Yeah, we're doing this. Let's get home to this room, Tim. Let's do it. Home room.
What's going on, fellas? Wait, that's Monday. Happy Monday, Tim. Dr. Tim Slecker. Dr. Johnny
Lupinox. I thought that was, wait, I thought that was a restart, man. No, man. That was the,
that was the energy that the audience sees in us every day. And then I'm just channeling
in to you, Tim, because I'm excited to do this home room. Yeah. Home room fully led
to Johnny Tim and Jacob. We are here. Oh, my God. What a thing. Hey, actually, this is
a good example of typically how Monday's go. Hey, welcome to the week. And if anybody's
waking up and going, what happened last week? Well, all kinds of things. Get your ballroom
dancing shoes ready because there will be a new East Wing coming forward. And also,
potentially new civics classes headed your way, K 12 learners and teachers, $150 million
from the education department that almost doesn't exist is now available to teach civics
in history and in Johnny. I'm a, I'm a little bit disappointed because if they'd have just
listened to busted pencils for the last couple of years, all the civics lessons that anybody
ever needed, we did. This is exciting, Tim. And I'm going to ask you because I think there's
a catch to this. Oh, yeah. As a, as a social studies teacher and I teach social studies
teachers, I get pretty excited when I hear there's a big pot of money, do civics education.
I'm like, well, this is absolutely essential to democracy and it's about time. That sounds
like music to my ears. There's yet to be an administration to really pour into this
in my lifetime of teaching, at least. And so I get excited. But Tim, there's got to be
a catch because I mean, I think you, if I was to say, I believe this is for teachers
like me, you would say, well, I've got some land. I got some land to say, yeah, that's
actually swamp, right? I got a bridge. I got a bridge in New York. It's a good price
right? It's too good to be true, right? Okay, within this is truly a civics lesson
and also a critical reading. John, you know, when they say, you know, make sure you know is
actually inside gift before you celebrate it. Or in other words, what is labeled? What about
the ingredients? So, you know, you get that really awesome looking bag of Doritos. And you're
like, yes, well, you know, anybody knows now, read the ingredients and what you get with Doritos.
Ooh, that's kind of scary. This too, before you jump in and celebrate all of the cash that is
now coming your way to teach civics, dig deep, open up the packaging and read the ingredients.
Or in this case, what is that you will have to do to get any of the money? And John,
just teaching kids to do what we just simply did right there in three minutes,
that ain't included in the stuff that you're going to be required to teach to get this money.
In fact, in fact, this, what we just did here, exposing the potential mislabeling of something
and looking deeply and figuring out, whoa, that ain't what we bought. That's not going to be what
is going to be taught. In fact, we're going to be taught that here is what it means to be
a civically engaged, no, actually, here's what it means to be an American patriot.
And that's what we're selling here is patriotism, good old fashion, American patriotism. And I might
even say, maybe not even really patriotism, it is good old fashion, indoctrination.
And you know, I know some people are going like, but kids need to know. So it's like revisionist
history kind of revision. It's a revisionist history of the revisionist history that conservatives
believe have actually led to a decline in civic responsibility because, you know, the Howard
Zen types of history that have dominated for the past 40 years, which is nonsense because that's
not true. But if it was true, that has caused such civic upheaval that kids don't even know what it
means to be a citizen anymore, Johnny. So I'm still excited because I'm still like, hey, maybe
that swamp land is actually swamp land I can do something with. I'm going to be diving in,
I mean, it's home-room, it's Monday, it's early in the week. But I'm going to be diving into this
because, you know, it's my job too. But also like I teach social studies teachers, they're going
to be teaching in this administration and they're teaching civics all the time in their classrooms
when they're teaching social studies, you know, and when they're teaching other content areas,
they're really teaching about how to learn together in a democracy so that we can
graduate to making decisions together in our community and in a democracy. As we said it many
times here on busted pencils, education is the bedrock or the foundation of a strong democracy.
So, you know, I got to understand if we're pouring big bucks, book who dollars into teaching
civics, I got to understand what this administration's version of teaching civics is. So one, I can report
responsibly out on it here at busted pencils and two, so I can prepare social studies teachers
and all you listeners out there, right, as part of this. So I can say, hey, like Tim's saying,
this is a different version of what we understand as civics, you know, skills contributing to a democracy.
Well, I'm hopeful maybe there's some cracks in there too that say, hey, maybe there's some of
that money for, you know, teaching good old fashioned democracy, Jeffersonian democracy, not that
like that, not all of the stuff maybe Jefferson did. Again, I'm a big don't throw the baby out with
the bathwater, love ward democracies, don't love slavery, you know, all space for those two things.
So, you know, I'm, I'm still excited about this Tim and I want to dive into it and it's like,
it's like you and I went to one of those timeshare places where they say, here's an amazing
vacation for 50 bucks. You just got to attend this meeting. I'm going to the meeting, Tim,
I'm diving in and I'm going to, and I'm excited to look into this stuff. So that's me pledging
that I'll be reporting out on it through, well, out on it through busted pencils here.
When you're at that, and I'm going to show up with the, you know, how to get you out of this
time, you can pull me out of it, you know, because you, you signed on to something you did not
know that you were getting actually, um, I think a great illustration, those would just said,
okay, if education is the foundation of a democracy, yeah, what if we ain't selling education,
what if it's indoctrination, indoctrination can't be the foundation of democracy.
No, okay. So my, my challenge to everybody here this, this morning, this home room morning
challenge of the week is to get out there dig deep and and see, is this a civic education
that is going to be funded so that we can get truly educated citizens to participate in our
democracy, or is it something totally different, maybe not even education as much as it might be
some form of, well, I, you know, people go, you know, we don't, we're not into doing indoctrination.
I know, and in fact, you know, we've been hearing for the longest time that teachers
should never engage in indoctrination. I'm all for that, Johnny. And so I think, yeah,
challenge of the week, not for the week, but for the, oh, not for the WAK week. Hey, my glasses,
but I'm back with him in the chat, listen, I'm throwing all kinds of word, word play puns into
the chat, dad jokes for the week. But in the, you know, for the week, but for the strong. Okay,
I so when we, hey, you know what, classes in session, Johnny, this week, let's figure out what is
being sold for civic education. That's the challenge of the week. And now it's time for your moment
of Zen.
Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population
whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught, all is right just as it is.
And all is right just as it is when you tune in and listen to busted pencils. We love
your pencil busters. Thanks for grabbing today's home room podcast. And remember to get other great
podcasts filled with more busted pencils content on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever it is,
you get your podcasts from and you can always find us at the civic media website or at bustedpensils.com.
And don't forget to miss this week's class in session on Wednesday and you find a special drop
of producer's choice on Friday. And of course, pencil busters, you can catch busted pencils on
Saturdays at three p.m. Central time across all the civic media network stations for one hour.
I mean, your favorite blue collar scholars, Tim and Johnny are two busted pencils.