Doing that right now?
Get you a call.
It'll already catch expelled.
All right, so nothing new there.
What do we got a couple more here, Jess?
We do. Let's listen.
Okay.
We'll go inside the classroom to help train them for meaningful work outside the classroom.
Ninth, we will strive to give all students access to internships and work experiences
that can set them on a path to their first job.
They're going to be very, very successful.
I want them to be more successful than Trump.
Let them go out and be more successful.
I will be the happiest person in the world.
We want our children to have a great life and be successful.
And tenth, we will ensure that all schools provide excellent jobs and career counseling,
so that high school and college students can get a head start on jobs and careers best suited to their God-given talents.
This is how we will ensure a great education for every American child.
And one other thing I'll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C.
And sending all education and education work and needs back to the States.
We want them to run the education of our children because they'll do a much better job of it.
You can't do worse.
We spend more money per pupil by three times than any other nation.
And yet we're absolutely at the bottom.
Bottom.
We can't do worse.
We're going to end education coming out of Washington, D.C.
We're going to close it up.
All those buildings all over the place.
And yet people that in many cases hate our children, we're going to send it all back to the States.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Jess.
Okay.
Well, now that my blood's boiling, let's jump into these last ones.
The first few parts, okay, the reality, the focus on jobs, technical skills, experiential education, guess what?
I actually, I don't have any problems with what he's talking about.
No, these are words that are correct.
Yeah, of course you want your students to have project-based learning.
Of course you want your students to have career training and advising.
And guess what, Tim?
Yeah.
They have that.
They already have that.
This is one, again, this is just to kind of create a mood as if that wasn't happening again.
So we're going to create something.
And the reason we're going to create something is not because we're creating something truly new.
We want to just create the sense that this never was happening to begin with.
Right.
We want to say that these students, they're really lacking.
They don't have any guidance on their future.
There's no internships.
There's no career counseling.
So we need to, we need to make sure these kids are doing a project or two.
And there's an inside part of this too that's really kind of throwing at is this.
The assumption here is, is that again, political indoctrination, learning history,
learning useless skills, it's kind of the anti.
However, let's not get too, too deep into that because yeah, I'm Mr. President.
If you mean that actually busted pencils might actually support you in high quality,
experiential, awesome education that leads to awesome jobs.
And yeah, and taking out Trump.
I'm all for it.
You know, let's, let's build some students capable of taking out Trump.
But there it is just the end of it though.
Guess what?
The end of the Department of Education.
Here's this part that we're going to send back the power to educate back to the states.
Guess what?
It never laughs.
Right.
There's something I recall you and Johnny saying very frequently.
Education is a right.
It's a state.
Right.
Right.
It is already a state right.
So, so let's come back to this.
What does the Department of Education do?
Why do we have it?
Well, I mean, first of all, there is a money aspect.
Absolutely.
You know, it comes in particularly for schools that are quote, you know, not getting the funding they deserve.
Um,
Federal Department of Education tries to balance out some of the budgets of some of the public schools to make sure that they're providing and a truly adequate education.
Um, it also is this for civil rights to make sure that you know what your rights as a student, your rights as a teacher, all of those things are also being respected.
There's the other thing though is is that guess what?
It doesn't really do a whole lot in this fact.
And so this is a real interesting kind of development here because it creates the narrative that the federal government has all of this kind of incredible authority over education.
And the quote, we're going to send it right back to the state's reality is that the federal government doesn't have this authority that the way the states do.
In fact, it is, as you said, we point out all the time, it's a state's rights.
I think this is going to be a little bit complicated because what if you're a state, then say, you know, Minnesota, something like that.
Who decides that you want to do awesome kind of critical citizenry democracy indoctrination?
Is he willing to say to Minnesota?
Yeah, that's where it belongs is in the state.
You make those decisions. See, this is where it gets a little bit complicated because if he is throwing away federal authority, I don't know how this works out because what he's proclaiming in these ten points that he goes over here.
Is actual, you know, an actual absolute monarchy over public education. Is he really going to give up power?
No. And I think this comes back to, you know, he's constantly saying about the Affordable Care Act, repeal and replace.
And then when pushed, what is your plan to replace it? I have concepts of a plan.
He said concepts of a plan for 12 years. So what is going to come in to replace the federal Department of Education?
Is there going to be absolutely no federal oversight of all of the education happening in this country? Is there going to be no federal reserve of money to go to say states that aren't pulling in enough funds to have these great project based learnings and experiential learning.
Activities. What's the plan here?
I don't know what the plan is on that. And come on again, this is just kind of crazy talk in that sense.
But, you know, I think about this one. It's crazy and we can have fun. But this is frightening. And these are the things that we have been, we've been talking about this.
Well, I mean, forever since, you know, forever the show has been a part of civic media. This is something that we've been really talking about.
You know, what is the role of public education in America? And the reality is is that guess what it is our kind of democracy laboratory.
And what you're hearing here out of president elect Trump is truly a smashing of the democratic laboratory.
This is why people need to be frightened by this movement. This isn't truly about giving back the states, the rights, because they already have the rights. But this really is about creating a movement that disenfranchises and disengages communities from using public education for its main number one purpose, which is the democracy, the installation of critical citizenry participatory citizenry.
To help people be prepared to live in this messy, messy world that we try to call, you know, democracy. What does it mean to do that?
This is an attack on democracy. And you know what, we're not going to hold back during these next four years and we're going to say here on busted pencils what we do.
Yeah, guess what? We do indoctrinate. We are the indoctrinators of democracy. We do not make any apologies for that. Sorry, that's what we do here. This is an indoctrination station in that sense because we're indoctrinating the values of democracy.
And now for your moment of sin.
Education can and should be dangerous.
Thanks everybody for listening. Make sure you hang on Friday. Yeah, first downs and Friday nights. And yeah, that Saturday drop again three o'clock all across all civic media stations.
And make sure you don't forget if you we want to hear from you 608 557 8577. Once again, everybody keep busting pencils.
Yeah, no, no, no.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Still stop talking to me.