There it is. Busted pencils fully let it education talk. It is the educated educators who
talk education, Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, me, Dr. Tim Selecker, and of course our chairman of the
boards, Jacob, producer Jacob, we are here, home room. And you know, there's really important
home room news that we have to have to get to, but just thinking about last Friday's producer's
choice. And thought I throw this out to you guys as a question where Jacob was asking about
a little bit of rebellion in in school and pushing the envelope. Now, this wasn't a student,
but oh, you're going there. I got it. I was hoping you weren't.
I, you know, we just want to, you know, talk a little bit, but in South Carolina, a teacher's assistant,
teachers aid. These are the things, these are the things that come up in Tim's feed.
Got, got, gotten trouble for, for, I guess you'd call it an active rebellion, Jacob,
um, by, um, spraying, I didn't even know that there was a canned poop spray. Um, yes,
truly an aerosol spray that, um, creates the stench of your grandfather vacating the toilet
on Friday after Thanksgiving. So you're a poet with words, man.
I think, I think, I think Jacob and I both, you know, saw that text. We have a group text
where we chat news, you know, happening related to education, 99.9% of the time. And I think we
were just going to willfully pretend that that one went right past us both. Come on. It was
here you are. All right. Here you are. Starting the week off. Well, listen, I got to tell you,
though, how did this come about? This actually came about because I get every morning,
K-12 dive, which is a briefing of all the K-12 news. And, you know, they give you the news and then
they give you a section called what we're reading. And this was one of the articles that K-12
dive highlighted as they were reading. Uh, this comes from NBC News. Uh, poop spray causes 55K
in damage. It's South Carolina school teaching assistant arrested and charged.
Not very much. I guess youthful rebellion. However, getting into the article and Jacob,
if you want to put a link to it, I think for the show, people need to see it. Yeah. People
need to see there. There are there. I didn't realize this too, but they it then goes on to point
out that this has occurred many times. And most of the times it is students that are doing it
in different places across the country because there is also an aerosol fart spray that has been
used in the past by students. And does a foul stench cross the line? Well, you know, they're saying
this caused damage and some students and teachers and faculty had to get checked out for respiratory
issues. Um, so, you know, I think this might be one of those ones. I had to put it out there.
Let's not comment. Go read it on your own. And, and maybe I guess the, the, the lesson here,
if you're going to use poop spray for a prank, don't buy the aerosol. Go for the pump because it
seems like the aerosol maybe has some kind of, you know, um, cardio pulmonary adverse effects.
I, yeah, almost no comment. I mean, I think last week's show we talked about, you know,
like adolescent behaviors. I think this one falls outside of the boundaries of that.
This is like, we might expect needing to discipline the student for one of these poor decisions.
There was something wrong with having to discipline an adult with this kind of, this kind of
behavior. Tim, I mean, I really don't want Tim. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. No, Jacob, go, go. You're telling me,
we don't need a Department of Education. And now that it's gone, this is happening, I think
I need a Department of Education. Thank you, Jacob. And in fact, yeah, my goodness,
look at the, the chaos that is coming down the, um, shoot, um, sorry, you know, I had to try
a little bit there. Um, Jacob though, you bring up the education department. And yeah, I mean,
we have been hearing how it is on its way out. It's disappearing. It's, we need to get rid of it.
But right now, though, the Education Department is going to, it appears to be doling out millions
of dollars for this administration. And I put it in quotes, patriotic education, patriotic
education. This is, yes, this administration, Linda McMahon, the Education Department,
big move going forward. Um, in fact, I will quote Linda McMahon, um, why they're doing, um,
patriotic education grants. Quote, it is imperative to promote an education system
that teaches future generations, honestly, about America's founding principles,
political institutions, and rich history of which, guess what? I 100% agree with her on, on,
on that statement. The honest teaching of the founding, the documents, the political systems,
I'm, I can't argue with that, Lupinachi. Well, yeah, Tim, we've said it on here before, um, that
patriotism is one of the core democratic values. Now, patriotism doesn't mean revisionist history,
or, you know, omitting, you know, facts about how we have done great things as a nation,
and also how we have done some things like that aren't great at all. In fact, might be understood
as awful. It's about learning about all of it. You don't pick and choose just like core democratic
values. You don't just get to pick one or two of those, you know, there's a nice list of them.
We've wrapped, we've rattled them off before, you know, justice, equity, you know, diversity,
you know, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and yes, patriotism along with also popular
sovereignty, right? All of those things. And the trick here is, you know, we ought to be learning
a balance of all of those. And in fact, the good definition of patriotism according to
core democratic values is the practicing and understanding of all these values. So I'm a big
fan of this, much like I'm a fan of this, you know, supposedly going away, Department of Education,
Funding Research about AI in schools, because every teacher I'm talking to you is asking questions
about how are you using AI? How are your students engaged in this learning tool? What is it doing
to help or hurt your classroom? These are good questions to not only ask and engage in conversation
about, but to research. And that's some of the things that grants fund is better understanding
of things we do in our classrooms. So I'm kind of with you Tim. I'm a fan of, hey, they're funding
in a sense, how we teach social studies, let's research how we teach social studies, which is
quite near and dear to both of our professional hearts. You would think, you would think so, but
right. I mean, I'm spinning it how I want to spin it. This is this is the theme here, Tim. You
get to spin it. How you want to spin it. But you know, there's a bot here. And there is not
just, I mean, not necessarily what we talked about to begin with. It's a couple of butts.
What will it take to get this money? Well, the executive director of the American Historical
Association, Sarah Wixel says, the very narrow conception of patriotism coming out of this
current administration and this department of education is, oh, man, you're crushing my dreams
here, Tim. I was hoping to get some of this money. Well, it just it says, you know, she's
there concerned because this administration, whether it's through the Smithsonian, you know,
trying to say that we can't have exhibits that create some sense of negative stories about the
past that the American Historical Association is a little bit concerned about what it is that's
going to be funded and probably what is not going to be funded. And I'll just quote from
the director there, Sarah Wixel quote, that context, meaning what we've seen in the past from
the administration with the Smithsonian, with talking about what can and cannot be taught,
tells us that the administration is interested in telling an uncomplicated celebration
of American greatness, end quote. And, you know, Johnny, we talk about it, right? There is, you know,
patriotism pride, love of country, we want to inspire that. I think there was a horrible potential
wrong turn in some more extreme versions of teaching, you know, the only negative, because I did
see some teaching of really, you know, everything's bad, America's awful, horrible things, right?
And even that, I would point out when, you know, as again, my PhD in teaching and learning history,
actually, there are waves of the flavor of history that's been taught over the course of history
of teaching and learning in American school, where we teach a certain way and then a new way
comes in and kicks this one out, kind of like the old pendulum swing. And if you look at that
history of how to teach American history in schools, there never really has been
the good old days from a historian's point of view, where we were teaching history. We have, in one
way, taught very patriotic American love your country with with no blemishes, then it would swing
to a very negative story about history of this country. And to point out that actually neither one
of those stories are histories, their stories that were put together by certain evidence and
a certain position that people wanted to tell a certain narrative, but that if we're going to
really advocate and study history, we would be saying that it's not about teaching
love, hate, patriotism or not. The study of history would be an exploration of all kinds of different
framings of how people try to tell stories about our past. And again, somebody's going like,
what are you saying? We shouldn't be teaching. I'm like, yeah, when you teach all of the blemishes
and all of the celebrations as a big complicated story, that should inspire Johnny active patriotism
and citizenship because there when you do one or the other, I think what ends up happening is
is that you continue to advance polar stories that either alienate or elevate certain groups of
people in society. When the reality is is that American public schools teaching our core humanities
curriculum is not to separate people into your team versus our team versus their team. And
I'm concerned that what I see here potentially is a funding of a story for a certain group of
people to feel good and a certain group of people will end up feeling poorly about this. So
that's my concern. Yeah, Tim, I'll give it a little up coin of phrase of it. It's educational
malpractice. It's encouraging educational malpractice because what you described is what teachers
pretty much take an oath to do. And I'm comparing it to like, what doctors do, right? They take a
hypocratic oath, you know, to heal, right, to serve everyone in a healing way, you know, to do
to do least amount of harm. And educators do the same thing. And to, you know, teach to omit
certain things in favor of others when that simply is not the truth, right? Simply not is educational
malpractice. And most teachers are not going to do this. And they're going to be called indoctrinating
for it. But they're going to go through an era, you know, where we do have freedom of speech,
though, you know, it's under threat, but freedom of speech, as well as a responsibility,
because all rights come with the responsibility to carry out that oath, to do the least amount of
harm, to practice good education, to practice sharing the best available knowledge. Like you said,
about the goods and the bads and to mediate students thinking critically through those,
right? Having ethical, you know, dilemmas where they're saying, well, why did that happen?
What was the context? When did it happen? How do we prevent these kinds of things from happening
again? How do we be our best selves, be our strongest possible democracy or country or community,
right? All those things. That's what educators do, right? So, you know, don't be part of teaching
and be guilty of educational, malpractice, right? Practice. I just say practice. Practice.
What's wrong with practice? And don't do I, you know, as my bad reference to an old AI,
different AI, Tim, AI than your AI, my AI from the sports world. Maybe some listeners got it
out there. Practice. You talking about practice. You know, but anyways, I digress. I'm still,
I'm still hung up on. Also, don't, you know, if you're out there and you're an adult who hasn't
learned the boundaries, stay away from fart sprays, right? Boy, and with that, now is time for your
moment of Zen. This is not going to be a neutral class. I said to the class, I don't believe in
neutrality. And you can't be still on a moving train, right, Tim? So thanks for being on the train
with us today. Shoot, shoot, home room. We're off to a great week. Thanks for listening and
remember to grab great podcasts filled with more busted pencils content on Apple podcasts,
Spotify or of course, on the civic media website. And don't you dare miss out on this week's class
in session on Wednesday and you find our special drop of producer's choice on Friday. And of course,
catch busted pencils on Saturday at 3 p.m. Central time across all the civic media network stations.
For one hour of your favorite blue-collar scholars and Johnny.
And keep Bustin Pencils.